Jesus Christ Died For Us

11-19-23

Hoonah-Hadley

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Call to Worship Psalm 90

Daily Verse 1 Thess. 5:10

When the day is over, when we’ve argued, fussed and fought our way to bed, when we’ve counted the cost, shopped our way into bankruptcy, painted our faces and cheered our team to a pitiful 5-3 record, when we’ve taken stock of our stock and find it waning, when we’ve stepped on the scales and finally decided to submit to the laws of nature, when we’ve given up on our marriage, our wayward brother and our lost child, when we hope our father will be saved before he dies when his life ends tragically and we are left wondering, when we are broken beyond repair, living in doubt and despair, when the tire is flat and the gas gauge eternally hovering around empty, when only 1 in 10 returns to give thanks, when the government, church and best friend has forsaken us, when we’ve missed the bus, fumbled opportunity after opportunity, when our appetite is lost, our passion for life has left the building, when the world is a mess, war, pestilence, famine and natural disaster is found at every turn, when we finally come to terms that there is no more hope in politics than there is in the blue light special, when the power has gone out and the noon day is darkened, when we are certain that the end is near and we are storing up bottled water, alienated from all we loved and longed for, Jesus Christ Died For Us.

At the end of the day, when cerebral cortical atrophy has had its last say, when we have signed everything over to an ungrateful generation, buried the love of our life and taken old Blue to the vet because we haven’t the heart to do it ourselves, Jesus Christ Died For Us.

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We are not saying there haven’t been blessings, important dates, life changing discoveries, earth shaking progress, monumental historical events that have shaped the face of humanity. What we are saying, is what the Apostle Paul said, or God said through Paul in 1 Cor. 15:3 “…that Christ died for our sins according to Scriptures…” We can be shamed into it by a controlling mother, sit in a dark booth as a child and be shamed by the church, which often leads to alienation from both mom and the church, or we can simply get on our knees before a Holy, just, merciful, gracious and loving Father and confess our sins. There is nothing hidden that won’t be revealed. If we think we’re getting away with something, we’re wrong. We are forever in the presence of an all knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God. Our deceptive spirit is evil, it comes from the master of deceit, the devil himself. The truth sheds light on our darkness and there is no more obvious place than Calvary.

The works of Jesus Christ are finished. What we are saying is the cross, the emblem of suffering and shame, the death of our Savior is the main thing. Jesus Christ dying for us is the first thing, the best thing, the only thing and the last thing we’ll be faced with. In our culture we have parades for things we should have funerals for. Christ died for our sins that we might be cleansed from them. We pass laws that glorify our sins and then give benefits for them to encourage us to remain in them. King David said, “I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before Thee, against You and You only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight—that You may be found just when you speak, and blameless when you judge. Behold I was brought forth in iniquity, in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:3-5) Read on, “purge me…wash me…hide Your face from my sins, blot out my iniquities, cleanse my heart, put a new spirit in me.”

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The Eagles: “You can’t hide your lying eyes. And your smile is a damn disguise. I thought by now you’d realize, there ain’t no way to hide those lying eyes.” The world doubles its information every year, not an increase in wisdom, but information. Not an increase in truth but information. Jesus Christ dying for our sins is the most important piece of information we need to know, past, present and future. At the end of our day when we “stand before the judgment seat of God”, He’ll ask us what we did with His Son’s death. We’d do well to confess to Him now, He already knows, because the judgment seat will not stand in the way of sinners. (See Psalm 1) Jesus Christ died that we might live. I need to tell you this less it gets lost and we not learn from it. I read a chapter every morning over breakfast and have for nearly 30 years, His word is a lamp unto my feet. I start in Genesis 1:1 and read through Rev. 22:21 one chapter at a time and when I’m done, I start over. This morning as God would have it, I was in 1 Thess. 5, our lesson for today.

There are 1189 chapters in the bible, we could be preaching on any of them, and my daily reading could be anywhere, do you understand the astronomical logistics to this equation? We can’t make sense of it, nor could we plan it. Why did Jesus die for us? Couldn’t an Almighty God have done things differently? It doesn’t make sense. “The day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night.” Is this verse not being fulfilled even as we speak? Ask the Israelites who were dancing and making merry in broad day light as evil breached their walls and their noon day was darkened, snatching the life right out of them “so this day shall overtake you as a thief…But you are not in darkness, you are children of light…we are not of darkness…but let us watch and be sober…” In its simplicity, “let us who are of the day be sober”, through faith, love and “the hope of salvation”, be ready.

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Vs. 9 “For God did not appoint us to wrath…” If you want to head off on the rabbit trail of “chosen”, “predestined”, “election”, feel free, but be sure in all your travels, give thanks that He did not appoint you to wrath. Psalm 21:9 “In His wrath the Lord will swallow them up.” Rev. 6:17 “For the great day of their wrath has come.”

Should we read from the nearly 200 offerings on wrath our understanding of a God who is slow to anger and abounding in love may slowly escape our grasp. God did not appoint us to wrath, own it, live a life worthy of it, walk in light of it, understand it, receive it, trust it, believe it, store it up in your heart, bind it on your finger, write it over your door, speak it. (See Spurgeon Nov. 9th “Morning and Evening”.) Vs. 9 continues: “…but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” For those of you that would like to further your understanding of our topic and title, R.C. Sproul does a wonderful job fulfilling our intellectual need for a philosophical/theological dissertation. You can YouTube him under the title “Why Did Christ Die?” Here is a quote from that teaching, “The substitutionary satisfaction of the atonement.” You will need to follow the scarlet chord back to Leviticus where the law required animal sacrifice as a substitute for our sin. Because this “old” institution was ineffective and unsuccessful, God saw fit to “fulfill” the law through His Son as the only fitting and necessary substitute for our sin. Atonement: The Redemptive live and death of Christ. The radical obedience and purification, exemplified in the life of Jesus, by which humanity finds oneness with God. We can ask the question, why did Christ die for us and come up with a million answers and then some or we can live in light of the Holy script that tells us He did die for us ( Rom. 5:8, 8:3, Gal. 3:13, 2 Cor. 5:21, Isaiah 53:5, 1 John 3:16) get on our knees and ask God, “God, what would you have me do with it?”

Amen.