Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank You for today. We thank You that You are sovereign; we thank You that we can trust You with everything about our lives, and that trust starts with that original faith in You—repenting of our sins, taking Jesus as our Savior and King.
We talked about that yesterday at Doug Long Senior's memorial service. Lord, we thank You for the treasure that is being a child of God, being able to trust You as our Heavenly Father, and knowing that You have Your sovereign and perfect plan that You are working out for the world, that You are working out for our church, and that You are working out for each of us as individuals and families. You are sovereign over every detail.
We can find our peace in You; we can find our peace in that trust. As we come before Your word this morning, we take a look at the greatest death that has ever taken place. I pray that You would open our minds, open our hearts, and open our ears; that Your Holy Spirit would reveal certain things to us through Your word that we might not have seen or thought of before.
And through that, not just gain more head knowledge, but get to know You personally better through it. And we pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
There are several accounts of heroic and sacrificial deaths throughout history, some of which are included on historycollection. com. In 1665, as the worst part of the Black Plague swept across Europe, the village of Eyam in northern England had to make an extremely difficult decision.
That summer, a shipment of cloth arrived from London. When the village tailor hung it out to dry, fleas carrying the plague that had infested the cloth revived, infecting the tailor and spreading the plague to 42 more people in the village. As the end of 1665 drew to a close, many in the village were ready to leave—they were all packed up and ready to leave and perhaps escape the horrible death.
However, the local clergyman, who had only been there for a few months, laid out the case that those remaining in the village should stay and quarantine, preventing the plague’s spread as a duty to their fellow man. Remarkably, the villagers listened and stayed even though six months later the death rate was worse in Eyam than even in London. The village's sacrifice spared thousands of lives.
During World War II, Salvo D'Isisto was a young Italian military officer sent to a village just north of Rome. On September 23, 1943, Nazi SS officers approached D'Isisto, and instead of responding in kind to D'Isisto's cordial greeting, responded instead by punching him in the head. You see, the SS officer was irate because one of his soldiers had been killed in an explosion in a nearby village, and he suspected one or more of the inhabitants of the village D'Isisto was supposed to be keeping in order had committed sabotage against the Nazis.
In revenge, the SS officer chose 22 men from D'Isisto's stationed village and told D'Isisto that if he didn't find the man or men responsible for the sabotage, all 22 of the men chosen would be killed by firing squad. D'Isisto was not successful at finding the supposed culprits and tried to comfort the 22 men as they were forced to dig their own graves, still not solving the mystery. Instead of allowing those 22 innocent men to die, D'Isisto chose to confess to the crime himself.
The SS believed D'Isisto, freed the 22 men, and executed D'Isisto by firing squad himself, with only one of the released men sticking around to witness D'Isisto's sacrifice. In 1939, as Nazi Germany invaded Poland, a Franciscan friar named Maximilian Kolbe was living in Poland. He was offered enhanced rights if he signed a document attesting to his German ancestry, but he refused.
He continued to publish texts which became more and more critical of the Nazis, even though he was threatened to stop. In 1941, after causing too much trouble for the Nazis, he was arrested and sent off to the terrifying Auschwitz death camp. While he was there, he would be beaten on a daily basis because he refused to stop bringing comfort to his fellow prisoners.
A few months later, 10 prisoners had achieved the impossible and managed to escape from Auschwitz. In retaliation, the Nazis chose 10 others to be starved to death underground. One of those chosen men shouted that he had a wife and children, so Kolbe sacrificed himself to take that man's place and suffered the slow and horrible death instead.
The man Kolbe took the place of ended up surviving Auschwitz, being freed by Allied forces, lived to be 93, and dedicated much of his life to carrying on the story of Kolbe's sacrifice. These sacrificial deaths spared the physical and earthly lives of many others and are well deserving of honor. But there is one sacrificial death that not only provides redemption to millions of physical and earthly lives but did the one thing no other sacrificial death could accomplish: rescue the souls of millions of people from the wrath of God and eternal judgment in Hell, reconciling them to Almighty God and sealing them for eternal hope.
Last week, we ended our time just before Jesus took His final breath and died on the cross. This week, we pick back up with that moment of His death—the greatest death that has ever taken place in all of human history. Luke records that Jesus makes His seventh and final statement upon the cross just before that; this was our scripture reading a minute ago: and Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, into Your hands I commit.
" My spirit; this is the very last fulfillment of prophecy that Jesus Himself had any control over fulfilling before His death, and He does so with great meaning. When we look at this, how do we—what do we see? "Into Your hands I commit my spirit" is written as it's all in caps, so it's a quote from something.
Here, this is a quote from something else, and that's Psalm 31:5. As has been noted, this entire Psalm, Psalm chapter 31, is one of a righteous man crying out to God to save him from his enemies, and at the same time, putting his entire trust in God and what God's plan is for him. You see some similarities there?
Jesus knows He's at death's door, and so He declares with His last dying breath that He is fully entrusting God the Father with what happens in that death, as the psalmist also says in Psalm 31:1, "But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God. ’ My times are in Your hand. " It's plural: the time of our conception and birth and the time of our death is all in God's hands.
Just as Jesus declared His full faith and trust in God the Father in His death, so we too must have that same faith in God's sovereignty. Our times are also in His hands—like I just said, both the time of our conception and birth and the time of our death. We've been given the treasure, as Jesus’s followers, of the peace that comes with the same trust that Jesus shows here.
One scholar points out that by Jesus making this statement of trust, He's also declaring to God the Father His full trust in His resurrection from His death. In the same way, we can have the same trust that our soul will go to be with Jesus in God's timing and that Jesus Himself will resurrect our earthly bodies, reuniting them with our souls when He returns for us. Following what Luke records Jesus saying as His very last words, Luke writes, "Having said this, He breathed His last.
" Matthew records what Luke writes as, "And Jesus cried out again," and we—Luke records what He cried out with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit. Mark says something similar to Matthew, and John records it in the second part of verse 30 of this morning's half a verse. Well, you guys thought it was bad when we only covered one verse; now we're only covering half a verse today.
Okay, um, so if you brought your Bible with you today, please turn to John chapter 19, verse 30. If you didn’t, that’s okay; there should be one located in the pew in front of you, or you can look this up on your favorite Bible app on your smartphone. John 19, the second part of verse 30: "And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.
" All four Gospel accounts record the same event here. In Matthew’s, Mark’s, and John’s accounts, what we have is that Jesus’s body didn't just give out; that's not what is being described here. Jesus’s body did not just give out.
Why is that important? Because, again, Jesus was in complete control of this entire situation. He displayed all of this all the way back to when the soldiers came to arrest Him at Gethsemane.
He displayed that in His conversations with Pilate, and He displayed that here. He was in complete control, and so He gave up His spirit into the Father’s hands, and when Jesus determined it to be so, that was the moment of His physical death. We'll be getting into both what happened to Jesus spiritually, as well as what happened on Earth immediately following the moment of His physical death, and what happened to Jesus’s physical body over the next few weeks.
This week, we're going to focus on all the theological significance of the greatest death as sort of a brief and basic soteriology 101 course. Here this morning, I want us all to learn and be aware of this theology so we can have a deeper understanding of the meaning of Jesus’s death on the cross, how that impacts our relationship with God, and through that, have a deeper appreciation for what Jesus’s death means for us. And so we can get to know God better personally because of it and through it.
The tremendous significance of Jesus's death, which I'm indebted to theologian Dr Wayne Grudem and other biblical scholars for all their work on, much of what follows throughout the rest of this message has been categorized in this way: the atonement, sacrifice as propitiation, election, and the extent of the atonement; salvation by grace through faith; justification; reconciliation; regeneration; sanctification; redemption; and glorification. Did you know that all of those are all wrapped up in Jesus taking His last breath on the cross? Here, with all that said, let's jump in.
Firstly, is the doctrine of Jesus's death as the atonement and propitiation sacrifice. We're going to be talking about a lot of big words today, but hopefully, by the time we’re done this morning, you'll have a little bit better understanding of these big words. This directly connects with what we talked about last week: the atonement and propitiation sacrifice.
God does not change, and since God does not change, His wrath and judgment towards sin do not change. Ever since the first two humans sinned, as Paul writes, "For the wages of sin is death," sin equals death. Death has always been the penalty for sin, from the very first sin, through the inheriting of that total depravity from Adam to every human since then.
The penalty for that sin has always been death; that never changed. In His grace, God. .
. Provided for an animal to be a sacrifice as a substitute for the sin of a human, as such, he required a blood guilt offering sacrifice. According to one scholar, all the way back to the days of Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Abel, in that case, God was both angry at Cain for not only providing the second class of what he had, but for refusing to offer a blood offering as a sin offering in the first place.
Whereas Abel did, with the best lamb he could give. God then commanded his people, in the law he gave Moses, to bring a once-a-year atonement sacrifice. In this law, two male goats without defect were brought to the high priest.
The high priest would cast lots between the two of them, which again was sort of like casting dice today. One of the goats was slaughtered on behalf of the people as an offering for their sin. The high priest was permitted to, only once a year, and only after certain requirements were met, enter the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle where the Ark of the Covenant was and God's presence resided, and apply that sin offering goat's blood to the Ark of the Covenant.
Once that happened, the other goat, that was known as the scapegoat, was released into the wilderness. Both of these goats signified that God had removed the sin of the people and because of that, their sin was driven as far away as possible from Israel. But in order for the sin to be forgiven, sacrifice must first have been made.
This sacrifice had to be made once a year, every year, or God's wrath would have destroyed his people for their sin. However, Paul makes a very clear point in Romans 3:25 when he explains that Jesus was whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed.
What does all that mean? As Dr Gudum explains, the atonement of Jesus shows that God is both love and justice. We know that the atonement of Jesus showed God's unconditional love toward us while we were still enemies of him; that's pretty obvious.
But how does it show God's justice? Dr Gudum writes that in Romans 3:25-26, quote, "Paul says that God had been forgiving sins in the Old Testament, but no penalty had been paid. " Everybody with me so far?
God had been forgiving sins in the Old Testament, but no penalty had been paid, a fact that would make people wonder whether God was indeed just and ask how he could forgive sins without a penalty. No God who is truly just could do that, could he? Yet when God sent Christ to die and pay the penalty for our sins, he quotes the RSV here: "It was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him or her who has faith in Jesus.
" I know it's a lot, let's dig into that a little bit. Just like we talked about a couple of weeks ago how the souls of those in the Old Testament were saved through their faith and looking forward toward the coming Messiah, they ended up in the same place as those who put their faith in that Messiah after he died and rose again. The sins of those in the Old Testament were paid for by the finished and substitutionary work of Christ on the cross; it was not paid for by their animal sacrifices.
Everybody still with me? Okay. Dr Michael Van Lanningham of Moody Bible Institute wrote about this, quote, "In the death of Jesus, God vented his wrath against sin, keeping his righteousness intact.
God applied the atoning work of his Son to Old Testament saints. On that basis, they were forgiven, and his righteousness was upheld. " That's what Paul is explaining in Romans 3:22-26.
As the author of Hebrews writes, the animal sacrifices were always meant to be a shadow to point to and be ultimately fulfilled by Jesus's death. Jesus's death was not just the next and last one in humanity's atonement. God passed over and forgave the sins of those before Jesus through their faith in the coming Messiah, but always, always, always had as his plan to prove his perfect justice: to provide Jesus as the atonement sacrifice in order to be the substitutionary payment for all time, for all of human history, of the penalty that had not yet been paid before that point.
That all makes sense to everybody, okay? I cannot stress that foundational truth enough, and because of that, I'm going to say it again. God passed over and forgave the sins of those before Jesus through their faith in the coming Messiah, but always had as his plan to prove his perfect justice: to provide Jesus as the atonement sacrifice in order to be the substitutionary payment for all time, for all of human history, of the penalty that had not yet been paid before that point.
Okay? Thus, the term "propitiation," that we may have heard before in connection with Jesus as the atonement sacrifice, is a word that, as Dr Gudum writes, means that Jesus's sacrifice, quote, "bears God's wrath so that God becomes propitious or favorably disposed toward us. " That's what that term "propitiation" means: that Jesus's sacrifice bears God's wrath so that God becomes propitious or favorably disposed toward us.
Everybody still with me? I know we're dealing with a lot of stuff here. Jesus bore the separation from and wrath of God directly directed solely at him, as having been made sin on our behalf, which we talked about before.
About last week, so that God would look favorably on us. Lastly, I can't get anywhere near all of it. The evidence in Scripture strongly supports that only those whom God chose to save before He laid the foundations of the world are the ones whose Christ's atonement paid the sin penalty.
For only those who were chosen before the foundations of the world were laid are the ones whose Christ's atonement paid the sin penalty. For all others who don’t put their faith in the Messiah, simply pay the penalty for their own sin for themselves in eternal condemnation to Hell. The reason we spent this amount of time on Jesus's death as the atonement, and I want to make sure that everybody understood it and was on the same page here, is because all the other categories of Jesus's death are built upon that foundation.
Every one of the other categories is built on Jesus as the atonement, the one-time-for-all-time atonement sacrifice to pay for the penalty of our sin. There can be no other aspects connected to our salvation if it were not for the payment of the penalty connected to our sin on our behalf. So, as Romans 3:26b tells us, Jesus's atonement proved that God the Father would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Justification is a legal term in the Greek meaning acquittal from a crime, and therefore legally declaring that the accused defendant is blameless for the crime of which they were accused. That's what justification means; it's a legal term. So, because Jesus's death paid the all-time penalty for sin as a substitute, that also provides substitute righteousness.
We weren't merely accused of sin; we outright stood condemned before God as the holy judge. There was no way out from that. Thank you.
But because Jesus took our place and paid the sin penalty for us, His righteousness is what is transferred to our broken righteousness account. So, the term justification signifies God's legal declaration of our acquittal from condemnation and release to freedom because legally, Jesus's righteousness fills our account. Instead, Paul captures this truth with "Just as Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness," therefore recognize that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.
Therefore, faith credits Jesus’s righteousness to our account. We've been justified and redeemed. God's Word tells us that we have been redeemed from the chains, enslavement, and curse of sin.
In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings. Because we have been redeemed from the power of sin, we are no longer to live in indulgence of our sin. But when we come to God in recognition that we're helpless in our sin, stand condemned before Him because of it, and accept that Jesus's atonement paid for our sin, we must repent or turn away from it.
At that point, when we recognize Jesus as both Savior and King, God's Word tells us that the Holy Spirit makes a home within us and regenerates or rebirths us into new life. A major aspect of being remade as a new creation is sanctification, or cleansing, or being set apart from a life of sin. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation.
The old things have passed away; behold, new things have come! What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
Far from it! How shall we, who died to sin, still live in it? For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all time, but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
So you too consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. What is considered to be sin that we must become dead to in ourselves? What we might consider sin?
No, it's not our atonement that saves us, right? So we have no right to be the judge of what sin is and what sin is not. Let's just be logical here.
The only one who holds that right is the one who accomplished the atonement. That which God condemns as sin, and as written in His word, is what we must also die to—how? By surrendering it to the regeneration and sanctification of the Holy Spirit indwelling us.
He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we did in righteousness, but in accordance with His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing by the Holy Spirit. And, but I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Next, because Jesus is the one who paid for the all-time penalty for sin, it is only because of God's grace on those of us He elected to lead to put faith in Jesus's substitutionary atonement that grants salvation to us as a gift.
We cannot work for it or earn it; we cannot add works to it. Whether or not we get baptized, either as infants or adults, has no bearing on it. We are utterly helpless and only beholden to God's grace and God's mercy upon us.
Ephesians 2:8-9 is very clear about this when it says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ” For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. First of all, Scripture is pointedly clear that we cannot save ourselves, nor are we just automatically good enough to get into heaven if we just don’t.
Do something really, really bad in our own standards of morality—very clear about that. Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. " That’s falling short of His standards.
Likewise, Scripture is pointedly clear that we cannot do enough good works, or give enough money to charity, or say enough scripted prayers to earn our salvation. Every aspect of our salvation is based only on God's undeserved grace towards us. It starts at His predetermined election of us—who of us God already chose to have grace on and provide Jesus's atonement for the sin penalty.
This is just one reference to this truth: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love. He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise and glory of His grace. " There’s that word again—by which He favored us in the Beloved.
This salvation grace is what reconciles us to God. As Paul writes, "We were once enemies of God because of our sin, but Jesus's death and God's grace reconciles us to Him. For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.
Much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. " We still use this word today when we talk about two people who once had a broken or strained relationship being reconciled, right?
And that relationship restored. It’s the same image conveyed through Jesus's atonement in the salvific sense. We simply are not true children of God's adopted family if we don't accept Jesus's atonement to have been on our behalf and for our sin.
The reconciliation had to come first. Sin severed our connection to and relationship with Almighty God. We were enemies in rebellion and at war with God, for we only served sin and the forces of darkness at war with God.
It’s only because Jesus paid the penalty for our sin that God provided the only basis for us to be reconciled to Him and have a relationship and friendship with Him restored. Jesus's atonement was the victory that brought an end to that war that we lived out against God and ushered in peace. As Dr David Jeremiah once said—and this may not be an exact quote, but something along the lines of—we cannot have the peace of God until we have the peace with God.
That atonement, and therefore reconciliation, is the only basis for our adoption as sons and daughters into God's family. God took one step further in His grace again and not only provided us with peace with Him but adoption into His family. "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters.
" Because you are sons and daughters, God sent the Spirit of His Son, the Holy Spirit, into our hearts, crying out, "Abba! Father! "—the most intimate way you could address a father in this time period.
Therefore, you are no longer a slave but a son or a daughter, and if a son or a daughter, then an heir through God. See how God took it one step further that He didn't really need to? But in His grace, He adopted us into His family and gave us Himself as our Abba Father.
This inheritance includes our eternal home—this is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life. And Jesus Himself promises that we will never lose that salvation. "We were chosen to be given: 'My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
And I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one—not even yourself, because you weren’t the one who chose yourself—no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. '" So stop listening to those lies.
Through this adoption, we have been given God as our good and perfect Heavenly Father. We have been given the peace of trusting in His perfect sovereign plan over our lives. "In your book were written all the days that were ordained for me, when they began and when they would end.
When is not when, when as yet there was not one of them. " Before we were even conceived of being conceived, He had written all the days that He had for us in His book, the moment we would be conceived and the moment He would take us home to be with Him. We can have the peace of trusting Him that that time will be perfect according to His will.
Do not worry then, saying, "What are we to eat? What are we to drink? What are we to wear for clothing?
" For the pagans eagerly seek all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. What you’re going through is not taking Him by surprise; He already knows what you need.
You seek first His kingdom and His righteousness according to His word, and all these things will be provided for you. You don't need to worry about when and where they’ll come from. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and pleading, with thanksgiving.
. . " Your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension.
People in the world who do not have Jesus cannot wrap their minds around this; it is only given to those adopted into God's family. The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard, militarily guard, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. While we have all the invaluable treasure of being adopted sons and daughters because of the atonement, we must also surrender every aspect of our lives to Jesus as King.
It’s not enough to just say, “God is my Father. ” We have to surrender every aspect of our lives to Jesus as King. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, death on a cross.
For this reason, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord or King to the glory of God the Father. Not only must we surrender to live our lives to please him as King according to his standards found in his Word, but we must surrender to his authority over every aspect of our lives. Nothing we are or own or have is ours anymore; even though they were never ours to begin with, everything about who we are and have and own is really, in all reality, owned by Jesus now, and we must live in that way.
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? He gave it to you; he entrusted it to you. You are not your own, for you have been bought with a price, that penalty, that atonement sacrifice.
Therefore glorify God in your body. Paul writes later on in this letter, but the fact is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits; after that, those who are Christ's at his coming.
That’s the rapture. We will not all sleep; some of us will still be around at the time of the rapture, but we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable. And whether still alive or gone to be with Jesus before that point, we will all be changed because of Jesus's death.
You see that? The first fruits, Christ, died, and there were the first fruits to be resurrected, and that's our only hope. Because of Jesus's death and because of Jesus's resurrection from that death, we are given the promise that he will return for us, he will resurrect our bodies, and he will reunite the souls he’s been keeping safe with him all this time.
We will be with him for all of eternity. We'll get more into what Jesus's death and resurrection means for our souls next week. There’s my teaser: got to come next week for it!
I know it’s hard to believe, because of all that we covered today, but we only scratched the surface of what Jesus's atonement with his death accomplished, what it signifies, and what it gives to us. I hope that we might have a deeper gratitude for all of it, that we worship God because of it, and have gotten to know God personally a little bit better through it. Because of all that Jesus's death accomplished for us and because of all of God's grace over us, let us all surrender and live every aspect of every day of the rest of our lives and surrender to him as both Savior and King.
Summing up everything from today: for the great grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly, righteously, and in a godly manner in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us, the atonement sacrifice, to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify, sanctify, and regenerate for himself a people for his own possession in accordance with his will, eager for good deeds. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that is wrapped up, all that was accomplished for us in this deep theology when you breathed your last breath on the cross.
All that you won for us, all that you healed for us, all that you gave to us as a gift. Lord, I pray that we would worship you for it and because of it, that we would be so overwhelmingly grateful for all that you accomplished for us, and that it wouldn't just be head knowledge, but that we would live out the rest of our lives in surrender to it, and surrender to the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, and surrender to you and your authority over every aspect of our lives. Let us look forward knowing we still have a lot of work to do before then.
Let us look with great anticipation and great excitement when you finally burst out of the clouds and say, “It’s time! Come on up! Let’s go!
” We give you all the glory. In Jesus' name, amen.
