The cross is the ultimate picture of forgiveness because it is God Himself absorbing the consequences of our sin against Him instead of pouring them out on us. This, in many ways, y'all, is the whole point of the Bible. God Himself absorbed the wrath and the penalty for our sin. Hey friends and welcome to the Summit Life podcast. I'm Molly Vitovich.
In case I haven't said it in a while, thank you for joining us. It's an honor to encourage you each week with God's Word. Another great place to stay connected to Pastor JD is on our YouTube channel. Every single week, you'll find these same two weekly sermons in video format for all you visual learners. And you'll also find other helpful content designed to keep you rooted in God's Word.
It's a great way to go deeper with the teaching you hear right here on the podcast. Just open YouTube and search for JD Greer. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a new message. And for daily encouragement, you can also follow Pastor JD on social media. Just search for Pastor J.D.
Greer on Facebook or find him on Instagram at Pastor JD Greer. Those are simple ways to bring biblical truth and gospel-centered encouragement into your everyday scroll. It seems like for a lot of people, believing in God isn't such a stretch, but believing in Jesus and believing that his death was necessary for us to be forgiven of our sins, that feels like a step too far for many. Let's talk today about why Jesus. Exodus 11.
Today, this morning, I want to answer the question: God, yes. But why Jesus? Several people I've talked to about Jesus over the years have said something to me like that. Like, okay, I get believing in God. It just makes sense.
There's a God out there somewhere and somebody that we're accountable to, but why do Christians make such a big fuss about Jesus? I mean, there have been lots of enlightened teachers like Jesus throughout history. Why do Christians insist that a relationship with Jesus is a necessary part of knowing God? Maybe you've had that question, or you know somebody that's had that question. That's a great question, and it brings us to Exodus 11, which recounts arguably the most significant event in the Old Testament.
Chapter 11, verse 1: The Lord said to Moses, Yeah, one more plague. I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, He will drive you away completely. No more begging Moses to let you go.
He will push you out. Verse 4.
So Moses said to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, about midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt. And every single firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and even the firstborn of the cattle, there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been nor ever will be again. This was the announcement of the tenth and final plague, the ultimate plague. The plagues were a systematic judgment on the gods of Egypt, a one-by-one takedown of their most cherished gods.
Well, Egyptians regarded Pharaoh as the incarnation of their prime deity, Ra, the sun god, which would make Pharaoh's firstborn son the next incarnation of that deity. Slaying the firstborn son was the ultimate and final demonstration that Jehovah, Yahweh, alone sits on the throne of the universe.
Now, you might say, Well, JD, why is God picking on the firstborn? I mean, how many firstborn sons out there? Raise your hand, okay? My hand is raised. This would have been a bad night for all of us.
You say, well, how is it fair that the firstborn sons are going to take the fall for all of Egypt? That's a great question.
So let me say a couple of things here. First, you need to realize that on the one hand, the death of the Egyptian firstborn sons was a repayment of sorts. If you recall, Pharaoh and all of Egypt had attempted a national genocide by throwing all the Hebrew infant boys into the Nile River. Remember that?
So this plague was a direct response to Egypt's national sin. That is true of this final plague. It was also true of the first plague where the Nile turned to blood. Remember where they had thrown the infant Hebrew boys in order to kill them? Into the Nile.
So God turning the Nile into blood was basically a way of God saying to them, Hey, I know what you did last summer. But there's another dynamic at play here that would have made sense to them in their culture, but doesn't make as much sense to us in ours, in our Western culture. Firstborn sons in those days represented the identity of the family, and firstborn sons embodied all the family's hopes and dreams for the future. The firstborn son was like the eternal soul of the family.
So God taking the firstborn was like him saying that he owned the soul of each family because there was a debt that each family owed to him. And the reason that's hard for you and me to understand is because we here in the West have a really individualistic culture where everybody rises and falls entirely on their own. But these people, both the Egyptians and the Israelites, were a really communal, clan-oriented culture. And so a son being held responsible for the sins of the family made sense in how they saw the world. You got to read the Bible.
Always read the Bible on the cultural situation in which it was written in, and God taking the life of the firstborn on behalf of the family would have made total sense to them. In fact, you're going to see that pattern again and again throughout your Old Testament. Remember the story in Genesis 17 where God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his firstborn son? You know, it's interesting that Abraham did not object to that and say, God, that's not fair. One commentator pointed out that if God had said to Abraham, Abraham, go get your wife and sacrifice her.
Or go get your servant and sacrifice him, Abraham would have objected. He would have said that's not fair. But for God to demand the firstborn son made sense to Abraham. Because Abraham recognized that his son epitomized his very soul. God taking the firstborn sons of Egypt was God saying to the Egyptians, you owe a debt to me.
Egypt had sinned. And they owed their very eternal souls to God, and that was represented by their firstborn sons.
So Moses makes this announcement to Pharaoh. This is going to be the final plague, he tells them. And then Moses and Aaron walk out of Pharaoh's court. And then God tells Moses, chapter 12, I want you to go tell the children of Israel this. This, we're about to see, took place after he did announce it to Pharaoh, but before the plague happened.
Chapter 12, verse 3. Tell all the congregation of Israel. But on the tenth day of this month, Every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, one lamb for each household. Your lamb shall be without blemish. And the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.
Then they shall take some of the blood and they shall put it on the two doorposts of their homes. They shall eat the flesh of the lamb that night, roasted over the fire with unleavened bread, bread without yeast in it, and bitter herbs. They shall eat it. In this manner, you shall eat it. I want you to eat it with your belt fastened, your travel belt on, your sandals on your feet, and your.
And your traveling staff in your hand. You shall eat it in haste. Because it is the Lord's pesak. which is the Hebrew noun version of the verb Passover. It is the Lord's Pesach, for I will pass through the land of Egypt on this very evening.
And I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on watch this, all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. Verse 13, but the blood that you put on your doorpost, that will be a sign for you. On the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will.
Pasakyu. No plague will befall you or destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. And so at midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. From the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians.
Watch this. And there was a great cry in Egypt. For there was not a single house in all of Egypt where someone, and by the way, in Hebrew, you could read that as something.
Someone or something was not dead. Not a single house in all of Egypt where someone. Or something was not dead. It was either a lamb that was dead on the table, and his blood was on the doorpost of the house, or there was a firstborn son dead in the bed. Here's what's interesting.
In many of the previous plagues, God had directed the plague exclusively toward the Egyptians.
Sometimes dramatically so. For example, in the fourth plague, the one with the swarms of flies. Exodus 8 tells us the swarms of flies literally flew around the neighborhoods of the Israelites and only infested the Egyptian neighborhoods. Same thing happened with the seventh plague. The storm clouds carrying the gigantic hailstones literally went around the Jewish neighborhoods.
If you've been a weatherman back then, you would have been like, well, today's an interesting forecast. If you live in a Jewish neighborhood, clear skies and sunshine. If you're in an Egyptian neighborhood, baseball-size hailstones are coming your way. Good luck. Same thing happens in the darkness with the ninth plague, which had to be an amazing thing, but the whole land of Egypt's dark except for the neighborhoods of Israel.
It's got these bright spotlights on it. But with this plague, the tenth plague, the slaying of the firstborn, God says to them, this one, Israel, applies equally to you. And unless you put the blood of a sacrificed lamb on your doorpost, your firstborn son's going to die also.
Something in your house is going to be dead in the morning. It's either going to be your firstborn son or it's going to be a lamb.
Now why? Why does this plague focus on Jew and Egyptian alike? Because get this. The debt of sin was not something that only the Egyptians owed to God. Israelites were guilty.
of the same sins as the Egyptians. You see, the Bible makes clear Romans 3.23. All have said. And all fall short of the glory of God. All, all means those born in Jewish households.
and those born in Egyptian households. Those born in Christian families and those born in non-Christian families, all of them, there's only one kind of person who has ever lived, sinner. All have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God, and anyone without a substitute sacrifice to die in their place will perish under the curse of death. I remember years ago watching an old Southern Baptist pastor named Adrian Rogers on Larry King Live. Larry King was pushing Pastor Rogers on his belief that all people needed to accept Jesus to go to heaven.
I remember him saying, Pastor Rogers, are you really trying to say that good Muslims and good Jews won't go to heaven if they don't accept your Jesus? I remember Adrian Rodgers looked back at him and said, Larry, I believe my own children won't go to heaven. if they don't accept Jesus. All have sinned, and all fall short of the glory of God, and only the blood of a substitute sacrifice can save us. But see, I know that raises a question for many of you.
And it goes back to the question I asked at the very beginning. God, yes, but why Jesus? People say, they say, well, why would blood payment make any difference to God? I mean it makes God sound like some kind of old capricious Viking warlord. Pat once had a Muslim say to me when I lived overseas in a Muslim country.
I had him say to me, he said, what you Christians believe about God makes no sense. Saying that God requires a blood sacrifice to forgive our sins because he said, if you, JD, sin against me. And you asked me for forgiveness, I wouldn't say, well, okay. I'll forgive you, but only if you sacrifice your cat as an atonement for your sin.
Well first of all That cat is guiltier of sin and more deserving of death than any of us, right? But I don't think that's the point you're trying to make here. But it's true. I don't require a blood sacrifice to offer forgiveness, so why would God? But see, you're not thinking about it the right way.
Walk with me for a minute, okay? Stay with me. Forgiveness always involves the absorption of a debt, right? A few years ago, my daughter. I was driving my cherished black Chevy Silverado truck.
And she put a $7,000 dent down the right side of it. She hit a pole in a parking garage and instead of stopping, she pressed the gas and crushed all three side panels.
Well, to get insurance to pay for it would ultimately cost me twice that amount over three years. She was absolutely torn up about it, but she did not have $7,000 to fix it. She didn't have $7 to go to Starbucks.
So, and I know, listen, I know some of you are going to judge me right now and tell me I should have made her pay for it, made her, you know, be a big girl and learn responsibilities. But in a moment of total fatherly weakness, I said. I forgive you. When I said those words, what happened to that $7,000 damage in my truck? He didn't just magically go away.
I wish it had. No, and saying, I forgive you. I agreed to absorb the cost for her mistake. And so for the next couple of years, I drove around this dented truck, some of you remember it. And then, when I sold it a couple years after that, the value of the truck was considerably less than it would have been without that big, massive dent down the side of it, which means ultimately I absorbed the financial cost for her mistake.
It didn't go away. I took it. That's what forgiveness is: you absorb the cost for somebody else's sin. You say, well, okay, GD, I guess that's true in the case of a mistake with a financial ramification. But a lot of sins don't have financial ramifications, so the analogy totally breaks down.
Like, say, somebody treats me rudely, or say that you get jealous of me and you start slandering me and really hurt my reputation in the eyes of others, and I'm really angry about it. Because you shamed me and you caused me a lot of relational problems. But then you come and say you're sorry and I decide to forgive you. And forgiving you, I'm saying to you. Hey, I'm not going to punish you or pay you back for what you did.
I'm not going to take vengeance on you. I'm not going to seek retaliation. I'm not going to go out and try to ruin your reputation. I'm not even going to stay mad at you for the hurt that you caused to me. Anger stops here.
The consequence stops here. I'm going to absorb the consequences of your sin, and they go no further than me. Forgiveness always involves the absorption of a debt. The sacrifice of a lamb pictures how God would himself absorb the cost for our sin. But catch this, that only makes sense if God himself is somehow pictured in the lamb.
Otherwise, killing a lamb in our place is random and cruel.
So when Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons Show up on my doorstep and say to me, That Jesus and God are two separate beings, and that God created Jesus. I'm like, well, that makes God cruel and capricious, because it means that God punished somebody random and innocent for my sin. But see, Jesus and God are not different, they're the same.
So salvation is God himself absorbing the penalty for my sin, just like I do when I forgive somebody. The cross is the ultimate picture of forgiveness because it is God Himself absorbing the consequences of our sin against Him instead of pouring them out on us. This in many ways y'all is the whole point of the Bible God himself absorbed the wrath and the penalty for our sin. You see, this Passover feast is going to be followed by an elaborate sacrificial system that's all going to be centered around a lamb. Moses is going to instruct them to set up a tabernacle, the centerpiece of which is going to be an altar.
On which each family each year will offer a sacrificial Pesach lamb. And behind that altar of sacrifice is going to be something they call the Holy of Holies. Which is going to house the Ark of the Covenant. The locus of God's very presence on earth, and the top of that ark is going to be called the mercy seat. We'll get this once a year.
On the Day of Atonement, one time a year, Yom Kippur. The high priest of Israel is going to enter the Holy of Holies. He's going to sprinkle blood from the sacrifice of a bull on that mercy seat seven times. By the way, I calculated. How much blood?
would have been sprinkled on that mercy seat. In the 373 years between the institution of the temple and its destruction in 586 BC. Scholars say that each set of sprinklings would have had used about a quarter gallon of blood. Which would total, if you multiply it out, 94 gallons of blood that had been sprinkled onto that mercy seat and into that room. It's how you know it's not all shiny like this.
That mercy seat would have been drenched in 94 gallons of blood. Can you imagine what that looked like? You said, well, why didn't they ever clean it up? No, no, th th th th th there were super strict laws about going into the Holy of Holies. The high priest could only go in one time a year and only then to sprinkle the blood.
That mercy seat and that room was drenched in blood. And that may seem gross to you. To see sin as a serious thing. God's glory is a serious thing. God's authority is a serious thing.
God's justice is a serious thing. And Leviticus says the life of the flesh is in the blood, and we owe our very soul to God because of our disobedience. The temple. was destroyed in 586 BC. But then it got rebuilt in 516.
And even though the Ark of the Covenant was never recovered, Nebuchadnezzar most likely melted it down and used it in his palace. The priest would still go into the Holy of Holies once a year. And they would sprinkle the blood on the foundation stone where the Ark of the Covenant had once sat. Y'all, that means that when Jesus died. And the curtain barring entry into the Holy of Holies was torn open.
The room that it exposed, I just need you to get your mind around this, the room that it exposed was coated in 230 gallons of blood. Can you imagine what that looked like? It reeked of blood. But no more. When John the Baptist saw Jesus, he said, Behold, The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Hebrews 7:27, Jesus has no need, like those other high priests, to offer sacrifices every day and every year because he did this once for all when he offered up himself. Jesus, if you did not realize this, died on Passover Day. He was the last Passover, and so from that point on, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. As Jesus poured out that blood on the cross, y'all. Luke says that as he did that, the veil that guarded entry into the Holy of Holies was suddenly torn in two.
Jesus cried out, It is finished, and that veil was torn in two. And him and that thief, that thief on the cross, that it repented, they both saw it. And that holy of holies, drenched in 230 gallons of blood from the sacrificed blood of bulls and goats over a thousand years, was rendered in one moment obsolete because the presence of God could now be directly with us and in us. And so the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day. And there may I, the vile as he, wash all my sins away.
Chapter 12, verse 30: When they woke up in the morning, there was not a single house where somebody was not dead. Friend, there's only two ways that you can pay for sin. Either you pay for it yourself by dying eternally and forfeiting your soul. Or Jesus, the Lamb of God, pays it in your place. This was the Passover.
the event through which God rescued them and in these chapters God's going to outline two rituals by which he wants them to commemorate this event forever. The first one you'll find in verse 24 of chapter 12. He says, You will observe this rite, this Passover meal as a statue for you and your sons forever. When you come to the land that the Lord is going to give you, the promised land, just like he promised. You shall keep this service every year.
And when your children say to you, Mom and Dad, what do you mean by this little thing we do every year? You shall say to them, It's the sacrifice of the Lord's Pesach. For he possessed the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt when he struck down the Egyptians. Spared our house and was saying, I love this. And the people, when they heard this, just bowed their heads and they worshipped.
Ceremony number one, the Passover meal. Every year, Jews begin to observe the Passover, something they do to this day. And if you remember from the New Testament, Jesus really wanted to celebrate the Passover meal with his disciples on the night before he died. He knew he was going to die the next day. On Passover.
So the last thing he wanted to do with them was celebrate this meal with them. And he loaded it up with all kinds of new meaning, which I'm going to show you as we go through it here in a moment. Exodus 12 describes the several components that were involved in the meal. The first ones are in verse 8. with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
You shall eat this. Meal in this manner, you shall eat it with your belt fastened, and your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You should eat it like you're leaving. Like you're ready to walk out the door. The unleavened bread was called Matza.
It was to symbolize the fact that the Israelites had no time for bread to rise. Unleavened means without yeast. That's all explained in verse 39. They were to eat this bread, unleavened, with their bags packed and their walking shoes on and their belts on. We don't really use a belt anymore, but think of it today like if you put your outside jacket on.
You put your backpack on your back. That's like you that's that's basically what you're saying. I want you to eat it like you're ready to go.
So the father's standing at the table, and he's ready to go, and he's ready to walk out the door. They would take the matzah. And they would dip it into this thing called the bitter herbs. called a Mauroor. And those bitter herbs were to symbolize the bitterness of their time in slavery.
And then they would hold it up and they would say, This bread. Dipped in these bitter herbs represents the bitterness of our affliction. And then they would break the matzah and they would eat it. By the way, scholars say that the maror, the bitter herbs, most likely is what Jesus dipped the matzah in. When he handed the bread to Judas, Signifying to Judas that he was the traitor, and signifying to Judas that he was still in bitter slavery.
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Then, after Judas left, Jesus took the matzah. It says, He held it up. And he broke it. But instead of saying, this bread represents the bitterness of our affliction, what he said was, this is my body, which is broken for you. The bitterness of your affliction is going to pass into me.
By the way, something else interesting.
Sometime in the Old Testament, the Jews developed this tradition that after the presider had broken the matzah, The family would eat one half that had been dipped in the bitter herbs, then the father would take some portion of the other half. They called this the Afi Komen. And he would put it in a special pouch, the Offy Comen pouch. And he would go hide it somewhere in the house. At the end of the meal, the kids would go do this big game of hide and seek to see who could find the matzah first.
And then whoever found it would bring it back for the last part of the meal and that kid would get a prize.
So why don't you get the picture here? Jesus breaks the bread. He holds a part of it. He says, This is my body broken for you. They eat half of it, and then half of it is hidden from sight and only brought back at the very end of the meal.
I mean, how much clearer could you get? The bread of life, our Afi Komen. was hidden from sight in the grave. Three days later, it was found. Even now, Jesus is hidden from our sight, but one day.
He will return in robes of light. The blazing sun will pierce the night, and I will rise among the saints, my gaze transfixed on Jesus' face, and we will feast on the bread of life forever. The next element in the Passover meal. after the bread and the bitter the bitter herbs was the four cups. The four cops, traditionally, there were four cops that were on the table for the Passover meal.
These four cups correspond to the four promises of deliverance you find in Exodus 6, verses 6 and 7, if you want to look at it in your Bible. The first promise, first cup, was called the cup of sanctification. And it corresponded to the promise in Exodus 6:7, where God says to them, I will be your God. Sanctification, just like we've seen this. God was not just rescuing Israel from something, slavery.
He was also rescuing them to something. That's what sanctified means, to be set apart for something. And so they drank from the first cup of wine to show that God had set them apart for himself. The second cup was called the cup of deliverance. Cup of deliverance, and it's based on the phrase in Exodus 6: I will deliver you from slavery.
In the Passover, God delivered them from bondage to sin and death. The third cup. Was called the cup of redemption, and it's arguably the most important of the four cups. Again, Exodus 6 says this: I will redeem you. And they would hold this cup up and say, this represents our redemption from Egypt, how God brought us out with a mighty hand.
This was the cup, by the way, that Jesus held up at the Last Supper. Except he deviated from the script. He didn't say this cup represents our redemption from Egypt. What he said was, this cup is the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. This fourth cup was called the cup of praise or the cup of final consummation.
And it corresponded to that phrase there in Exodus 6: and I will take you to be my people. Interesting thing about this cup: when the children of Israel celebrated the Passover during the exile, they began a tradition where they wouldn't drink this one. They would just hold it up. And they would say, hopefully next year. We drink this one when God has restored us to Jerusalem.
On the night that Jesus celebrated his Passover with his disciples, Matthew tells us he held up this cup and he said, You remember this? I will not drink this cup with you again until we drink it together in my Father's kingdom, in the new Jerusalem. When we're all gathered in the New Jerusalem and the marriage supper of the Lamb, this is going to be the first one that we're going to drink together.
Now many traditions will point to a fifth cup. Called the cup of wrath. And it was this cup that was a plea for God to execute judgment on all the evil nations like Egypt. They got this idea from the statements of some of the prophets like Isaiah 51, 17. which describes God's wrath like a toxic poison that was contained in a cup that God will one day pour out on the nations.
But the rabbis at the time began to debate whether they should include this fifth cup in the Passover because it represented, after all, God's judgment on the nations.
So why should Israel drink it?
So Jewish people around the time of Jesus had started to say, When Elijah the prophet returns, he will tell us who should drink the cup of wrath.
So we're just going to leave it untouched. By the way, Jewish people also leave the front door of their homes open during Passover. They leave it cracked, symbolically inviting Elijah in to take this cup, hold it up, and inaugurate the kingdom of God. This was the cup scholars say that Jesus was referring to in Gethsemane when he said, Father, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me. But what did the fathers say?
No, there is no other way. And so on the cross, Jesus drank this fifth cup, the cup of God's wrath. He drank it down to the dregs. And then we know that one of the last things he says is he cries out with a loud voice: it is finished. And it was like he was slamming that cup down on the table.
Saying he had finished the work of the Passover once and for all, forever. The meal was finished. He had drunk the cup of God's judgment so that it would be empty for you and me. By the way, Can you think of any greater insult you could possibly give to Jesus Christ than to say that there are multiple ways to God? As if when Jesus asked the Father if there was another way, the Father was like, actually.
There are multiple ways to get to me as long as you're sincere. I'm like a mountain. Whatever way you choose to get to the top is going to get you there. No, there was no other way, which is why Jesus took the cup.
Now one other element I'm going to highlight, chapter 12, verse 8. It says they shall eat the flesh of the lamb that night roast it on the fire. The last element was the meat of the Pesach lamb. Interestingly, during the Passover that Jesus held, The gospel writers never mention any lamb that was eaten. And that's because they recognized the true lamb was not being served on the table.
The true Lamb was presiding over the table. standing at the table. Behold, John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God. who takes away the sins of the world. God gave them one other ceremony.
Ceremony number two. was the offering of the firstborn. The Lord said to Moses, Consecrate to me. All the firstborn in Israel. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, either of man or of animal, is mine.
God said that from this point on, every firstborn in Israel belonged to him. That meant a couple of things. Number one, every firstborn animal had to be brought to the temple in sacrifice. The firstborn of every flock belonged to God. For firstborn sons.
They didn't physically sacrifice them, of course, but the parents had to go to the temple and redeem them with the sacrifice. Again, you see this all throughout the Old Testament. Hannah does it with Samuel, Mary and Joseph do it with Jesus. And so, with these two ceremonies, the Passover and the offering of the firstborn, watch this, we establish the melody line of salvation. A melody line that Jesus is going to play to perfection when he emerges onto the scene in a little town called Bethlehem some 1,200 years later.
And we're going to look at his life, and we're going to hear in his words and in his actions the melody of salvation. And we're going to say, That's him. That's him. That's the tune I've been hearing played all throughout these Hebrew scriptures. And he opened their mind so they would see that Moses and all the prophets were about him.
Jesus was God's firstborn Son, who would redeem our souls from the debt we owed to God. He was the Lamb whose blood would be applied to the doorpost of our hearts so that we could escape the looming curse of death. His blood was the blood that was sprinkled on the mercy seat in heaven one time so that we could all be clean. His body was broken like bread to absorb the affliction that our sin had brought on us and restore us to the presence of God. And his blood marks the new covenant that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
It has always, only, ever been about Jesus. Always. And all of Scripture stands on the shores of that Jordan River with John the Baptist and proclaims: Behold the Lamb of God. who takes away the sin of the world. Earlier in this message, I quoted this verse by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament.
Romans 3.23, for all have sinned. Religious and irreligious, all of us fall short of the glory of. God. Paul goes on in the next few verses to describe the work of Jesus, and if you will let me be pretty bold here. I'm pretty sure that Paul was thinking about the Passover when he wrote these words.
Because I want you to look at the words that he used, verse 24. And we could all be justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in. Christ Jesus, three words in there that capture the heart of the Passover. Justified. Justified means the penalty has been paid.
Jesus drank the full cup of God's wrath.
So that there would not be a drop left for me. That doesn't mean that I'm without sin. It means that Jesus took the penalty for that sin that I have so that I would not have to, to use the words of Martin Luther. It meant that I'm declared righteous even though I'm still a sinner, simultaneously righteous and a sinner at the same time. God doesn't see me as actually righteous and say that's a righteous God.
He sees me as a sinner and says, I've put my righteousness of Jesus Christ onto him, so he is simultaneously righteous and a sinner. Believer, listen to me. If you have accepted Christ, it would be, listen to me, unjust for God to punish you for your sin because the full measure of God's wrath has already been poured out on Jesus. And for God to punish you for your sin would mean that God was requiring two payments for your sin, and that would be unfair and unjust. That's why the Apostle John says this.
Says that when we confess our sin. When we confess, what does he say? He is faithful, and I love this word. just to forgive us our sins. Not faithful and merciful.
Not faithful and merciful, faithful and just. God forgiving me now is no longer mercy, it's justice. Because Jesus already paid my debt. Debt's been paid. Count's been settled.
John is going to go on in the next couple verses to say that Jesus is now our advocate before the Father. Basically, it means he's our lawyer, he's our representation. What I used to think that meant was that Jesus stood there beside the throne of God. And every once in a while I pull out a case file with my name on it, my lawyer, big old case file says Greer. Yeah, okay, Judge.
We got Greer again. He's not been doing that well. He's actually been doing quite terribly. I'm just going to ask you one more time because you go easy on him. Please.
Just give them another chance. Give him some right, give him a warning ticket. Give him a little rope here. And God the Father would be like, I don't know. I mean, Greer is, okay, for your sake, Jesus, I'll give him one more chance.
But see, I was always afraid. that at some point God the Father would be like, nope. That's enough. No more chances for Greer. He's here every week, or you're here in his behalf every week.
He has blown through all of our mercy bandwidth here. He's just not getting it. I'm going to have to punish him. But mercy is not what Jesus, my advocate, is pleading for. My advocate says: Father, you can't punish JD for that sin.
It'd be unjust if you did. And Father, you never do anything unjust because you've already punished me in his place. There's nothing left in that cup for him, not a single drop.
So it says God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. You see, before the throne of God, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great high priest whose name is love, whoever lives and pleads for me. And the reason he pleads effectively is because he's already drunk the full cup of God's wrath in my place, and he says before the Father, it is finished. You can't punish him anymore.
The cup of wrath is empty. Not a drop left for you and me.
So why? Why do you still feel guilty about your sin? Why do you say I can't forgive myself as if that's some kind of virtue? Why do you feel like the best days of your life are behind you, that you're disqualified, that you're damaged goods? Jesus put all that stuff away forever to make you new.
Yes, your sin and its damage was great, but his grace was greater. And he wants to lead you to his promised land of fruitfulness.
So you need to leave that captivity of Egypt behind and follow him to freedom because you've been justified. Here's the second word. Your second word, redemption. To the redemption. that is in Christ Jesus.
Redemption refers to when you buy something back. Early on in my marriage. Veronica made me get rid of a bunch of my suits. but she thought rata style. In fact, the first picture I have of me at the Summit Church, we still have this back in my green room, I'm wearing one of the suits that she threw away.
One of this old-fashioned suit. And so we boxed all them up. We took them down to Goodwill. And for most of them, it was the right call. But there was this one blazer that I immediately regretted giving away.
You ever have that happen, man? You're like, so I drove back down to Goodwill when she wasn't with me. It was in South Durham. And I walked in and I asked him if I could have it back. And they're like, now, sorry, once you drop it off here, it's ours.
I thought it was lost forever. A few weeks later, I was in that goodwill. And lo and behold, praise Jesus, there on the rack was my blazer, $7.
So I marched that thing up to the counter and I took out my credit card and I slapped it right down in the front of the Goodwill and I redeemed my blazer. Hallelujah. I had a holy moment right there in the front of the goodwheel. Took it home and Veronica put it in a box and threw it away again. To buy us back from true slavery, our slavery to sin and death, that we plunge ourselves underneath.
You ought to get a lot more than $7. It took the precious blood of the Lamb of God, Peter says, without blemish or spot. And once Jesus redeems us, he ain't ever taking us back to Egypt. That leads me to the third word in that verse. We are justified freely by his grace.
to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Grace simply means gift. That's why Paul uses the word freely with it. Free. It wasn't cheap.
No, no, no, it was extremely costly, but it was free for us. Like I used to learn in Sunday school growing up, grace, G-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's expense. That's a pretty good definition of grace. How do we get that, Paul says? How do we get this grace?
By faith. Faith is what takes the blood of Jesus' sacrifice and applies it to the doorpost of your heart. You say, well, that's a poetic image, J.D. I mean, applying Jesus' blood to the doorpost of my heart, but what does that actually mean? Paul explains it this way in Romans 10:9.
Listen to this: if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. In other words, if you will confess that he is your Lord from your heart and you will believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, meaning you believe that he died for your sins and was raised for your sins, look at these next four words. You shall be saved. It will pass over you, not might be or could be. Or if you go to church and do well enough, maybe one day you can hope to be, but you.
Shall be saved. For there is no difference, Paul goes on to say, in the Jew or the Greek, or the black or the white, or the rich or the poor, or the Jew or the Egyptian, or the one who grew up in the Christian household, or the one who grew up in a secular household. The same Lord overall is rich to all who call upon Him. For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Friend, if you call in the name of the Lord and surrender today and you ask Him to apply His blood to the doorpost of your heart, I don't care who you are or where you're from, He'll do it.
In fact, there's a beautiful little phrase tucked into the story of the children of Israel leaving. It's in verse 38, and people read right over top of it. It might be the most beautiful parts of the whole story. It says that when they left, Israel left. A mixed multitude also went at will.
You know what that means? Means a bunch of Egyptians. A lot of Egyptians heard this. Their neighbors told them about it. And they believed.
Anybody who applied the blood to the doorpost of their heart and surrendered to follow. Jesus could be saved, which brings me to... the applications. Have you received Jesus? We started this message asking God, yes, but why Jesus?
The short answer: because there's just no other way to be forgiven of your sin without Him. Jesus was God taking the penalty for your sin into Himself and swallowing up its consequences forever. He said to you at the cross, the anger for your sin stops with me if you'll receive this. There was not a household in all of Egypt where there was someone or something not dead in the morning. Friends, somebody's got to pay for your sins.
Somebody's got to pay for your sins. It's either going to be you eternally or it's going to be Jesus in your place. Those are the only two options. Have you applied his blood to the doorpost of your heart? It's the only way you can be set free from sin and death, the only way to have your debt paid before God.
Have you ever received Him? You can do it right now. Right now, listening to me at one of our campuses, you can right now, listening to me, quietly bow your head. And just in your heart, say to him, Jesus, I receive you. I say yes to you saving me.
Come into my heart. Here's your second response. Worship. I love that phrase, verse 28. I pointed it out after Moses explained the rescue operation, all the people.
The people just bowed their heads and worshiped. Y'all, what else could they do? God wasn't asking them to save themselves. They couldn't have if he didn't want it to. God was gonna have to rescue them.
And so now, you and me. I stand in awe in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how he could love me, a sinner condemned, unclean. And now, all I can really say is how marvelous, how wonderful, and my song will ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me. But see all that's why I say that in every sermon, there should come a moment when your pen goes down.
And your eyes go upward. And you stop saying, oh my God, look at all the things that Pastor JD is telling me I got to do for you, God. And you start staying and said, oh my God, look at all the things you've done for me. What I preach every weekend to you is not go be better, go do something, go be more religious. What I preach to you every weekend is: behold the Lamb of God.
Look at what God has done. and just stand amazed. Minute number three. Remember. God gave him a ceremony.
They were to do this every year. From that point on, forever. Jesus gave us his own version. of that ceremony and told us to observe it until he comes again. We call it communion the Lord's table.
On the night before he died, Jesus took the matzah. But instead of saying, This is the bread of our affliction, he deviated from the script and he said, This is the bread of my affliction. My body, which is broken for you. Yo, listen, when I was growing up, the only thing we were ever supposed to think about during communion was our sin. to make sure we confessed it so that we didn't get sick and die after communion.
That made a big impression on me as a 10-year-old. And that is important and it's very biblical. But today, along with that, I want you to think about the other meanings of this too. I want you to think about the fact that they ate it with their backpacks and their coats on and their walking shoes on. And maybe as we take it today, you ought to consider this.
Have I gotten too comfortable in Egypt? Maybe you've forgotten the bitterness of sin. Or you think my sin was actually not so bitter. Maybe right now, what you need to say as you take this is: Lord, you are my home. Your presence is the bread of my soul, and I can't wait to be with you forever.
The third cup, the cup of redemption. He held it up at the table. And he deviated from the script again. He didn't say this is your delivery from Egypt. He said, this is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you to redeem you from your sin.
It's for your forgiveness. There is no power. I'm Pharaoh in heaven and on earth that can hold you captive any longer. There is no addiction, no regret that can overcome the power of this blood. This blood is greater than all the enslaving Pharaohs in all the universe.
And as you drink it, you should remember. The fourth cup. About which Jesus said, I'm not going to drink this one again until I see you in the New Jerusalem. It's gonna be waiting on you. And until then, we wait.
A quick reminder before we go about our resource this month for our faithful givers. There's no better way to start the year than by grounding yourself in God's Word. This month on Summit Life, we are offering a simple, beautiful resource to help you do just that. It's a brand new set of 52 scripture memory cards featuring gospel-rich verses you can memorize, carry with you, and display as daily reminders. Tuck them in your Bible, clip them to your mirror, hand them to a friend.
However you use them, they are a powerful tool for keeping your heart aligned with truth. Reserve your set at jdgreer.com. And that's it for today. We'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Jiddy Greer Ministries.
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