The High Price Of Sin

Introduction

We’ve now come to the interactive portion of our worship service. Because I want to divide the group into two camps, but don’t worry, I’m going to bring us all back together. Camp number one, by a show of hands, do you love to shop? If shopping for you is a vacation experience, just to make sure everybody’s paying attention, I was making sure Deedra had her hand up right about now. All right. The rest of us, who hates to shop? The shopping is a burden and a chore that has to be done. All right. Both camps, I think, though, will have something in common. Whether you love to shop or you hate to shop, you can probably remember the day. The best deal you ever got. Again, whether you like to shop or you hate to shop, you could probably recall that deal.

That day in which you got something at an incredible price. Can I tell you about mine? About 20 or 25 years ago. I was preaching in the Birmingham area, and this is going to date me here, but was printing all of my Bible class material and sermon outlines on a dot matrix printer.

Nobody had a laser printer back then. They were too expensive. But this one was marked way, way down. It also had an advantage to me. It was compatible with my Macintosh computer. Those printers were hard to find at that time. And so I went early to this closeout sale. One day sale only. And I got in line with the hundreds of others. I normally don’t do that. I’m in the I hate shopping camp, by the way. But I wanted that printer. They had a great price for it. I went in, they actually gave us all numbers, and you went in by your numbers. And I went in when my number was called, and I found that printer. And there was a worker there who was helping me.

And I came in, I pointed to the ad. I said, I’m here for this. He said, Follow me. I went and followed him. I got that printer. And again, this is going to date me because that printer was in a box about this big. And here I am walking proudly to the front of this major upgrade. I’m going to be one of the only preachers in the country that’s going to have a laser printer. And as I’m walking up toward the front, they had cleared everything out of the stock room. Everything was on shelves on the floor, everywhere. And down on the floor between where the printer was and the cash register, I walked by was a comb binding machine. You may not know what a comb binding machine is, but it’s it’s a machine that you use to make Bible class material to perforate and bind the.

And again, nobody had a comb binding machine back then because they were expensive. They were about three or four hundred dollars back then. They’re much cheaper now. And that comb binding machine was sitting there on the floor without a price on it. I had this big printer in my hands, and the worker was helping me, walking me up to the cash register, and I just kind of tapped with my foot. And I said, How much is that? I could tell by the look on his face when he looked down on it, he had no idea what that was. You’ll find out in the following of this story that that was to my advantage. I said, How much is that? He looked down at it, looked at me, looked back down at it, and looked back up at me and said, Well, how much will you give?

That was his first mistake. Because he didn’t know that I was a jokester, and so joking, I knew instantly that was about a $350 machine. And as a joke, I said, I’d give you as much as three dollars. Without hesitation, he said, sold. I could not believe it. He said, Well, take the printer up to the counter, we’ll come back and get it. I said, No, put it on top. I went there for a printer and I came home with a $3, $350 comb binding machine. There’s the day I was married, the day our children were born, and the day I bought a three-dollar comb binding machine. Now imagine if there was a store where that could still take place. Where you could go into the store and you set the price.

No qualms, no strings attached, no tricks, you got to decide what you paid at the cash register. Where would you set the price for something that you bought? Now let’s up to Annie a little bit. In that store where you get to set the price, the store is owned, operated, and run by your enemy. Someone that hates you and has mistreated you. And so you wouldn’t feel guilty undercutting his prices, and you don’t care about his profit. Where would you set the price if you got to determine how much value was transferred in this exchange? This morning I don’t want to talk about shopping. But I want to talk about a price. And the high price that was paid for our sin. We’ve already thought about that subject, haven’t we, as we do every Lord’s Day when we gather around this table.

1. Christ Paid That High Price to Redeem Us

The emblems that represent body and blood speak of the high price that was paid for our sin. Let’s think about that price this morning. The high price that was paid for our redemption and ask the question, why? Why was the price set so high? Well, let’s begin with a premise that I think most of probably all of us already understand is that Christ paid that high price to redeem us. Did he not? As Christians, as attenders here this morning, you are keenly aware of the fact that Jesus paid the price to redeem us for our sins. You’re keenly aware that he paid a high price to redeem us for our sins. You know the passages as well as I do. When Paul to the Corinthian brethren would say, you were bought with a price.

And that same apostle would say to the Galatian churches, he gave himself for us. Those words ring in our ears, or at least those concepts channel through our minds when we partake of these emblems, don’t we? That we were bought with a price, that he gave himself for us. You know the passage in 1 Peter, but let’s turn over there anyway. Look over in 1 Peter chapter 1.

Where another apostle puts it in very understandable language. 1 Peter chapter 1, look at verses 18 and 19 saying, knowing, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ. As a lamb without blemish and without spot. We were redeemed with the blood of the Lamb. As much as we know that fact, as much as that is just basic and foundational to our Christian experience, I think we also know this fact. That we don’t truly understand the price that was paid. In Philippians chapter 2, I think maybe that’s the concept the apostle Paul is trying to get us to understand the actual depth of the price that was paid.

Oh, we know it was a high price. His life, his blood. But I think we also know that we can’t truly understand what it means, not just for a human being to die for someone else, but what it means for the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. He’s called the Lamb. The Lamb of the Old Testament sacrifices and our Lamb, Jesus Christ, have a lot in common. But I want to focus in this morning on the idea that they were spotless. That they didn’t do anything wrong. That lamb that was sacrificed under the old law, if it had the capacity to reason, and maybe even to speak, as the priest placed the knife upon its throat to take its life, to shed its blood because these people had sinned.

If that lamb could reason and speak, the lamb might look up at that priest and say, wait a minute, what did I do? What sin did I commit? What crime am I guilty of that I have to give my life? Our Lamb could have asked the same questions. And so we never fully understand what it means for a spotless one, a sinless one to die on our behalf. We’ll never fully understand or appreciate the depth of the sacrifice of a divine, eternal being partaking of flesh and blood and dying such a humiliating death. Are you in Philippians chapter 2 begin in verse 5? Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery, that is something to selfishly hold on to, to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation.

And taking the form of a bond servant and coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. I want you to appreciate the layers of humiliation the apostle has laid forth there. It starts, let’s start in reverse order. He didn’t just die, he died the most indignant death. The death of the cross.

Number one is we’re going to make this criminal die an excruciating, painful death. And we’re going to do so in the most humiliating of ways. Jesus didn’t die a valiant, heroic death. He died an embarrassing, humiliating death of a criminal. Above that is just the fact that he had to die at all. Death is a part of our experience. We’ve seen death. We know that death is our end. Not so for God. But before we even get to the death, and even the death of the cross, don’t forget verse 7 in our text, and that is something that we take for granted is just the humiliation of being in this flesh. Before he would even be humiliated through the death of the cross.

Should boggle our minds. Christ paid that price.

2. It Had to Be That Way

Law, the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never, with the same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they have not have ceased to be offered? For the worshippers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices, there’s the reminder every year of sins. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Therefore, when he came into the world, he said, sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as was written in the volume of the book.

Previously saying, sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and offerings for sins you did not desire, nor had pleasure in them, which were offered according to the law, then he said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first that he may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all? Here are facts that we understand readily. Number one is Jesus paid the high price to redeem us. Number two is it had to be that way.

3. Who Set That Price So High?

It required the blood of Christ. But I want us to think about whyhy couldn’t blood of bulls and goats take away our sin? Why not a real lamb? Spotless and sinless as it was, why couldn’t it take away our sin? And really the question comes in who set the price. Remember our imaginary scenario. Here’s a store where you go in and you have to pay the price, but you get to set the price. God, through Jesus Christ paid the price. We know that. But who set that price so high? I think sometimes we we think, we wouldn’t maybe not voice it this way, but we somehow think in our minds that someone or something outside of God Himself set that high price, and that God loved us enough he was willing to pay that price.

But the reality is God was willing to pay that price, a price which He Himself set. In our imaginary scenario, you go into that store, let’s change it a little bit and make it a car dealership. You go into that car dealership. Their advertising, their sign say you set the price. And there’s that car you want. And you’ve examined that again, you notice there’s no strings attached. You get to decide how much you pay for that car. Add that other layer, though. The owner of that car lot is your enemy. He’s done numerous things to harm you and your family.

You’re going to set the price low? Are you going to set it exorbitantly high?

4. It Demonstrated His Love

God set the price high. But why? I want us to give some thought to that question. Why was the price so high? When I was preparing this sermon, the first version of this sermon ended right here. I was just going to end with that question. And give you time to contemplate. But then I got to thinking I wouldn’t really be doing my job. If we didn’t open the scriptures and see. If with God’s help, with the Bible’s help, that we can see why that price was set so high. And so let’s answer that question. First of all, we understand that one reason, the Bible tells us this, one reason the price was not just paid for our sins, but was set by God Himself so high to redeem us from our sins is because it demonstrated his love.

Turn to Romans chapter 5 and verse 8. And when you’re turning to Romans chapter 5, verse 8, I want to quote for you a passage that you don’t even have to turn to. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. There’s an answer, isn’t it? God so loved the world. That he would not only pay a price, and not pay a price that was set high by someone else that he was willing to pay, but he himself was willing to set that price so high to demonstrate, John would tell us, to demonstrate his love for us. Romans chapter 5, read with me, verse 8. Puts it this way. God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

From now on, when you read Romans chapter 5 and verse 8, God demonstrated his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I don’t want you to just think God was willing to pay the price and thereby demonstrating his love. I want you to think God was willing to set the price and then pay it to demonstrate his love. Sometimes we talk about that high price. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and we come to this conclusion because price tells us value, doesn’t it? Many times, not always. But we come to a conclusion from that.

5. It Demonstrates His High Standard of Righteousness

That tells me how much I’m worth to God. And maybe there’s a conclusion to be drawn to that end. But to me, a better conclusion is that that doesn’t demonstrate necessarily my worth to God. It demonstrates his love for me. Maybe it does demonstrate my worth, but the scriptures over and over again tell us what it really demonstrated is how much he loved me. He loved me enough that he was willing to both set and pay that price. Back up a couple chapters in Romans chapter 3, we understand also that it demonstrates not only his love, but it demonstrates his high standard of righteousness. Look in Romans chapter 3, verses 26, or beginning in verse 21 through verse 26. Romans 3, verse 21. But now a righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there’s no difference. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness. Because in his forbearance, God passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So what does the Bible say? Why did God set the price so high? It demonstrated his love. And it demonstrated his righteousness. A lower price could have been set. Blood and blood of bulls and goats could have been enough.

But that would not have satisfied God’s own righteous demands.

As far as I can tell, by my finite mind, God had three choices as to what to do with us and our sin. Choice number one is he could have just condemned us all. That would have satisfied his righteousness.

But he could have just ignored it. And sadly, a lot of people are banking on that, aren’t they? We picture God as this pushover, kind of the grandfather picture. That, oh, he talks rough, but in the end, he’s going to cave and give in, and he’s not going to have the heart to condemn anybody. He’s just going to finally overlook the sin.

The second option of just overlooking the sin and not causing a price to be paid for it would not have satisfied the demands of his holiness, his righteousness, and his justice. And by the way, I believe that God, like the creatures he created, had a free will. God chose to be loving. And he chose to be righteous. And by his own will, that put certain demands upon himself. And so comes his third option. That the price could be paid. That justice and righteousness demanded. The price had to be set high. That would satisfy his righteousness. But he himself would pay the price. That would satisfy his love. Read with me again, Romans 3, verse 26. To demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

6. It Brings Glory to Him

So it demonstrates his justice, and it demonstrates, because of his love, that he is the justifier. Lastly, I believe the Bible tells us that by setting the price so high and paying it himself, it brings glory to him. Turn with me, if you will, quickly to the Old Testament, to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 43. God to Isaiah is going to talk about being the redeemer of Israel. Now when he talks about being the redeemer of Israel, is he saying I’m going to save the nation of Israel and bring them back after judgment, after captivity into their land? Or is he prophetically saying I’m going to be a redeemer of spiritual Israel? I believe the answer to that question is yes. Both of them are true.

But notice why God says, I’m going to redeem Israel. Isaiah 43, verse 1, but now, thus says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, and who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I’ll be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall your flame scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your Savior. I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Saba in your place, since you were precious in my sight. You have been honored, and I have loved you. Therefore, I will give men for you and people for your life.

Fear not, I am with you. I will bring your descendants from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, give them up and to the south, do not keep them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth. Everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory. For I have formed him. Yes, I have made him. God says, Why did I create you? Why am I redeeming you for my glory? And that’s the neglected part of our study of God and his relationship to us. God did this for his glory. Why would he pay such a high price that he himself set to redeem us for his glory? So that we might come on a day such as this.

And whether literally or figuratively, we would bow down before him and honor him. Remember when he said there in Romans chapter 3, when we said it satisfied, not just his love, but his righteousness.

Conclusion

To bring glory to him. And when we sin, when we rebel against him, when we do not rise to his level of love and righteousness shown to us, we fall short of his glory. That’s why the scripture would say so many times, when you do righteous deeds, God will be glorified by that. And when you do bad deeds, you’re opening the door for God to be blasphemed by your actions. The question is, are you bringing glory to God by your life? By your submission and by your obedience to the gospel. Because in the sacrifice of Christ, we have and we see a perfect redemption. The purchase of blood to every believer.

So would you respond to that gospel this morning? Respond to the love, to the righteousness of God. And by coming in obedience to him, would you bring him the glory that he deserves? Would you come to him right now? As together we stand and as we sing.