Christ Atoned for our Sins....
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning everyone,
Good to see your faces, my very dear friends.
How was your week? Was it difficult? Was it stressful at times?
And in the midst of all that pressure and stress, did you look to Jesus for help, for strength and power to overcome?
Or did you look to self?
Those two questions are very important my friends, we must break the faulty cycle of looking to self, our ability and our own strength to overcome. Instead we must constantly redirect our thinking about to Jesus,
He is the way, the truth and the life in every area of life, no matter what we are facing my friends.
So lets move on… last week we began looking at Jesus. And I walked you through the examination of Jesus and the authority He has as Lord and Christ in this world.
Today, I want to address the topic of His atonement. Literally it was Jesus who atoned for your sins.
What is involved in all of this, what did He accomplish and what does it mean for us, for the world?
So lets go the the New Testament book of First John and lets find I John 2:2 and then chapter 4 verse 10
2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
and
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Now there is a great old word there that I want to point out to you in these two verses just so everyone is on the same page, understanding what I am talking about...
Propitiation - it means to atone or atonement, or to appease… There is the simplest and best meanings of the word itself.
It refers to Jesus being the atoning sacrifice for sin. Sin needed to be punished and Jesus became the sacrifice for sin…
But there are a million questions in all of this.. so lets break this all down and understand the meaning of Jesus atoning for sin.
So lets being at the very heart of it all briefly…
1. Sin Must be Atoned for.....
1. Sin Must be Atoned for.....
So the very first thing we have to unpack is the truth about sin. Sin is the one thing that God hates, He hates it because it hurts his creation and separates us from Him.
Sin is not just a problem of humanity, now why do I say that? Sin did not originate with man and of course it did not originate with God. So then, who is responsible for sin?
Satan, Lucifer, the Devil.... what ever name you want to refer to him by, it is the same. Sin has its origin in Him. He sinned against God, wanting to be like God and fell, was cast out…
Ezekiel 28 tells of the fall of the King of Tyre, who was really Satan.
Verses 14-17 says
14 You were an anointed guardian cherub.
I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;
in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created,
till unrighteousness was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade
you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
from the midst of the stones of fire.
17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground;
I exposed you before kings,
to feast their eyes on you.
He was proud, verse 1 He wanted to be like God and in His sin, God cast him out… And a third of heaven with him who rebelled against God.
It is here were we find the true origins of sin… and soon, this one who is called the prince and ruler of the air, He led man and woman astray in the garden.
He led them down a deceitful road to doubt God and soon they Adam and Eve has violated God’s words, his commands of eating of that one tree.
You see in their disobedience, they sinned and forever mankind was separated from God, judgement was pronounced by God.
They were cast out of the garden.... and so the sin nature of humanity came into life.
And we are ruined before him.. you see the sin nature is just like a genetic trait, it is present in everyone, no matter who we are or how good or bad we have been.. All possess it.
And since we are separated from God, we cannot walk with Him or please Him in any way. Our state was helpless and hopeless.
I cannot imagine who distraught Adam and Eve must have been as they walked out of the garden knowing their sins.. knowing they had done wrong, knowing they had lost everything....
My friends, their one action so long ago changed this world, it has had a lasting effect upon it.
But God in His love already knew… He had the answer… There would have to be a way to make humanity right before God ...
Sin would have to be atoned for...
That mean’s everyone’s sin… young and old, men and women, boys and girls..
2. God determined His Son would Atone for the Sins of the World...
2. God determined His Son would Atone for the Sins of the World...
Here is what is amazing to me.... no one wants to lay down their life for another.
Let me ask you, who among you here would give up your life for me, for another you are not related to here?
The answer is simple, no one really would… Its not that you don’t care for that person, but you care for yourself also… you care for your family?
Now here is something wonderful.... When a sacrifice was needed, God was preparing His Son to be the perfect, lasting wonderful sacrifice for sin.
God was willing… He was willing to die for us…
One of the most fascinating truths there is my friends, God knew all the actions of those in heaven and on earth and yet in spite of it all, knowing He would have to die for our sins…He did it anyway. He created us and loved us that much.
This is true love… Listen to John again in I John 4:10
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
So as Galatians 4:4 tells us at the right time, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.
The law is important, it is God’s standard and it is that which revealed our sin, our faults , our separation before God. and Jesus has some to remind us that we don’t measure up, but more than that.. to show is the true standard. God’s own Son.
He would be the perfect lamb of God.
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
He was the One, without spot of blemish who would redeem us from our sin.
John says this in I John 3:5
5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
So He was made like us, flesh and bone, blood and marrow and lived as we did, He was tempted by Satan in the wilderness and yet he prevailed… Jesus would know no sin… this qualified Him to be the perfect sacrifice.
Hebrews 2:17 says
17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
You see the only way for God to take away our sins was to be made like us. Can you imagine just how He humbled himself to become a man… Yet love is the driving factor and love is what held him to the cross. It wasn’t the nails, it wasn’t the Romans… no it was love that held Jesus there to die for our sins.
And so Jesus came as a willing sacrifice.. So many times He testified “…I have come not to do my will, but the will of the one who sent me...” Listen to Paul in Galatians..chapter 1, verse 4
4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
I love what Paul says there, He did so to deliver us from the present evil age.
My friends without Jesus we would be hopeless and helpless, caught in the very trap of sin.
Have you ever read Dante’s Inferno, He paints a very vivid picture of hell. For Dante there were 7 rings of Hell, each one progressively worse. From those who are good but without Christ to those that lust, greed, falsifiers… and so forth.
The picture is a terrible one…I am not saying that is what hell is like, it is just a god vivid picture of torment. People caught in their sin and suffering in hell.
This present age is what traps people in their sin…they are lured away by many hopeful prizes that ultimately end in defeat.
Who would make the difference, Jesus would make the difference.
What was your sin… what captivated your eyes before Christ rescued you?
Of maybe your here and you don’t know Jesus and you need help?
And this brings me to my last thought..
He was a willing Sacrifice who Bore our sins upon His own body.
3. Atoning for our Sins meant He Bore them on His own Body....
3. Atoning for our Sins meant He Bore them on His own Body....
Do you remember the verse I shared with you with from the gospel of John earlier this morning?
John chapter 1, verse 29
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
So understand this, a sacrifice is required to atone for the sins of a person or corporately as a group or body of people.
The Book of Leviticus teaches us a great deal about the offerings and sacrifices that were to be made to the Lord at different occasions, and the most important of them was the day of Atonement. Yon Kippor
Here a sacrifice would be made for the people, to cleans them, to make them acceptable in front of God for another year.
You have heard me tell the story how two offerings, to animals, to lambs or young goats are brought without spot or blemish to the High priest and he does two things in His service for God on behalf of the nation.
First He would lay his hands on one..... confessing the sins of the nation and symbolically transferring those sins to that animal. So not the young animals bore those sins and it was led out of the camp, far away… the “scape goat.” never to return to the people...
The second one is killed, its blood caught and it is taken by the High Priest to the Holy of Holies, behind the curtain and the blood was placed on the mercy seat. There God would see the blood and declare the sins of the world forgiven for a season.. a year. And the next year on the day of atonement, it would always be repeated.
Jesus would be our sacrificial lamb. That is what John the baptist declared that day at the river. “...The lamb that takes away the sins of the world...”
So that day on the cross, Jesus is crucified, He is laying down His life that all humanity might be saved.
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus would die for us, for the world, bearing on His body the sins of the world, He as the sacrifice would ransom us from sin, listen to Jesus in Mark 10:45
45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
A ransom is paid to buy back that which was taken from us. Our best life was taken from us because of sin.
Sin ruins all that it touches for sin leads to death. So we were captured by Sin and God in His love us has ransomed us. He bought us back.
The idea also fits with redemption, to purchase back from sin.
And then also, his death would cleanse us from sin. Remember what I John 1:9 tells us
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And it is a one time atonement, not repeated year after year. No the perfect lamb of God presented himself once for all eternity.
Let me share to passages with you from the book of Hebrews...
26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. 27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.
And Hebrews 9:26b and 27 says
“....But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,”
We will talk more about his role as High priest another time...
The Scriptures tell us that Jesus hung there on the cross, the world grew dark, as if it were night but it was the middle of the day. There He hung, being the sacrifice for sin, and there bearing the weight of our sin, the world’s sin upon His shoulders He cried out...
My God, My God why have you forsaken me.... God the Father was there, make no mistake about it.. but suddenly Jesus experienced what we naturally bear in our sin, the separation from God the Father..
He bore our sins, and in doing so he became our scape goat if you will.. He took them away from us and the Bible says this..
12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more.”
and then....
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
and also
19 He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
You see my friends by Jesus being the scape goat our sins are removed… and then by atoning for them… they are made right in front of a Holy Gd.
I like the word justified, it is a legal term that means to make right in the sight of God. The sacrifice of the Son, has paid it all, it has satisfied the penalty of the law and we are free… Paul says the result of His justification is peace with God
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ took our sins, bore them on His own body and made us free… listen to John 8:36 my friends..
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Jesus came and died to forgive each person from their sin.. if they would only call upon His name..
Now there are two things for us to consider here...
What state are we in…
We are wither saved or unsaved, forgiven or unforgiven, judge as right or condemned as wrong.
If you are here and you dont know Jesus as your Savior, today you can come and expereince, know for certain that He loves you, died for you and wants to save you today
Or....
You might be here and say, Pastor I am a saved child of God but I have not lived for him like I should have.. I have sinned.. doesn’t matter if its gossip, talking about another person, judging another person, committing another type of sin… friends sin is sin..
You can be cleansed today
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If you have another need.. come today… for prayer, for a church home, what ever it may be.. we welcome you to this altar to pray...