That you would help me to speak
as you've called me to speak, Father, without the hindrances
of life standing in the way. Lord, to continue to help us
to put to death the flesh that so easily just destroys us. Because you have brought us near,
you have reconciled us to yourself. Father, I pray you just fill
everyone who is here with the ultimate joy that is in Christ
alone and that nothing can change that. Nothing would take that
away. And Lord, that we would understand with our minds the
great love that you have for us. And as we worship father
through the word, I pray that you would plant deep in our hearts
the reality of the gospel and of the atonement of Jesus Christ.
And I pray that you would save those who need saving, that you
would convict us who need to really see areas of sin in our
lives, father, that you would empower us and encourage us not
to be broken in despair and guilt, but father, to be contrite before
you in humility, but have joy that you have forgiven us. We
thank you for this opportunity to worship in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Turn with me, please, to the
book of Ephesians. It's where we are, it's where
we'll be. If you wanted to look at or stick
your finger in Romans five, we'll be there a little bit toward
the end of our message today. But for the whole part, we're
going to be using Ephesians chapter two. Last week and the week before,
we've looked at the way we were, the condition of those who are
Gentiles, not only in the sense that they physically were not
Jews, therefore they had no covenant of promise, but also and most
importantly, they were those people. We just like them who
were apart from Christ and the death of our flesh and the excuse
me, the sin of our flesh. And today, as we look, we're
going to see something called the atonement. The atonement
in a simple way of defining atonement is that the word was created,
which means at-one-ment. And this is a watered down way
of defining it that I'm going to take the next 40 minutes or
so and just unpack it. That we were separated from God
and now God has made us at one with Him again. And this is where
we are in verse 13. And so what we see here in verse
13 of Ephesians chapter 2 is that Paul has told in chapter
1 that of just how far off we really were as human beings,
as sinners, as depraved individuals, and that Christ has saved us.
And then he does a comparison with the Jews. He says that you
and us and we, we're all saved together. In Christ, one way. There's one Lord, one salvation,
one baptism, one spirit, one life. We are one people. This
is a incredible text. Chapter two of Ephesians to deal
with racial segregation. It's a wonderful text to deal
with nationalism and egocentrism and all the other isms that we
could come up with. But today, and most specifically,
Paul, though his motive was to help the Ephesian Christians
understand that they were now part of Israel. the doctrine,
the theology behind their depravity and the atonement of Jesus Christ
is so clearly laid out here. That it is it is and I didn't
really see this fully and I still haven't seen it fully, but I
didn't see it to this fullness until this week. Seeing just
how clear the atonement and all aspects of the atonement and
redemption and reconciliation are so clearly spelled out here. And so follow with me as I read
13 through 22 of Ephesians, chapter two. But now in Christ, you who
were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ,
for he himself is our peace. who has made us both one, and
has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility
by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that
He might create in Himself one new man in the place of the two,
so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through
the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And He came and preached
peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near.
For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father,
so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow
citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ
Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure,
being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place
for God by the Holy Spirit. Now, I will have to spend several
weeks to deal with other doctrines that are here, but today, fitting
that it is, verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were
once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. looking at Easter Sunday, Resurrection
Day. We don't know and probably most
likely most theologians would say that this is not the time
of year. However, it's just as if your birthday falls on a work
day and you can't take off to celebrate it. You may celebrate
it at another time, another week when it's good for everybody.
If you celebrate your birthday in that way, such is the case
for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and such is the case of
the birth of Christ. So we've picked these two. calendar
events throughout history in the last thousands of years,
if you will. And we have selected them to
be the day that we do remember the birth and death and resurrection
of Jesus. And so as we know the condition
that we were, we were alienated. We were enemies. We were hostile
in mind. We were lost. We were dead in
our trespasses. We were unable to come to see
Christ, to see the beauty of God. We weren't even part of
a promise. But now Christ. We who were once
far off have been brought near. This is the at-one-ment that
we need to see, the atonement. Friends, there are many, many,
many horrible theologies and doctrines that have been lurking
around for the last few centuries about the atonement. I won't
go into those today for the sake of time, but in your studies,
we will probably deal with that on one of our Tuesday night classes,
dealing with some of the problems that some of the atonement theology
brings. But now in this text, as we see
verses 13 through 22, we understand that Christ alone has brought
us near to God. And what that needs to do in
our minds is it needs to ask the question, wait a minute,
we were apart from God, right? How far apart were we? Were we
just so far apart that we were just, you know, couldn't barely
see Him? No, we were so far apart, the Scripture says, that we were
blinded, unable to see. And as a matter of fact, even
what God had made known to us by grace, then we took and loved
what? The world and loved ourselves. You realize self-love and pride
is probably one of the greatest sins against God because it is
the root of unbelief, self-sufficiency, self-worthiness, self-preservation. All of these things, when self
comes, the sin of Satan was that he wanted to be like God, not
that he wanted to be God. And so when we are self-sufficient,
when we are self-supporting, when we are self-righteous, we
then serve ourselves and not God. We look at ourselves and
our ability to do what is right and do what is best for us in
our lives for the greater good of our own self and our own families.
And friends, America, and like no other place in the world,
breeds this type of mind. And none of us, including me,
are far from it. Matter of fact, if we all look
deeper than our hearts today, and I pray that you would evaluate
and examine your heart as we prepare to take the Lord's table
later. For the main issue of evaluation is that we are right
with God through his grace, and then also we are right with each
other by his grace. And so there's a lot here in
this text, and I want to just I want to just sort of take it and piece
by piece, just walk through and just read some of the just read
the language here. and then throw in some thoughts,
and then we'll get to the heart of what we're going to talk about
today. Look at this. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were
once far off... See, we who are far off have
been brought near. This bringing near does something
that we will discover in the next few weeks. And we'll look
at this text, look at the next type of action, the next type
of reality, the next glorious truth that we see here. And Christ
has become our peace. He has made peace as our peace. He has unified Jews and Gentiles
as one body. He has broken down the wall of
hostility in His flesh. His flesh became the hostility. He became the curse. And He did
that by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances.
This created one new man instead of two. And I'm going very quickly.
And we'll pick up some of this in the next few weeks. But all
of this is essential to the teaching that is found here about the
atonement today. Therefore, we are now reconciled,
both groups, through Christ to God because of the cross, killing
the hostility. He came and preached peace to
all those who were far, which are Gentiles, and those who were
near, those who were in the covenant, which are Jews. Verse 17, Christ
then gives access to the Father, for Jesus Himself says, No one
comes to the Father except through Me. So we all have access to the
same Father, not different fathers, not different mothers, one Father,
one Christ, one salvation. This makes certain that we are
not strangers. But what does it say? That we're
fellow citizens, members of the household of God. Friends, this
is huge. You might think, well, members
of the household, this is an adoption that Paul talks about
there in chapter 1, that in love He predestined us for adoption
as sons through Christ Jesus that we might be holy and blameless
before Him. In verse 5 of chapter 1, we see
this adoption where we become the members of the household
of God. We are not slaves in the house, for the Scripture
teaches us that when the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.
If a slave has freedom, but he's still owned, he's still a slave,
even though he has. Free reign of the house. He's
not a son. But when the Son sets you free, you are indeed free. And we are members of the household
of God, which is built on the prophets and the apostles. So
when we see that the law has been abolished, it is not the
doing away with it. For the Scriptures teach us that
not a jot or tittle of the Word will pass away, but that Jesus
fulfilled it. And thus, we who are in Christ,
then satisfied with God, Christ satisfied the Father, then we
are also satisfying to Him because of the atonement, because of
what Christ, who is the cornerstone of the prophets and the apostles,
the temple of the living God. We are indwelt with the Spirit
of God. God Himself, in fullness, indwells
His children. And that's a different indwelling
than the incarnation, where the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell in Him. Jesus was God in the fullness. We are just indwelt
with God. We all become the temple of the
Lord together. We are a dwelling place for the
Holy Spirit of God. So now, all of that we'll deal
with some in the next few weeks. Today, focusing strictly on verse
13, but using all of these other verses to prove the point of
what Christ did when He brought us to God, when He made us at
one with God again. God, being the active agent of
all the verbs here, brings and heals and saves and redeems.
All of this is in God's hands. He is the one who is doing all
of the action. So this bringing to one what
was far off. See, God's character and nature
is at display here. God is holy and so his holiness
requires perfection and the presence of God in the relational intimacy
with God. We must be perfect and holy as
God is in order to be in relation with him. So that's why Paul
goes to great lengths twice before up to this point in this letter
to teach us who we really were in the flesh and how dead we
really were and how impossible it was for us to come before
the Lord. Because God's nature is perfect.
God is holy. And so in order for us to understand
that, we need to realize that the fallenness of man is the
natural state of man in his existence. What that means is that he is
wicked in his nature, and thus because we are wicked in our
nature, the fact is that because we breathe and live, it is a
trespass against God. Now that is an unpopular reality. People like to tell others, You're
a great person. You're worthy. I mean, I have
this debate every few weeks with a local guy. When I tell him
it is by the grace of God, then he puts his hand on my shoulder
and he looks me in the face and he smiles and he says, but you're
worth it. You're worth it. Because you came to Christ, now
God sees that you're worth it. And we've come to blows a little
bit about that because I think it's semantics, but I'm not quite
sure. Because it follows usually with,
well, then the reality is then, Pastor, he says, is that God
has to give you everything He's got because you're His. And so
it sounds as though it's an obligation of God. God's under no obligation
to do anything but what is just. But the truth does remain is
that God had to bring judgment on man. God had to bring judgment
on man in order to satisfy His divine holiness, His divine justice. But, what do we learn? That God
is rich in mercy. God is rich in love. And became
like a man, yet sinless, born of a virgin. In that He, Jesus,
the Holy, Anointed One of God, which is what Christ means, could
grow as a human being in obedience to the Father, live a perfect
life under the law as a human being, and then fulfill it. Because His nature was divine
and human. Then he also became or not also,
then he was. He proved himself as a man to
become the Lamb of God. Let's look at several attributes
of the atonement in introduction. This saving grace by grace, you
are saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing.
It is a gift of God, not of works. Jesus just coming to earth in
the incarnation. A lot of times people say, well,
the atonement. is when Jesus came and was born
of the virgin. No, that's not true. The atonement is not the virgin
birth. Just because Jesus was born, if Jesus was born and lived
a holy life and then ascended into heaven without going to
the cross, there's no salvation for sin. There's no salvation
apart. Well, there's no salvation, period.
But there's no salvation apart from Christ. Full life, full
obedience, full death, willing death and resurrection, ascension,
second coming. All of these things are the atonement.
And so, the birth alone does not atone for sin or bring salvation,
nor does it bring redemption. Also, salvation is not gained
through the fact that Jesus died on the cross. Now, hear what
I said. Salvation and atonement is not
just possible or certain because Jesus died on the cross. Just
because it's the truth that He died, doesn't mean that we're
saved because He died. It doesn't make Him Savior just
because He died and rose from the dead. It makes Him Savior
because He willingly gave His life after willingly and obediently
being perfect on this earth for thirty-three years. Jesus and His death on the cross must
be seen as the requirements for salvation. There's a payment
to be made in Jesus willingly living holy life and willingly
giving His life as a ransom and we'll talk about that part of
the atonement in a moment, is the essence of what the atonement
really is. Jesus was obedient in His life
as a young boy, as a baby, as a young boy, as a teenager, as
a young man, and up until the time He was crucified on the
cross, He was obedient on the cross, He was obedient through
the cross, and willingly obedient. Jesus' life was a full, willing
act of obedience, but beyond the act, Jesus desired to obey. Let me tell you what does not
get you favor with God, and that is following the rules. You honor me with your lips,
but your hearts are far from me. Jesus is not concerned with
your morality, though He demands it. He demands so much more than
morality. He demands a love for morality and a love for righteousness.
And your obedience, our obedience, just as Jesus, if God commands
our heart to love righteousness, at the apex of our soul. To love
the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength
is the first and greatest command. That means everything we think,
see, do, feel, listen to, if we are not loving God fully,
we are condemned. Guess what? We're all condemned.
That's why we need Christ to atone for our sins. Obedience
is not just doing it correctly when you grumble under the Spirit
that you don't want to do it. That's not obedience. Several
years ago, I was reading a paper someone gave me written by Arthur
Pink, A.W. Pink, for those of you who read
some historical theology. And he had a quote at the very
end of about a nine page little essay he'd written on obedience.
And at the very end, he said these words, if there's any reservation,
any pause, hesitation in your obedience, you are on your way
to hell. And I took that space and I tore them in half and I
threw them right in my trash can. And a few days later, the person
that gave me that to read, because it bothered them as well, said,
what did you think? I said, I'm never going to read
pink again. I can't handle that. That doesn't fit. So if there's
any reservation that I'm on my way to hell, that's really dogmatic.
That's a real harsh thing to say. And then I began to study
and pray about that through the years. And I've come to understand,
I don't necessarily know that I agree with the argument that
I have picked pink back out of the trash can, not that particular
one, and I do read them from time to time. But just with any
man, we must be discerning. And I'm not saying he's wrong
there, but I understand now where he came from. And that Christ,
obedient unto death, the shedding of His blood, the life that He
lived, was a result of His inner desire, not a result of His act
of obedience. The act of obedience that we
saw was a result of a passive obedience in His heart that He
desired to do what the Father had called Him to do without
reservation. Now, you may say, well, I can refute that. What
about the garden? Take this cup from me. He is humanity, express
the essence of understanding what it was about to endure.
But he did not want to not die. He wanted there to be another
way, except death for a brief moment in his flesh. But he did
resolve before he even prayed that what is it that the will
of the Lord be done, not his own. You see, that's how we ought
to pray. When Jesus says, pray thy will
be done, that's what it means, is that though we do not like
the path that God has set us on, and we may not like the way
it looks across the street, we may not like the way it smells
in our own home, but I'll tell you this, is that's where God
has us, and we must actively and passionately and lovingly
accept it and rest in it and say, your will be done, God.
You know my desire, but your will be done. That is how we
pray. That is how Christ prayed. And I'll be honest with you,
when I saw that there might have been a balk in my obedience at times
in my life, and there is, I really had to struggle with that. Christ
learned obedience in this life. The Scriptures say that Christ
learned. The Scriptures say that Christ grew in stature with God
and man. That's hard to comprehend. He
was God. His omniscience was never severed
from Him, but yet He reserved that omniscience so that His
human body and mind might grow in obedience to the Father. They call that theologically,
why they even use these words, I don't know. It's the hypostatic
union. It's two natures in one person. And Jesus is the only
one who has such. So with this, you know, comes
to mind Philippians chapter two. To see the essence of what Christ
has done. Paul saying, having this mind
among you which is yours in Christ Jesus. What does he say? Who
though he was in the form of God, did not take equality with
God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Nothing. Taking the form of a
slave, doulos. taking the form of a slave, being
born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form.
And He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross. Therefore, God, because of Christ's
obedient life, because of His willing to lay down His life,
to lay down His glory, to lay this stuff down and to become
part of what you would say, creation. He created the womb that He came
from. He created the body that He held. Now, Because he died,
because he obediently walked, therefore God has highly exalted
him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So
that at the name of Jesus, Paul says in Philippians, every knee
should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every
tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the
Father. So what does this mean for us?
This means that the atonement includes some things. And the
first thing that you must understand that the atonement includes,
there's maybe four or five little points to this. The atonement
includes Christ's obedient sacrifice of His life as a man in obedience
and His life on the cross in obedience. His blood is the final
blood. His true blood. He is the true
Lamb. He is the final sacrifice. God
did not atone for sin through the blood of goats and bulls.
Never, ever did the sacrifices of the Old Testament atone for
the sins of man. It pointed to the atonement of
sins of man, but it was of no consequence. It did not say. Nothing man can do can bring
justification before God. Those sacrifices look forward
in faith to the true One who wants to come. Sacrifices, friends,
is necessary. A sacrifice is necessary in order
to atone for sin. Because sin has a consequence.
Sin has a wage. And the wages of sin is what?
Death. If you eat of that fruit, Adam,
you will die. If you disobey me, you will die. If you disobey God, you will
die. We have all disobeyed God. And because our parents disobeyed
God, because Adam and Eve, our earthly parents disobeyed God,
everyone who came from them and was conceived of them after the
fall were also fallen and thus have sinned against God based
on the essence of their existence. The federal headship of Adam,
we call that A universal sin, if you will. Everyone is under
the headship of Adam and everyone is condemned. And Christ, we
see in Romans, is the new Adam. If all are condemned through
Adam, then the many are made righteous by the new Adam, by
Christ. So the atonement. includes sacrifice. Jesus was the true sacrifice.
He was the final sacrifice. So then the atoning sacrifice
provides something. This sacrifice provides something
called propitiation. You hear me say that word often.
It's only listed a few times in the New Testament, but it's
dealt with a lot in the Old Testament. And without getting into too
much detail about the Word, listen to the essence of propitiation.
Propitiation provides, in the Old Testament we saw that it
provided covering for sin. It was to take the sin and it
would cover it up. It would hide it. It would put
something over it that the sin would not be there. Then the
sin was forgiven. And what it did is it brought
one back to right standing before God. All of the propitiation,
the sacrificial system and the precepts and the edicts of the
old covenant, all of that was for nothing. It all pointed to
Christ. It had no reality in redemption of propitiating for
sin. It did not forgive, nor did it partially forgive. For
the Scripture teaches that all the righteous acts of man are
awful. They're an abomination. The righteousness
of man is wicked before God. It's a stench to his nostrils
because even our righteous acts, even our sacrifice, even our
worship is tainted. Our worship is tainted and nothing
we do is going to stop that. Even with the purest of our own
minds, when we sit and we pray, we go, OK, God, I know that I
am just really repentant before you. We get up and we worship,
we read, we focus. We are still doing it with sin,
tainting that worship. We are never free of the effects
of sin, even in the most righteous things that we think and do.
The atoning sacrifice provides propitiation. Understand that
God, keep this in mind, does not need to reconcile himself
to man. God didn't go his way and man
go his way. God is immutable and forever
and holy and righteous, and man departed from God. Sin against him. And so God is
always and always will be in the same position that he's always
been. God has not moved. Who moved? We moved. How have
we moved? We rebelled against Him. And
by our very nature now, we rebel against Him. It's like polar
magnetism. When you put two North Poles
together, they repel each other. Well, God isn't moving. And everything
that is not righteous is not only repelled, but held under
His judgment, for He is holy. God doesn't need to make things
right with Himself and thus with man. God needs to make man right
unto Him. There's a big difference. Man
has trespassed against God and sins against His nature, His
worth, His perfection. And God is rightly angry with
humanity and He must provide justice. It is often so frustrating
to me to hear people when I talk about this. And just this week,
I've spoken about this with several different people individually.
And they say, this is why I don't like church. This is why I don't
like people like you. because you always preach judgment,
you preach condemnation. Friends, you have to preach condemnation
before reconciliation makes sense. Why is it that you clean up to
get in the bathtub? Why would you shower off in the
sink to bathe yourself in the tub? It's ridiculous. Why would
you bathe and then put your clothes on and get back in the shower?
There's a logical sequence to things. There's a reason that
we do what we do. Friends, we cannot come and say,
That God is loving if we don't express how loving. And so to
understand from where we come, then we understand the greatness
of the love of God. If I just know that God loves
me, and that all I have in my own mind, and when I look in
the mirror of my soul, I see who I think I am and I've never
been told the truth, then I'm thinking God loves me because
of how good I am. I'm thinking God loves me because
of the great person that I've become to be. I'm thinking God
loves me because I've decided to follow His ways. I'm thinking
God loves me because I'm not like all those sinners hanging
out over there doing their sinful things. And we know what Jesus
says about that very situation, that the man who thinks that
he takes hope in what God has even done and the righteousness
of his life, he is condemned. But the man who cries for mercy
is justified before him. See, God is truly displeased
with humanity. God is displeased with sin and
he is wrathful against us and propitiation belongs only to
God. But friends, I'll tell you what
happens when Christ propitiated for us, is that we bring God's
wrath to naught against us. It disappears. It doesn't go
away. Propitiation doesn't mean that
God just says, okay, I'm just going to let it go. But propitiation
means that Christ stood in the way of our judgment and that
God fully and with full force and with the full fury of His
wrath poured out His anger For me and you and all the sins of
all believers from Adam to the very last day of this earth exist
on Christ. I did not say every human being,
I said for all those who believe, because we don't believe in a
universal salvation. We don't believe that everybody
is going to be saved because it contradicts everything the
Scriptures teach about that. But what it means is that God's
wrath is then focused on Christ, and His wrath is satisfied because
it has already landed. The hammer and the sword and
the fist have already landed on the Son, and we have been
saved. God is satisfied. This is done
because of God's great love for us and because of God's righteousness
and the worth of Christ. In Romans 3, you hear these words
often. But now the righteousness of
God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law
and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there
is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as
a propitiation by His blood in order to Show God's righteousness. Because in His divine forbearance,
He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness
at the present time that He might be called the just and the justifier,
the one who has faith in Jesus. See, God is satisfied with Christ's
life as a man. God is satisfied. And He's satisfied
with the willingness of Christ to die for sinful mankind and
thus for all who believe. Nothing is owed for sin for the
saints because Christ took it on Himself. We call that substitutionary
atonement. He's reconciled us. We look through these. I haven't
been going through these verses and really pulling them back
to you, but all this is here in Ephesians. It's all there. For
Himself is our peace. He's satisfied God's judgment
against us. That's propitiation. He's made
us both one and broken down His flesh in the dividing wall of
hostility by abolishing the law of the commandments. We see that
this propitiation is granted to us. And He reconciled us.
He brought us into Himself. That word reconcile means what
was separated now has been brought together. Reconciliation. The atonement gives believers
peace with God. Peace with His wrath. Reconciliation
now gives intimacy with God's presence. So if Christ's propitiation
which gives peace with God's wrath, then redemption or reconciliation
rather, redemption is a whole other thing. Reconciliation is
where Christ brings relational intimacy back with the church
and with God. In Romans 5, I'll go here several
times in the next few minutes. 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, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we now have received reconciliation. In verse 16 of
our text today, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through
the cross, thereby killing the hostility. Understanding how
severely we were at odds with God. Friends, you won't understand
and worship God in fullness until you realize just how far apart
we have been from Him. We are hostile. We are at odds.
We are enemies and we must be reconciled in order to be saved.
We must be reconciled in order to be forgiven. God is not in
need of providing repentance to us, but we must repent toward
Him. And here's the natural truth.
Repentance will not save you unless you're justified by grace. Because that would just be living
the law. The gospel, see, culminates in
a relational way. You might think, well, what's
the big deal here? Well, what Paul is doing, the crux of his
argument is to show the Jews and the Gentiles that they have
a relational unity that comes in Christ alone, a spiritual
unity and a relational physical unity. They are no longer two
peoples, but one people, one temple, one nation. Under God,
indivisible. That's amazing that that's in
our Pledge of Allegiance. I don't see it. The gospel deals with relational
intimacy because that's what reconciliation, that's what atonement
is. And so our relationships with
each other must mirror God's relationship with us. And if
we are the children of God, then our relationships on this earth
will be at peace. We will work through them. We
will reconcile them. Man is alienated, is cut off
from God. God seeks to reconcile us, and
He does that perfectly. We are unable, friends, to meet
God in any way apart from His grace and love toward us. Listen
to the Old Testament. In Habakkuk 1.3, why do you make
me see iniquity, God asks, and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me. Strife and contentment
arise. God demands the world to be holy. And in Romans 1.18,
Paul very clearly teaches that the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men
who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. And so if
we are suppressing the truth and we've been called to make
our sin correct, but we cannot do it, Paul teaches us in Romans
chapter 10, what should we do? Hear these words, for I bear
them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to
knowledge, for being ignorant of the righteousness of God and
seeking to establish their own. They did not submit to God's
righteousness, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes. And in Job, the questions are
these. What is man that he can be pure? Or who is born of a
woman that he can be righteous? Behold, God puts no trust in
his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight. How
much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks
injustice like water. Do you hear what Job is asking? Who can be right with God? No
man. No man. We must atone for sin,
but we cannot atone for sin. What shall we do? It's Christ. God's mercy and love where He
forgave and forbore the sins of Israel and the saints of old,
and the sins of us who had never been born yet, and the sins of
those who are yet to be born, who are His children, who will
believe in Jesus Christ and be saved. In Hebrews 10, we see
the Spirit clearly. It says, in every priest's stance,
picture this in your mind, if you will. Kids, picture this
picture. Imagine this. As you think of
the priest, as you think of this priestly man dressed in all this
garb, standing in the temple, going in every day, offering
sacrifices, offering goats, offering lambs, offering doves, offering
prayers, day after day after day. And what the writer of Hebrews
says in chapter 10, verse 11, is that none of these services
can ever take away sins. The exact Greek there. None of
these things could ever take away sins. But when Christ, had
offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins. He sat down
at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies
should have made a better footstool under his feet. For by a single
offering He has perfected for all time those who are being
sanctified." See, what we see is the priests went in and came
out. They bowed, they stood up. They prayed, they left. They
made sacrifice for themselves, they made sacrifice for the people.
They went out, they came in. They could never stay in the
presence of God, and if they went unworthily and their hearts
went in with contempt, they were struck dead. If you touch the
Ark of the Covenant with your dirty, filthy, vile hands, when
it was falling into the mud, he got struck dead for that because
his hands were defiled, the mud was not. So now we know that as Christ
appeared as High Priest of the good things that have come, then
through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands,
that is, not of this creation, He entered. Who entered? Christ
entered into the holy places, not by the means of the blood
of goats and calves, but by the means of His own blood, thus
securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and
bulls, and the strength of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer,
Sank the fire for the purification of the flesh. How much more will
the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself
without blemish to God, purify our consciousness from dead works
to serve the living God? Therefore, Christ is the mediator
of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the
promised eternal inheritance. I wish you'd hear that. Those
who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance,
since the death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions
committed under the first covenant. And that's a past tense situation
there, too, in Hebrews chapter 9. Christ has redeemed those
who believe. It's a done deal. And see, this
relationship that God has with us is a relationship of wrath
or mercy. But God's wrath for our sin, even when we get mercy,
God's wrath for our sin has not been tampered. We temper our
anger. We try to. We feel angry and
most of the time, I'd say nine out of ten times, probably more
than that. We are angry and we should not be. We are angry because
of our selfishness and our pride and our self desire. We didn't get our way or something
was done and we mistook it or whatever, but sometimes in life,
very, very, very few times possibly we get angry and we should be
angry. We get angry, but we sin not because we suppress that
anger or we don't put our judgment. Why? Because we aren't worthy
to pass judgment. We aren't worthy to give wrath. We aren't worthy
to make judgment on things and then deal with them. We aren't
worthy to sentence people. But God is, and God said He will
be His own vengeance. He will avenge His children. He will avenge the martyrs. He
will avenge His righteousness. And so God's wrath hasn't been
just sort of put off. It hasn't been quelched. It's
been fully and divinely administered on the back of Jesus Christ for
the saints. That's where we stand as the
church. God's just not forgetting about
it. He didn't forget about it. He took every sin that I have,
the essence of my soul, and He put it on Jesus, and He pounded
Him, and crushed Him, and destroyed Him, and put His judgment on
Him for six hours. He deserved it, not I did. See
how simple that might sound? We might say, OK, I get it, but
we don't. Because I can promise you when you see for just a moment
that we have watered down atonement, the fact that the blood of Christ
has brought us near to God, we've watered this down by thinking,
OK, God just sort of let it go. He did not let our sin go, but
we are not responsible for it. We are not responsible for it.
That's the kind of relationship God has with us. That's what
the atonement does. That's what the atonement did.
And relationships on earth, there's a little rabbit I want to chase
here for just a second. Relationships on earth are indicative of relationships
with God, except that God reconciles us and we must reconcile with
each other. Scripture teaches that if we're given in Matthew
5, if we're given an offering at the altar and realize we have
a relational division with someone in this world, we ought to leave
our offering for it is not acceptable and go and heal that relationship.
For it is worthless. It is wicked. This does not mean
an eternal forgiveness, an internal forgiveness. It doesn't mean
that we let them go in our spirit. Never ever do you see that. Forgiveness
is not just a spiritual and emotional thing. Okay, I don't hold them
accountable for it. Then go embrace them and serve them. That's the
command of Scripture. Well, I've forgiven them, but
I'm just not going to be around them anymore. No, you haven't.
You're a liar. We're liars. We are liars. And when we say
we have, but yet we failed to serve and we do not put ourselves
under that and we're all guilty, we're all we all stood up like
an AA meeting, we just have to say, I'm James and I'm a liar
because I say I've forgiven some people that I know I haven't
now that I think about it. It's not an internal thing. The
Scripture doesn't say in Matthew 5, make peace in your heart and
forgive that person in your spirit. It said leave that thing there,
get up on your feet and walk your happy hiney out there and
go fix that relationship before you bring your rump back in here
to kneel down before God. And don't come back. Matter of
fact, don't take that thing off the altar because if you take
it out, you might throw it at the guy. And then you'll break it
and it won't be worth giving. We must realize that if our relationships
with each other are unforgiving, then our lives and our offers,
our service, our worship, our prayers. You know, the scripture
says that God plugs his ears up to the prayers of those who
are relationally divided in sin. And that's a big paraphrase,
a bunch of paraphrase there with several different places pulled
all together. But God does not hear the prayers of those who
live in rebellion, and if we are not forgiving, then we are
in rebellion. If we are not discipling, we
are in rebellion. Oh God, hear my prayer. I'm not
doing what You want me to do and I don't care, but hear me.
You see how that sounds? We would never say that, but
the good news is that through the hearing of the Word, through
the reading of the Word, through the study of the Word, God convicts us
of that. We don't stay down and beat ourselves and run ourselves
over with buses. We stand bold before the throne of grace knowing
that Christ, though we are unable to, Christ has brought us near
to God. Let's back up in Romans 5, a couple of verses. For one
will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a
good person one would dare to even die. But God shows His love. Listen to this, church. God shows
His love. Kids, listen to what I'm saying.
God shows His love for us, for you, in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now
been justified by the blood of Jesus Christ, much more shall
we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if we were enemies
when we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much
more now." that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by the life
of Jesus Christ. More than that, we also rejoice
in God through Christ our Lord, through whom we have now received
reconciliation. Friend, there is no greater story
than that. That is the ministry of the church. That's the ministry
of the apostles. We see Paul saying, we now have
the ministry of reconciliation. That's the purpose of coming
here and learning and teaching and instructing our ears and
instructing our hearts. and dividing the Word of Truth
is that we might grasp it and live it and breathe it and send
it out to the world. That's the purpose of the church,
is that we understand the atonement and that we live in the atonement
by the grace of God, not our own wisdom. And how does He do
this? Look at verse 15 of Ephesians
chapter 2. I'm going all over the place today. Almost done. By abolishing the law of commandments
expressed in ordinances that He might create in Himself one
new man in the place of two, so making peace. See, remember
that God's the actor here. He does all the work. He saves.
Christ's atonement redeems. It's a sacrifice. It's propitiation. It reconciles us and it redeems
us. There's a big difference in reconciliation
and redemption. It may sound the same to you,
but reconciliation is that we're being brought together. Redemption is that we've been
paid for. Redemption, propitiation go hand
in hand. All this goes hand in hand. Jesus came to seek and
save the lost, to ransom souls and stand in the place of sinners. Abolishing the law of commandments,
expressing ordinances. So what does that do? And really
quickly, I'll give you two things that it does. And I don't know
why this came out as alliteration, but it did. The first thing that
this does is it abolishes the curse. And the second thing that
it does is it abolishes the course, the curse, love, the love of
God. And the love of brother, the
love of God and the love of the brethren, the love of others,
the first and greatest command, the second. Fulfills the law of the prophets,
that's what Jesus says, the greatest law is this, the love of the
Lord, your God with all you got and to love your brothers yourself.
On these two laws, on these two commandments, all the laws of
the prophets hinge, all six hundred and fourteen. Yeah, there's more
than 10. In Romans 13 it says, love does
no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the
law. Love is the fulfilling of the law. We really misconstrue
that when we don't understand who we really are. When we don't
understand how far we are from God. We don't understand how
perfect God is. We don't understand how just God is to put wrath
on our sin. We don't understand how loving God is to become like
us and to hide His glory, if you will. But yet we saw it in
His fullness in Jesus. To live a perfect life and be
tempted in every way in which man was. Therefore, we have a
high priest that not only can empathize with us, but has walked
where we've walked. Love does no wrong, and it's
the fulfilling of the law. This is how much God loves us.
And I know Mama Jo's got on the sign there. First John 3.1. See what kind of love the Father
has given to us that we should be called the children of God. And so we
are. Friends, we can't see the kind of love that God has given
to us unless we see the fullness of the Gospel, the fullness of
the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and it's something we do every
day. Christ redeemed us, Paul teaches to the Galatians, from
the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written,
cursed is everyone who is hanging on a tree, so that in Christ
Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so
that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. And so
it abolishes the curse of the law. It also abolishes the course
of the law. When I say the course, like an
obstacle course, the action, the work of the law. In Galatians
4, I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different
from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. But he is
under the guardians and managers until the date set by his father.
In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved
to the elementary principles of this world. But when the fullness
of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, under
the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we
might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God
has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba,
Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a
son, then an heir through God. And Christ has set us free from
the slavery of sin, from the legalism of the practice of the
law, and the practice of religion, and the practice of morality.
Christ came to save us from righteous morality. And He came to be righteousness
for us. He came to dispose of the ceremonial
precepts prescribed as a shadow to himself and to his perfection. And in whom the whole structure
being joined together, verse 21 of Ephesians 2, grows into
a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built
together into a dwelling place with God with the Spirit. You
know what that teaches us? That we then reside with God. We've been
redeemed and reconciled and propitiated in all these things. We've been
saved through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. We are with
God in that dwelling place. And here's the joy of it all,
friends. We are righteous before Him. How do we know that? For
Paul has already said it. We are predestined to be righteous
before Him, holy and blameless. But we know the holiness of God
demands righteousness or either judgment against sin or against
wickedness. Both have been done. Christ has
taken our wickedness as the righteous one and we have been given His
righteousness as the wicked ones. And that we all as one body stand
before God the Father as the living temple where God will
dwell with us forever. We will be with Christ, so we
are free. Atonement saves us from sin,
from the slavery of sin, from the power of sin. In Revelation
5, and they sing a new song, worthy are you to take the scroll
and open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you
ransomed people from God. for God from every tribe and
language and people and nation. And you have made them a kingdom
and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. In
Hebrews 9, verse 12, it says he entered once and all once
and for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of
goats, as I've already read, but by the means of his own blood,
thus securing an eternal redemption. The atonement frees us from sin.
It frees us from guilt. It frees us from the power of
sin. We've been delivered. We've been justified. What else
is there? What else do you want, Church?
What else do you want in life? The gravity of the sin of man
is severe. Our relational separation from
God as a subject of His wrath makes the love and the grace
of God ever more beautiful because it is the fullness of the gospel,
the good news. The horrid news makes the good
news oh so much more good. As Jesus met with the disciples
during this Passover meal, the night that it was to be tried
and crucified, He took the bread and the cup, and we'll move into
that portion of our service. As you've seen what the atonement
is, it's a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect on what Christ
has done. And as Jesus took that Passover meal, as it was accustomed
for many years, hundreds and hundreds of years, He took the
bread in the cup and he offered it as normal, as usual for that
Passover feast. But instead of looking back to
Egypt, he looked just a few hours ahead. And he took that bread and he
took it and he broke it. And he says, this is my body
which is broken for you. This is my body which was crushed. This is my flesh which was destroyed.
This is my blood in the cup. which was spilled out and poured
out for the remission of sins. This is what I want you to do.
I want you to take every time. And I believe, you know, because
we're not Jews, we don't observe Passover. And I'm of the opinion
that Christians shouldn't, unless they just want to. We're not
bound to that. Jews even shouldn't if they're
Christians. But the reality is, is that every
time we eat, we ought to really reflect. But then there are times that
the church ought to gather together and really reflect. And that's
why we have these little things here. He told the disciples to do this
in remembrance of Him, remembrance of His life, of His holiness,
of His teaching, but most importantly, of His body and His blood that
was broken and spilled. But Jesus doesn't just stop there. We see the practice of the Lord's
table in the New Testament church. We see the practice of the Lord's
table being abused. And it was abused that people
would come just to eat. And they didn't care about what
was going on in their hearts and their lives and their minds
and their soul. And at that time in history, when people would
come in an unworthy manner, God would strike them dead. As they
took of the elements, they would die if they were doing it in
vain. And God doesn't do that anymore, but Paul does command
us to reflect and examine ourselves, examine our hearts. We ought
to look forward to the glory. We ought to look back to the
glory of the cross. We ought to look forward to the glory
of the second coming, knowing that we will be glorified and
made immutable and sinless. And then we ought to also look
at the same time inward at our hearts to see if we have affection
for Him. And then most of all, not most
of all, but also as importantly, We look at our relationships
with each other to see if our love for him is proven and our
love for others and that we've reconciled these relationships
without as we reflect within. I want us to pray. I want to
pray. Father, as we began to look inward,
father, it's just. It's an ugly picture sometimes
when we just think about it. Lord, I pray you would just help
us to see what we can't see, help us to really learn that
we need to trust in you in a deeper way. Stop being so sufficient
in our own morality. Understanding that we are not
moral, even when we think we are. And Lord, as you took that bread,
Lord, at that table. And you broke it, God. It was
a foreshadowing of what was about to happen to you, Father. That you would give your only
son as a ransom for your church. And God, as Jesus took that bread
and broke it, he called us to remember his body. Lord, that
requires us to remember Your holiness and our sinfulness and
how far we are from You and to see the depth of the love and
the extent that You went to forgive us and to bring us to Yourself. We are not worthy to even reflect
on the body of Christ. We thank You for saving us. We
thank You for crushing the son that we might live. We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Father, we're just, again, just
humbled by just reflection. We thank You, God, that You not
only crushed Christ and took Your wrath from us,
but Father, He was sufficient. For he willingly and obediently
desired to die for the church. He gave his life up for her.
And through the shedding of blood is remission of sin. Father,
for centuries, the Jews poured out the blood of goats and animals
and poured jar after jar after jar of blood on that holy of
holies, the mercy seeker. And God, in Your divine judgment
and Your divine justice, You poured the blood of Jesus down
the cross. As His body was whipped and devoured
by the hands of men, Father, You are the one who put Him there
so that You would display Your righteousness in forgiving sinners. Father, as we contemplate that
blood, let us reflect on that day where Christ died. But God,
let us know that it's not the end of the story, but Father,
just the beginning. For we are now free from sin
because of Christ's willing sacrifice. We look forward to that day when
we can be resurrected unto you with new bodies as Jesus has
now. The glorified Christ who He was before time began. Thank
you for loving us in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.