The Best Possible News: Jesus Died For Our Sins

INTRODUCTION

Please turn your Bibles to …

For our lesson today, we are continuing our 5th Sunday series titled “The Best Possible News”… In our first lesson in this series, we talked about the life of Jesus. sums up a lot of what we talked about in our first lesson: “You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” We talked about all of the miracles that Jesus did, and how he spent time with so many people teaching them about God. All of this was to show the great authority that He had.

For our second lesson this Lord’s Day, I would like to talk about the main purpose for Jesus coming to this earth. He lived so that He could die…

– OUR OUTLINE (v3)

(NKJV) “1 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures…”

Paul in this passage is showing us the heart of the Gospel message… the greatest news ever told… For this lesson, let’s take note of what is said at the end of verse 3: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” This verse is going to be our outline for this lesson. Jesus:

1. Died

2. For Our Sins

3. According to the Scriptures

JESUS DIED - HIS SUFFERING

Jesus was:

Betrayed… One of his 12 closest disciples betrayed Him for the price of a slave… for 30 pieces of silver… When He was arrested, as an innocent man not having broken any of the laws that Moses gave, all of His disciples fled, leaving Him alone.

Falsely Accused… He went through a series of trials where it seems clear that truth was not the biggest concern… It may be inaccurate to call them trials! The Jews who had Him arrested already had their minds made up that He was guilty and deserving of death. They found people to be false witnesses, and failed to get the witnesses to agree… But the High Priest found a way to condemn Jesus… He put Jesus under oath, telling Him to tell them whether He was the Christ, the Son of God, knowing very well if Jesus claimed to be the Son of God as He had at other times in His ministry, he could accuse Him of blasphemy… And he got what he wanted… Jesus spoke the truth…. That He is the Son of God, and these few words Jesus said made Him guilty of breaking God’s law and worthy of death (they didn’t consider that maybe he was telling the truth)… He is sent to Pilate, then to Herod, and then back to Pilate again to be tried…

Mocked… He is mocked on multiple occasions, during His trials and after he was crucified. He was spit upon and shamefully treated and beaten.

Scourged… Pilate had Jesus scourged, thinking that it would appease the Jews. We have talked before about how terrible the pain of scourging would have been, getting whipped many times on your bear skin by a whip that had little pieces of rock or metal balls or bones attached to its tails… This would have been a painful way to die in and of itself, but it was just the preparation for crucifixion… Jesus was brought out to the Jews after He was scourged, and the scourging did not appease them… They wanted Pilate to kill Him… and Pilate allowed this innocent man to be condemned to die on a cross…

Crucified… He was taken to Golgotha, where He was crucified. This is one of the worst and most humiliating ways mankind has created to put people to death… It was created by the Romans to be a slow and painful way to die. Jesus’ hands and feet were nailed to this cross, where He hung for many hours before He prayed to God and gave up His spirit.

Jesus was willing to endure so much… We can only imagine the humiation, the emotional distress, and the immense pain that Jesus went through before He breathed His final breath and died on that cross…

WHY? FOR OUR SINS…

One of the questions that often comes up when the death of Christ comes up is, “Why did Jesus have to endure such suffering as an innocent man? Why did He have to go through this and die?” This question is answered in part by Paul’s statement that Jesus “died for our sins.”

Jesus needed to die because He was God’s sacrifice for sin. Under the Old Testament law, God put into place a system of animal sacrifices and other offerings so that the penalty of sin against Him could be removed and fellowship with him could continue. His people deserved death for their sins, and God, as the judge and law-giver, says that the only thing that can remove the penalty that sin causes is blood. Something or someone that was innocent needed to die for the sins of His people. In , the Hebrews writer says that without the shedding of blood, the taking of a life, there cannot be the forgiveness of sins.

When Jesus began His ministry, John the Baptist referred to Jesus with this kind of “sacrifice” terminology. Pointing his disciples to Jesus, he said, “Behold! The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (). His disciples would have been reminded of the Old system of sacrifice. John was telling them that this man, Jesus, is the one whom God had chosen to be His sacrifice so that sin could be forgiven, not just of Israel, but of the whole world! God as the judge of all the earth, has chosen this one sacrifice to be the payment for sin. No other sacrifice can pay the price for sin, and there are no good works or amount of money that can be paid to make forgiveness possible. Forgiveness and salvation can only be found through Jesus Christ. Jesus’ sacrifice was the fulfillment and replacement of the Old Testament system, and is for all people. This is why Jesus had to suffer all of these things.

FORETOLD IN THE SCRIPTURES

Our final point… Jesus died for our sins “according to the scriptures.” This statement in is one that can be easily overlooked… But it is very important… It shows that Jesus’ death for our sins was no accident… It was not ‘plan B.’ It was foretold in the Old Testament scriptures hundreds of years before Jesus lived on this earth…

One such passage that shows this is in …

· (NKJV) 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes 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. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

I have mentioned this prophecy in a lesson before. It is one of my favorites to share with people who I am sharing the Gospel with… This prophecy has a lot of sacrifice terminology. Who is this passage talking about?

This passage is talking about a man, who is a servant of God, a man who would be afflicted and killed so that the sins could be forgiven and people could be brought into peace with God. This is just one example of a prophecy that talks about the death of Jesus. We have prophecies about His betrayer, how much He would be betrayed for, many of the details about what would happen during His crucifixion, we could go on and on…

Jesus told his disciples multiple times what was going to happen… And before He ascended to His throne in heaven after His resurrection, he reminded them… “all that was spoken about Him by Moses and the prophets needed to be fulfilled.” This included His death for our sins...

Fulfilled prophecy is a great evidence for the claims of Jesus and His Apostles. It is no surprise then that the Apostles in the 1st century would often go to the Old Testament scriptures to prove to the Jews that the Messiah needed to suffer and die.

CONCLUSION

Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures… This statement, for us, is the greatest news possible! He did this for you and for me so we can have eternal life…

And we are told by Jesus and His Apostles that if we believe this message and in repentance, if we confess our allegiance to Jesus, and if we get baptized into Christ, we can receive the benefits of what Jesus did for us. We can receive forgiveness of our sins, and we can be born again into a living hope.

If you today would like to become part of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, or if you as a child of God have gone astray and return to Him today, we invite you today to make your need known by coming forward as we stand and sing the invitation song…