The Big Picture of the Bible

Introduction

Good morning. This morning, we are blessed to have with us, Brother Brent Hunter. Brother Brent has been a dear friend of mine for several years, and I’m thankful that he and his wife Gail are here with us today. They currently live in the Tampa area, and Brother Brent has been preaching the gospel and teaching God’s word for many, many years across this country. Since yesterday, Brother Brent has been here with us at South Bumby, equipping us and teaching us and showing us how to spread the gospel to our friends and neighbors. Particularly, he’s been equipping us on how to use the big picture of the Bible. This is a presentation that disciples can use to introduce and teach the gospel to those who are lost. In just a moment, Brother Brent will come up into this pulpit and he will present the big picture of the Bible to us.

And he will need about an hour to do so. And so for those who are guests, those who are visiting with us today, we thank you for being here. You are our honored guests, but we want you to know that this is kind of an exceptional Lord’s Day for us, an exceptional Sunday. Usually we have a sermon between 30 and 40 minutes at this time. But today, Brother Brent, we want to give him a full hour to present to us the big picture of the Bible presentation in its fullness. And so we understand if you have to get up and leave at some point, but we do want to hear this presentation so that we can be equipped on how to use it to spread the gospel.

And so at this time, I ask you to give Brother Brent, your undivided attention as he presents to us the big picture.

The Bible is one of the most popular yet most misunderstood books in all the world. A lot of people think they know a lot about the Bible, but sadly, a lot of folks don’t understand the Bible, its theme, and how it all fits together. You know, God could have written the Bible so that only Greek scholars and PhD theologians could understand it. Instead, it’s written so that true seekers who have the heart of a little child can understand it. So the big picture of the Bible is like getting up in a helicopter about five thousand feet high and looking out and having an aerial view of the scriptures. Too often people get lost in chapters and even books, but they miss the forest.

So I want you to imagine that you’re sitting on the other side of a kitchen table here, and I’m just sharing this with you in about one hour or less. Consider this a kind of a reader’s digest version of the Bible story. Let’s begin with some basic Bible facts. This indeed is an incredible book. It’s not one book that we often talk about the Holy Bible. It’s actually an anthology of literature. 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 from the New, written over a period of about 1,500 years, and there’s 40 different authors, holy men who are moved by the Holy Spirit, to write the Bible. It’s from three different continents, different nations, varying cultures. It actually contains three different languages.

And the New Testament is made and is written in Koine Greek, which is the language of the common people. So we put all this together and we find out that it’s all connected in God’s amazing plan of redemption. I want you to think about this for a moment.

You’re going to just do an interview of 40 different people, kind of man on the street interview, and you ask them these different controversial questions, and you take copious notes of what these 40 people say. And then if you were to take your notes and you put it all together in a book, what do you think that book would look like? Well, it’s a bunch of different people’s opinions off the top of their head. It’s going to be contradictory, it’s going to be confusing, and obviously there isn’t going to be any harmony. But that’s not what happens when you look at these 40 different men who deal with these controversial subjects over a period of 1,500 years at all. Instead, you open up the Bible and everything harmonizes.

Now, why is that the case? Because the Bible is truly unique. We learn in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 that all scripture is inspired or God breathed. So that’s what makes it so unique. The way I like to think about it is let’s imagine you’ve got an orchestra, and you have one conductor, and all these different members of the orchestra, they have 40 different instruments, and they all have their own sheet of music, but they’re all working off the same sheet of music that is designed in advance to be harmonious and to be beautiful. And at different times in history, God has tapped these holy men to start playing their instrument until you get to the end and finally you’ve got this full orchestra, and it’s all beautiful, harmonious music that brings forth the fruit of the Spirit.

1. Believe the Gospel, Obey It, Don’t Change It

That’s the best way for us to grasp and understand the scripture, or what is often simply referred to as the gospel. This is an urgent and important command. The last thing that Jesus said before he was caught up in the clouds to go to sit at the right hand of God and to reign over his kingdom, he gives his apostles one very important mission. He says, I want you to go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Do you know what the gospel means? That’s right. It means good news or glad tidings. Whatever this gospel is, it must be mighty important. This is the last thing that Jesus said that he wanted to be communicated to the world by his followers, if they’re going to be faithful to him.

So the gospel is what stands between man and salvation. It’s not a fuzzy feeling, it’s not something mysterious. No, the gospel is an objective truth that people need to believe and understand. Jesus said in John 8 and verse 32, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

Consider with me, 2 Thessalonians 1, 7 through 9. Now, if you were sitting with me to my right as I’m sharing this, I would ask you to read the passages. Okay? So keep that in mind. When the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. You know, it makes sense to me that when the Lord returns, those who choose not to know God at all are not going to be in right relationship with him. But this says there’s a second group of people that when the Lord returns are not going to be in right relationship with him as well, and that is those who’ve not obeyed the gospel.

So you can believe the gospel, but you also, to be right with God in the second coming, this text says you have to obey it. Now that’s kind of a challenge because the gospel is a series of facts. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 and 2, that the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, a series of facts. Well, I can believe a series of facts, but how do I obey a series of facts? I believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States, but how do I obey that? There’s a very unique way that the Bible says that we obey the facts of the gospel. And we’re going to be looking at that at the very end of the presentation.

So be looking for it, because it’s very important to understand. And there’s also a serious warning given to Christians. He says, I’m amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel. This is in Galatians chapter 1, beginning at verse 6. He says, which is really not another. Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. So there are some people who want to change the gospel. And he says, if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached unto you, let him be eternally condemned. Now I know that this is today would be considered politically incorrect, religiously incorrect. Everybody wants to believe that they can kind of believe whatever they want, and as long as they’re sincere, it doesn’t matter.

2. The Old Law: A Tutor to Bring Us to Christ

But this text says if you change the gospel, even if you do so sincerely, that you’re going to be lost. So we want to make sure that we understand what this gospel is, that we believe it, that we obey it, and we don’t change it at all. Because if anything is clear, there’s one gospel. And it grows up from the roots of the Old Testament. So if this is so critical to understand the scriptures, people often look at these 66 books and maybe these big thick Bibles they have on their desk and they think, well, where do I begin? How can I be certain? And where do I start to understand this gospel, this good news? Well, fortunately, in Galatians 3 and verse 24, there’s a New Testament verse that kind of serves as a pointer that tells us where to begin.

Paul says that the old law is designed to be a tutor or a teacher or a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. So don’t misunderstand me. We’re not under the old law of Moses anymore. Colossians 2 and verse 14 tells us that the law was nailed to the cross. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of value that we can find in studying the Old Testament. You might say there’s some gold in them there, hills. And that’s exactly right. In fact, we learn in Ephesians chapter 1, this eternal plan of God, beginning in verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

And so what this really tells us is that God knew, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, that when he made us in his image, that that would include the fact that we are free moral agents just as God is a free moral agent. And it’s so important to remember this important aspect of similar to parents today. We have children, we love them, we hope that they will love us back. But we know there’s a risk, and that children have a mind of their own. They are free moral agents, right? And God knew that he was making Adam and Eve and those that would follow as his children, they’re going to have a mind of their own as well. And if they chose not to love him back, not to be obedient, he chose in advance, if they chose to sin, that he would not abandon us, but he would provide us a way back.

You know, if someone is religious, it literally means that they are tied back to God. They recognize that they’ve been separated from God by their sins and they’re interested in fixing that problem. They’re religious in the sense that they are wanting to be reconnected like a ligament is reconnected to the body. All right, so what do we learn about God? One of the things we need to understand about the concept of God, and we’re taught this in this Old Testament as our schoolmaster, that yes, God has these attributes of being omniscient, all-knowing, omnipotent, all-powerful, and omnipresent. He is everywhere present. But the thing that overrules all of this, what governs God’s character is his holiness. In other words, as we sometimes sing, God is so good, right?

And this is such an important part of the good news because God is omnipotent. If I just told you that God was omnipotent, but you didn’t know that he was good, that would be a scary truth. But God never uses his omnipotence or his power to abuse or to manipulate us. But instead he cares about us and he wants to shape us and mold us, but at the same time, he wants to protect the fact that as a human being we must make our own choices. You know, you can’t really love another person and then have that love reciprocated and it mean anything if there’s coercion. You know, if I give you a gift and you say, Well, you didn’t have to do that, I go, well, I didn’t have to, but if I had to, it wouldn’t mean anything.

I want to. See, it’s when we want to serve God and love him and be reconnected to him that that’s what pleases God and gives him glory. And that’s what God is hoping for as a loving and just God. Consider Psalm 33, 4 and 5. For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice, and the earth is full of the loving kindness of the Lord. So here are these two descriptions of God’s character, and there can sort of be a tension between the two. Because God loves us and he wants what’s best for us, but also because he’s holy, he must be just.

And so God’s holiness is demonstrated by both his justice and his love toward his creation. I hope the figure of this person that is reaching out to God is a reflection of all of us today. In our heart of hearts, we want to know God. We want to see him one day face to face. We desire spiritual fellowship with a holy God. Because God gave us this eternal spirit, and it’s within our bodies. We often think of ourselves as being a body with the Spirit within us. But I think it’s better to think of ourselves as being this eternal spirit, and we are given this temporary physical body. That it’s not just that we’re a person that has a soul, we are a soul. That is the essence of who and what we are.

And if we’re going to come in the presence of a holy God, we have to figure out some way for us, even after we’ve been defiled by sin and made the wrong choices, to be sanitized or to be made holy. And the very fact that that’s possible is at the heart of the good news. In Leviticus 20, verse 26, thus you are to be holy to me, God says, for I the Lord am holy, and I have set you apart from the peoples to be mine. So God demands moral uprightness in his creatures because he is holy. And God is of such purity and sin is of such revulsion that he cannot even look upon sin. And so God who hates sin and has to deal with the consequences of the fact that you and I have sinned.

3. Sin Separates Us: The Wages of Sin Is Death

In fact, the Bible says your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden his face from you. I like to think about this this way. When I was a kid, I used to play with magnets. I used to get them on the floor, and they have these little small magnets that my parents gave me as a gift, and then you’d get them close to one of the magnets, and then they kind of snap. And then you pull them back and they’d snap again. And I just found that so fascinating. But what happens when you take one of those magnets and you do this? Now you try to push the two close together, and what happens? They repulse one another. When we are born, we’re born as natural children of God.

We are in connection with our Heavenly Father. Children are innocent. But then you reach a point, the age of accountability, whenever that is, I think it’s different for each person. You reach a point where you know right from wrong and you do wrong anyway, willful sin. And when that happens, we’re held accountable before God, and that’s like turning the magnet. And now our sin separated us from God, and God is holy, and in him is no darkness at all, and so he has to turn his face away from us. And so we’re dead in our trespasses and sins, is what the Bible says. Spiritually dead. And so the question is, is there any hope? How can we get reconnected as a true religious person who wants to be close to God?

This is demonstrated for us in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned. And the result of this was spiritual death. The day you eat of that forbidden fruit, on that day you shall surely die. I think on that day they became mortal, honestly. And then eventually, if they didn’t deal with this appropriately, they would die in their sins, and therefore they would be separated from their God. In Romans 6 and verse 23, the Bible says, the wages of sin is death. I like to tell congregations I work with, if the wages of sin is death, we better quit before payday, right? And the wages of sin is very serious. And sadly, eventually, everybody who reaches accountable age eventually chooses wrong and chooses to sin.

They exercise their free moral agency in the wrong way. And when they do that, they fall short of God’s original plan for us. They fall short of God’s glory. And the consequences of this sin are very serious. It’s not like you have to sit over in the knotty corner and you know, we have to wait, you know, a while for God to smile at us again. No, this is really serious. For out of dust you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. There’s two types of death that occurred in the Garden of Eden. There was spiritual death, and then eventually Adam and Eve and their offspring also are going to die. There’s spiritual consequences and physical consequences. And what is the price for sin?

Well, ultimately, all sin is a capital crime. Ultimately, all sin, if it’s going to be paid for, it has to be paid for with someone’s life. And that’s why the Bible says in Hebrews 9 and verse 22, without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sins. And so I like to think about this as sort of having these three deaths. There’s this spiritual death, which is the result of individual sin, separation from God. When we become unholy and God is holy, then he separates his spirit from us. And then there’s physical death. Think of the word death as the word separation. You go to a funeral and you see there’s a corpse in the casket, and obviously the corpse is lifeless because its spirit has left, separated from the body.

And so there’s separation from the body physically, and sadly, separation from God as well, if we don’t deal with our sin problem. Those are the consequences of sin. And there’s also this judicial penalty of sin that hangs over the head of every single person who sins.

And that’s something that every person has to deal with because once you become a sinner, you’re responsible to pay for this your own sins, not someone else’s sins. And so mankind has this terrible dilemma. God’s justice demands death as payment for sin. We’ve broken the laws of the God of the universe. This has separated us from a holy God, and the price of death hangs over our head, which we cannot pay unless we choose to go to hell forever. That’s one way we could pay for our own sins. But God doesn’t want that, and we don’t want that. And so, how do we resolve this dilemma of sin? Well, fortunately, God’s love provides a way to pay the price. And God’s love is filled with grace on the one hand and mercy on the other.

4. God’s Love: Mercy, Grace, and Atonement

Let’s start with mercy. Mercy and grace are often used interchangeably, but actually they’re two different things. Mercy is where you don’t get what you deserve. If you’re traveling down the interstate and you are guilty of speeding, and the police officer says, you know what, I think you’re really sorry. I understand what you’ve said. We can sometimes get distracted and not pay attention to our speed. So I’m just going to let you off with a warning this time. How’s mercy feel? Mercy feels pretty good. We knew what the law was, we broke it, we deserved to pay the ticket, and to maybe even have points on our license and have our insurance go up and all the other consequences involved. But this police officer says, I’m going to let Job with a warning.

That’s mercy. You don’t get the penalty that you deserve. Biblically, we all as sinners deserve to die. And the fact that we can avoid spiritually, being separated from God is God being merciful. But God does more than just save us from death. God chooses to have us live forever in glory with him in heaven in the place he has chosen to live himself. That is amazing. He gives us eternal life, which we don’t deserve, and really, in some ways, is completely unexpected. Imagine that police officer to let you off with a warning, you know, you get talking with him and you develop some rapport, and he says, you know, I’m in a really good mood today because I just learned that I’m the sole recipient of my grandfather’s will and he left me millions.

It’s just going to completely change my life. And you know what? I just want to share my blessings with others. Could you use a thousand dollars? And you go, boy, could I? And he says, okay, you know, tell me your name, I’m going to get it right on the check. And he leaves you a check for a thousand dollars and says, Take care, God bless. You deserve to get a ticket, and instead, you get this gracious gift of a thousand bucks. Completely unexpected, completely unobserved, excuse me, not observed, unexpected and undeserved. And if that happened to you, which seems so unbelievable, but kind of the gospel is somewhat unbelievable. It’s like, what? I get to be in glory in heaven forever with my creator? Because I accept the payment that someone else has made for my sins on my behalf?

Really? How many people do you think you’d tell that story to if that happened to you? I mean, you couldn’t keep your mouth shut. There’s a reason why there’s not a lot of admonitions in the scripture. Now, don’t forget to share your faith. Don’t forget to talk about the grace of God. The reason is if you’ve really experienced God’s grace, you can’t help but want to talk about it and want to share it. Just the nature of this wonderful good news. But let’s back up just for a minute and let’s remember that in the Old Testament there was all of these animal sacrifices and all of this shed blood. All that shed blood was designed to show God’s mercy. Someone else is giving their life so that you don’t have to give your life.

The Old Testament is teaching us about this idea of a substitute offering. And one of the things I find just absolutely amazing is the story of Noah and the Ark. In this historical account, a week before Noah and all the animals go into this ark, the ark is covered with pitch, this oily substance. Now, why would God tell Noah to paint the ark with pitch before it starts raining? Well, it covers up all the little holes and imperfections, all the little cracks where the water might get in. And so it becomes something that helps the ark to be a real fit receptacle of salvation. And so we’re told that the word there to cover the ark with pitch is the same word that in other places in the Bible is translated atonement.

So you might say that Noah, once the rain and the water came over the ark, he atoned the ark and made it something that could truly save Noah and his family and all those animals. And that’s what atonement does. It’s designed to cover up imperfections, cover up blemishes and little holes. When we stand before God, God still sees that we have committed sins, but if the blood of Jesus Christ is in our life, then he doesn’t see us with all of our sins and blemishes and imperfections. We’ve been atoned for. We’ve been covered by the blood of Christ, and so we can be saved. Another image that’s sometimes given is we’re wrapped in the robe of Christ. He doesn’t see us, but he sees his son Jesus, because we took on his name and became one of his followers.

The idea of atonement is found throughout the Old Testament, for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you. You will be clean from all your sins before the Lord. So I like to think of atonement as at one mint. This is the way we can become one with God again because of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. Sanctification, think sanitize. You’ve been defiled by sin, but once you’re atoned for by the blood, now you receive sanctification, which then enables you to get reconnected back to God and be reconciled back to him, the way you were at the very beginning before you sinned. The term atonement is talked about in Leviticus 17, verse 11, for the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I’ve given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes for atonement.

One of the ways you can understand the animal sacrifices is as follows.

The life is in the blood. And here the innocent life is atoning for the sinner, or the innocent life represents or substitutes for the guilty life. This pictori, I think, explains it well. The sinner humbly comes before God in offering up this animal sacrifice in the Old Testament, and he does so looking for redemption, for sanctification. And this innocent sacrifice pays its life, sheds its blood, so that the one who comes by faith to the sacrifice doesn’t have to. And so they figuratively put their sins upon this animal, and there’s this representative death which provides for sanctification. So you have in the animal sacrifices justice shown on the one hand, and that a death is required.

Now, what made this work? Well, the thing that’s so important to understand is that faith made this work. You know, if you offered up the animal sacrifice but you didn’t know what you were doing, it wouldn’t have meant anything. And if you had faith of what you needed to do, but you never bothered to be obedient and offer up the sacrifice, you wouldn’t have got the benefit. There was no benefit without obedience. So faithful obedience is what makes this work in the Old Testament system. This woman here has gone to the doctor and she’s told to take these pills, but what does she have to do to get the benefit? She’s got to take the pills, right? Otherwise, it does her no good. Another way I like to think about this is this fellow is going to give a gift to his girlfriend, and she opens up the gift, and there’s a lot of tissue paper at the bottom of the package, and she opens it up and then she sees this envelope, and she opens up the envelope and it’s a check for $100.

She immediately hugs her boyfriend. Why does she do that? Because she believes the check is good. She trusts that, you know, the boyfriend’s not going to give her a bad check. So she takes the check and she endorses it and she takes it to his boyfriend, her boyfriend’s bank. She doesn’t walk out of the bank and say, look at the $100 I earned because I endorsed the check and took it to the right bank. No, she says, look at the $100 my boyfriend gave me, even though there were some conditions that she needed to fulfill in order to receive the benefits of the gift. Still a free gift. And that’s the way of salvation is, really. There are some conditions attached to receive the free gift of salvation.

We’re going to look at what those are in just a moment. In Hebrews chapter 11, the Bible talks about face hall of fame. And I want you to notice that all of these different things that the Bible commends in regards to faith have to do with belief-based action. These are all verbs here in Hebrews 11. These are all things that these people did. Saving faith is belief-based action. Hebrews 11 and verse 6, but without faith, it’s impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And the book of James, they talk about faith, which is just intellectual ascent. And he asks a question about that. He says, Can that type of faith save a man?

He says, faith without action is dead. Faith is shown by action. Faith without action is useless. Then he goes to verse 26 and he says, faith without action is dead again. And then in verse 19, he says, even the demons or the devils believe and tremble. That’s an amazing statement. The demons who were around even before the creation of the world, they knew about God. They knew about Jesus. They are believers, but they don’t have saving faith. It’s more than just intellectual assent. You have to have the right kind of heart that causes you to be obedient. You know, there’s a controversy in the religious world that says, well, you’re saved by faith, or you’re saved by your works. It’s not an either or. The correct answer is you’re saved by a faith that works.

Because that’s what saving faith is. It’s kind of like fire and heat. If you have fire and you put your hand above it, you’re always gonna feel the heat of the fire if it’s a real fire. And if you put your hand above something that looks like fire and there’s no heat, it’s a counterfeit. And basically that’s what faith is. People can profess that they believe in Jesus, but if their life is worldly and carnal and doesn’t follow Jesus, it’s just a phony confession. So true faith will always produce some sort of action. Now, having said all of that, we look at this Old Testament teacher. Remember we learned it was a schoolmaster or a teacher? And I want you to notice all the things we’ve learned and covered thus far.

5. Behold the Lamb of God

We’ve learned about justice and mercy and sin, the importance of blood, atonement, and sacrifice and faith and a representative death and redemption and holiness and sanctification, which leads to reconciliation. Wow. No wonder the Old Testament is a schoolmaster. And understanding all of these principles helps us to then grasp what the New Testament is all about. And all of this prepares us for perhaps one of the most climactic moments in all of history. And that is when John the Baptist introduces Jesus for the first time to the people. And Jesus walks in, and what does John the Baptist say? He says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Why did John the Baptist call Jesus an animal?

Initially that doesn’t sound or look like it’s very respectful of Jesus. But this was to a Jewish audience and to the Jewish mind. You call Jesus a lamb, you’re saying this is the sacrifice. This is the one who’s come to be the ultimate perfect Lamb of God that’s going to enable you to have your sins covered or taken away. And so that ties all of this together, where the sinner, not figuratively, but literally can place their sins upon Jesus as the innocent sacrifice. And when that happens, you’ve got his representative death. He tasted of death for every man, so you and I can be sanctified. And he becomes the sin bearer that can remove sins from our account.

And you and I are familiar with this. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us have turned to his own way, exercised our free will in the wrong way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, of whom the stroke was due. Someone else took the beating that we deserve, so we don’t have to suffer that beating. But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, as he will bear their iniquities.

Who’s this obviously about? Jesus of Nazareth. Now, this is a prophecy. This is stated before the cross.

Many people guess, oh, maybe 1,500 years before. One of the things that’s so amazing and that proves the Bible to be actually from God, is that this was prophesied by Isaiah approximately 750 years before the event. See, this has always been a part of God’s plan. And the Lamb of God is the one that serves as a ransom. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. The analogy is we’re carried away by the captivity of sin by Satan, and we’re held by what Jesus refers to as the strong man, and we can’t get out based on our own strength. And we deserve to be there as sinners. And Jesus comes along and pays the ransom, which means that we have to be let go of.

Is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. So Christ’s sacrifice is actually the Old Testament fulfillment. All of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is ultimately fulfilled in Christ. And so instead of having these animals, these innocent animals, and by the way, this was all disfigurative because the blood of bulls and goats can’t take away even one sin. Because they’re not spirit beings. It’s like apples and oranges. But they were there to teach people so when Jesus came, they would understand it. That’s why it says in Matthew 5 and verse 17, do not think that I came to abolish the law of the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.

Ezekiel 18 and verse 20 tells us the soul that sinneth, it shall die. I want you to imagine all the sins from the beginning of time to the cross, and all the sins from the cross to the present time, and all the sins from the present time to the end of time. And Jesus, there on the cross, he bears our sin as our sin bearer in one huge noxious math. He takes on the guilt of the world’s sins. He suffers there in darkness for three hours so he can truly be the light of the world. Frankly, beloved, I think we focus too much on the physical pain of the nails on the cross and that kind of thing. I think if we are to ask Jesus one day, what was it really like on the cross?

I don’t think he’ll reflect on the nails. I think he’ll reflect on how terrible it was to bear the guilt of the world’s sins. I mean, have you ever tossed and turn at night from a guilty conscience? Something’s really bothering you? Have that emotional pain. Imagine taking that emotional pain of the guilt of billions and billions of people’s souls and bearing them in one instance on the cross. No wonder Jesus cries out, Eli, Eli Lamas Abaktonai, which is translated, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That’s when the world’s plunged into darkness. And I think what happened at that moment is God who is holy cannot coexist with sin. And Jesus has to then become the sin-bearer. And so God has to turn his face from his son.

And when that happened, Jesus suffered a spiritual death on the cross.

See, that’s really the penalty that Jesus paid for our sins was he took on the penalty that we deserved, which is damnation. Unbelievable. Separation from God. God hated to do it, but because of his nature, to be consistent with his holiness, he had to turn his face from Jesus, and when he did that, Jesus had to suffer alone. His soul was snuffed out. For us, unbelievable sacrifice. And he does it because he loves us. He could have stopped it at any moment. It wasn’t the nails that held him to the cross, it was his love. It was his own free choice.

And that enables us then to be reconciled back to God because we have the means by which we can be forgiven. Colossians 1 and verse 22, but now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation. Romans 3, 23 through 25 tells us about Christ being the propitiation for our sins, which is just a theological word that connotes the idea of appeasing God’s wrath. He’s the substitute offering. But he didn’t just die there on the cross. He’s resurrected. Friday was dark and terrible. But Sunday, Sunday was the resurrection day. That’s why we worship God on Sunday. He was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.

6. Who Really Died? Baptized Into His Death

Now let me ask you another question. It may seem obvious at first glance, but think this through with me. Who really died? Well, obviously, Christ died on the cross, paying the traditional price for our sin. But there is a sense in which the sinner also representatively has to die because God wants us to come before him with a broken and contrite spirit. We have to as much as possible die to sin and try to have a real determination to sin as little as possible, because now we want to be like Jesus who was sinless. I want you to notice what it says in 1 Peter 2 and verse 24. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin.

See, the true disciple is determined to put off the old man that he might put on the new. Romans 6 and verse 6, our old self was crucified with him that our body of sin might be done away with. Paul talks about this in Galatians 2 and verse 20. He says, I’ve been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who liveth in me. So I like this particular diagram. You’ve got this fellow here with the three-piece suit up on the cross. Idea is there’s a real sense in which you have to crucify the flesh and the lust thereof and be determined to be faithful to Christ and to sin as little as possible.

So that little diagram, that’s just a perfect little composite of what the gospel story is really all about. Now, if you were living in the first century and someone knocks on your door in Jerusalem and says, Don’t you realize Jesus didn’t come to drive out the Romans? He did something better. He came to drive out Satan. He came not to just give us physical freedom from physical bondage, but to give us spiritual freedom and to give us eternal life. That’s what this is really all about. And if suddenly you came to that position of faith and you understood it and you could connect the dots of what it really meant for Jesus to be the Messiah, what would you want to know? Well, I’d want to know, well, when, at what point in my faith, do I die to sin?

At what point in my faith do I die with Christ? When does God view me as being united with Christ in his death and being crucified with him? Or you might say, Well, how do I apply this to my own account in heaven? I mean, what does this mean to me? I believe it, but how do I get the benefits of it? Well, in Romans chapter 6, we’ve got a passage that very clearly answers that question for us. Romans chapter 6 deals with a false doctrine where some people thought, well, if I can get forgiveness through the gospel, I can get grace, then I’ll just live any way I want, and I’ll just periodically say a prayer and get forgiveness, and it’s all good. Paul deals with this terrible attitude, and he says, What shall we say then?

Shall we go sinning so that grace may increase? He says, By no means. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Notice, we died to sin. That’s what God expects of the believer who with a penitent heart comes to Christ and decides to commit their life to him. And all of Romans 6 actually tells us about this process, how it happens and when. So let’s read together Romans chapter 6 and verse 3. Oh, don’t you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death. So this is the point at which we’re baptized into Christ’s death, and we get the benefit from contacting his blood. Let me ask you something. Where did Christ shed his blood?

In his death. And so when do we contact his blood? So we are sanctified and get the benefits of that blood atonement when we’re baptized into his death, so we can arise to walk into a new life. And that’s what verse 4 is all about. Therefore we’ve been buried with them through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. This is referred to sometimes in John 3 and verse 5. He says, Except ye be born again of the water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. This is where you put all things away from the past, and all things have become new. And then notice in verse 5, for if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also in the likeness of his resurrection.

So this has to do with the next question we talked about. At what point are we united with him in his death? Same time when we choose by faith to be baptized for the remission of our sins. Verse 6, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be done away with. So there’s the next question. When are we crucified with Christ? When we’re baptized into Christ and into his death. And see, that’s this judicial death that has to be paid. If not by us, hopefully by someone else. But if we have died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with him. Therefore, I said all of that to say this: do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies that you should obey its lusts.

So here is this penitent heart. Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies. When you do mess up and you realize that you’ve sinned, you immediately have an advocate with the Father, and you can get forgiveness. Continual access to Christ’s blood and his sanctification as his followers. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered. Please notice, once again, you’ve got faith-based action. You by faith choose to obey the gospel, and you do that from the heart. And notice it’s to that form of teaching to which you were committed. Some translations say form of doctrine. So the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 15, 1 and 2. How do I obey a series of facts like that? Well, I can obey a form of them. And that’s what baptism is: it’s a form of doctrine. It’s by faith participating in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And that’s how we obey the gospel. And notice, even though we must respond by faith, the wages of sin is still death, and it’s still a free gift, however. We learn in 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 11, but you were washed. I think a reference to biblical baptism. At that point, you were sanctified, sanitized, sins are forgiven. You were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. So here is a diagram, which is a picture of someone who comes dead in sin, they’re crucified with Christ, buried with Christ into his death, then they’re sanctified, then they’re justified, the penalty is removed, and ultimately they can be reconciled back to God.

Now, with that in mind, let’s take a moment and look at Ephesians chapter 4. These are known as the seven things about which we all must agree to have unity. He says, make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit of the bond of peace, for there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called, one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who was over all and through all and in all. Now, I understand why we have to agree on one body, one hope, one spirit, one faith. But I want you to notice why do we have to agree on the one baptism? Why is baptism on this list? You know the Lord’s Supper is really important, but it’s not on this list.

Why is baptism here? Because this is the point when we by one spirit are baptized into the one body. We’re baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is where we once again reconnect with God the Father and we become one. This is where it all comes together. I like to think of baptism as the believer’s wedding ceremony. This is where you love someone and you have faith in them, but you don’t become married or one with them until you actually sort of exchange your vows and you were there at the altar and you go through this wedding ceremony. That’s where it all comes together at the wedding. And that’s kind of the way I like to view baptism for the remission of sins.

Now, some people are puzzled and they think, well, you know, how could this be? Well, what if you had a bunch of people that admit that they’re lost and they ask, what must we do to be saved? And then you had an inspired man through the Holy Spirit clearly tell them what they need to do in no uncertain terms. Wouldn’t that kind of clear it all up? Well, that’s exactly what we have in Acts chapter 2. Now, when they heard this, the preaching of the gospel, and that many of them had actually been there and cried, crucify him, and were responsible for what happened to Jesus, they were pierced in their heart. Why? Because they knew they were guilty. They believed the gospel. And they then said, All right, what shall we do?

I want you to notice.

Christ did it all. They weren’t told to call out Jesus’ name or to pray the sinner’s prayer or to pray through or to accept Jesus into their heart. Now, those are things you hear a lot today, but you don’t see those as being really biblical solutions. What are they? They’re different gospels. They’ve changed the response to the gospel the way God has clearly laid it out. What did he tell them to do? Very clearly, Peter said to them, Repent each of you and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you’ll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now, baptism is not the gospel, it’s just the gospel response. So I like to call this the big picture of the big picture.

In the Old Testament, under the patriarch and mosaic age, you had these animal sacrifices. Looking forward to the ultimate Messiah, Jesus. And people in the Old Testament are saved by the blood of Jesus, just like you and I are saved by the blood of Jesus. Fortunately, under the new covenant, we don’t have animal sacrifices anymore. Aren’t you thankful? Now we’ve got the real Lamb of God, Jesus Himself, and we by faith participate in his death when we’re baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. That’s belief-based action. And that’s when we can contact the blood of Jesus today. Now let’s go back to that one of those very first slides. The Great Commission, go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

Conclusion

What does he go on to say? He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who has not believed shall be condemned. Obviously, if you don’t believe, you’re not going to be baptized. But he says if you believe and are baptized, you participate in the gospel, you don’t just believe the gospel, but obey it, then you shall be saved. That’s how you obey the gospel, folks. So the question is, are you ready to die with Christ? Will you accept his gospel? And I like to conclude the big picture this way. Every person has in their life a cross and a throne. And the call of the gospel is to get people off their throne to humble themselves so that Jesus can be enthroned there instead.

True conversion has to happen from the inside out. You gotta, you gotta repent, you’ve got to turn, you’ve got to humbly say, I don’t have all the answers, but I trust that my Lord does. And so when you let Jesus be enthroned there, then you’re free to take up his cross and follow him. That’s what it really means to die with Jesus, to truly be converted, to have your past forgiven, to have a purpose for living, and to have hope of heaven. Now, if you reject this plan that God has given us, there’s no plan B. The only way you can be forgiven is through Jesus, who is the perfect sacrifice. And it’s just so sad that some people want to try to get saved another way.

We sometimes sing the song, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Absolutely. There is no other name under heaven by which anyone can be saved, save by the name of Jesus. And this is what he did for us, and this is how he showed us his love, and this is his plan, and we have to be willing to come and die with him so that we might live life anew. If there’s anyone who’s heard this, heard this basic gospel, and you were ready to come and die with Christ, please consider doing so now, as together we stand and we sing.