April 13, 2014 Palm Sunday, Providence AS A LAMB, SLAIN FOR SIN 1 Corinthians 15:1-3 INTRODUCTION: What would you do if you found yourself facing certain execution? Most of us never even think such a thing could happen. But the city breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when a man was rescued from his kidnappers in a bizarre case of revenge against a prosecuting attorney. The prosecutor had sent a violent and repeat offender to jail a couple of years ago, and through a series of circumstances hard to understand, this criminal was able to set up an elaborate kidnapping of the prosecutor s father to retaliate against her. Over a hundred phone calls with his co-conspirators revealed a plan to get the family to take actions to reduce the severity of the imprisonment and other demands. If they did not act according to their demands, the kidnapped man would be killed, they were told. How horrible the days must have been for the family! Unless the demands were met, the family understood the threats to be real and recognized that unless action was taken, the kidnapped man would die. The story turned out well law enforcement officers successfully rescued the man before the execution could take place. But what is there were no rescue plan no relief from a certain death sentence no way to escape? Every human being is held captive to sin. The inevitability of death has been announced as a death sentence has been declared by a Just God. Some hope the judgment will be lenient or that an angelic force will rescue them but few consider that a pardon has been provided by the Judge Himself. Jesus Christ is the Judge to whom we must give an account one day. Either we will stand condemned by our sin, held captive till death by its power over us or we will stand free by our Savior who has done the unimaginable taken the death sentence upon Himself! THESIS: The love of God is perfectly demonstrated in that while we were still sinners deserving to die, Jesus took our place and was executed for us, shedding His own blood so that we could be freed from the consequences of sin. 1 Cor. 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. Paul understood that this is a matter of first importance. Until we grasp this, we are not prepared either to live or die. Before we speak of the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday next week, we must understand what Jesus did for us when He died for our sins. I. JESUS CHRIST DIED ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES. --Some have tried to suggest that Jesus failed in His mission because He died before having the opportunity to do all the good He could have done had He lived. --Unfortunately, those who say such things totally misunderstand His purpose He came to show us the Father by allowing us to see in Him what the Father is like and He came to suffer for our sins and endure the death we deserved, to take the penalty we deserved. --The Scriptures make this perfectly clear there has never been a time when this was not the intent of our loving, gracious God and He revealed it throughout His Word. A. FROM HIS OWN LIPS, JESUS SAID HE MUST DIE. --On several occasions, Jesus told His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem to die that the religious leaders would put him to death.
--Although He could not have stated it any clearer, the disciples did not, or could not, or would not, accept or believe what He said. --Their understanding of the Messiah did not allow for Him to be killed until He had overcome the dominating powers of all government but that of God. --But Jesus understood that His task was undeniable and death was the only solution to the sin problem separating all people from a just and holy God hear His own words. Luke 18:31-33 And taking the twelve, he said to them, See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. 33 And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise. [Lk 9:22; Matt 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19; Mark 8:31; 9:31-32; 10:32-34] --When the angels at the empty tomb on resurrection morning spoke to the women, they reminded them of this. Luke 24:5-8 and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, Why do you seek the living One among the dead? 6 He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, 7 saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. 8 And they remembered His words, --So Jesus knew that it was written of the Messiah that He must die, that His own blood must be shed in order for the penalty for our sin to be paid and for us to be pardoned. B. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, A SIN-BEARER MUST DIE. --When we trace sacrificial death through the Scriptures, we find that it shows up frequently in anticipation of the coming of a Messiah, a Savior, who would give Himself as that sacrifice. 1. The Lamb of God --The Lamb of God becomes a prominent feature of God s Word and Jesus is identified as the Lamb of God by John the Baptist (John 1:29, 36). 1 Pet. 1:18-19 knowing that you were ransomed [redeemed] from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. --One of the most vivid illustrations of this can be seen in the Exodus account as Israel is spared death and released from slavery. Ex. 12:3, 6-7, 12-13 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers houses, a lamb for a household. 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. 7 Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. -- When I see the blood, I will pass over you the Lord said to the Israelites, and still says today to anyone who trusts in the death of the Lamb of God that He shed His blood for us and that
whoever believes in Him, His forgiveness shall come, our death shall be upon Him and the Lord will pass over and give us life! John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. 2. The Perfect Offering --When Jesus was crucified, His sacrifice was a perfect offering, acceptable to God. --Looking all the way back to the various offerings in the book of Leviticus, we see that each one paints a portrait of Jesus so that we can understand the breadth of what His sacrificial death and shedding of blood on the cross means. --God made it clear that there had to be a provision made to allow sinful people to come before Him. --Under our normal, sinful circumstances, we would never be acceptable to the Lord, never be permitted to enter His presence to worship. --Therefore, the Lord presents a plan, offers us a provision to come to worship Him. --In the Law of God, given through Moses, Israel was told to come presenting sacrifices and offerings to the Lord in a carefully orchestrated plan that established a vast array of symbols and pictures of the work of Jesus Christ when He would come centuries later. --In the first seven chapters of Leviticus, He outlines in detail all that was necessary for us to worship Him in a manner acceptable to His holy name as He describes five offerings to be presented by any who wish to come to Him. --Each offering God uses to lead us to a better understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He accomplished in His life and ministry. --Each one of the offerings reveals some aspect of the work of Christ that leads us to know Him better and appreciate His grace more fully. --Jesus is the perfect sacrifice who on the cross shed His own blood, gave His own life to restore all that had been lost because of our sin. Our Guilt imprisons us our Sin-stain defiles us our Enmity separates us our Ignorance robs us of the joy of knowing Him our Failures deprive us of seeing the true glory on Christ reveals. The Order of the Offerings --The order in which the offerings are listed is worthy of note in that they begin with what honors the Lord the most, burnt offerings, and end with what helps man the most, guilt offerings. Guilt Offerings -- This offering is usually the first aspect of the work of the cross of Christ that we come to understand. --When we grasp the devastating impact of our guiltiness, our wrong-doing before a holy God, the first question that we dare to ask is, If I can see how awful my sin is, how can a holy God ever receive me unto Himself and forgive my sins? How can my sin ever be taken away?
--Who can ever forget the flood of gratitude that rushed over our hearts when we realized that by His grace God had laid our sin upon the Lord Jesus Christ who then died in our place? --That grace is pictured in the guilt offering as we discover that the debt of our sin has been discharged by the death of our Savior! Sin Offerings -- As we then begin to grow in our walk with Christ, we soon realize that sin was more than just a debt that needed to be paid in full, but that it was also a thoroughly defiling and staining aspect of our lives that needed to be washed away. --The sin offering addresses the problem of sin which had rendered us unholy and unfit for a relationship with the Holy God. --Not only has Christ paid our debt, but He has washed us and cleansed us from all unrighteousness the defilement is gone! Harry Ironside -- It was a wondrous moment in the history of our souls when we saw that we were saved eternally, and made fit for God s presence because the Holy One had become the great sin offering, was made sin for us on Calvary s cross. (Lectures... p. 8) Peace Offerings As we grow in Christ, our understanding soon expands to realize that what Christ did for us has also restored the broken relationship, granted us peace with God. --Our sin had broken all chances we might have for fellowship with God because our sin had made us His enemies. --Before there could ever be communion, friendship, and fellowship with God, there would have to be a reconciliation between God and man. --This is what is revealed in the peace offering as we see the meeting of God and man together in Christ and rejoice in the fact that through Him we have now entered into a peace with God that nothing can destroy! Grain Offerings -- Having come to enjoy......the freedom that Christ has given us through the payment of our debt of sin,...the refreshment that has come to us knowing that we are clean from all defilement brought on by sin, and...the peaceful fellowship that we now experience having been reconciled to the One who was once our enemy because of sin......we begin to long to know more intimately the Person who has done all of this for us. --The grain offering points out for us the sheer joy of knowing the person of Christ for who He is in Himself. --The glorious perfection that is found in the Lord Jesus draws us closer to Him and generates in our hearts a passionate desire to delight ourselves in Him and let our hearts get lost in the beauty of the sweetest name we shall ever know. Burnt Offerings -- The last in our list is the first in the one given by the Lord to Moses when He called to Him from the mercy seat to speak of the coming Messiah in the types and symbols of these levitical offerings.
--The nature of our maturity in Christ draws us into a deeper understanding of God s Son than we ever thought possible when we first came to Him. --Slowly but surely as we abide in Christ and continue to walk in Him, we will recognize that there was something more significant than just our salvation accomplished when Christ died on the cross. --God created man for His own glory and no one had ever lived up to that holy purpose, all of us so totally dishonoring Him through our sin. --God desired a Man in this world who would fully glorify Him, who would live only for His praise, who would never bring shame upon His holy name. --In Jesus Christ, as seen in the burnt offering, we find God s desire satisfied as His holy and glorious character is vindicated forever! --By living a life of perfect obedience, by maintaining the purity of His Father s name, Jesus chose to live in such a way that He wholly honored and glorified the Lord God. Harry Ironside -- This is the burnt offering aspect of the cross. By means of the cross more glory accrued to God than He had ever lost by the fall. --When the Lord looks at the work and person of His Son, Jesus Christ, He sees all these things: Our debt for sin paid in full Our sinful stained completely washed away Our enmity and broken relationship totally restored Our Redeemer s sinless perfection thoroughly maintained Our Lord s glory finally upheld in human flesh --These are the pictures He shows us in the levitical offerings of His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ! II. JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS. 1 Cor. 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures --For those who have only a limited understanding of the gospel, the fact that this truth is of first importance gets lost in a flood of moralistic teaching some people call Christianity. --The gospel does not call us to live better, but invites us to believe truly. A. THE PENALTY FOR OUR SIN WAS PAID IN FULL --The prophet Isaiah foretold what the Messiah, Jesus, would do on behalf of sinners like us. Is. 53:5-6 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the [punishment] chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
--Once the sacrifice was made for our sins by Jesus, the perfect justice of the Father and His glorious love and mercy were satisfied forever. --Our debt was paid and to Jesus we owe it all! B. THE SACRIFICE OF BLOOD WAS OFFERED ONCE FOR ALL Heb. 9:14, 22 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. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. --The Lamb of God has come and died and now takes away the punishment of the world of sinners so that whoever trusts Him and puts confidence in His name will be forgiven and have eternal life! --No other sacrifice is necessary no other blood must be shed no one else needs to die because Jesus paid it all! CONCLUSION: Therefore, those who hear of such great love that Someone would lay His life down for them must respond. Some have heard and heard often yet continue to ignore His call and reject His invitation. Either they do not believe their sin deserves the death sentence that God says it does or they do not think what Jesus did was enough or they think they can negotiate away their sins by doing enough good things to compensate for them. But others have heard and now believe. Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved the blood of Jesus washes away the stain of sin and breaks the power it has to enslave and frees us from its condemnation. What about you? Do you realize what it means when you hear someone tell you, Christ died for your sins? Heb. 2:1-3 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? So Paul views this as of first importance. Will you do the same? April 13, 2014 Providence Baptist Church David Horner, 2014 Sermon outlines are copyrighted in the event of future publication. They may be used for preaching and teaching purposes but may not be published or sold.