Bye. If we're gonna be honest with
what the Bible says regarding sin, salvation, heaven, hell,
what we're gonna find is that the message of Christianity is
controversial. It runs against everything that's
natural to us, and therefore, Christianity will always be unpopular. As we seek to understand the
truth of what God has revealed concerning the gospel, we must
begin to talk about man's dilemma, his plight, sin. There really can't be anything
more unpopular than what the Bible says regarding sin. Because the Bible is saying we
cannot remedy our condition. See, the Bible says that everybody
is condemned under the wages of sin. The Bible says the soul
that sins will die. And so what is the message of
Christianity? This is what it says. It says
we have all fallen short of God's glory, God's standards. It says
we are all guilty before a holy God. And it also says we are
all completely powerless to remedy our condition. When you begin
talking about the real doctrine of sin, the way the Bible teaches
it, that message is very, very unpopular. Sin is not just about
mistakes that we've made in the past. Sin doesn't just deal with
the psychological state of mind, the fact that we feel shameful
about something. When we define it biblically,
Sin is the transgression of God's law. That's what the Bible says.
It says that sin is lawlessness. Now, when we break God's law,
then we are guilty of breaking an infinite standard. And therefore
God holds us accountable, not to a standard that we think we
can measure up to. He holds us accountable, not
to a standard that we might measure other people by, but he holds
us accountable according to His holy standards, which is His
laws. And so, when we're thinking about
the condition of man, the dilemma that sinners are in, we can't
remedy our condition by simply becoming religious. It doesn't
matter if a person begins going to church, or starts giving to
charity, or starts trying to better themselves. That's the
whole point of the doctrine of sin. is that sin tells us we
are of such a condition that only God can remedy. The religions
of men seek to channel God's power through various religious
activities, but it all ends up being upon me. I have to work the system. I
have to do the right things. I have to learn the right things.
I have to show worthiness, whatever else it might be. But it all
comes down to me. And the problem with that is,
the biblical revelation is, it's actually all about God and not
about me. God is speaking in the book of Psalms, chapter 50.
And he says, these things you have done, and I kept silent.
You thought that I was like you. I will reprove you. and state
the case in order before your eyes. The reason why there's
so much confusion about sin is because there's confusion about
who is God. Most people do not have a biblical view of God. Their view of God is based upon
their own opinions. So most people, what they're
doing is they like themselves and they make a God in their
own image and they adore their likeness. And so that God they've
made likes the things they like and hates the things they hate.
And so they don't have a biblical view of God. And because of that,
they don't have a biblical view of sin. They can't know what
it is or how horrifying it is to God. If it's focused upon
me, then he's just sort of the one who makes a system available. That's not the biblical teaching.
The Bible teaches that God is glorifying himself in the salvation
of a particular people. It's revealing to the world his
love and his mercy and his power and his grace. So it has to be
focused upon what he is able to do. The condition that the
sinner is in is primarily a religious problem. It is not primarily
a sociological problem, an economical problem. It's not a problem of
environment. It's not an ethnic problem. The
very first problem between God and man is religious. He needs
to have a new heart. He must have a change of nature. And that is only something that
God can do. Bibles fill the statements about
the ability of God to save and how Jesus Christ is able to save
perfectly. And then it's filled with a lot
of statements about man's not being able to do almost anything
whatsoever except being a really good rebel against God. And so
the contrast, the contrast is very unpopular. It's very, very
offensive to man because what we're being told is, yes, you're
a creature. The Spirit of God works in your
heart. You don't rebel against that
anymore. Instead, you embrace that and you rejoice, not only
am I a creature, I'm a creature that has learned that my Creator
loves me and has provided perfect salvation for me. All the religions
in the world, with the exception of Christianity, have one thing
in common. They are works based. Do this
and live. Men have a problem with God and
there's something they must do in order to have reconciliation
with God. Well, if you take every religion,
it will be follow these rules, do these rituals and you'll be
OK. Christianity says, no, God is
just. You have violated his law. There
is punishment. It must be meted out. He cannot
deny his own justice, even in the name of love. But he has
done something instead of pouring out judgment on those who have
broken the law. He himself becomes a man and
takes that punishment himself. He satisfies the demands of his
justice. And now sinners can come back
to God as a gift through faith in what God has done. What the
Bible is telling us is that we are powerless to help ourselves. This is the plight of the human
condition. Because we have no strength of
our own to save ourselves, and we are guilty before a holy God,
we desperately need God to act on our behalf. And that's exactly
what he did, and that's what the gospel really is all about.
But it is not popular today to say man is a sinner, He has violated
God's law. He stands guilty before a holy
God. And on the day of judgment, God
is going to judge him according to every deed that he has ever
done in darkness. When you start saying what the
Bible says about sin, expect for popular culture to disagree.
Because this is what popular culture tells you. man is basically
good, man can do whatever he needs to do to morally reform
himself and to bring himself to a place where he is now morally
righteous. So popular culture is telling
us this, man has all the resources within his grasp to remedy his
condition. The Bible is telling us man is
impotent. He is powerless. The Bible calls
it being dead in your transgressions and in your sins. One of the
most powerful pictures in all of scripture is of the man who
stands before the judge. And unlike so many in our day,
excuses are being made. And, but didn't I do this? Or
didn't I do that? I'm not as bad as that guy over
there. I'm almost as good as that guy over there. Instead
of that, the picture that we have of this man is the head
is down, the mouth is closed. There is a recognition of God's
right to judge. I'm guilty. I know I'm guilty. The judge is right to say that
I'm guilty. And the scriptures tell us that's
the man who's ready to hear about the perfection of the work of
Christ and a Savior who can give eternal life. We live in a culture
that glorifies sin, that trivializes sin, that makes sin less heinous
than it is. It is very deceptive to look
at sin in a way that makes sense to us. If we see ourselves the
way the culture tells us to see ourselves, then man can remedy
his condition through technique. But if we see ourselves the way
the Bible tells us we really are, then the only remedy for
our sin is the work of the Savior. There are so many people today
who have been taught that we have so much power and so much
authority in ourselves. We determine our own destiny. We are autonomous. And as unpopular
as it might be, the Bible says we are not. We are creatures.
We are made in God's image. We are dependent upon Him. And
when it comes to this issue, Because we are dead in our sin,
we are absolutely dependent, not 99%, but completely dependent
upon the work of the Spirit of God to raise us up. And once
that happens, once the Spirit of God works in our hearts, That
person who has experienced that work of grace in our life rejoices
to say, I could not save myself. I was in the very grave of despair
and it was Christ by His Spirit who raised me out of that grave.
And we don't want to add anything to that. We don't want to claim
to have been able to add anything to that. We rejoice in that.
All of our good works, all of our good deeds that we do will
never get us into the favor of God. Once we grasp the gravity
of our sin, that we are powerless to help ourselves, then we begin
to realize the value and the beauty of the cross. If God is so holy and man is
so sinful, how does a holy, righteous God bring sinful people to himself
safely? The world has all sorts of different
ideas about how we can better ourselves or improve ourselves
morally, but there really is ultimately only one solution,
the cross. The cross was considered a scandal. When the Christian church was
preaching the cross, they were preaching something that was
taboo in that culture. It was scandalous. The idea that
Paul was making up a new religion or something with this idea of
a crucified Messiah, as if that was going to attract people,
wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. The cross repulsed people. The cross was unpopular. The
cross would be a way of death. that would say that the one who
died died under the very curse of God, which is exactly what
the scripture writers went ahead and confessed. But we know what
the Bible says about the cross. The cross is the wisdom of God. It is the means that God has
chosen to save sinful humanity. So it's through the cross that
God saves his people. He justifies his people on the
basis of what Jesus did on the cross. What the cross is telling
us is that what we so desperately need is completely and utterly
outside of us. It's what theologians used to
call a righteousness that is extranose. It is something that
is alien to us. It's outside of what we're able
to do. And that's exactly why Jesus
died on the cross. It's because God knows that man
cannot save himself. The cross is unpopular because
it tells us we are wrong. There is no reason for God to
become a man and to die in the place of men if we're all right,
if we're OK. And so the cross tells me I'm
wrong. Also, the cross humbles me. It
tells me I cannot save myself. That's why Christianity is the
most hated of all religions, because it tells man you cannot. God must save you. And that is
an affront to our pride. Theologians talk about an alien
righteousness because the work that Jesus did on the cross in
essence has nothing to do with us. The righteousness that is
given to us is on the basis not of works that we have done, not
of our own righteousness. It is the righteousness of Jesus
Christ. It is the righteousness that
He lived a perfect life, but He also died a perfect death
to become that offering for our sin. And so on the basis of Jesus'
perfect righteousness, a life that He lived perfectly so that
He would be a perfect offering for sin. He had fulfilled the
Father's commandments perfectly. His perfect life is given in
exchange for sinners. Two things happen at the cross. The justice of God is satisfied
and sinners can be justified. That's what the work of the cross
is all about. God making sinners right through what Jesus did
on the cross. Jesus entered into his own creation. The Bible says that he is the
one who made us. That by him were all things made.
We're in heaven and earth. principalities, powers, dominions,
or authorities, all things created by him, for him, he is before
all things, in him all things hold together. We're talking
about the one who gives us every breath of our mouth, every beat
of our heart, and yet, amazingly, and I know this is a fantastic
claim, amazingly, he entered into his own creation. And that's
hard for people to begin to understand because of the condescension
and the love that would be exemplified in that action. But it's important
to recognize it wasn't just a good teacher. It wasn't just a good
man who decided to give himself to try to give us an example.
He had to be the God man for the cross to be the cross. It had to be the God man because
you see all of history pointed toward the cross. And all of
history since then looks back upon the cross. It's the center
point of history itself. Why? Because at that one time,
that one place, that one God-man, the Son who entered into human
flesh, that one was able through the fact that all those who would
ever repent and believe in him were joined to him at that time. He voluntarily gave himself so
that a great exchange takes place. This is the opposite of what
you and I would have done to save ourselves from our sin.
But yet the Bible says, this is the wisdom of God at work,
offering his son on behalf of sinners who would put their trust
in him. This is God's wisdom on display. No religion of man has ever contemplated
the idea of doing what God did in Jesus Christ. The way that
he did it, Well, it's very unpopular with the world because it's not
a way of great showing of power and pomp and circumstance. In fact, from the world's perspective
here is a beaten Jewish man upon a tree. But when you look at that with
the eyes that the Bible gives us, what you see there is not
only the great condescension of the Son of God Himself, but
the restraint of His power. He had power. He could have destroyed
the whole world, but because of His love, He does not. That
power is restrained, He accomplishes His purpose, and He says it is
finished. And so the cross The cross has
caused generation after generation of Christians to live their lives
focused upon service to Jesus Christ because we know outside
of that cross we have absolutely no hope whatsoever. If man is
able to remedy their condition, then Jesus died just to be another
option on the table. And the Bible says God gave His
only Son, but God doesn't give His only Son to die on the cross
if there are many options for salvation. He died on the cross
because there was no other way. All the religions of the world
believe they're the only way, or they're not really teaching
anything. And so the question is, who is
or what is the only way? It's Jesus Christ. For people
who have nothing to bring, for people who in fact honestly merit
the full fury and wrath of God, their sins are imputed to Him. His righteousness imputed to
them because He voluntarily gives that one perfect life. Think about it. If Jesus was
who He claimed to be, if He was the eternal Son of God made flesh,
and He came to give His life a ransom for many, how can there
be any other way? How can there be a way to add
to this? How can there be some other path? This was an absolutely
radical way of providing salvation that was focused, first of all,
upon God's glory, and then upon the need for it. Jesus said in
Mark chapter 1 verse 15, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom
of God is at hand, therefore repent and believe in the gospel. But what did Jesus mean when
he said repent? That's what we need to define
and we need to define it biblically and carefully. The doctrine or
teaching of repentance as it's set forth in the scriptures is
unpopular today. And the reason why it's unpopular
is because we live in an age of a very, we live in an age
that's a very strange definition of tolerance and intolerance,
but only in certain matters. For example, if I go to a doctor
and he tells me I have cancer, I'm not mad at him. I'm not angry
with him because he told me the truth. Because I know that he's
trying to help me, even though it will make me sad. He's trying
to save my life. But when we come to areas that
are more areas of religion and philosophy, even politics, and
someone tells us we're wrong, we immediately become very, very
angry. And that's why the doctrine of
repentance is so unpopular today and many times is not even taught
in churches. It's because we're telling people
that they're wrong. Now, we're telling people that
they're wrong, not based upon our own opinions of how they
should live, but we're telling people they're wrong based upon
the scriptures. We're also not just pointing a finger at someone
and saying you're wrong, but we're saying you're wrong as
I also have been wrong. Jesus gives us a parable in Luke
18 to help us to understand how repentance works. There were
two men that went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee,
the other one a tax collector. And the Pharisee was very self-righteous. He was very prideful of his own
righteousness, and he thanked God that he wasn't like other
sinners. The tax collector was so weighed down with his guilt,
it says he could not even lift his eyes to heaven. He beat on his breast. He asked
God to forgive him of his sin, to have mercy on him, and Jesus
gave us a declaration. that it was the person who humbled
themselves to that degree that went home justified. That's the
way that repentance works. It's only when we are willing
to humble ourselves in the presence of a holy and righteous God that
He will forgive us and accept us into His favor. True biblical
repentance is born in the heart by the work of the Holy Spirit
of God. and therefore it is always going to transcend the merely
moral, the merely following of rules. A repentant heart not
only loathes the sin that it once committed and rejoiced in,
but the truly repentant heart finds joy, finds happiness, in
following the law that God has given to his creatures because
we recognize that law reflects who he is and we want to be like
him. And so if you're just following
rules, you're just trying to get rewarded. A repentant heart
wants to follow rules to please the one who made us. Repentance
and faith. That's the biblical response
to the gospel. It's only when we acknowledge
and when we see ourselves the way that God sees us, it's only
when we acknowledge our sin and our misery that we will see the
beauty of the cross for what it is. That is why the Bible
calls us to repent. He calls us to repent and the
Bible calls us to repent so that we will turn away from the things
that are toxic. and we embrace what Jesus has
done for us, that is a confession. Repentance is a confession that
we are turning to the only source that has the power to forgive
and to save. That is what repentance is all
about. Mankind has been made by God
in His image to recognize that today is not the only day. There
is tomorrow. There is a year from now. and
there is eternity to come as well. Real maturity brought to
us by the Spirit of God makes us to understand that by holding
on to that which is destroying us inwardly now, We will absolutely
preclude ourselves from experiencing life in the future. If we can
look to the future, understand that God has put eternity in
our hearts, look beyond just the stuff that's around us on
this world, to see what really matters, we will be able to understand. And what God is calling us to
do is not for us to give up something that we think feels good. We
don't even know what true joy and happiness and fulfillment
is as long as all we're doing is playing with these little
things here upon this earth that will pass away so quickly. If you want abiding joy, Only
God can lead you to understand how to experience that. And that
is the repentance of faith in Jesus Christ. The gospel, as
unpopular as it is, contains a great promise. The promise
of the gospel is this, that when we believe in the wisdom of God,
contrary to all popular opinion, we will find eternal life. We
will find rest for our souls. Redemption accomplished and applied
through Jesus Christ. It may not be popular with the
world, but this is the means that God has chosen to bring
sinners to himself. The call of the gospel is to
trust and to believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ. you.