Christ Our Sacrifice

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again radio friends. How in the world are you?You doin’ all right? Well I feel great. I got up before it was light, and fried myself an egg, and had some coffee. You know it’s amazing what breakfast will do for your mood. Have you discovered that? (Laughs) Sometimes I don’t feel much like a Christian when I wake up. But have a little breakfast and talk to the Lord, and let Him talk to you from His Word, and things become a lot different.

Thank God for Jesus, and for the indwelling Holy Spirit, and for the inerrant Word of God, the Bible. All of them working together in my heart, to give me a different perspective on life. Blue Monday doesn’t have to stay blue if you get in touch with Jesus. Terrific Tuesday and Wonderful Wednesday and Thankful Thursday and Fearless Friday, huh? Well, whatever…

So, we’re together again you and I, around the Word of God. Listen to what Isaiah said about the Lord Jesus Christ. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our inequities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him. And with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned every one to his own way. The Lord hath laid on Him, the Lord Jesus, the inequity of us all.” Now that’s Isaiah.

Now I turn the pages over to 1 Peter 2. And I hear Peter saying, “Who His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree that we being dead to sins should live onto righteousness by whose stripes ye were healed. For you were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls.” You see any similarity? Of course you do. Simon Peter had read the Scriptures. And he had been taught by the Holy Spirit to connect the Old Testament Scriptures with the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we’re, we’re in 1 Peter 2, and we’re looking at verse 24. We got into it the last time we got together. And now we continue. Let me read that verse again, then, may I? “Who His own self bear our sins in His own body…” Now it’s His own self, nobody else could take the place, His own body. “If He had to be human enough to take our place on the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye were healed.”

The sacrifice of a life instead of another life has been part of God’s teaching through the Old Testament centuries, looking toward the day when the Lord Jesus Christ as God’s Passover lamb would be sacrificed as He hung there upon Calvary’s cross. Paul then could later write, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” God’s lamb.

John the Baptist, as he announced the coming of the Lord Jesus cried out, “Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” So the imagery throughout the Scriptures is that of the sacrificial lamb, giving its life, it’s innocent life, for and instead of the penalty, the punishment for our sins. And so now we come to this verse: “He bore our sins in His own body, on the cross. God hath made Him to be sin for us.” We read in Corinthians, “He who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

Roman 5:8 says, “But God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for — means ‘instead of’, ‘in place of’ — died for us.” He took your place. What does that mean? Number one, the penalty has been paid, all of it. There’s a, there’s a southern Gospel song that I hear sometimes on the radio that goes, ‘Forgiven, forgotten, forever’. Forgiven, forgotten, forever. All my sins will be remembered no more. God says, “Their sins and their inequities will I remember no more forever. Thou will put all my sins in the depths of the sea.”

The old holiness preachers used to say, “God put my sins in the deepest sea, and then posted a ‘No Fishing’ sign.” Every bit of all of the penalty for all of my sins was paid by Jesus Christ my Lord, who His own self bore…” Now you put the personal possessive in there. Instead of ‘our’, you say ‘my’. Say it in your own heart. “…who His own self bore my sins in his own body, on the cross.”

When the Lord Jesus Christ hung on Calvary’s cross, every wrong thing that you and I ever said or did, or will say or do, and every lack of good things… you see, sin is not only negative in, in saying and doing wrong things. Sin is in coming short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23: “All of sin, and come short of the glory of God.” It’s missing the mark. You cannot, not can I, nor can anyone, ever approximate the holiness of God. The essence of sin is in coming short of God’s holiness; and then in transgressing God’s law; and then in, in forming an attitude of lawlessness that says, “I’m going to have my will, my way anyway.” That’s the three-fold essence of sin.

The Lord Jesus paid the penalty for it all. Hallelujah! Have you thanked Him recently for paying your penalty, for suffering personally for you? He bore my sin. Say it. And bow as you do, and say, “Thank you, Jesus for dying personally for me.” “Who His own self bear my sin in His own body.” Now it had not only to be a person, but it had to be a human person. He became flesh, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

See in that, the, the human, the human race was subject to death. He Himself also likewise became subject to the same, that through death He might deliver them who all their lifetime were subject to fear, bondage through fear of death. The Lord Jesus Christ took on Him a human body in order that He might identify completely with poor, lost, sinful, human beings.

And so we get a good deal of comfort out of realizing that our Savior knows how we feel. “We have a high priest,” the writer to the Hebrews says, “who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. For you is an all-points tested like as we are yet without sin.” He knows how you feel, beloved, this very instant. And He cares. Verse Peter 5:7: “Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you.”

Now, what’s the result of this? He says, “In order that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness…” The Bible has a good deal to say about this matter being dead to sin. We could run down a few of the verses that, that speak about that. “What then, shall we sin that, that grace may abound,” Paul says in Romans 6. “God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer thereon.” When you commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you identified not only with Him not only as Savior, but you’re identified with Him also in dying on the cross.

I don’t know, it was Wendell Loveless or who it was that wrote the little chorus, ‘For me to live is Christ, for me to live is Christ; I died with Him, I rose with Him; For me to live is Christ’. You’re identified with the Lord Jesus Christ when you commit yourself to Him, and ask for forgiveness, and receive His mercy and His grace, and are as the Bible says, ‘Born again’. You’re identified not only with the salvation He purchased for you, but with the fact that He died on the cross. Dead to sin.

There’s a dear missionary that came to speak at the college back in the 1960’s. And I shall always remember the story he told of his own life, when as a missionary in Africa he was faced with day-by-day contact with someone who was very abrasive and critical, and with whom he simply could not establish any kind of, of lasting rapport. Now whether it was human chemistry or whatever it was, the, the two personalities always clashed. And this brother was always it would seem, always pointing out what was wrong; speaking critically and oftentimes sarcastically about this missionary brother of whom I’m speaking.

Well, he was meditating on what I was just telling you. That when he identified himself with the Lord Jesus as Savior, he also identified himself with death on the cross. And that human sins, and faults, and foibles, and frailties, and weaknesses, and shortcomings; all are identified not only with the salvation that Christ provides, and the forgiveness that God extends, but they’re also identified with the death on Calvary. And dead to sin means that faith in Christ also handles all these other things.

And that thought came to him, and, strongly as he was in prayer, and meditation and, and studying his Bible one day. And it gave him a great deal of joy. So he went on about his work. And now there came another confrontation provided by this abrasive brother. (Laughs) And, what was he going to do? Well he said, immediately there flashed into his mind this picture of a cross with Christ hanging on it on one side, and somebody else nailed to it on the other side — that somebody being himself, the missionary.

And he said to the brother, “Would you excuse me. I’ve got something I simply must do this minute.” And he went out of the room and over to his own room, got down on his knees beside the cot, and he said, “Oh Jesus, thank you that I’m on the cross with you,” you know. And the pressure was gone. And the resentment was gone. And the feeling of abrasion was gone. You know, salvation is a very practical business. It’s not just a point of view, and it’s not simply a profession that you make to join the Church.

When you deal with Almighty God in salvation, you are dealing with the practicalities of life — temper, irritation, resentment, discouragement, temptations of one sort and another, and the whole gamut of human failures. Jesus died on the cross. You, believer, died with Him. A dead to sin. And so Paul says in Romans 6:11, “Likewise reckon ye…” See, now you count on it now by faith. You were saved by faith and you can count on this fact by faith. “Recon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Why don’t we come back to this the next time we get together.

Dear Father, thank you for Jesus. We’re dead to sins. Help us to reckon on it, in His name. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!