Sermons

He Gave Himself For Our Sins

July 16, 2017 Speaker: Reid Strahan Series: Freedom in Christ - The Book of Galatians

Topic: Gospel Living Passage: Galatians 1:1–5

The purpose of this book is to blow away all the confusion about HOW you gain acceptance with God and how you get free from evil in your daily life.

One and only one thing can make you right with God, accepted by God, and guiltless before God – and that is what Jesus Christ did FOR you on the cross. One and only one thing can empower you live as a new person: and that is the gift of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ, to live IN you. Christ FOR you and Christ IN you, is the good news!

The thing that destroys the power, and the joy, and the glory of the gospel, is putting all, or EVEN SOME OF YOUR TRUST, in your own works, or in other methods, to try to find deliverance from the pain and misery, and shame, and the sin, which we find ourselves in, in this world.

The churches in Galatia were putting some level of trust and security in keeping the law of Moses, to give them good standing with God. But that undermined the sufficiency of what Christ did on the cross. And it undermined the sufficiency of the Holy Spirit to complete the work of Christ in them.

The power and the joy and the glory of the Gospel is only in its pure form! Distortions of the gospel, neutralize the power of the Gospel! That is why so many people have been in church, and around Christian culture and Christian jargon, and yet have never been radically changed by the pure and life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ. They have heard and believed a distorted, powerless version.

The true gospel starts with the stunning revelation that all you need, is a gift of God. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself! He gave himself for you.

The gospel starts, NOT with God asking you for something, but to give you something. Verse 3 says, “Grace and peace to you FROM God our Father”. Grace covers our sins, it assures us of God’s love and acceptance. Peace quiets our conscience and calms our hearts. It gives a sense of well being, deep within our soul. This grace and peace come FROM the Father to you. They are always there, always coming, always flowing to you, from God our Father. What do you do with that? You receive, you just take it in. You drink it in. You receive it by faith.

One of the most important spiritual truths you will ever learn is that: God gives, we receive. We receive forgiveness of sins, we receive grace, we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive the love of God, we receive Christ, we receive justification. Romans 3:24 says we are “justified freely by his grace….God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement for us… “to be RECEIVED by faith.”.

5:17 “how much more will those who RECEIVE God’s abundant provision of grace and the GIFT of righteousness, reign in life through the man Jesus Christ”. THE ABUNDANT PROVISION OF GRACE IS RECEIVED! THE GIFT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IS RECEIVED!

8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously GIVE us all things?”

Galatians 3:14 “The blessings GIVEN to Abraham” have come to us, “so that we might RECEIVE the promise of the Spirit”. God has given so we might receive.

The salvation, the hope, the peace, the life, you need, are not months or years away! They are always present to be received! Receive his grace and peace in this moment. Open your heart and receive by faith that Christ loved you and gave himself for you. This is not only true of our initial salvation but is the way we live.

Paul said, “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him”. You continue to receive by faith all he has for you. You can't work UP what you need. You can't work FOR what you need. You can’t earn it and you don’t deserve it. You can ONLY receive all that a God has for you.

If you wake up and night and wonder how to have peace, or how to experience God’s presence or his love, or perhaps relief from guilt, the answer is that you just receive what he gave. He has already given his love. It’s there for you to receive.

Maybe you are fearful or full of anxious thoughts, you receive his promise that he cares for you. You receive his care for you. You receive his peace. “Let the peace of Christ reign in your hearts”. You LET that which God has for you into your heart.

People who are not doing well spiritually are not receiving from God. They are looking somewhere else to receive something.

That person you know who is doing well spiritually, its because they are continually receiving from God. Our greatest danger is to NOT receive.

Jesus said, “Come to me and I will GIVE you rest for your souls”.   I will just give it to you. After his resurrection, Jesus blew his breath on them and said receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus is breathing on you this morning saying to you, “Receive”.

The gospel is all about giving and receiving from beginning to end. The danger is that we turn away from what God gives and seek our salvation and our spirituality somewhere else.

*In verse 3 Paul tells us that “Christ gave himself for our sins”.

He gave himself for our sins, because THAT is what was wrong with us. Our greatest problem was our sins, and what to do with them and how to pay for them, how to escape them, how to be released from them. The entire gospel message deals with the reality, that we have a huge problem with sin, that needs to be taken care of, desperately!

Your real problem is not your self image, or lack of money or lack of a dream, or your upbringing, or something that happened to you. There can be real pain, and real hurdles in our past and in our mind and emotions. But...

Sin is what has done the damage. It has marred all of our lives! God created us in his image, but we are all broken. Sin has broken all that God intended us to be. Sin spoils our happiness, and our relationships. It wages war against our souls. Our sorrows and miseries and problems, and all that is NOT RIGHT with us stem from our sins and the sins of the world. Sin has set us at odds with God and ultimately leads to death and eternal destruction. The wages of sin is death. Unforgiven sins will lead to hell and separation from God forever.

So….By far the biggest question in life is…..How can a person be released from his or her sins? Paul said it is through the Lord Jesus Christ .... who gave himself ... FOR OUR SINS!

Luther said, “The heavy artillery of these words destroy the papacy, works, merits and superstitions. For if our sins could be removed by our own efforts, what need was there for the Son of God to be given for them?”.

Feeling sorry for your sins will not remove them.   Reforming yourself, or turning over a new leaf, or staring to live a better life, will not remove your sins. Too massive of a problem to be removed by anything but Christ.

I had a conversation with a cousin recently who has a serious blood disease that will kill him if a stem cell transplant procedure doesn’t work. He told me that there was about 20% chance it would not work and he would die. I asked him if he had ever trusted in Jesus Christ to save him from his sins so he could have assurance of going to heaven. And he very calmly said, “No, I have just always tried to be a good person and I think that will be enough”.

Many people think sin is a VERY small matter that can EASILY be taken care of by doing a few good things, by being a nice person, by earning God’s favor in some way! That is like fighting cancer with a cough drop, or like spitting to put out a forest fire, or like trying too buy a house with 3 pennies.

Jesus Christ came to fix our sin problem because we couldn’t do it for ourselves! No other man, or woman, or method can remove your sins! There is no program, or philosophy, or self help book, or psychologist, or priest, or religion, that can release you from your sins. No spiritual experiences, or angels or visions, or miracles, can take away sins! Nothing else in the whole world can take away sins except Christ - giving himself for our sins.

We know that.   But I agree with Luther when he said, “In actual living, it is not so easy to persuade oneself that by grace alone, in opposition to every other means, we obtain the forgiveness of our sins and peace with God”. “The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not allow us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with all our heart”.

Christ was given for our sins, that means YOURS too! Forgiveness of sins is not for special people, or for good and righteous people, it is for sinners! He didn’t give himself for our goodness! He gave himself for our sins. He gave himself for your small sins, your huge sins, the sins others know about, the sins no one else but you know about. Your respectable sins, your most shameful sins. He gave himself for ALL your sins.

He gave himself in such a way that your sins are completely and totally forgiven. You stand without your sins and faults before God! Justified freely by his grace!

When you think of Jesus Christ, your primary focus should be on this merciful, gracious act of love he did for you...that he gave himself for your sins. THIS is what he came into the world to do. This was his work.

Yet it would be a great underestimation of the work of Christ to think that forgiveness of your sins is the ONLY thing he did with your sins. It says….

The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for your sins, to rescue you from this present evil age…Rescue: the word used by Stephen to describe the Israelite escape from slavery in Egypt.   The word used to describe Peter being rescued from prison by the angel. The word used to describe Paul’s rescue from the rioting angry mob in Jerusalem who wanted to kill him.

Christianity is like being released from slavery or from prison, or from an angry mob that is threatening your life. Norman Harrison said, “God sees sin as a state of bondage from which man needs to be delivered”. God sees us as prisoners, captives, held in captivity to the evil of this present age. And Christ is the Savior!

Jesus gave himself to set us free to liberate us from present evil! He came to rescue you from sinning today, and tomorrow! Titus 2:14 says Jesus Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good!”

The glory of the gospel is not that we can continue to sin with impunity (without being condemned). It is not so I can keep on sinning and God won’t judge me. It IS glorious that IF we sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous ONE. But the glory of the gospel is the COMPLETE work of Christ to release us from our sins and make us new people.

Jesus Christ’s interest in you goes beyond forgiving your sins. His plan, his destiny, his purpose for you, is to liberate you from this present evil age and bring HIS VERY OWN heavenly life into your life.   Hebrews 6 describes believers as those who have tasted of the powers of the age to come.

John Stott: “The purpose of Christ’s death was not only to bring us forgiveness, but that, having been forgiven, we should live a new life, THE LIFE OF THE AGE TO COME”. We are call to a heavenly life, here, now, on earth, in the midst of evil.

What is this present evil age that Christ rescues us from? It is all the opinions, and values, and messages of this age. It is indifference toward god, independence from god, rebellion against God. It is the world's way of thinking, the world's methods and answers. It is immorality and killing unwanted children and drunkenness and drugs and filthy talk, it is also the worship of success, and possessions, and loving the approval of men rather than the approval of God. It is every attitude, and every disposition, that is against God! It is self righteousness! It is not giving thanks, it is not forgiving or loving. It is bitterness, greed, hatred, selfishness, harshness, cruelty, unkindness, envy, revenge, unfaithfulness to spouses and to other people.

Christ gave himself that we no longer walk in these things.!

1 John 5:19 says “We know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under control of the evil one”.   Along with the rest of the world we WERE under the control of the evil one! Jesus gave himself for our sins to rescue us out of that.

Philippians 2:14 calls this a “crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights”. The present evil age is everything that is perverse and wicked and unclean. Christ rescued us out of it so that we would live lives of such contrast that we appear like the stars shining on a dark night.

Christ has done everything necessary to deliver you from the present evil age! HIS work on the cross is sufficient to deliver you from the evil in your own heart, and from the evil, dark powers of the world around you.

You are no longer in bondage to sin, guilt, fear, evil thoughts, hopelessness, pessimism, anger, the inborn selfishness of your own soul. You are not longer in bondage to your appetites and impulses.   Jesus gave himself for our sins! - to rescue us FROM them, from the evil of this present age!

This was all done according to the will of God. Christ did this for you because it’s what God wanted and decided! It was God’s will that Christ give himself for your sins. It is God’s will that you be rescued from your sins, and from the evil of this present age.

And this is all to the glory of God, “to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen”. It brings glory to God that you would be rescued from your sins by Jesus Christ. It brings glory to God that you would be restored to the man or woman God intended you to be, with Christ living in you and manifesting himself through you.

Any answer for living life, for making you pleasing to God, or for making you a better person that do not lead you to THIS gospel, is garbage!

The gospel is the solution to your life!! Everything has been provided for you to live the abundant life. Everything has been done to open your jail cell. Everything has been done to pull your life out of the pit. Everything has been done to free you from lust and sinful passions and habits, and anger, and resentment and self pity and jealousy and greed, and to work in you purity, and love and kindness, and gratitude and joy and peace and consideration of others…

Christ gave himself FOR you on the cross to forgive your sins and he gave himself TO you by his Spirit to give us the power of new life we so desperately need.

Respond to this gift this morning! Come and receive!

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