Easter, by far, is probably the
most well-attended day of churches in America. It is the day that
most families gather, such as Christmas. And Mother's Day is
another, probably third most attended day of worship in America. But friends, the question is,
why does Easter bring joy in our culture, but rather the Christ
of Easter doesn't bring joy any other day? So, we're excited
about Easter, and we're joyful about Easter. When I was a little
boy, Easter was a day that you got the best outfit to wear to
church. It was always some pimp little
tie and a vest, with your little wing back loafers, and your hair
had to be slicked back a little bit, because it couldn't look
messy, and your collar had to be pressed, and your cuffs had
to be buttoned, and if you were a little older, You could wear
a jacket and all the girls in the neighborhood had to wear
the best dresses, the biggest bows and the most prestigious
Mary Janes. You know, they all look alike.
Look at my Mary Janes, aren't they shinier than yours? Yeah.
But really, that's sort of what Easter was. It was a custom.
You woke up. You got a lot of treats and presents
and a lot of stuff and the introduction to wonderful dental bills for
the rest of the season. But everybody was happy. And
before we would eat, we'd gather around. We'd talk about the celebration
of this holiday. We would share the Word of God. And we would be told that we
celebrate today the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And that was wonderful. But ultimately what I wanted
to do was get done with the resurrection talk and get to the candy and
the cake and the things of that day. And such is the same thing
that happens in our culture. And I would say that even in
the most devout Christian homes that No one is sitting on their
face all day just worshiping the Savior in such a wild way
that they don't even eat or participate in anything. I would say that
even in our churches today that oftentimes we worship, even if
we're from the inner core being of our soul, we are truly celebrating
Christ. I want to tell you that the most
devout worshiper of Christ, even on this day, Wayne. in the worship that he or she
should have. And the reason for that is that
we live in this world that we still reside in that flesh that
is dead and no longer reigns over us, but it is there just
the same. And the world that we live in
goes on. Our clocks tick and our time
goes and the earth is spinning and orbiting and spinning and
the surface of the sun is hot. And when it turns around and
gets behind us, On the other side of our planet, we go to
bed. We stop our worship. We stop our celebration. And
we get up on Monday and it's no longer Easter. And we may
have a little bit of joy of reflecting on the Easter day on the way
to work or school or job or chores or whatever it might be on Monday.
But by two o'clock, we're ready to go home and we're back into
the swing of normality or so we think. And so what I want to do today
is I want to give you the fruit of God's grace through His Word,
supernaturally, that you would leave this place and after today,
there will never be another day that wanes with your joy. I want the joy of Easter to forever
be filled in your heart. And so today will be the first
and last Easter sermon you will ever hear because every day you
live, the sermon of Easter will be in your heart. I want the joy of Easter, and
more correctly, I want the joy of Christ forever in your heart. Do you know what is a command
to be joyful? It is a command of God. Rejoice! Worship! Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice
in all things. Well, you don't know how bad
it is for me, Pastor. You don't know what I'm going
through. I probably don't. Maybe I've experienced some things
worse. Maybe I haven't. But I will tell you this, it
has no bearing on the command to have joy in Christ. Why is it only this day or that
day or this season, why is it only the Lord's day that we try
to find joy? Because I think what happens
is that we come to Christ and we seek him for joy, but we seek
him for the joy that he could bring apart from himself rather
than for the joy that he is. That's what I believe. I believe
we want Jesus to fix every problem, to give every need, to fill every
void, and he does, but he is the fix and the filling and the
answer. It's not what he can do. It's
who he is. It's what he has done and what
he always will do for you, church. And so there is no excuse to
rot in depression. There is no excuse to rot in
suffering. There is no excuse to rot in
depravity because we who are Christians have been set free
from that. We are no longer slaves to the world or to flesh. It
no longer trips us up to the point where we have no control.
If we sin as Christians, including that we are not joyful, it is
a rebellious, effective, permanent, not permanent, but purposeful
act of our will. It is the freedom of our will
that exercises unbelief and disobedience. No one's flesh has made them
sin. No one's circumstances has encroached
upon the Holy Spirit of God and snatched them into a sinful situation.
No one's mind has moved them into a place where they cannot
worship God. Now, caveat. Illness. does cause depression. Illness does cause sadness. Illness
does cause bitterness. And sometimes, through God's
grace, we have to maintain some help. But those are not the rule,
but the exceptions. I don't want to belittle anyone
who is suffering with depression. I don't want to belittle anyone
who says, you don't know just how horrible my darkness is. I do and have been there. And
I can guarantee you, it's sort of like war stories. Everybody's
scar costs them more than the other person's. So no matter
how we measure it, our scars are always darker than the others.
But friends, no matter how dark it may be in comparison, it's
as dark as it needs to be in our lives. But in Christ, He
sets that straight. And even in the depth of the
darkest depression, even in the depths of the darkest situation,
even when you could think that there's nothing else that could
go wrong and there's no way you could see light, Christ is the
light that shines in the darkness. So what in the world is the joy
of Easter? I want you to turn to Romans chapter 5. And I want
you to understand before we get into this, that I am overly overly,
overly, overly excited about this text. And I have been for
about three weeks. Overly excited. Overly excited. I have a very short... I decided
to outline today. I have not been preaching with
notes for the past month or two. And so I decided to outline this
today because if I start talking, I might not stop. So I have a
beginning and an ending. And by God's grace, if you need
to leave, then just... Scoot on out. I know you have
plans. I know things come up. That's fine. You will not offend
me and you surely will not offend God. Just like you do not please
Him by sitting in these seats. The only way you please God is
if you're found in Christ in whom He is pleased. Period. By faith alone. Period. And so,
our righteous acts, though are surely a fruit of God's regenerative
power in our lives and the Spirit and the Word, they do not sustain
God's favor toward us. As Christians, what sustains
God's favor toward us is Jesus. And that's what I want you to
see today. And I start out and you might think, well, I don't
know, we're going to have an Easter sermon on sorrow. No, we're having an
Easter sermon on joy. But I think that'd be silly to
start out with joy and not paint a little bit of picture for some
of us who may be in joy to realize that some of us sitting next
to someone else may indeed be in darkness. Romans, chapter five. A big,
fat, long word. Therefore, that means that everything
Paul has just said is conjoined to that which is about to be
said. The argument is moving on. We are moving from that which
is already realized in Christ Jesus by faith. who we are. There's no distinction. There's
no there's no excuse for all. We'll stand without excuse before
God and give an account. But their mouths will be shut.
Paul's already said those things. But he says, therefore, I want
you to listen carefully, church, and by God's power, I want you
to hear the words of the Lord. since we have been justified
by faith. We have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. You see that? Peace. Peace. Peace is the foundational fruit
of being born again. If you do not have peace, it
is either because you are not born again or because you are
living in rebellion and sin. We have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained
access. Access to whom? To God by faith. Into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in hope of the
glory of God. More than that. I'm like, really? I read that and I'm thinking,
you've got to be kidding me. There's more than that? More
than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering
produces endurance and endurance produces character and character
produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame
because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us for. While we were still weak,
at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will
scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a
good person one would dare even to die. But God shows His love
for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for
us. Since, therefore, we have now
been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by
Him from the wrath of God. For if, while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more,
now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that. Come on, Paul. We also rejoice in God through
our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation. So friends, let me show you the
fullness here. I cannot with any fiber of my
body and mind preach this text expositionally in the time we
have left today or tomorrow or the next day. It cannot be done.
But what I want you to see is the overarching pow, just the
boom. I want you to see it. I wanted
to punch you in the soul and in the gut. And when you take
that breath, I want you to breathe in the glory of God. I want you
to feel the fullness of God through his word. And so let's talk about
this for a second. The ultimate thing that we need
to see above all things. Is that God's power through His
Spirit by Christ Jesus in His children is actively working
for our joy and our good. And Paul's getting there. He's
got to deal with sin and suffering and past and regeneration. He's
got to deal with all that. And then he gets to verse 1 of
chapter 8 and he says, Therefore, now there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. So there's a lot that he's building
here. But now what he's doing is that there is peace with God
sustained through the power of God. It is not up to us to maintain
our peace with God. And when we think of Easter,
we think of being justified and becoming righteous and being
reconciled. Do you understand what's at work
here? These are not just words that
we talk about in the church. These are positions. and authoritative
realities that God has wrought in us by His power through Jesus
Christ. This is where we stand. This
is who we are. And this is most powerfully who
we will always be. And so let's look. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and some points. It's overwhelming. I'm really
just overwhelmed right now. But let's just get started. Let me pray. Father, I am not able to do this. I don't have enough in me, in
my mind or in my mouth to accomplish that which you want to do. So,
Father, by your grace, apart from me, would you accomplish
all that you purpose for today? Lord, that the fullness of joy
of Jesus Christ would truly be alive in every heart and mind
and every soul and every child, woman and man that is in this
room that might ever listen to this message. Father, we thank
you for the power that you have to sustain us and to preserve
us and to make us alive in Christ Jesus. We worship You for who
You are and what You are. And Lord, we thank You for what
You've done on our behalf. Father, let the Word of God just
powerfully drill through us and rest in every fiber of our DNA,
every point of our molecular structure, that we might come
through this rejoicing, awake, alive. Father, clear our hearts
and our consciousness. and our consciences, Father,
clear us and help us to be pure to hear with good ears and a
good heart as You set these words upon us. In Jesus' name we pray,
Amen. I want you to first see the fullness
of joy in Christ alone. We use that term a lot. We talk
about Christ alone, Solus Christus, one of the five pillars of the
Protestant Reformation. One of the five foundations of
Sola Scriptura, if you will, in that Jesus Christ alone is
how we are reconciled to God. And that reconciliation by its
purpose, by its naming. If you go to 2 Corinthians chapter
5, you see a whole... I really debated, as of this morning,
as to what text I would actually present today. And that was my
other text. Talk about what's there without
going there in order to show you what Paul is teaching here
in Romans 5. But the fullness of joy is in
Christ alone. Now this joy has some aspects.
In verses 1-5, we see that we're suffering, because I'm not going
to really talk about verses 1-5, I want to get to 6-11. So, as
a way of introduction, let's look at 1 through 5. We have
joy in suffering by grace in which we stand. You see that.
So, no matter what, people say, oh yeah, I've got joy in the
Lord, and then I've got to go over here and suffer and my joy is gone.
No, that's not the way it works. Our joy does not leave when suffering
comes. Friends, guess what else? If
you look at Hebrews 12, and you start to see, especially, in
the area of discipline. God disciplines those He loves.
And so your suffering could be an aspect of discipline in the
context that God is trying to change you and mold you. All
discipline is for what? For growth. There is no such
thing as punitive discipline in the body of Christ. God does
not punish His children. He proves them. Punishment is
put on Jesus. So for God to punish us. Now,
what about consequences? Well, that's not punishment.
It's pruning. It's to prepare us and to push
us to sanctification. So stress and trials, you can't
love until you have an opportunity not to. You can't walk in righteousness
until you have temptation in order to walk in sin. You can't
actually worship God for His glory until you see the wickedness
of your own heart. And so all that is bad and wrong
and stressful and dark in the world, if you really think about
it, what God does in that is greater than what He does when
everybody's happy with everything. Because let me tell you about
a happy man. A happy man needs not God. A happy man is one who
lives his best life now because everything that he ever wanted
is there at his fingertips. And when those things disappear,
he's no longer happy and he has nothing else. For the Christian,
the Christian is not happy with everything that they have, with
what the world offers. The Christian has all that stuff and it gets
in their way. They're like, get it out of my face because it's
getting in the way of Jesus. The Christian wants to push it
all away, wants to push the world away so that the love of God
may be fully manifested in them in such a way that their joy
is full and complete and that nothing... Why do you want, if
you're hungry and there's bread on the table, why would you want
boogers? There you go kids, you're paying
attention now. Well, I guess I just didn't feel
I was worthy to eat the bread. You're not going to do that.
And if there's garbage all around the table, you'll move the garbage
away. You won't eat through the garbage
to get to the food. You will move it away. Jesus
is the sustaining and filling bread of life. Move the garbage
away. So in suffering by grace in which
we stand, we rejoice. Why? Because we know, we look
around and the world goes, And we say, wow, you need to see
the trueness of joy. I won't weep over this. I'm thankful
for this because in this, God is growing me to worship Him
in a better way. You see why I'm not? My head
is swimming. Not only that, with the hope
of the glory of God. Look at that. Verse 2. Through Him we have also obtained
access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice
in hope of the glory of God. I could preach 25 sermons on
that. We stand in the hope of the glory
of God. Friends, let's just go to John. I don't have time to
argue it. Let's just go to John. Don't have to turn there. Just
listen. We have seen His glory. Whose glory? God's glory. How have we seen God's glory?
Through the Son. We rest and we stand with joy
in our sufferings, in the glory, in our hope, in the glory of
God. So we hope in the glory of God. And there is much more
to be dealt with there. But the text is very clear, is
that God's glory is truly and foundationally in Jesus and not
just who He is as a person. Oh, there's Jesus. I recognize
the glory of God. I'm looking at Him and we turn
over here. No, Jesus in the sense of the glory of God is that very
manifestation. Dave read it this morning out
of Colossians 1. In Colossians 1, we see that the fullness of
deity was pleased to dwell in him. We have seen God's glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and
truth. And from the fullness, we all receive grace upon grace
in which we stand rejoicing with our hope and the glory of God.
See, it's a whole big synergistic, linear argument that never fails. Our joy is full in Christ, so
we rejoice, and rejoicing in our suffering does something.
It builds endurance. What does that mean? That means
we can continue to stand under our suffering. It's a wrong prayer. I'm going to tell you this now.
I believe it's the wrong prayer to say, God, take this suffering
away from me, or I'm not going to be happy. I think it's a sinful
prayer. I think it's a better prayer
to say, God, my joy is complete in Christ. I want you to take
this suffering. But you work it out for your
will, for your glory in my life, for my good, and I thank you
for it. Can you thank God for the suffering in your life? If
you can't, you have not grown up. You're immature. You're weak and your joy's not
full. I promise. And it's hard. Why
are you saying that? Why are you calling me weak?
Because you are. You're weak. But there's good news because
Paul calls us. He talks about when we're weak. And see, our
hope is just there. What is the endurance to be able
to stand up and the endurance and the standing under the pressure?
You know what Paul says to Timothy? Endure suffering. You know what
that means? Stand under it. When you see
it, don't run away from it. Stand firm. Walk into it. Press
into that which is hurting you. Press. Embrace it. Hold it. Love it. Squeeze it. Hit it and
pat it. Name it. It doesn't matter. Hold
on. And the endurance develops character. That character molds us into
the person of Jesus Christ. Molds us, not into Him, but into
the likeness of Christ. Into the character and the nature
of Jesus. Who suffered greater than any man ever will or has. The righteous Lamb of God. The
Creator of all the universe. Subjecting Himself to the futility
of creation. And put Himself willingly. And we'll talk about that in
a minute. At the hands of men, by the will of the Father, to
be crushed by the will of the Father. And it pleased God to
crush the Son. And so in that, Jesus suffered. None of you, the writer of Hebrews
says, has suffered temptation unto shedding of blood. And so that character, and that
character yields hope. Look at that text. That character
yields hope. And that hope, what does it say?
First time I read this years ago, what does it mean? What
does it mean that was not put us to shame and I just moved
on, looked at something else? Let's look at Psalm 316 again,
you know? There's something I think I know. I don't want to learn
something new. Think about it. What is shameful? What is the most shameful thing
that you can think of in the world? One of them is this, looking
like a fool. Looking like an idiot. Looking
like someone who has put their hope in something that was just
absolutely ridiculous. Like the fake lottery ticket
or the government or something like that. You put the shame when you put
your hope in that. You go to the guy that knocks
on your door and he sells you a water filter. And it just sort
of hooks up by your microwave. It sits there and through osmosis
it filters the water on your house. Or like the security systems
that have been installed in so many businesses around here locally.
These wireless ghosting video cameras that just sort of stick
up on the wall. And then when they get robbed,
they say, look, GBI, we got it on film. And they pull it down. It's just a box with a blinking
light on it. They don't even have a lens.
Oh, you feel so shamed. You feel so shamed. He's saying,
put your hope in the glory of God and it does not put you to
shame. And this, what's more shameful? Looking like a fool? I'm rejoicing
in my sorrows? I'm standing under the suffering
and I'm going, yes God, thank you God, praise you God. I rejoice. And the world goes, you're crazy. You're crazy and something's
wrong. You're a fool. But this produces endurance and
then character and then hope. And that hope will not put us
to shame because... How do we know that? Because
this is not just an abstract... Christianity is nowhere... This
is where I get head-butted with apologists. Christianity at no
time and in no way and in any century, especially in the days
of Jesus, has it ever been an academic pursuit of information.
Ever. You can know everything in every
language that has ever been spoken in this Word and you can go and
stand before God and He will say, I never knew you. You can
understand every theological principle in nine languages and
it doesn't matter. You can stand here and teach
the Word of God and say everything correctly and exposit the Scripture
and go to hell. It does not matter what you know
in your mind. It matters if God has remade
your heart. Because the knowledge of Jesus
academically does not produce life. That's how we're learning
academically. And then when you're born again,
the Spirit of God then gives you understanding. So what if
He was born a virgin? That's neat, and this is how
it works, and this is how it looks. So what? You know why
it matters to the Christian? Because if He was just another
man with an earthly father, He hasn't saved anybody. And He's
certainly not God. Because every man, if you keep
on reading down to verse 12 of chapter 5, therefore, just as
sin came into the world through one man, and death reigned from
Adam to Moses. Be careful. The burden of birth
is important. And our so-called brothers in
the Lord, the Brian McLarens and the Rob Bells and all them
that say it doesn't matter, they're lost. But it's not shameful. to put
our hope, because it's not just that which we know that we can
say is true in the Bible. It's that which we know, as Paul
says in Romans 8, 16, that God testifies to our spirit that
we are His children because God's love has been poured into us
and His spirit has been given to us. Look at that. Because
God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
who has been given to us. And so God in His fullness is
in us. And we're not ashamed. Romans
1, 16. We're not ashamed of the Gospel.
We're not ashamed of the power of God. We're not ashamed of
the truth. We're not ashamed of rejoicing in our suffrage.
We're not ashamed to tell the world that this mighty and invisible
God that we worship is real and He will judge them. We're not
ashamed to stand and as our bodies and our hearts reek in emotional
despair, our souls rejoice in the beauty of Christ. And Jesus is alive. And we celebrate
that, but we miss so much when we just think, Jesus is alive,
good, so what? What difference does that make
in our life? This is the difference it makes. Because it is Christ's
birth, and His life, and His ministry, and His death, and
His resurrection that make it certain. Not just the fact that
He died. Many people have died. All the
apostles died. So what? Well, he was raised
from the dead. Lazarus was raised from the dead. Many other people
were raised from the dead during the ministry of the apostles. As a matter of fact, the Scripture
says that people were raised from the dead at the resurrection of Jesus.
Can you imagine? Easter morning, and everybody
in the vicinity of the cemetery just, poof, they're walking around? Maybe that's what it was like.
Why don't we know about that? Christ is important. Christ is
the one who is going to be the firstborn from the dead with
many brothers. Not Lazarus. Not children of other people.
Not anybody else. Just Jesus. And so now let's look at verse
6. The whole reason I wanted to come together today. Introduction's
over. Verse 6. The fullness of joy in Christ
alone is there because of the work of Jesus, the fullness of
Jesus. And friends, the work of Jesus
did not begin at the incarnation. What's the incarnation? That's
when God the Father, through the Spirit, impregnated Mary. and the zygote, embryo, fetus,
baby, Jesus was born of the Spirit out of His mother that He created. Jesus' work did not begin at
the incarnation. Jesus' work began in creation. Jesus' work began the eternity
before the eternity of the eternity of creation. Listen, for while we were still
weak, At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Now let
me give you some things. First, we see that this joy comes
through the essence of Christ and His power in spite of us
while we were still weak. Adam and Eve, other than Jesus
Christ, are the two most righteous in standing and person. in the
flesh, people that ever walked the earth. They weren't neutral. They weren't
just ambiguously unaware of anything. They knew fully the righteousness
of God. They communed with Him. They
were created perfectly righteous. Not neutral. Not moral. Righteous. Holy. sharing the exact same image
as God. And then they fell. And there's never been another
human being except Jesus who stood close to that righteousness. And even then, Adam and Eve were
a shadow of the righteousness of God. Jesus was the fullness
and the full reflection of His glory. Okay? And Adam and Eve
tried to do something. they try to atone and cover their
own sinfulness. You see that? Adam and Eve, the
most righteous people that ever walked the planet as finite beings
other than Jesus Christ, tried and failed. It could not happen. It cannot happen. No human can
atone for their sins and a billion, jillion, zillion eternities of
eternities of infinite eternities. No man can atone for his sins
with eternities of eternities of righteous acts. It cannot
be done. So, while we were still weak. That's so understated, Paul.
Understated. We were powerless. to do anything, to
affect anything, to come to Christ. In Ezekiel 37, I talked with
some middle school students about zombies this past week. Went
to Ezekiel 37, those dry bones that were dried out, the marrow
had been dried out. And God asked Ezekiel, can these
bones live? And Ezekiel goes, you know God.
And so Ezekiel prophesied over these bones, and they stood up
with flesh on them, but they were still dead. And he prophesied
again, thus saith the Lord, live. And the winds of God blew life
into these creatures who were once bones, who were now men,
and a mighty army stood alive. Those bones, before they were
stood up and breathed into, that's where we are apart from Christ. while we were still weak. See,
Paul, if he'd have done it right, let me tell you, Paul should
have corrected. I'm being funny when I say that. He should have
said, while we were still like the dead dry bones in the valley, at the right time, Christ died
for the ungodly. You know what that right time
is? That means that the fullness of the plan of the Father and
the Son and the Spirit Eternities ago, before they created everything,
was that Christ would come to atone for the sins of His own.
Of all who believe. And that was the time that Christ
selected before the world began. That day, that moment, that time. And oh, we've missed some meaty
stuff in Romans 3 starting in verse 21. That God put forth
Christ as propitiation in order to display His righteousness
because God is the forbearer of sins. And so we have the fullness of
joy in Christ alone through His essence and might in spite of
us while we're still weak. Also, at the right time, verse
6, this deals with the sovereignty of God. We have a fullness of
joy in Christ through the sovereignty of God. God has established the
cross before He established the world. God had established the
timing before He ever thought about time. That's a misnomer
there. God doesn't really think I'm
just trying to put it in a human way of for us to understand it. And then look at the end of our
six there, it says Christ died for the ungodly. You know what
that is? Christ willingly died. for the ungodly. So we have the
fullness of joy in Christ alone through His essence and might
in spite of us, through the sovereignty of God and through the absolute
obedience of Christ. Now, let's look at some things.
In verse 7, we see that what Paul has said in verse 6, it
defies what I would call rational thinking. Why would a righteous,
innocent, perfect person die for wicked, evil, sinful people? And Paul uses this in the sense
there's nothing to pull out of here theologically. Please don't
do that in verse 7. But what I say this is, is an
extreme comparison in rational logic in that Paul is saying,
for one would scarcely die for a righteous person. Maybe one
would dare to even die for them. for the good person. There's
not a comparison between a righteous and a good. It's just it's the
same thing. And Paul's saying even for a righteous person,
one will not die. Maybe they would dare to die
for one. But Christ died for us while we were still sinners,
when we were weak. And so what this shows us, friends,
listen very carefully, what this shows us is the extreme love
that God has toward us. And this reveals the active and
passive obedience of Jesus Christ. You know what Easter is all about?
You know, Jesus is not the fulfillment of the law because He fulfilled
all the laws of the Old Testament. Do you know that Jesus did not
obey all the laws of the Old Testament? He did not obey them
all. He didn't keep all the laws of
the Old Testament. He broke them because He's the
Lord of the Sabbath. It is those laws. It was those
laws that pointed to His fullness. And so, even if any human being
fulfilled every law in the Old Testament, they're still wicked
and they're not going to be righteous. Fulfilling those laws through
practice and precept does not make you righteous. But Christ
fulfilled them all. Perfectly. Christ not only fulfilled
them all in that regard, not necessarily by practicing them,
but He fulfilled the law of God's holiness as a human being, walking
compassionately, lovingly, obediently. And so Christ learned obedience. He didn't learn to obey in the
contrast of disobedience. He never disobeyed. He learned
obedience. So He grew up as a human and
He learned to obey actively, Obeying. Obeying who? The Father. How? By obeying His parents and
by obeying the Word and by obeying the government. Render unto Caesar
what is Caesar's. So this obedience doesn't stop at the cross. Jesus didn't climb on the cross
and put nails in His own hands and whip himself, though he passively
obeyed and then turned himself over to Pilate to be killed and
have the power to stop it. And so this extreme love of God
toward us reveals the active and passive obedience of Jesus
that affords us and preserves our atonement with God. Friends,
it is so important to understand it is not just the death of Jesus
that atones for our sins. It's His fullness. His work from
creation past to the incarnation, to the obedience of His life,
to His baptism in the River Jordan, to His teaching ministry and
His giving glory to the Father. to his arrest and his beating
and his crucifixion as a resurrection, and then the 40 days thereafter. See, God shows his love. There's
an interesting thing to think about there. Whose love is it?
It is God's love. God loves us. God's love is moved
by himself, not by his creature. And God's love is moved by his
desire to love, not the creation. So we are sinners. Where do you
get that? This is His love and He loved
us who are sinners. He can't love sinners. It's incompatible. So the sinner doesn't create
an affection. So God chose to love us. How
did He do that? By Christ dying for us. Christ
died showing, revealing the love of God. God's love for us is
seen in this way. In John 3, verse 16, for God
so loved the world. That means in the manner in which
God loved the world, He gave His Son. Read it. Therefore, look what it says. Since therefore, verse nine,
we now have excuse me, have now been justified by his blood. Much more shall we be saved by
him from the wrath of God. Now, let's talk about these for
just a moment. We are justified, what sinners
not right before God, the cause. Of our wickedness. Of what we
were. That we existed. We were not
right before God. Not because we sinned. Because
we were sinners. And then eventually, as we were
able to exercise our will, we sinned. But we were condemned
before we ever sinned. We were condemned at conception.
Alienated from the promise. Apart from the God of Heaven. We were slaves to the God of
the world. We were slaves to our sin. And so we're justified. We were once sinners, but now
we are right before God because of Christ's obedience, including
His death and His life and His willful life of righteousness
and His passive, willful obedience to die for ungodly sinners who
were His enemies and the enemies of His Father. The death of Christ
results in the atoning of the sinner as enemies of God, now
righteous before Him as friends. And so what does he say there?
Now we much more will be saved. Oftentimes, and I heard this
a lot as a child, I heard about being saved from my sin, which
is true. Being saved from death, which
is true. But what are we being saved from? What does sin do? Sin leads to
death, but what is death? The wrath of God. So Paul says that Christ has
saved us from the wrath of God. Jesus saves sinners from God. So in closing, let me give you
four things. How does that work? How does it work? Oh, boy, this
is just for Easter now. Take it home. Four ways that
we are saved from God's wrath. Sacrifice. You can write them
down. Propitiation. Reconciliation. And redemption. Sacrifice. Propitiation. Reconciliation. And redemption. Now hold on to
your seats. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ
was the sacrifice that was established before the world began in order
to redeem a people. That Jesus, in His passive obedience
to lay His life down, pleased the Father and united sinners
with God, purchasing them with His blood. That's all four of
those things in one little phrase, and I can't repeat that. Jesus' sacrifice was not the
final sacrifice of many sacrifices that brought redemption. It was
the only sacrifice in which all sacrifices of history past pointed,
to which all sacrifices of history past pointed. Jesus' sacrifice perfectly establishes salvation. Propitiation. What is that? Well, if you look at it in an
Old Testament way of looking, propitiation is used more there
than it is in the New Testament. It's only used three places in
the New Testament. But it's there. And it's important when we see
it, John and Paul both use it. It means covering or absorbing. And what does it absorb? What
is Jesus' sacrifice absorbed? Jesus' blood and His sacrifice. The reason we talk about the
blood and the flesh is because He was killed. There is no remission
of sin without the shedding of blood. Something must die when
it sins against God. Jesus did not sin against God.
We sinned against God. Jesus took our sin and put it
on Himself and made Himself the object of wrath and sacrificed
Himself so that the just God of the universe, who had been
offended and His holiness had been offended and the stench
of our wickedness had filled the holiness of His nostrils,
and He deserves justice. He must have wrath. He must have
judgment. And God will judge the wicked. He has to, or he is a liar, and
he's not a liar, so he will. But Jesus' sacrifice, he became
our propitiation. He absorbed the just wrath of
God, thereby removing the original object of its due judgment. So
Christ removes God's displeasure with his people. You see that? God is displeased with the world. God is displeased with the saints. God is displeased with those
who are unbelievers. God is displeased. He has to be. So God just can't say, well,
I'm just not going to do anything about the wickedness. Y'all are
all right. What is that? Somebody come into
your house and burglarize your stuff and you catch them red-handed?
And the cops come by and say, well, they've sold all your stuff,
but no harm, no foul. No, you're going to go to jail
that day, I promise. Because you're going to fly hot,
say something wrong, slap the police. You're going to do something
stupid. Because it's wicked. But then
we see Jesus. Removing the displeasure. How
is that displeasure removed? Well, God's wrath, number one,
is not converted to love. God doesn't change His wrath
to love. Oh, look at there! Jesus doesn't make God's wrath
magically go poof and turn into love. God's wrath is not dissipated,
it's displaced. And God's love and God's wrath,
although God is love, God is also holy. And the holiness of
God displays His intrinsic worth. And so, though God is loving
always and all that He does is rooted out of His love, for He
defines love, love doesn't define Him. He is love. God is love.
Love is God. And so in that, then, God's wrath
is not converted to love. His wrath is poured out and His
wrath is satisfied on an object, a human being, a pure one, and
His name is Jesus. Another way, God expresses His
love in the manner of wrath toward Christ instead of sinners. Because Christ alone is worthy
of taking the wrath of sinners so that sinners could be forgiven. But don't be fooled, friends. God will eternally express and
pour His wrath out on all who do not believe on Christ. on
all who are not born again. There is no universal gospel
that all men will be saved. It is a lie. Love wins, but it
does not win over unbelief, except that God poured His love out
when He poured His wrath out on Jesus. You must repent. You must believe. You must by
faith be saved. So, propitiation, what does that
do for us? It provides reconciliation. These
are the terms that Paul uses here and in 2 Corinthians chapter
5, the ministry of reconciliation. What does that mean? Well, it
presupposes that there is something that is off. We are off. We who are not in Christ or at
one time before we were in Christ, we're off. We were separated
from God. We were at odds. We were enemies. And God, through
Christ, restores us to right relations. We don't come and
fix it with God. God fixes it with us in Christ. So what does it do? What is reconciliation? Well, reconciliation and justification
go hand in hand. You can juggle them in the same
hand. There they are. If we're justified, we're reconciled.
If we're reconciled, we're justified. There they go. And what they
are is a judicial act of God wrought certain through the blood
of Jesus Christ. God has declared us innocent,
just as if I'd never sinned. We've been reconciled. We're
no longer enemies. We come bold before the throne
of grace. We walk before God. We call Him Papa, Daddy, Father. We don't shrink back in fear. We are standing in the grace
of God. and the hope of His glory, Jesus
Christ. Justification. It does not mean
that man is pure. It does not mean that man is
righteous. It means that man is counted
righteous. That man is counted pure because Christ absorbed
our wrath, church, and then gave us His righteous standing. He
took our place. We call that Substitutionary
atonement. Atonement is a transliteration
of several words through the centuries that means at one with
God. Atonement. They made it up. They
created new words for the Christian faith. Reconciliation. Atonement. That's
what it is. Justification. Atonement. We
are atoned. with God. We are counted pure
because of Christ's righteousness. And what that ultimately means,
last thing, is that we have been redeemed. We have been redeemed. Jesus says, I came to seek and
save the lost. Now, there's a question to pose
here in your minds. Did Jesus fail in His mission?
No. Do you know what the Scripture
teaches? The Scripture teaches that the
birth the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ
perfectly atoned for the sins of all He seeks. Jesus did not say on the cross,
it's going to be finished. He did not say on the cross,
one day soon. He did not say on the cross,
say to your neighbor, it's coming. He said, it is finished. It's
paid. God is satisfied. I don't know. Christ, he who
knew no sin, said Corinthians 5, by the way, became sin that
we might become the righteousness of God. And Jesus became sin,
and while he was sin, God destroyed him. And then he says, it is finished,
and to thy hands I commit my spirit, Father. The Father destroyed that which
was sin and atoned and propitiated His wrath. And then Christ went
to be with the Father. And so, if God has been satisfied,
what else is there to do? So, if God is satisfied in the
death of Christ in regards to the forgiveness of sins, then
who is forgiven? All who are redeemed, who have
been paid for by the blood of Jesus, who he sought and he found
and he died for, he accomplished perfectly his mission. He ransomed. His people from the captivity
of death. To be redeemed or to be ransomed mean that you were
in bondage to something without Christ, we were in bondage to
sin and therefore in bondage to death and ultimately in bondage
to the wrath of God that remained on us. But with Jesus, He ransomed His people from the
captivity of death and sin and wrath. He passively obeyed on
the cross. And with His life, He paid the
price in full, satisfying the demand of the debt of sin for
all who believed. Jesus took the place of sinners
by the hand of God's judgment. He substituted Himself for us
No man could suffer for six hours on the cross and pay for any
minute of his mortal wickedness. Jesus paid for all those who
believed once and for all right then. So who are those who believe? Those who were enemies who were
made children. Those who were made children
through the death of Jesus Christ. And what does He say? How much
more shall we be saved by His life? What's the outcome, church? The
question is, are you a child of God? You know, there's nothing
you can do to make God save you. There's nothing you can say to
cause Him to love you. Because by faith, By grace, through faith, you
see today that you indeed know Christ as Savior, your child, through faith. So all I've got to do is believe?
Yeah, all you've got to do is believe. But friends, there's
no such thing as easy believism. And faith is a gift of God, and
don't ever forget it. If you can believe today, if
you can trust in Christ fully, friends, there's nowhere in Scripture
that says that that's what you do to get saved. Scripture teaches
that's what you do when you are saved. And the first time you express
faith in Christ and repent of your sins is the first time of
billions. You're not rededicating your
life to Jesus every time you exercise faith. You're living
out the Christian life. Faith is that active expression
and living of working out one's salvation. Repentance and turning
from sin. You know why? Because the outcome
of new birth is joy and praise. and glory and honor and affection
and fullness of satisfaction and fullness of satisfaction
in the majesty and the wonder and the awe and the glory of
God. You cannot be saved if you don't
love Christ with everything you are. You are not a child of God
if the world satisfies your longings without conviction. You cannot
be. You cannot say, I got saved when
I did this, but I don't love Jesus now because I'm sort of
sliding back. You're not sliding back. You're
where you always were. You're where you always were
with the judgment of God remaining on you, with condemnation resting
there. So what is your eternal hope?
To repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ as your only
way to life. And there are no magic words
to be saved. There are no special prayers
to be saved. There are no waters that will
wash away your sins. There are no church membership
roles that will get you into heaven. There are no leadership
positions or ministries that you can give. Do you know the
people that Jesus talks about in Matthew? They were pastors
and teachers and ministers and Christians. And they were people
who were church members who led the ministries and who led the
masses. And they said, did we not prophesy? Did we not teach?
Did we not pray? Did we not raise people from
the dead? Did we not cast out demons? And He says, depart from
Me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. Go to hell
with the devil. That's what Jesus says. Oh, that's
just not a very good message. That doesn't make me feel good. Good. It's not supposed to make
you feel good. If you feel good about going
to hell, you're going. If it rattles your bones about
the judgment of God, let it rattle your soul about the love of God
towards you in Christ. Why do we have to preach such
a one sided gospel? Oh, God loves everything. Everybody,
everything. It don't matter. It don't matter,
child. God bless your soul. God ain't
going to bless the soul of a sinner who doesn't repent and believe
the gospel. He's going to condemn it. Why do we have to preach that
one side? On the other hand, why do we have to preach the other side?
Well, if you're all going to hell, have a good day. Walk off. Thank you. Be sure you give. So at least
you'll be somewhat pleasing to God on the way to the bank. You've
got to buy that new boat, you know. I'm just making fun. I'm scoffing at people, and I
probably should. So what is our hope? Our hope
is in the glory of God, Jesus Christ, who is alive. And if
you are in Christ, you are alive. Even if you die in the body,
you're alive in Christ. Friends, where else are you going
to find that joy? Do you want your joy to rest
in what you've done? In what you know? In what you
think? In what you are? No! It's waning. It's fading. It's gone. Put your joy or put your trust
in the joy of Christ. That He is your highest treasure.
That He's the only One who will sustain you and give you filling. Christ, the God of the universe
who created you. Church, you who are in Christ,
you have had an expression of God's love in that Christ paid
for your sin and took the wrath of God off of you and made you
into something new. Behold, we are new creations
in Christ. The old is gone. The new has
come. Are you a new creation in Christ?
Was that resurrection, Jesus was raised from the dead, glorified,
immutable, eternal? And the Scripture promises that
we who are in Him will be like Him one day. Friends, on this
side of eternity, as the body of Christ, we grow together,
unified unto that image of Christ. And the church that's by itself
is an orphan. not part of the body. Come to faith. Trust in Christ. And know that you are indeed
a child. Let's pray. God, thank you. The beauty of Christ. There's
nothing that parallels it. Nothing comes close. Nothing
shines in His direction. In comparison, everything is
awful and dim. Except one thing. And that is the new life that
you give us in Christ. Because it perfectly reflects
His righteousness. We who are the bride, beautiful
and prepared, holy, coming down that aisle to come to our groom of whose glory and beauty and
righteousness and life we reflect perfectly. Father, save Your
children. Sustain Your children. We don't
even have to pray for that except that we remind ourselves of it
because You have promised to save and sustain Your own. But
God, we do pray for those who have not yet been born again.
Would You save them, please? God, would You reach into their
heart and bring them alive that they might see Your beauty? Lord,
that they would not be wooed by the pretty pictures or the
eloquent words or the powerful music or the ambiance of anything,
but, God, that they would be moved by the power of Your Spirit
indwelling them and bringing them to life. Father, take the
downtrodden and bring them to joy. Take the depressed and heal
their minds. Father, take those who suffer
and let them rejoice. And as we walk this journey together,
Father, we thank You for Your grace in the Gospel of Jesus. And it is only by that grace
that we are saved. It is only by the gift that we
have faith to believe. And we worship You for that.
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.