Atonement
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. This morning we're going to be talking about sin. Happy Father's Day. We are, though.
We're in our second week of our Glory Series, and we're talking about how big and glorious and magnificent and beautiful and holy Jesus is. And last week we specifically spent some time looking at that He is the image of the invisible God, that He's the radiance of God's glory, and that He exists over and above all of creation, from the smallest thing to the greatest thing, and that He is most glorious and most worthy of worship. And today we're going to spend some time talking about the atonement. We're going to spend a little time talking about this concept of atonement whereby God takes sinful humans and develops a system, makes a plan to make them okay with Himself, to bridge the gap between His holiness and our sins.
So in a minute we're going to turn to Leviticus. I want us to start here, though, and we'll have this on the screen. It's Hebrews 1, verse 3, and in a second that's going to get brighter. We're having some issues with the projector today. So it says, He is the radiance of the glory of God.
It's talking about Jesus. That Jesus is the glory of the glory. He's the beauty of God's glory. He's the light and the heat from it. He's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. That if we want to know what God is like, we look to Jesus.
And He upholds the universe by the word of His power. So if you only think of Jesus as a Galilean peasant who holds sheep and cries and is just having conversations with the weak and the poor, He does these things. I don't know if He holds sheep. I'm just assuming maybe at some point He did. He does in all the pictures you see in Sunday school. But He does weep.
He does bend to those who are weak and poor and hungry and needy. And He does spend time. But if that's your only picture of Him, your picture of Jesus is underwhelming. It is petite. It's cute compared to the true magnificent Christ that we meet in Scripture who upholds the universe by the word of His power. Now I know that the Bible says that and I understand what the words mean, but I actually have no clue how that works.
But it means that Jesus rules and reigns over everything. And then it says this, After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So what it's saying is that after Jesus Christ died for sin, that's what He did on the cross, that's what people know about Jesus. If you don't know much about Jesus, people will say, well, He died for our sins. People who don't even believe that will say that. What did Jesus do?
He died for our sins. So what we're going to talk about today is what does that mean? That Jesus Christ had to make purification for sin. First, we see from that three words, purification for sins, we see that sin exists and it needs to be cleaned up. It needs to be taken care of and that Jesus does that. That's what atonement is, is that there is sin.
Objectively, it exists. It has marred. It has destroyed. It has sullied. It has dirtied. And Jesus purifies.
So first, very simply, what is sin? In a simple definition, sin is the rejection of God's good reign in the world. It is our action, attitude, and nature that intentionally and unintentionally rebels against God and His moral law in the world. That God is the creator, that He oversees the universe, and that we rebel against His law, His rule, His reign, His system. That we break His laws. Paul says this in Romans.
He says that the Jewish people who were given the law of God will be judged based off of the law they were given. And then he says in the non-Jewish people, that their conscience actually bears witness and that they show through their actions that what the law requires is written on their hearts. That they actually have a conscience imprinted in them. And this is why many of the cultures that have grown up in society, they have very similar systems for what right is and what wrong is. That stealing is wrong. That murder is wrong.
There's this kind of internal policing of... This is why when you do some sort of an action, you feel it. You feel bad. You feel wrong. That's what he's saying, is that those who were given the law will be judged by the law. And those who weren't given the law, the non-Jewish peoples, show that it's written into them.
But it's not just a failure. Sin is not just a failure to live up to God's moral code. It's also primarily, it begins with a failure to relate to God properly, to appreciate who he is, to worship him, to love him, to bend to his reign, to submit to his rule. It's this... Paul says in the beginning of Romans that all of our sins starts with us loving something, worshiping something more than God. That once God leaves his rightful place, as the most...
That's what we spent time talking about last week, that Jesus is the most worthy of our devotion and our love. But once God gets moved and you put something else there, romance, finances, power, prestige, anything you get stuck up there suddenly begins to bend us. We begin to love it too much and it leads us into sin so that at first, sin is not just a breaking of rules, but it's at first worshiping and loving something other than God that leads to us rejecting his rules and running from him. Augustine says that sin is disordered love. Augustine's an African church leader in the early church. He says it's a disordered love that we love something too much.
We love ourselves too much. We love our families too much. We love something other than God. It's moved from its rightful place. And you can see this in simple things. So if you imagine a home where it's Father's Day, so we'll use this for an example.
You imagine a home where there's a father, a mother, some children and there's supposed to be an amount of love that goes towards this. The husband's supposed to love his wife and his children in a way that makes the rest of everything else fall into place. But if he begins to love work more, suddenly his love is greater for his job or greater for his title or if his love is greater for money or even just his own personal satisfaction and rest, suddenly everything gets out of order. And that's the system that we have in the world where we've begun to love things more than God and the whole system has begun to break down.
Paul says in Romans 3, he says, None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless.
No one does good, not even one. The biblical stance on sin is that it is bad and you are a sinner. That's where we're starting this morning. I'm going to pray and we're going to jump into in just a second, and we're going to be going to talk about what sin actually does and how it's bad. But before we do that, we have to realize that naturally we don't want to think of ourselves as sinful.
You give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You judge other people by their actions, but you judge yourself by your intentions. It's one of the things like my wife will say, you know, you really hurt my feelings. And my response is, well, I didn't mean to. And I feel like that's a perfectly good response. That was not my intention.
And maybe that's helpful. I wasn't malicious, but I still caused harm. I still broke our relationship down. It's like, well, that wasn't what I was going for. And that's why people, you know, when someone, you tell somebody they did something wrong and they, well, I'm sorry that it offended you. And you immediately want to be like, time out.
That's not an apology. What you just like, like it's really looking at someone and going, well, I'm sorry that you're too sensitive to handle being around me. We don't want to think of ourselves as sinful, but we are. And we need God's help for us to see ourselves as he sees us and for us to see him as we ought. And so let's take just a second and pray for ourselves. Wherever you are, just ask God to help you see that this morning as we look into this.
God, I pray that you would give us a glimpse into our sin, into what it does to us and to others, as you'd help us to see your holiness and that we would leave here today with a true appreciation for what you've accomplished through the cross on our behalf. In Jesus' name, amen. I have three pictures, three reasons, three truths I want to talk about sin to help us see what it does and how the Bible talks about it. One of the ways the Bible talks about sin is that it pollutes or it defiles, that a whole land can be polluted, can be defiled by sin. So first thing is that our sin destroys God's good world.
Before we can get into talking about the system that God has for taking care of sin, we've got to understand a little bit more about sin. So our sin destroys God's good world. I had a friend of mine that was a, she was a student youth group leader and she was a good cook and one of her students is actually here today and I just ran into her and now I'm going to have to really make sure this story is told true and accurately because it's based off of how I remember her telling it to me. But she made brownies for her entire like student group and so she was a good cook. She made brownies. Everybody was just chowing down on these brownies while they were hanging out before they were going to kind of do their study time and then she kind of called everybody up and she starts teaching from the Bible and she says, okay, sin pollutes, it defiles, it creeps in and it works its way into everything and she says, and that's what sin does in us and some of us like to minimize and act like just a little bit of sin is okay and she goes, in order to help us see this, I have a confession.
As I was making those brownies, using my same recipe as normal, I just added one ingredient. I went out of my backyard where my dog lives and I got a small helping sample really, just a little bit of dog poop and I mixed it in with the brownies. Now immediately, they did not take it well. close to anarchy very quickly with people like hyperventilating and very frustrated and some of you are thinking, there's no way that anybody would ever do this. I will tell you that this certain lady has lived a life in such a way that this is plausible and she said, it was just a little bit, it was just a little bit, it was hardly any at all, really, it was just a tiny little bit and people are like, you made us eat poop brownies and she's like, no, they're not poop brownies, they're brownies with a little bit of poop.
It's completely different and so the question, when it comes to sin, when it comes to brownies, the vouchers will ask about brownies, what's the minimum acceptable amount of poop? What's the maximum acceptable amount maybe? What's the range here when it comes to your brownies and poop? And the answer is zero poop. None. None whatsoever.
I don't care if it was really a sprinkle. It's like, why would you add that to brownies? Absolutely not. And this is what God says that sin does, that it immediately defiles, that it works its way into everything because if you told me I have brownies that are 98% brownies and 2% poop, I would say those are poop brownies. Those are not, they are no longer edible. This is not a good brownie batter system recipe.
Throw it away. This is terrible. That's what God says sin does. That it works its way into the world that a little bit of it begins to destroy everything. I have another picture of this. One of our pastors became a pastor.
We ordained him in January of this year. He has a gluten allergy, celiac disease. It's kind of aggressive in the way he has. I know some of y'all have gluten issues. He's got significant gluten issues. And I don't know much about gluten.
I don't know the science behind it. From what I understand, it's the thing that makes all food taste good. And so like when I eat a biscuit, all the biscuits I've eaten over my lifetime are slowly working together to try to kill me. If he eats a biscuit, it goes immediately and tries to kill him. That one biscuit just right then tries to kill him. And so we were eating a meal.
He had some soup. I was there. Our other pastor, Matt Freeman, was there. And Matt Freeman, because no one ever really taught him basic social norms, does what he will do from time to time, which is while you're eating with him, he will just eat some of your food. And so Matt's sitting there talking to Raz. Raz is eating his soup and Matt takes a saltine cracker and just dips it in Raz's soup, scrapes some up, and just starts eating.
And Raz looks appalled as any normal human should. But then over and above was just staring at Matt like, what on earth? And I was like, what? I'm just like, I didn't even pick up on the gluten thing. I was just like, you ate his food, dude, stop. Like, but Raz goes, I can't eat my soup now because you defiled it with gluten.
It was like, it wasn't just breaking social norms. It was attempted murder. And sin does that. It enters in. This is what God tells us about sin and creation. It enters in and it begins to erode.
It begins to corrode. It begins to destroy everything. Let me give you an example. In real life, you'll have someone talking to you and they'll tell you something. They'll tell you a story about their life or something they did or they'll tell you some sort of an event and there's this moment in you where you go, mmm, nah. You just have this, I don't think that's true.
Or someone maybe comes and they start complimenting you and they start saying nice things and there's this moment in your soul where you go, mmm, this is starting to feel a little bit like you're trying to trick me. You have nothing really to base this off of in this conversation other than the fact that you know lies exist. You've been told lies before and you've told lies before. You've been manipulated before and you've manipulated before and so what happens is this relationship is already being torn apart by things that have happened in other situations. It's quite possible that that is the exact truth.
When people tell me things, my natural reaction is, no, okay, probably not. And maybe I'm way too pessimistic. People complain to me that I am. But it's because sin has worked its way into relationships before I even meet somebody. my child has never been abducted. But when we go to a playground, we are less free because other children that we do not know and have no relationship to whatsoever have been.
And that instance that had nothing to do with us where nothing was taken from me has worked its way into my life so that it is now breaking down how life should look for us. that's why we have to take our shoes off when we go to an airport. It's because sin in other areas has begun to work its way in and this is what sin does. You've been manipulated so you treat everyone like they may do that. It begins to work its way into the world. Our sin destroys God's good world. And the issue in the Bible is that how is God going to get rid of sin without getting rid of us?
Because it's in us. For lack of a better example we're all poop brownies. It's infected us and God has to get sin out without destroying us if he's going to keep us. Secondly in our sin we have joined God's enemy. The story of the Bible is that God has an enemy in Satan who is an angelic being who led a rebellion and that in the Garden of Eden he continued that rebellion as he recruited humanity to join his side and to actively reject God's good rule and reign. And when we sin it is not a benign action but it is the willful rebellion of God's creation against him.
And in our sin we have joined the enemy in the same way that someone who grows up in our nation can join ISIS carry out and carry out an attack claim allegiance to ISIS and ISIS will step in and say yes they were on our team. That is us in our sin when we reject God we join the cause of the enemy to sow dissension and pain in the world. And this happens through our selfishness this happens through our racism this happens through our lies that we tell this happens in every way possible that we choose to sin we actively join God's enemy. Thirdly God is eternal in size glory worth and majesty he is eternal in size glory worth and majesty so that read earlier that he rules the world holds it together by his word of his power and that he sat down at the right hand of majesty that God is infinitely glorious and that all of our sin is first and foremost against him.
This is what David says after he commits adultery and murder he begins praying to God by saying I've sinned only against you because that's who our sin is first and foremost against. So we know that our actions carry consequences of greater weight depending on the object that we carry out our actions against. It sounds complicated it's not. If I take a sheet of white paper ball it up and throw it away I should not have done that. I just wasted paper. But if you had just drawn a picture on it or my son had just brought it to me from Kid City with a little picture on it and I'd balled it up in front of him and threw it away that's worse because something went into it.
That's worse because something went into it. If I waited until you got done taking your SAT and then snuck over and grabbed your Scantron and tore that up and threw it away you should choke me you just wasted three hours of a Saturday working your hardest to guess what words meant if I tore up the Mona Lisa and threw it away now it's the object that our sin
Is against that makes the greater weight and so when we look at an eternal and glorious and holy and majestic God and actively sin against him and then say it's not that big a deal what we're really saying is you aren't that big you are not that glorious you are not that beautiful you need to calm down
See one of the major issues we have as humans is that we do not think our sin is that big of a deal and is because we do not think our God is that big of a deal we exist at his will we're here because he allows us to be and the truth is often as humans we dislike that God
Expects anything from us we find God to be an imposition that he would hold us accountable that he would care about our sin that he would eventually judge us seems unfair frustrating and as if he should really just leave us alone there's a quote from Jonathan Edwards who's a pastor in the 1700s in America I'm going to read this it says in this world
God puts forth his authority to command them them being humans the rest of the time he's talking about humanity and to require subjection to him meaning that God says he's in charge and humans should subject themselves to him in his commands he's very positive strictly requiring of them the performance of such and such duties and positively forbidding
Such and such things that are contrary to their duty all he's saying is that God says do this don't do this this is how you ought to relate to me but they have no regard for these commands God continues commanding and they continue rebelling they make nothing of God's authority God threatens but they despise his threatening
They make nothing of dishonoring God they care not how much their behavior is to the dishonor of God he offers them mercy if they will repent and return they despise his mercy as well as his wrath he calls but they refuse thus they are continually plunging themselves deeper and deeper in debt
And at the same time imagine they shall escape the payment of the debt and design entirely to rob God of his due but God has undertaken to right himself he will reckon with them he has undertaken to see that the debts due to him are paid all their sins are written
In his book not one of them is forgotten and everyone must be paid see God is the glorious eternal king and him requiring anything of me is an imposition it's an annoyance it's an annoyance maybe at best and at times it's ludicrous and it seems as if he's out of line so we as humans sin
And make a little of our sin and in so doing trample on the honor of God and make a little of him and act as if he should not care or hold us accountable one of the beautiful things about the state of South Carolina is that we live in an at will state meaning you work at the will of your employer I say this is
Beautiful because my dad runs companies he is an employer and this means this if he has an employee who shows up late talking on his cell phone listening to his headphones doing one in one a year and my dad tries to tell him hey you need to get to work you're late and he looks at my dad and goes
And goes right back to talking on his phone and then when he gets off my dad's like hey you can't show up late you start explaining to him the duties of his job and that person who's a 15 year old boy looks at him and says I don't understand why you're getting all up in my face you need to calm down my dad can look at him and say
There's the door and it brings joy to my soul when it happens and here's why if if a my dad as a boss keeps him there and does not try to corral that does not try to change that he makes the rest of our work environment terrible you ever worked in a place where the boss did not oversee his employees so that anyone
Who showed up late and did whatever they wanted to like who does that it tears everything apart and I would be watching and going who on earth are you to be a 15 year old and talking to someone who's older than you and your boss and of course he started this company he can do whatever he wants to with it but we will stand and look in the face of God and say it's a little bit ridiculous for you to care
About my sin and I think you've stepped out of line and if there is a God this is the type of God I will accept well there is a God and you have to accept the one you got who is glorious and holy and is just and will not let sin be unaccounted for because it destroys his good world
That he created out of his own goodness and his own love and his own joy that he invited us into and we exist at his will the reason you are still inhaling and exhaling oxygen is because he is allowing it C.S. Lewis in his essay God in the dock dock being where a guilty person would stand or the accused would stand
So we might would say God on the witness stand the ancient man approached God or even the gods as the accused person approaches his judge for the modern man the roles are quite reversed he is the judge God is in the dock God is on the witness stand he is quite a kindly judge if God should have a reasonable defense for being the God who permits war poverty
Disease he is ready to listen to it the trial may even end in God's acquittal but the important thing is that man is on that the man is on the bench and God is in the dock that we approach this glorious holy God as if he has some explaining to do he owes us nothing why are you allowed to swat a mosquito
That bites you why am I allowed to rid my backyard of fire ants who destroy my son's ability to play back there freely and how on earth do I think that the God that created me owes me something we have a problem God is just and sin must be punished and God doesn't owe us anything but I have really good news
The Bible also clearly and repeatedly says that God is loving and merciful and faithful and gracious in Exodus chapter 34 God shows up and he begins to declare who he is and what he's like and this is what he says he says the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him
There him as Moses and he proclaimed the name of the Lord the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord the Lord a God merciful and gracious slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who will
By no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation God says he will by no means clear the guilty let me explain to you something about a good judge a good judge does not let the guilty walk someone in your family had been harmed and you went to trial and the person
Stood up and said yes I'm guilty yes you have proof that I'm guilty but I just want to let you know I'm really sorry and it'll never happen again and the judge went good enough for me said they're sorry if someone stole your car they found it and they said you know what now that you found me with it I'm willing
To return it the judge said sounds good we have a system where it's like no you have to make restitution you stole something but it didn't just it wasn't just the car that went missing it's the action that you took and there has to be restitution a good judge does not let the guilty walk free and God declares himself a good judge God is just
When he defends his good creation against what is polluting and destroying it he is just when he executes vengeance on his sworn enemies and he is just when he defends his holiness and his majesty against those who trample on it with utter contempt for the God that created them but keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression
And sin God doesn't have to do that but he chooses to and he comes go to Leviticus chapter 1 Leviticus is in the law it's going to be on page 40 something 46 47 47 if you have a white bible it's going to be early on if your bible some other brand different Numbers God comes
God comes to Israel and he says I'm going to make a way for this to happen I'm going to make a way for me to forgive sin because when you've sinned you've incurred debt that in God's economy there's actually debt that is incurred through sin he says I'm going to
Make a way for this to be paid for it says the Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting saying speak to the people of Israel and say to them when any one of you brings an offering to the Lord you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock if his offering is a burnt offering
From the herd he shall offer a male without blemish a burnt offering was the one that atoned for sin a male without blemish he shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement
For him this means that this animal is going to pay for his sin it's going to make him right with God and if you're unfamiliar with this I hope you have not gotten attached to this animal verse 5 then he shall kill the bull before the Lord and Aaron's sons the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent
Of meeting they would take the blood of the animals that they had sacrificed and they would splash it against objects and this was making purification that they would take the life out of another animal and they would use that life to atone for sin and to make purification and this was the sacrificial system that God set up now we don't really have a category for this
But God says you have a debt that has been incurred by your sin and in his justice and his mercy he makes a system where your debt can be paid now we don't understand that someone else could pay the penalty for something you did so that if I commit a crime my wife can't go to jail for me but we do have a system where if I owe a debt anyone can pay it that that makes restitution and God somewhere in the blending of this says that I'm going to
Set up a system because I am merciful he does not have to do this but because I am merciful and good I'm going to set up a system that allows you to pay for your sin to atone for your sin a few observations your sin deserves death the penalty for your sin was death and they had to redo this over and over and over again you'd have to walk out to your herd you'd have to find a male that was without blemish means it was worth something it was good it should keep breeding
It does not deserve to die you would have to then bring it with you walking with what was going to have to pay for your sin you'd bring it to the priest you would lay your hands on its head transferring your sin your action your decision your willful rebellion against God to this animal and then in front of you it would be killed and it would be a bloody mess and they would take some of the blood and they would sprinkle it to purify
For the sin that had caused the stains something had to die for you to go free but this is God in Exodus chapter 34 this is him accomplishing this because this this little phrase in Exodus doesn't make a whole lot of sense forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who will by no means clear the guilty so you're saying a whole second iniquity transgression and sin make you guilty
So how does he forgive that and not clear the guilty and this is where he does both he forgives it by giving you a way to not be guilty anymore by allowing you to transfer your guilt to something else allowing you to take your guilt place it on something that's why they would lay their hands on this animal place it on something and have it die for you every year this can be found in Leviticus 16 we're not going to spend any time there this morning but you can read through it
Every year they would have the day of atonement where they would do this for the entire nation they would get two goats they would bring them the high priest would lay his hands on one to lay all the sin of the nation on it and it would die for the sins of the nation and the high priest would lay his hands on another one to lay all the sins of the nation on it and it would be carried off to take the sin away
Because God's wrath had to be paid for and sin had to be taken away and then the high priest with the blood would purify everything in the temple that this was a ritual that they had to do day after day year after year because they kept piling up sin before God and they kept needing their debt to be paid now this is an actual debt I find that that when we're talking with people
About this sometimes they'll say well yeah well why couldn't God just forgive us why couldn't he just wipe it away this is his process that he made for it because let me explain to you if I come to your house this is how sin works with God if I come to your house and I break your television it's more likely that my two year old would do it but if I break your television we have a couple of options now
You can make me buy you a new television that I pay for the decision I made or you can say don't worry about it but if you tell me not to worry about it who's handling the television you are who's incurring the cost you are you're paying for the television you're either going to buy yourself a new one or you're going to pay for it day after day
After day after day of having to talk to the people who live in your house so you're going to buy yourself a new television but you're going to have to incur the cost and what God says is there's an actual debt that has been mounting against us that he's holding back the debt and it continues day after day to rise and to rise and to rise that there's a flood of sin
That we are piling up that he's counting that he's watching and he's either we have to pay for it but ultimately to forgive something someone has to pay for it and what we find in scripture is that God says I'll incur the cost of your debt God looks at us and says you don't have to worry about it
I'm going to pay for it and Jesus Christ comes as the atonement see he gave us this picture of animals having to die for our sin but they had to keep doing it year after year and day after day and every time you sinned you'd have to walk another animal and I would have to be very rich to handle all the sin
That I would have to kill goats for and they continually had to do this but eventually God says I'm going to fix this problem turn to Hebrews chapter 9 the book of Hebrews walks through and clearly connects a lot of the Old Testament to the fulfillment that's found in Christ will be on page 583 starting in verse 11
Hebrews chapter 9 verse 11 but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come so this is when he says the high priest he's talking about the person who would have overseen the day of atonement who would have overseen the sacrificial system it says that Jesus steps in as the new high priest the one that's going to make atonement for the people
He appeared as a great high priest as a high priest of the good things that have come then through the greater and more perfect tent this is where the high priest would have gone to make atonement not made with hands that is not of this creation he's talking about his body he says he entered once and for all into the holy places this is the day of atonement this is the picture he's painting
That they would have gone into the holy places and made atonement for the people he's saying this is what Jesus did he entered once for all into the holy places not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by the means of his own blood thus securing an eternal redemption redemption for if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling
Of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify 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 conscience from dead works to serve the living God what he's saying is that Jesus Christ was our perfect sacrifice he was the one without blemish
Without sin who willfully chose unlike a goat who has no choice Jesus Christ willfully was led to the slaughter to make atonement for the sins of others therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant meaning there's a new system now between God and humans so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal
Inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant Jesus Christ came humbled himself the creator of the world who holds the world together by the word of his power and who owes us nothing but yet we owe him everything not only our existence but also for our rebellion in that existence he comes to
Swap places with us to walk with us and to as a great high priest pay the penalty for our sin to be both the high priest and the sacrifice so that we may forever be at one with God forever be made right with him and forever have our sin taken away I have a few points of application that I think
Come out of this concept for us to consider this morning as we finish first I want us to see that in this God saves humanity he remains just because sin is dealt with the guilty do not go free either the sacrifice is accepted and your guilt has been taken away because
It was placed on Jesus or we are still in our sin that God remains just and he vindicates the glory of his name in this picture of atonement that we're given in scriptures we learn that we are guilty of sin and unable to make restitution we have a debt that we are unable to pay that every
Human will stand before God with a debt of a life lived in rebellion and be unable to pay secondly we learn that God in his love and mercy and grace through Christ provided an acceptable sacrifice this is why Jesus is called the Lamb of God that God in his mercy provided someone
To pay our debt thirdly you should hate your sin and you should hate the fact that you don't really hate your sin that if we look into this and see the weight of the burden of the guilt that we had before a holy and just God knowing that one day we would have to pay for it
And we should hate all the sin that had to be laid on Christ that he had to die for and we should hate the fact that we so often minimalize and do not hate our sin feel okay with it think God winks at it act as if his holiness does not matter if you have not trusted in Jesus
Christ as your atoning sacrifice you should do so now you should repent of your sin and look only to him as the acceptable satisfactory payment of your debt to God Jesus Christ has been put forward as your way to not
Pay for your sin and what I would encourage you to do is to walk to the cross just as you would have to walk and pick out a goat and walk to the high priest and lay your hands
On it knowing that this animal that is currently breathing and looking at you and has walked with you this whole time because it is a tame animal is about to breathe its last breath because of the actions
That you have taken and the choices you have made and lay your hands on it and know that your guilt has transferred from you to this animal and it will die for you I would encourage you to walk to Christ
And lay your hands on him and transfer your guilt to him and know that he'll breathe his last breath to pay for the guilt that you owe God so that you can be eternally redeemed if you have not placed your faith in
Christ you should do so now because God forgives transgression and iniquity and sin but he will not clear the guilty for those of you who have placed faith in Christ we should rest confident in the eternal redemption provided by
Him questions of have I done enough am I good enough betray the fact that we have begun to believe that somehow the guilt has shifted back to us or somehow believe that we have to atone for our sin something that we were
Never going to be able to do and we should rest fully confident and free in the fact that a death has set you free that you did deserve punishment but in Christ you will not receive it this is why Christians no longer practice
Animal sacrifices we have a sacrifice once for all that has eternally redeemed us the blood of the lamb has been shed we have been purified we will stand before God guiltless because he
Stood before God guilty we should tell everyone about our terrible state before God and the good news of hope offered through Christ if we believe this and see this and know this to be true the most loving thing you can do is for those who feel guilty help them know that there is a
God who pays for guilt and for those who do not feel guilty help them see how guilty they are and then let them know that there is a God who pays their guilt for those of us who stand here or sit here this morning and say we believe this
There is no other loving option for those around us other than to tell everyone we possibly can that there is a debt of sin and a savior that offers redemption lastly for those of us in Christ we should spend the
Rest of our days marveling and rejoicing at the sacrifice of Jesus that God would humble himself to redeem creatures like us that he owed nothing to but that he loved enough to rescue and to make his own to reclaim his willful enemies
Who have actively destroyed his good order and with an utter contempt for his rule he came for the purpose to bleed and to die and to sacrifice himself so that we could have life the band
Is going to come back up and as we begin today to leave here as Christians marveling at the grace of God that we do not have to pay for our sin that we incurred debt that he paid for that we
Can walk with Christ and walk away free and blameless the way we are going to immediately respond as Christians in the room is to take communion where we remember the sacrifice of Christ where we take take the cup
We take the bread and we remember that Jesus Christ was broken and bled for us so that we can go free that we get to walk pick up a goat we get to walk with guilt hanging over us to a high priest
And walk away free that we get to walk to the cross with guilt bearing down on us but because blood is shed and death reigns we get to walk away free but you see Jesus Christ
Is both goats from the day of atonement sin is laid on one and it is killed and sin is laid on one and it carries it away and Jesus Christ died on a cross and rose from the
Grave and we have an eternal redemption and an eternal inheritance and we get to celebrate today as we wonder and marvel at the graciousness of a loving God who would die in our
Place we get to take communion remembering that we owe a debt to God that we could never pay but that Jesus Christ has and if you are not a Christian you should place your faith in Christ you should
Become a Christian and you should go take communion for the first time as a Christian who knows the weight of what you're doing that Jesus has redeemed you from your sin and that you can be forever free let's
Pray God we thank you that you made atonement for us that you purified us that we no longer stand under our guilt because we are in Christ thank you that you figured out a way to rid us of sin
To atone for our guilt without destroying us but that you were willing to be destroyed for us as an eternal sacrifice who reigns supreme seated in the right hand of majesty forever giving your life to those
Who place their faith you thank you in Jesus name amen