The Purpose of His Passion | Part 1

What was the purpose of the cross of Christ? It was so deep and so great that your destiny and my destiny is the purpose of His passion. When a man died upon the cross for our sins, the purpose of his passion was prophesied in Isaiah 53. If you have your Bible, turn there in the Old Testament to Isaiah 53. We'll begin in Verse 4.

As Adrian Rogers explains, the purpose of his passion. In a moment, we're going to look at verses five and six. Seven hundred years, seven hundred years before Jesus Christ in the flesh walked the dusty shores of Galilee, seven hundred years before that, the prophet Isaiah dipped his pen in gold and glory and wrote some amazing words that have an effect on us in this year. Isaiah chapter 53, verse 4, surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes, we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Now, with that in your mind, I want you to fast forward in the Bible all the way to the book of 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 18. And I want us to look at this verse that basks in the light of the prophecy of Isaiah so long ago. 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 18, for Christ also hath once suffered for sins the just for the unjust that might bring us to God.

There it is, folks. Christ also hath once suffered for sin the just for the unjust. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We've turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him, on Jesus, the iniquity of us all.

There's enough gospel dynamite in those verses. We're united by the spark of faith to blow the sin, the hatred, the discouragement, the confusion out of any heart and give a hope that is steadfast and sure. We're talking this morning on the purpose of his passion. Why did Jesus Christ die upon that cross?

The greatest tragedy the world ever knew took place on an ugly hill just outside the ancient city of Jerusalem where the Son of God hung upon a cross, where darkness veiled the glowing face of the sun, when there was an earthquake and the earth shook and trembled and the rocks split, where Satan and the dark forces of hell were battering against the very gates of glory, which in agony and blood was dying. Now, the question comes, why? Why the cross? Why did Jesus have to die? After all, isn't God a God of love? And after all, isn't God all-powerful? Now, if a loving God wanted to forgive sin, why didn't God just say, are you sorry for your sin?

Okay, I forgive you. Question, why did Jesus have to die? What was the purpose of his passion?

You're going to learn that Calvary was not only the earth's greatest tragedy, but it was God's greatest triumph. There was a purpose in all of this. And I had a reason for it. As a matter of fact, a reason that was so deep and so great that your destiny and my destiny is wrapped up in it. One more time, I turn your attention to 1 Peter 3, verse 18, for Christ also hath once suffered for sin the just for the unjust. Now, I want to lay several thoughts on your heart this morning. One is this, the substitutionary purpose of the cross.

Get it down. If you don't understand that the purpose of the cross was a substitution for us, then you'll miss the whole thing. Christ also hath once suffered for sin the just for the unjust. That is, he, the just one, took our place, we, the unjust. He died for us. He died instead of us. Jesus Christ did not die as a martyr. He was not a helpless victim. He said, no man taketh my life from me.

I laid down it myself. Nor did Jesus Christ die as an example, though it was the greatest example of sacrifice the world has ever known. That was not the major purpose of his death. Jesus, upon that cross, died as a substitute. Now, look at what Peter said. He is just, the just.

What does that mean? He is perfectly, totally, completely righteous and holy. He is just.

Now, being just, he cannot overlook sin. If you were to go through all of the dictionaries and the lectionaries of the world to find one word that would describe God, what do you think that word would be? Most people would say, well, that word would be love. Well, he is love. He is infinite love, matchless love, indescribable, endless love.

He is love, amazing love. But if you were to find one word, and of course, no one word nor all the words can describe God, but if you had to be reduced to one word, it would be the word holy, holy. God is holy. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. God is holy.

Now, what does that mean? It means that God is the complete other, the complete antithesis of sin. God being so holy, his holiness burns against sin. His holiness says that sin is a clenched fist in his face. Sin is a repudiation of all that God is. God is holy.

He is the just one. We are the unjust. If you take one word that would describe man by nature, just one word, it would have to be the word sin, sin. We are the unjust, the just for the unjust. So here's a holy God and here is sinful man. Man is the complete other, the antithesis of God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The glory of God is his holiness.

Our condition is that we have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now, as you read the newspaper today or any day, you will read about murder. You will read about rape. You will read about homosexual marriage. You will read about corporate scandal. You will read about insider trading. You will read about terrorism.

You will read about all of these things. But I doubt in today's newspaper you'll find the word sin used one time. You will find the word sin used. No, we don't like the idea of sin. He may be ill, but he's not evil.

A man may be weak, but he's not wicked. We don't like the word sin. But, friend, the problem is sin, S-I-N, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

So here is the problem. God is holy. He's the just. We are unholy.

We are the unjust. Now, God has a problem if we could speak respectfully about God having a problem. How could God, a holy God, punish sin and love the sinner at the same time?

That's the problem. Well, the problem is solved by Calvary. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Here, the doctor not only makes a house call, leaves heaven and comes to earth, but the doctor himself makes the patient well by taking the patient's sickness. He dies the just for the unjust. Here this time, the judge not only adjudicates the criminal guilty, but then the judge steps behind the bench and goes out and stands in the place of the accused and takes the punishment upon himself. The just for the unjust.

You'll never understand the cross until you understand the principle of substitution. Jesus Christ died for us. Now, God cannot just overlook sin. If God were to just simply overlook sin, God would not be just.

I've told you before, they say in a court of law, when a guilty man is acquitted, the judge is condemned. If God were to just say, my love allows that sin to go unpunished, then God, though some might call him loving, would be unjust. God would be unholy. He would topple from his throne of holiness. God himself would have broken his own law that says the wages of sin is death, the soul that sin is, it will surely die.

No, God must be just. God cannot merely overlook sin, but God is a God of infinite love. He allowed his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to take that sin upon himself and go to the cross. Therefore, the cross is not an accident.

It is not an incident. It is not an afterthought. The Bible teaches that the cross was in the heart and mind of God before the world was ever framed. Put in your margin Revelation chapter 13 and verse 8. The Bible speaks there of Jesus as the lamb slain before the foundation of the earth. Before God framed this universe, before God flung out the sun, moon, and stars, scooped out the oceans, and heaped up the mountains, before you were ever born, God saw the cross. Jesus Christ was born in the shadow of the cross. If you open this book, the Bible, and begin in the very first book of the Bible, you're going to find there is the cross is pictured, prophesied, portrayed. Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, and they tried to hide their shame with fig leaves.

What did God do? God clothed them with coats of skin, animal skin. Well, when you flay an animal, when you skin an animal, there is shed blood.

That's not incidental. That's put there in the Garden of Eden to teach us that we need a covering for our shame, and that covering cannot come apart from shed blood. Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 22 tells us, without shedding of blood is no remission. There is a river of blood that begins in the book of Genesis. We see that Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. Two sons came to make a sacrifice to God. One son was a keeper of the flocks. The other son was a farmer. Cain tried to offer to God fruits and vegetables, the fruit of the ground, but God said, cursed is the ground, and here he is offering to God the works of his own hands.

It may have been beautiful. It may have looked like a county fair, fruits and flowers and vegetables, but the Bible said God had no respect to that offering. At that time, Abel, the other son, took the firstlings of the flock, a lamb, and slew the lamb and offered that to God, and the Bible says God had respect to Abel's offering.

Why was this? Without shedding of blood is no remission. God destroyed the world with a flood. God saved Noah and seven others with him, and he came out of the ark. What's the first thing that Noah did when he came out of that ark into a new world? He offered a blood sacrifice upon an altar.

Why? The Red River is flowing without shedding of blood is no remission. God takes the first Hebrew. His name is Abraham, and God calls Abraham out of paganism, and God reveals himself to Abraham, and God says, Abraham, I'm going to give you a son. Through that son, all the nations of the world will be blessed. Abraham says, I'm too old to have a son.

My wife, her womb is dead. God said, he's a son of miracle. I'm going to give you a miracle son, Isaac. And then when he was a young strapping boy, God said to Abraham, Abraham, take Isaac, take him to a place, I will show you a very certain place, and offer him up there a burnt sacrifice.

Shed his blood. Abraham can't believe it, but he knows if God wants him to do this, he must believe it because God will raise him from the dead because God has made a promise. Abraham is called the father of the faithful. Abraham took Isaac to Mount Moriah, as we're going to see later on became Mount Calvary. And when Abraham is about to plunge the knife into the quivering bosom of his own dear son, he hears a voice from heaven saying, Abraham, hold your hand. Don't kill the lad.

Don't do it. He sees over here, Abraham, and Abraham sees over here a ram with his horns caught in a thicket, a ram, if you will, crowned with horns. And God says, Abraham, offer that ram in the place of your son. Isaac is unbound. The ram is slain.

What is this? Again, he is talking about sacrifice, destroying Abraham without shedding of blood is no remission. And so here an innocent animal dies in the place of Isaac. This red river of blood continues to flow into Egypt. The people of Abraham have become a nation. They're slaves in Egypt. God is going to deliver them from Egypt.

And they're getting ready to go and make an exodus out of Egypt. And God says to Moses, tell the people to take a lamb and kill that lamb and put the blood of that lamb upon the doorpost of the house because, Abraham, this night in the land of Egypt, my death angel, my angel of vengeance is going to come through the land. And he's going to be looking for houses that have the blood on the doorpost. Moses said, the angel is going to see the blood. And God says, if he sees the blood, he will pass over that house. Hence, the Jews have a feast called Passover because when I see the blood, I will pass over you. An innocent lamb is killed. The blood is put upon the doorpost of the house. Now, had they put diamonds and rubies, it would have done no good. Had they put poetry and sentiment rather than sacrifice, it would have done no good.

Had they taken a live spotless lamb and tied a live lamb there at the doorpost, it would have done no good. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. People talk about Jesus as the example.

No, friend, he is the Savior. Salvation does not come by learning lessons from the life of Christ, but by receiving life from the death of Christ. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. This red river of blood is flowing through the Bible. The Jews continued every Passover to make a sacrifice of a spotless lamb. That river of blood begins to widen, and you have all of the Levitical laws and all of the sacrifices there in the book of Leviticus.

Every smoking altar is telling us a story. Without shedding of blood is no remission of sin. One day, John the Baptist, standing by Jordan, baptizing people, looked up and saw the very Son of God coming, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And John said, Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Pointing to Jesus Christ, who was the fulfillment of all of these types and shadows. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 1, tells us that all of these sacrifices in the Old Testament, beginning with the coats of skin for Adam and Eve and going all the way through, all of them were only a shadow. A shadow is an outline that has no detail and no color. All of these were shadows pointing toward reality. You see, my body is casting a shadow upon this stage. Now, it's not the shadow that really matters.

It's the body that counts. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. All of these things were just getting people ready for Jesus to come. What God was doing was conditioning people for Calvary.

What He was showing them by the shed blood of these innocent animals is, without shedding of blood, it is no remission. The wages of sin is death. The soul that sinneth, it must surely die. Sin means death. Sin means death.

Sin means death. It is a conditioned response in the Old Testament to one of these days, the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the fulfillment of all of this, came and John said, Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. And he died for the unjust that he might bring us to God.

That's what it is all about, my friend. There is the substitutionary purpose of the Gospel. And so the Lord Jesus Christ hung his head and died there on the day when the Passover lambs were being slain, on Passover. Jesus died because He was the fulfillment. There on that same limestone ridge where those priests were putting to death those little innocent lambs, those little innocent lambs, the Lamb of God, the Son of God was there, there on that same limestone ridge, Mount Moriah, where so long ago God told Abraham, God will provide himself a lamb. Jesus said, Abraham saw my day and was glad. That's what Abraham saw, Mount Moriah, so long ago.

Jesus dying in agony and blood. And when Jesus Christ died upon that cross, He said, It's done. It's finished. I want to say to all you Levitical priests out there on Mount Moriah now, your work is over. You put away your knives. Go home. We don't need any more lambs. We don't need any more sacrifice.

The Lamb has died and is paid in full. And coming up tomorrow, we'll hear part two of this important lesson. But maybe today you have questions about who Jesus is or what He means to you, how to place all of your faith and trust in what He did for you on the cross. Go to our website, lwf.org slash radio and click the tab at the top that says, Find God's Love.

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