Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 21, 2017 | Christianity 101: "Back To Basics" - Why The Crucifixion?

Transcript

May 21, 2017 | Christianity 101: "Back To Basics" - Why The Crucifixion? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to Christianity 101.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: How are you today?
0:05
SPEAKER_01: And before I get back into the series, I want to invite Jeb Graber.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: Come on up.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: Once a year, we have this ministry we love called Gideons.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: You've probably seen some of their stuff in the Welcome Center.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: And we like for them to sort of explain what they're doing each year.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: And then at the end of the service, there will be people at each of the doors if you'd like to give a gift.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: We're always really generous to them.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Jeb, come and talk to us about Gideon's.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jim.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's get right down to business.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: We're here for your money.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: So open your uh empty your pockets and your pocketbooks when you leave, if you would please.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: And that'll take care of us.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, anyway.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: We have uh here at in our building, we have the two Gideons uh that are in this church.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Don Gifford will be uh there at the uh bottom of the stairs to uh shake you down.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh we have a visitor with us uh from Covenant Baptist Church, Gideon Roger Flinakin.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: He'll be back there and he's the Gideon giant, he's about 6'6, so uh you'll be able to notice him.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be down here and the cab building we'll have uh Doug has recruited uh some shady characters uh over there to uh get your donation.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: But just uh kidding, of course, we uh we do want to uh mention to you that a New Testament now costs$1.30.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh that would be uh in a case of a hundred, one hundred and thirty dollars.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: When I was in Columbia, South America with the international scripture blitz in that country, we uh handed out 1.2 million scriptures.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: That was that's a 12,000 cases.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And so you can see the cost is uh considerable.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: A million and a half dollars just for that one distribution.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: So uh we do need money in the churches or where we get that money.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: We uh depend on our churches to provide that fund.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, you say, why?
2:19
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, what is it worth to have uh Gideon's on the Washburn University campus every year handing out about a thousand New Testaments?
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Or what is it worth to have our ladies in the auxiliary handing out about a hundred New Testaments at the Washburn University nurses' graduation?
2:38
SPEAKER_00: What is it worth to place Bibles in our hotels and motels?
2:44
SPEAKER_00: And that brings up an issue.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Um I brought a Red Gideon Bible with me today and it disappeared.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: Go figure, huh?
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, they disappear all the time in our hotels and motels, and we just go in and replace them if they're damaged or lifted.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: We encourage them, of course, to be used.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Also, we want to uh mention just a few things about the the Gideons.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: We have 270,000 voluntary missionaries around the world in uh in 200 countries.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: They're there serving, giving out the word every day.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And here in Topeka we have like 150 Gideons and Auxiliary that do the same.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: So uh we're appreciative of your support, prayers and finances.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Just to name a few uh that you might know who have been uh eternally changed by the word of God that the Gideons provide, Robbie Zacharias, Al Lindsay, Mary Kayard, the uh originator of Angel Tree, was in prison when she received the New Testament, and uh Jimmy Fortune on the Statler Brothers.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: So we have uh some famous people, but the everyday person that receives that New Testament or that Bible can make an eternal difference in their lives.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: So we want to thank you for your uh participation, your cooperation, and uh we have um Don and I go into the jail every uh so often, once a month, Thursday nights to do a Bible study.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: So Gideon, this is try to be everywhere that we can in public lanes of society.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: I've given Jim permission to start walking up here when I've got 30 seconds left, and then he can rip the microphone out of my hands.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: So uh he'll do that.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: But uh there are many testimonies.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Some are written here in this bulletin insert that you've received.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: And also there's an envelope there that you can send in your donations.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of good information here, some testimonies, and uh so please take a look at that and uh also want to uh have you go to the website gideons.org to uh see a lot of other testimonies, some videos, some just stories.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: And you see them coming, don't you?
5:27
SPEAKER_00: All right.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: So uh we want to uh close uh with just a thanks for all that you'll do to help us.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Jeb.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: I'll take that.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: So um I just wanted to add to what uh Jeb said.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: If you forget at the door, if you if you leave and you go, Oh, I meant to give to Gideons, listen, you can give me something if you designate it to the Gideons, give it, send it into the office.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: We love to give a hefty gift every year uh after Jeb or Don, it's usually Jeb or Don share with us, and we love to give a large gift.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: We think the Gideons are doing a great job.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: We are, after all, Topeka Bible church.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: So uh you can get it to the office if you want to.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: We we uh appreciate you, Don, and the other Gideons, Jeb.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh I want to start with a verse.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: I have a text this morning, uh, and I would like you to read our text from the screen with us.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: This is Isaiah 53, 5 and 6.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: This is a great passage from the Old Testament.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh it starts with, but he was pierced.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Are you ready?
6:29
SPEAKER_01: Let's read this together.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: We all, like sheep, have gone astray.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: That's a great text for my topic this morning.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: Our topic in the fourth of five in our series Christianity 101 is why did Jesus have to die?
7:06
SPEAKER_01: Now I know on the front of the bulletin, and our advertisement was that this morning I would cover two questions.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: Why did Jesus have to die?
7:14
SPEAKER_01: And why did Jesus have to rise?
7:17
SPEAKER_01: But I realized driving in this morning, why did Jesus have to die is thick enough, big enough, huge enough, and so I'm gonna push Why Did Jesus Have to Rise to next week, which is the final sermon in which I'll also answer the question, how do I become a Christian?
7:35
SPEAKER_01: Now, I I know that this is basic, supposedly basic Christianity, but I am warning you, this is the morning to put on your big boy breeches, because this question demands an answer that includes from four and some four and five-syllable words.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: I've spent a number of hours.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: I was out in Oregon for a prayer week on the beach this last week.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Great place to pray, folks.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: Just anyway.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: So, but I've worked a lot this week to try to distill down what is second-year seminary stuff into a clear, understandable, basic answer to this huge question.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: The first question we answered in the series was, who is God?
8:17
SPEAKER_01: The second was who is man?
8:18
SPEAKER_01: The third last week, who is Jesus?
8:20
SPEAKER_01: This week, why did Jesus have to die?
8:24
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray and ask God's help.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, we're about to climb a mountain.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be basic.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: We won't need crampons or climbing rope, but still, Lord, this is uh deep stuff.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: This is what sets us apart from all other religions on earth.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: We ask that you'd give us grace.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Give me clarity, give us the ability to listen and understand in Jesus' name.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: You ready?
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not a question, why did Jesus have to die?
8:55
SPEAKER_01: That's uh just asked by theologians.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: It was the question on the front cover of Time magazine back in 2004.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: As you know, every year or so, Time Newsweek, U.S.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: News and World Report make Christ a cover boy because they double their sales as a result.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh but their their answer to the question is not going to be the same answer I give you.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: Their answer is gonna be, well, it's gonna be the same answer that you often get when you're in a conversation with people, and uh and perhaps someone in your lifetime has said to you, you know, I this Christianity thing is nice.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: I think Jesus is a wonderful man, but I don't understand why did Jesus have to die.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: In your religion, you often say he had to die.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: And then you say something like, Well, he had to die to forgive us from our sins.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: And then they might answer something like this.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: But I forgive people all the time.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: I just say, I forgive you.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: Why can't God do that?
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Why can't he look at us and he see, yeah, we've sinned, we've done some bad stuff, we haven't lived perhaps the way we should, we've broken some of the Ten Commandments.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: Why can't He just say, like I do, I forgive you and let us all come to heaven?
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Now, this view, this perspective, we're talking worldview in this series, is a famous view.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: It became popular, popularized by a guy named Peter Abelard, who came up with it first in about 1100 AD, and it's been called the moral influence view, which is that Jesus came to have a moral influence on the world.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: He did not have to die.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: There was nothing in God or in heaven that required that Jesus shed blood.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: No.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: He sent Jesus to have a moral influence on the world.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: And the best part of the Bible, these folks would say, the central part of the Bible, the gospel of the Bible, is Matthew 5, 6 and 7, the Sermon on the Mount.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Love people, be kind, don't get angry, be mild, be meek, and so forth.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: That's the moral influence view.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: Now, it was taken a little bit further by a guy named Sosinus in about 1575, 1600 A.D., and we call it the example view.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: And what that says is yes, this moral influence was brought by God on the world, but he left us an example that we should follow in his steps.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: You say, yeah, I've heard that.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: That's in the Bible.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is in the Bible.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: But that's this so Sinus said that's the reason he came.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: He didn't come because he had to die for sins or something, because he didn't.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: He came to be our example.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: So we should be kind and generous to the poor and to the weak and to the me, like Jesus was.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: All right?
11:51
SPEAKER_01: So this is what you would hear.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: This is what you would hear uh from Jews for Judaism, this is what you would get uh if you go to the Unitarian Universalist Church, or if you read those Time Newsweek uh U.S.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: News and World Report articles, or that CNN series that was recent or NPR.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: And the conclusion uh that they give is no, Jesus didn't have to die.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: Like Socrates, he went to his death to show us how to live a moral life and die a noble death.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you go online today, uh this view that Christians have that Jesus had to die, you'll find that this is really yucky for a number of people.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: So if you go on YouTube, you can actually see presentations on why Jesus did not have to die to atone for our sins.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: So trying to make this doctrine practical, and as you can see, this is really relevant.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: This is practical, this is this is authentic.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: So let's continue our conversation.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Why did Jesus have to die, they ask you?
13:04
SPEAKER_01: You say, to forgive us our sins.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: But I forgive Jesus, or I forgive people all the time, they say.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: Back when I was in high school, uh my best friend stole my boyfriend from me.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: It took a while, but I finally forgave her.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: Or when I got in college, my roommate lied about me once, and it really hurt my reputation.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: But eventually I I forgave him.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: Just last week, I loaned out my cell phone and and and they dropped it in the toilet, or sorry about that, in the sink and ruined it.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: And and they didn't have the money to buy me a new cell phone, so I forgave them.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: So why can't God do that?
13:54
SPEAKER_01: Now, the correct response, the wise response, whether it's uh you're reading the Bible or whether you just have a lot of common sense is listen, you misunderstand two things.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: You misunderstand both sin and forgiveness.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: They say, What do you mean?
14:14
SPEAKER_01: And you say, well, let me explain.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: I think you have a child's view of sin.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: If you ask a child who's just slapped his younger brother how he feels about that, his answer is no big deal.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: My little brother's slapped me before.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: Or a child takes a toy that someone else is playing with, and you try to tell them how awful that is, and they look at you, because to them sin is really no big deal.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that you have a child's view of, you might say, is you have a child's view of forgiveness.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: You know how, dear parent, you you tell your child who's just uh slapped his brother, you say, you need to say, I'm sorry.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: And finally, finally, you get the little boy to say, I'm sorry.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Now you're in a pickle because his brother's refusing to forgive.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: So now you've forced his brother to say, I forgive you, right?
15:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh, come on, you've done this.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: This is life, you know, and families.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Okay, I forgive you.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: And so the child's view is, okay, you know, I forgive.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: There's really nothing to it.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: It's easy schmeasy, it's just something you have to say.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: But you see, that's a real misunderstanding in two cases, sin and forgiveness.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about those.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: The child's view of sin, that it's no biggie, confronts the fact that because of who we've sinned against, our sin is a biggie.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's a crime worthy of death.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Several months ago, I think I told you a story.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Robbie Zacharias, or somebody may have told it first about how he's talking with a taxi driver.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: And to talk about sin, he asked the taxi driver something like this, so don't remember the details.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: What would happen if you threw a rock at your neighbor and you hit your neighbor?
16:13
SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, uh, I'd probably be required to, it would cost me some cash, probably have to pay him some money.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Now, what if you're standing alongside the road and the king's caravan came by and you threw a rock at the king and you happened to hit the king?
16:29
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I would be executed.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: You see, the difference is that some sins have more gravity than others.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: They're more heinous than others because of who you're sinning against.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: And what you say is, listen, you don't understand when you sin against the person who created you, when you sin against the omnipotent king of the universe, when you sin against the one who is so holy that he cannot countenance sin, that sin is as great as you can imagine.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: It's not like keeping a book that you checked out of the library and stealing it, or shoplifting, or slapping a brother.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: It's not like that at all.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: No, no, it's much more like the guy who last week drove a car the wrong way down a street and killed a woman and injured 11 other people.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's even worse than that.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: It's like in the Bible, killing the king's son.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: That's how bad a sin is.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: It's like Auschwitz, it's like killing six million Jews because it has an infinite evil to it, a gravity to it, because of who you're sinning against.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: You need to understand the size of your sin against God.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: Minimize your sin.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Be like in the Canterbury Tales, you know.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you remember that, you know, where the friar just sins all over the place, sexually in other ways.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: You minimize sin and treat it as trivial to that extent.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: You are minimizing the God you have sinned against.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: It's only when you realize how great your sin is that you again realize the greatness of the God you've sinned against.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: And then the other, and they say, well, what about forgiveness?
18:23
SPEAKER_01: You say, Well, I said you have a child's view of forgiveness because you you seem to say all you did was you said, I forgive you, to the person who ruined your cell phone or lied about you or stole your boyfriend.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: But if you think about it, you say there's really no such thing as cost-free forgiveness.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: Who paid the cost for that lie, for the loss of your reputation?
18:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, well, I did.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: You see, you actually paid a cost for that.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Who paid the cost for the cell phone when you said, I forgive you?
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, I am gonna have to pay the$600.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you see, someone always pays the cost.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: There is no such thing as cost-free forgiveness.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: Forgiveness always costs somebody something.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: Someone always pays.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: And so what happened with sin and forgiveness is that our sin was so great, someone had to pay, and in Christianity, God pays taking the penalty for our sin.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And if they've read C.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: S.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Lewis's book, The Lion Witch in the Wardrobe, then you can remind them of the story of Narnia.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: For those of you that haven't read that first of six volumes in the Narnia tales, there uh there are four children called the Pevensey children who live in London about the time of the Second World War.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: There's Peter the oldest, and then Susan, then comes Edmund and Lucy.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: And there's one child who's not like the others.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: And you can see it even in the drawings and the pictures of them.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: There are three children that are happy, there are three children that get along with and like each other, and then there's one child who resents his brother and his two sisters.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: Edmund, the third child, is is angry at them, he feels as though they put him down, he's angry at life, and so he they just sort of, you know, they love him, but he sort of doesn't like them.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: And so they go through a magic wardrobe and they go into a land of Narnia and find that it is cold, it is frigid, it is winter.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: They have come at an auspicious moment because uh because something is happening in Narnia.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: For hundreds of years, for centuries, the land has been frigidly cold and it has been very uh depressing.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: Always winter and never Christmas is the way C.S.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: Lewis describes it, and and the talking animals describe it.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: It is ruled over by this evil witch called the White Witch, and this Queen of Narnia keeps the land in icy winter cold, but something's happened.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: The Almighty, powerful, wonderful lion, Aslan, has returned secretly to the land.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: The witch doesn't know it, but he is slowly revealing himself to the talking animals and to these children who he has brought to this land to help save it.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: Edmund, however, doesn't want anything to do with this happiness or this joy.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: And so he he sort of runs away.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And then the witch herself rides up in her sleigh, is stunned to see a human because she knows an old story that four human children.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Will help rescue the land and take away her rule.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: And so she invites him into her sleigh and she tempts him with his favorite candy.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: And he decides, you know what?
22:11
SPEAKER_01: My brother and sisters are so off, she's a wonderful person.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna go with them.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: And so he he sides with her, but before long he finds out that she only wants to kill him and his siblings, and she captures him and ties him to a tree, and and and they're about to kill him so that they can ruin ruin the plan.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: But uh but the talking animals come at the behest of Aslan and they charge in and the and the and the wolf and Aslan's other animals, they set Edmund free and they bring him back to the camp and and they save him from the witch.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: But now the witch makes her way herself to Aslan's camp, sends a messenger, and demands uh uh a talk with Aslan and they go off together.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: And the witch says to Aslan, quoting the deep magic that the land of Narnia, the realm of Narnia, was was uh based upon when it was created by the emperor beyond the sea.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: The witch says, You know, Aslan, that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey, and that for every treachery I have a right to kill.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: And so that human creature, thinking of Edmund, is mine.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: His life is forfeit to me, his blood is my property, unless I have blood.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: As the law says, all Narnia will be overturned and will perish in fire and water.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: And Aslan knows this is true.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: And they have a discussion between themselves as the children look on, not able to hear.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: And Aslan comes back and he is very, very sad for the rest of the day, and he tells the children that uh if he if he doesn't appear the next day, then then they need to go on without him.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: And he's just he's as downcast as Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then he slips away at midnight.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: Susan and Lucy can't sleep, see him, and they follow him and they catch up to him and they comfort him, and then he tells them they have to stop before they get to the witch's camp, which is where he's going.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: So they stop behind a bush and they watch as he enters the witch's camp, and there she is, brandishing a stone knife, standing on the a great stone table, surrounded by hundreds of the most awful creatures that you can imagine, just horrible, evil beasts.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: And Aslan walks right up into the middle, and at the beginning, these other beasts, these evil creatures, cower back, afraid of Aslan.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: But then they realize that he has come to submit to the witch.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And she orders them to tie his hands and to shave his mane and to spit on him and to kick him and to jeer him and so forth.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: And they do this and they bind him to the stone table, and then she stands above him and she jeers, I am going to kill you.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: You have taken Edmund's place.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: But when you're dead, then I will go kill the children as well.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: And as Susan and Lucy look on, she does.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: She stabs him to death with a stone knife.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: And then they leave to the witch and all her minions leave to prepare their troops for battle to go to go kill the rest of everybody.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: And Susan and Lucy run to the stone table and embrace Azal, and they sob through the rest of the night.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: I'll share the rest of the story with you next week when we talk about resurrection.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: But when you go, when you when you look at the story, and then you suddenly see that there's Yahoo Answers as a website which asks and answers questions, and there is a question that gets asked often on Yahoo Answers.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: Why did Aslan have to die for Edmund?
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Yahu Answers has starred as the single best answer to that question.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: I quote, really, Aslan did not have to die for Edmund.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: He chose to.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Which is much like uh an answer just close below it.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: He died because Aslan is a noble lion.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Friends, this is, of course, the moral influence and example view of Aslan's death, that he didn't have to die.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: He came and he did it because he's noble.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: And he's like Socrates.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: He just wanted to set an example and he wanted to show us how to die.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: I like, of course, and you'll like better, an answer which appears a little farther below on the page.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: Why did Aslan have to die for Edmund?
27:06
SPEAKER_01: Because when the world of Narnia was created, the deep magic gave the white witch the right to all traitors, such as Edmund and the story, and so he is her property, and she can rightfully kill him.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: Aslan convinces the witch to take his life instead of Edmund's.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: And I love at the bottom of the page someone just wrote, that's like asking why Jesus had to die for the whole world.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: Bingo.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: Now listen, you'll never understand that, you'll never understand this the way the Bible wants you to, which is to not only understand it with your mind but with your heart and to feel it until you see yourself in the three ways that the Bible pictures you.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: As a criminal, as an enemy, and as a slave.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: These are the three predominant pictures in the Bible for everyone who is born into this world.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: Let's take these one at a time quickly.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: I'll be done with this soon.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: I realize, you know, we're climbing this mountain.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: But listen, you and I are criminals.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: We are, we are to be specific, we are heinous criminals on death row.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: We deserve to die as the penalty for our sin.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: And we're not only criminals on death row who've been sentenced and convicted and condemned to die.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: We are enemies of God.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: We are hated enemies, at war with Him, separated from God, the Bible says, and objects of God's wrath because of our sins.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: Not only are we criminals and enemies, unfortunately, we're slaves.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: We're helpless slaves in bondage.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: We're enslaved to sin on Satan's plantation, for he is the prince of this world.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Now, what the Bible says is, okay, let me, the Bible gives us these four theological words that address this problem.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: All right?
29:01
SPEAKER_01: This is where we get the three and four syllable words.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: All right, the word for criminals is sacrifice.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says Jesus has been manifested, Hebrews 9.26, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: He sacrificed himself so that you wouldn't have to hang on the cross, wouldn't have to uh you know be electrocuted in the electric chair.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you want to, you know, however you want to picture it, sacrifice in our place.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: For the enemies were hated enemies at war, separated from God.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: The first of the two words here is propitiation.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: Long word.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: Say that with me.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: Propitiation.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: Told you it was a seminary word.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: Propitiation is the word that has to do with God being angry.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: And in the Bible it says that God is deservedly angry at his creation, at his creatures for sinning, but in this is love.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Not that we've loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son, 1 John 4.10, to be the propitiation for our sins.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: That is, the satisfaction of God's anger.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: The cross, in a sense, is the lightning rod of grace, A.W.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: Tozer put it this way, that short circuits God's wrath to Christ, so that only the light of his love remains for believers.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that great?
30:26
SPEAKER_01: The cross is the lightning rod of grace that short circuits God's wrath to Christ, so that only the light of his love remains for believers.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: Now that's God's side.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: Man's side, what happens to us is called reconciliation.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Like the song Hark the Herald Angel says at Christmas, God and sinners reconciled.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: And so we're brought back to Him once enemies.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: God's wrath is satisfied, and now it's time for you and I to be reconciled to God.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: Once you were alienated, Paul writes, Colossians 1 from God, and you were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, but now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: Reconciliation.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: And finally, you need to see yourself as a slave if you really want to feel these truths, as a helpless slave in bondage on Satan's plantation.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: And the theological word that applies to this in the Bible is redemption.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: That Christ came to the slave market of sin and he purchased you.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: Not with silver and gold, but with his precious blood.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: So let me wrap this theological stuff up together, all right?
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Remind you of where we started.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: The moral influence view, the example view, which says Christ is our example, which is kind of silly anyway.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've already got Mother Teresa, who's so far above me, I'll never get there, you know, and I look down, and some of you, you know, the nice thing about some of you is that you're like Bob Durbin, he's 15% ahead of me, so that's close enough where I think I can get there.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you want to become like somebody, don't you want somebody who's kind of close to you?
32:22
SPEAKER_01: So if Mother Teresa's not much help to me, how is a perfect Jesus Christ gonna be much help?
32:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't need him as my example nearly so much as I need him as my substitute.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: And we believe the Bible, the Bible's rather clear on a penal, you've heard of a penalty, penal substitution view of Jesus' death.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: Jesus died in my place for my sin.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: Say that with me.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Jesus died in my place for my sins.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: Say that one more time.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: Jesus died in my place for my sins.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: Now you can get a book.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: I had a book out in Oregon this week I was looking at called 50 Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not 50 Reasons Why I Had to Die, but 50 Reasons.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, I I've sort of covered the dozen or 15 most important ones this morning that he came, he had to die to forgive our sin, to absorb the wrath of God, to take our condemnation, to reconcile us to God, to set us free from slavery to sin and Satan, to rescue us from eternal death, to demonstrate his love for us.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: But it all comes back full circle to the verse that we read at the beginning, Isaiah 53, 6.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: That we all like sheep have gone astray, we've all turned to our own way, and the Lord laid on him, stamped on him, drove into him the iniquity of us all.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had to die in my place for my sins.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: And so the conversation goes like this: you misunderstand both sin and forgiveness.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: Our sin is a heinous crime against the high and holy God.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: Don't minimize your sin, or else you minimize God.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: Forgiveness.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: Someone had to pay the cost because of his justice.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: God could not ignore the crime or the cost.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: And because of his love, he chose to pay it himself.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus Christ took our place, dying to pay the penalty for our sin.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: There's so many wonderful old pictures that the old preachers used to use.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've heard many of them.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: We shared the one about Aslan dying in Edmund's place, perhaps.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've heard the word, the one of the judge, whose son was having a lark and driving 105 miles an hour and endangering people and was arrested and brought in, and he thought, well, my dad's the judge, so no problem.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: And he stands before him and they say, Well, you either serve, you know, the penalty is lost, says you either serve a week in jail or you pay a thousand dollars.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: Judge's gavel comes down and he looks down, says to his son, Take your pick, a week in jail or a thousand dollars.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: He knows his son doesn't have the thousand dollars.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: And he sentences him.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: And then he pulls out a checkbook and the judge himself writes a check for a thousand dollars.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: That's penal substitution.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you've heard the story of the Indian chief.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, and then the tribe, there was thievery going on, someone's stealing from the wigwams, and and and the penalty he announces is 40 lashes.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: And then he discovers it's his mother doing it, his aged mother, something gone wrong, and and and so he has he sentences her to 40 lashes, knowing she will die if she takes those 40 lashes and and they they strap her up to the pole, and then he comes and he stands and he puts his arms around her and they give him the lashes as he covers his mother.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: Or perhaps you heard the story of the little boy whose sister is dying from the same disease that he'd recovered from a few years before.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: And the doctor says, we need someone to do a blood transfusion to give her blood who's had the disease you have.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: Will you give her your blood?
36:12
SPEAKER_01: Will you give him, Johnny?
36:13
SPEAKER_01: We give Mary your blood, your older sister.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: And he thinks about it for a while and says happily, yes.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: And they take his blood, and two hours later the doctor comes to him.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm shortening all his stories, and the doctor says, Good job, you did it.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: And he says, But when do I die?
36:29
SPEAKER_01: He had thought that by giving his blood, he was going to die in the place of his sister.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: Of course, none of these stories are perfect because, for example, he didn't die.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: What I like are more recent stories, just real quickly, too.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: Can you remember 9-11 and how those firefighters gave their lives going up those steps as people came down, gave their lives?
36:54
SPEAKER_01: Remember that?
36:55
SPEAKER_01: That substitution.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't peen.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: All those people up in the towers didn't deserve to die.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: But what a noble, Christ-like thing to do, that substitution.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: Or more personally, I think of I think of every grandparent that I know.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, parents are the same way.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: I babysit, I love to babysit my my three grandsons, for example.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: And every grandparent thinks of this, you know, when you're babysitting, what if I lose sight of them somehow, somehow, and one of them wanders out in the street and all of a sudden I see the a truck coming or a car coming?
37:30
SPEAKER_01: What'll I do?
37:31
SPEAKER_01: And and of course, every grandparent thinks the same thing I do.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: I would immediately go out there and dive and save that child and give my life, wouldn't you?
37:40
SPEAKER_01: Every parent would do the same thing in their place.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: They've been told not to go on the street.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: But you're not going to let them die because you love them.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: And yet there's a cost.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand?
37:56
SPEAKER_01: I hope I've helped you to understand, not just mentally, but at a heart level, what Jesus Christ did for you and why he had to do it.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: Is this clear to you?
38:06
SPEAKER_01: Are you feeling it?
38:07
SPEAKER_01: Are you sensing the greatness of our Lord, of his love for you, and yet his need to satisfy his justice?
38:13
SPEAKER_01: Can you say amen?
38:15
SPEAKER_01: Let's close in prayer.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Son Jesus, for the fact that you're just and you're holy, and yet you love us so much that when you decided that you would just not cast us all away the way you did those fallen angels, when you decided that no, you were going to save us, that you knew then that you had to come and die in our place for our sins, and we we can't thank you enough for that.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: We see that clearly.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: We understand that's what separates Christianity from every other religion that's ever been invented in the history of the world, and it makes us so, so grateful to you and to the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: In whose name we pray.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: You're dismissed.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.