Jack Jurgens's Ministry Library

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:01] So we’re going to read in the New Testament, we’re going to read in Acts chapter 13. And while you’re looking that up, I’m going to talk about the Lord Jesus. I suspect everybody listening this evening has heard about the Lord Jesus Christ. Celebrate his Christmas. Others celebrate Easter. But we’re not talking about Christmas or Easter, but we’re thankful that he came and he was born, and we’re thankful that he died and he was buried and he raised again. But tonight our question to you is very personal. If you know about Jesus, Why haven’t you personally accepted him? Why is he still outside your life? Some people accept their church or accept things going on and they conform to all the different rituals of the church, but yet they draw a blank when you say, do you have a moment in your life, when you trust with Christ as your Savior? I have a moment like that. It was in an attic bedroom. No one was coaching me, say a certain prayer.

[1:17] I’ll just put your mind at ease tonight. We’re not gonna ask you to come up to the front, and you don’t have to shed tears and we’re not gonna ask you to quote anything. You can just relax and listen to the word of God. But I was in my attic bedroom as a young boy, just starting out in my teen years. And I discovered that I was a sinner and Christ died for my sins. And you can tell as I have friends back East and they call me a fossil. I think it has something to do with the color of my hair. But all those years, since my teenage years, through my 20s and my 30s and my 40s and my 50s, and yes, I’m definitely well into my 60s, I have known Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I highly recommend him to you. But why haven’t you accepted him? I’m gonna put a little sign up here. I printed it off. We’re gonna talk about this man, Jesus. And this is what I want you to think about for the opening part of the meeting is, what is wrong with this man? Like, why haven’t you? You know the Jesus story.

[2:31] So what is wrong with him? Why haven’t you just, why wouldn’t you just tonight, oh you say I didn’t intend to make any consequential major decision this evening, but why not? If you know about the Lord Jesus, who he is, what he accomplished, why wouldn’t you want to walk back out into that parking lot knowing Christ as your personal Savior? So what is wrong with this man is the question that I want you to think about. What is wrong with this man Jesus. The background to where we’re going to read in Acts chapter 13, the apostle Paul, he was, no one was always a Christian. The apostle Paul, some of you are older, old enough to remember a man by the name of Osama bin Laden. The apostle Paul was the Osama bin Laden of his day. Way, he was out to put to death every Christian, everyone who named the name of Jesus.

[3:31] That was the trajectory of life that he was on, to wipe out Christianity, until he found out that the very one that he was rejecting and so vehemently opposed to was the one who who loved him and died for his sins on the cross, and on a road one day, this man Paul embraced Christ as his savior. And so he’s in a synagogue on a Saturday in the city of Antioch. He had just been to Cyprus, like that’s in the Mediterranean, Cyprus. It’s his first missionary trip. Like what I like about, one of the things I like about the Bible, it’s not fantasy.

[4:16] You can visit Cyprus today. I have a second cousin who works in Cyprus. And when you open your Bible and you read about Paul visiting Cyprus, these are AD 48 real places, modern day Turkey, GPS coordinates. These are not fantasies. Not like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia or Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. I was in a store today and they said, so what’s your name? Peter, oh, it’s Peter Pan. No, and it’s not Peter Pan’s Neverland. No, and it’s not the Hobbit’s Middle Earth or Jurassic Park. These are real places. The Bible is the word of God and definite historical facts. They don’t dismiss it. And so he’s in a synagogue in this place in the city of Antioch, and someone read from the scriptures and then they invited Paul to speak.

[5:14] And he stood up, and he motioned with his hands, and he asked those who feared God to listen very carefully, we hope you’re listening tonight, we’re so glad you’re here. You could have been a lot of other places, but you’re here. Thank God you are here. Carefully and as we heard last night, think. About what the Bible is saying. And so the Apostle Paul, he’s reviewing their history and God’s dealings with the people. And then he presented the credentials and the claims of Jesus, who ended up being rejected and crucified. And then he made a crucial point, and that’s where we’re going to pick up our reading. Acts chapter 13, 29, 30, it says, They took him down from the cross, and they put him in a tomb, verse 30, but God raised him, that’s Jesus from the dead, and here is the verse I want you to think about. Verse 38, be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man, that’s why I wanted you to think about this question. What do I have against this man? What is wrong with this man? Paul said, through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, what better message would there be? Like you must acknowledge that you’ve had sin in your path.

[6:35] Maybe even today, you experienced some road rage. You were first off mad at the red light being so long. And then the people ahead of you being so pokey. And you just, whoa, you restrained yourself. You didn’t blast the horn or anything, but it was inside you a little bit of a rage, Oh, that’s a sin. Anger, that kind of stuff.

[6:58] And to think that every one of your sins can be forgiven through this man? That’s what Paul is saying. Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe, not most that believe, all that believe are justified from all things, are made right with God in every way from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Here’s what I want you to think about.

[7:24] The greatest three years in human history, the darkest three hours of any day in history, and the longest three days of any time in history.

[7:40] The greatest three years in human history, I don’t know if you’re a student of history, I can’t say that I really was, and I can’t say that I am, but I guess it depends on where your interests there and how you define the best three years in human history. In the empire-building age, Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, some may think the British Victorian period was the greatest age when England expanded its empire. Some are very opposed to that thought as well. Or it could be when it comes to intellectual ingenuity, it could be all the inventions, you know the early civilizations, they were really advanced. Sometimes we portray them as just somewhat inferior intellectually than we are ourselves in 2022. Like we are head and shoulders above them we sometimes think, but those ancient civilizations were extremely advanced.

[9:01] Maybe you think it’s, if you’re into culture, maybe you think it’s a renaissance period, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th century, art, music, literature, all of those things, the Industrial Revolution. But I want you to think about this. The greatest three years in human history, a Roman emperor was ruling, Tiberius Caesar, he was reigning, and late in the summer of AD 26, A young man, 30 years of age, stepped out onto the stage in the public limelight at a river called Jordan. I was telling somebody the other day, my wife and I visited the Jordan River. We felt the wetness of that river and the muddiness of that river. This young man was about 30 years old, and he emerged on the public stage.

[9:54] His name was Jesus, and from his baptism in the River Jordan until his ascension back into heaven, I don’t think anyone could dispute the fact those were the three most momentous years in human history. Just think of his ways, that young man, Jesus, so different from all the significant religious leaders that you’ve seen some today, and they dressed in robes. Now, we’re sort of not dressed up in a hot summer evening, but we know how to dress up, too. We can get our big, heavy-duty suit coats on and—but back in the day, the religious leaders, they were dressed in their robes and their sashes and their turbans and their scarves and their colors—nothing wrong with a little bit of ritual. But out onto the stage emerges this 30-year-old man wearing sandals. Just the way the commoners would be dressed. No special clothes. No halo around his head.

[11:00] He wasn’t carried in a little special eunuch designed just for a significant religious leader. He didn’t have an entourage of people running before him, playing the trumpets and going like this. No, just up and down the dusty roads of Israel.

[11:19] This lovely man, Jesus, went. His ways were so different. He reached out to the people. He shunned no one. If someone was feeling introverted or isolated or marginalized by society, there was something about his holy heart, compassion, and heart, and he gravitated to that. He reached him out in the audience, and he crossed him, and he changed their lives. He put a smiling face on them and gave them peace in their heart. The ones who were written off by others, oh, his ways were absolutely unique. His wonders and his works. He was able to heal what no doctor could heal. He proved that he was God in human flesh. He turned water to wine. He calmed the angry seas. He fed thousands from a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. Absolutely amazing. I think people had a jaw-dropping experience, a whoa experience every day they followed him.

[12:32] I thought yesterday, nothing could be better than yesterday. But then today, they’re back out in the fields and up on the mountainside because they’ve traveled all over the countryside just to see him. They closed their shops, they brought their children and they held their children up. They said, can you hold my child? and he would lift them out of his arms and hold them, sit them on their knees. Years ago, President Putin of Russia, you perhaps recognize that name, he was the photo op, and he was trying to show that he’s just a lovely ruler over there and everybody loves him. And perhaps you saw the picture circulating where he was just going to pick up a child and he sort of picked up the child and the child was terrifyingly frightened. It was a really lousy photo of someone reaching out to a child, but the Lord Jesus, for some reason, parents brought their kids to him. And he turned them not away, not one. And my friend, he wouldn’t turn you in. You prayed to come. Maybe you’ve been disappointed by others. Maybe some have let you down. You’ve had a good friendship, and then you all of a sudden were rejected for some reason. Let me commend the Lord Jesus Christ to you. His ways, his works, his wonders, absolutely amazing. You know, Einstein.

[14:00] He was asked if she accepted the historical existence of Jesus. You know what Einstein said? Now I got this out of his very recognized thick biography of the life of Albert Einstein. So this is not out of People magazine, some hearsay or something like that. This is an authoritative summary of Albert Einstein’s life.

[14:35] On page 386 of that book, New York Times bestseller, when they asked him, do you believe in the existence of Jesus, his response couldn’t be clearer. He said unquestionably, exclamation mark. He said no one can read the four Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. He said his personality pulsates in every word. Have you read the Gospels lately? Have you opened your Bible and read the Gospel of John? I know people who didn’t know much about the Bible and they were reading the Gospel of John. We have the Gospel of John at the back table. I’ll take one home with you. It’s powerful. It’s the Word of God. It’s a portion of the Word of God. And people were reading that, trust to Christ, their lives were transformed. He said, his personality pulsates in every word. He said, no myth is filled with such a life. Not a myth, he said. But with all his brains, he was not ready to accept Him. There’s no record of him accepting Christ as his Lord. And his savior, but he didn’t deny that Jesus existed.

[15:55] I don’t know what he had against that man, Jesus. What do you have against him? Why are you not just rejoicing tonight in Christ? Why are you keeping him out of your life? You know about him? Perhaps you went to catechism or Sunday school and you read about him, you heard about him. Maybe you did a Christmas play at Christmas time and maybe you were Mary or maybe you were Joseph in the play. You know all those facts, and yet, on this night in July, you’ve never accepted him as your savior. What’s wrong with Jesus? Why not? His words, oh, if you look at his words, truth and grace. John 7, verse 37 says, here’s what Jesus said, if anyone thirsts, maybe you’re thirsty tonight, you’ve tried this. You ever get one of those smoothies or a fresh cold, drink or a milkshake, and it’s so good you’ve got the straw I’ll point it right to the bottom.

[17:06] And you’re sucking it up, and you get right down to the last thing, and then you tilt the little glass cup right to that corner. There’s a little bit more left. Then it’s empty. Look, there are Christians here older than me, and they have never thirsted. Once Christ, they met Christ, they have never thirsted again. There’s no emptiness with Christ. He keeps you, your thirst quenched. Jesus said, if anyone thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. John 8 and 36, Jesus said, think of these are his words. If the Son shall make you free, that’s the Son of God shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Well, there are a lot of words and I’m not gonna go over them, but those, I believe those three years were the most outstanding years in human history. His ways, his works, his wonders. What touched me last night as I was thinking about this, His world was so big.

[18:16] Look, you have your little family and your extended family, and like around Wyckoff and Midland Park, and all the world that the Lord Jesus came to save. He embraces every culture, every nationality, every type and stripe of sin. His world is so large, for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”.

[18:50] The greatest three years in human history. What were the darkest hours, the three darkest hours of any day in history? Well, this entire day was dark. Jesus had been arrested. In Matthew chapter 27, we read these words. From the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. From twelve o’clock noon to three o’clock, pitch black over Jerusalem. So physically it was dark, but oh spiritually it was dark. You know what was happening when the Lord Jesus hung on that cross? I can’t explain in my simple little mind, but all I know is that the vast load of all all sins of all people of all ages. Now God had a way, of accumulating all the load.

[19:54] And Jesus, I love Him, He was my substitute. He died for my place. I was the one who committed sin. I was the one who should have been punished for my sin. But when I look to the cross, I think of that lovely one in those hours upon the cross. Oh, the darkness of that experience. God punished Jesus.

[20:22] Punished, judged, whatever word you want to use, Christ Jesus paid the penalty in full for all our sins. And he dealt with the sin problem on the cross, those hours of darkness. Corinthians 5 says, God made him, Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. I don’t know how people can use Jesus’ name in blasphemy. I don’t know when they’re in a rage why they say, Jesus Christ. He’s the one who loved you and went to the cross and shed his precious blood, died for your sins and for my sins. How can anyone ever shake a fist at God and say he’s not a loving God, he’s a cruel monster? Oh, the cruel monster is Thank you.

[21:32] Thank you. God wants to save you out of that sin, and He wants you to be with Him forever. That’s a wonderful message that you’re going to hear more about as Joseph comes up. But here’s how Isaiah puts it. 750 years before Jesus Christ actually came and before He died, here’s what Isaiah wrote. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him, that’s Jesus, the iniquity or the sin of us all. Righteous? See why we love him? Why we sing? You say, well, the singing wasn’t your, you sort of exaggerated the quality of the singing. Maybe. It’s not to say it was hard to go, right?

[22:26] But you see why we sing, love lifted me. But at the end, I get my wife, I don’t go to the dollar store to buy a Valentine’s card. You know, like you can get them quite reasonably priced there. Oh, I invested all in our card. And if the local grocery store has red roses or pink roses marked down, I’ll get a whole dozen. And then she’ll say, you shouldn’t have wasted our money on them. That’s my big statement of love, right?

[23:00] God didn’t send a Hallmark card and say, I love you folks down there in Whitehawk, Midland Park. God said, I’m going beyond the Hallmark card. I’m going to give my son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on a cross. He’ll be your savior if you’ll trust him. What do you have against this man that tonight, while Joseph speaks, why you wouldn’t trust him, that I will have this man to be my savior. But what were the three longest days of any time in history? The people who loved the Lord Jesus, when they saw him take his last breath and he was dead on the cross, they thought it’s all over. All over. They went home weeping, sad, brokenhearted. All the rest of Friday, all of Saturday, and they woke up Sunday morning the third day and they were just all so blue. What will our life be like without Christ? We loved Him. And they went to the tomb that morning.

[24:11] And the stone was rolled away and they looked in and someone says, He’s not here. He is And tonight, as you listen to the gospel, we’re not talking about a defeated Lord Jesus Christ. We’re not talking about a one that went down to defeat on the cross. We present to you one who accomplished exactly what he came to do. Christ died for our sins. He was buried and he was raised again the third day, according to the scriptures. It through this man preached unto you the forgiveness of all your sins. I’d like to read in the book of Hebrews, please. Hebrews in chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. And we’ll just read at verse 11.

[25:10] Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, is what you have just heard. And the verses I want to read tonight say something else about this man. Hebrews 10 and verse 11, every priest stands daily ministering and offering, oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down, right hand of God. I just noticed what it says about the same man, the Lord Jesus that you’ve already heard about tonight. It says in contrast to others who have tried to do something for sin. That could never, it says they could never do it, never take away sin. In contrast, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down, right hand of God. And we’re gonna talk about that verse tonight, but one other verse in the book of Romans, book of Romans in chapter three. Romans chapter 3, and we’ll break in at verse 22.

[26:17] At the end of verse 22. Romans 3 at the end of verse 22 says, for there is no difference, for all have sinned. Short. Glory. Yeah. Last night I said, for those of you who are here, and if you haven’t been here, I’ll just take a second to repeat it, that I’ve been looking at the word awesome. Used sometimes to describe how somebody’s feeling, or how they did on a test, or how good a sandwich was, I said last night. But really the word means something that provokes awe, or inspires awe. Something truly awe-causing, awe-inspiring. And I was making the point that the gospel is awesome, And for this reason, the reason the gospel causes awe, number one, we learned last night, is because when you listen to the gospel, not just here, not just under this tent, not just necessarily put on by this church, anytime anyone stands up and opens the Bible and clearly faithfully preaches what the Bible says, you’re hearing the voice of God. God is speaking through that person. You are hearing God speak. And that in itself, you just take a moment. We’re all together, I know, and thinking about a million different things. But you take a moment to think about that. But as I sit in this tent, listening to God, that is awesome.

[27:40] But today, I want to look at another thing, and something I was thinking about back home, where I come from, and that’s that when you listen to the gospel specifically, you’re faced with a standard that you don’t really think about out in the world. You think about different kinds of standards that you use maybe for hanging something up or certain standards to get into a specific university, maybe you need a 3.8 or something like that, test score standards. But there’s a standard that you hear about when you come to listen to the gospel. It’s described in this verse in Romans chapter three. It doesn’t just say that all have sinned. Sometimes that’s where we stop and we point the finger and we say, listen, all of us are in the same boat and the verse does say that. We’re gonna talk about that. But it gives us amazing standards. Something we don’t really think about in our lives. It says all have sinned. There’s no difference. of sin, and come short.

[28:35] The glory of God. The glory of God. Awesome. It is a standard that the Bible says we’ve all missed. And as you just start to think, what does that mean? If I asked you after this meeting, and I won’t, so don’t worry, but if I asked you, what is the glory of God? Describe it for me. I don’t know what that is. What would you say? How would you describe the glory of God? How would you describe, like you and I, on a bright sunny day, we can hardly even look straight at the sun. Imagine looking at the one who gave the sun its life. Imagine the glory of God and what that must be like. And the Bible says and gives us this standard that truly is awe-inspiring, that this is the standard for heaven. This is the standard for how you and I were intended to function as human beings. That we were made by God in His image and we were intended to function in and for the glory of God. What does that mean and what does that look like? And I wanna try to explain it here tonight in just a few simple ways for the next 20 minutes.

[29:56] I want to talk, first of all, about the standard that has been missed. Standard that has been missed. Secondly, about the sin that must be punished, according to these verses. Thirdly, satisfaction that has been made. That’s what we read in Hebrews chapter 10. But this man. My dude, work for that verse or work for that concept in the Bible. There’ll be no meeting here tonight. Listen, if it weren’t for this man, there’d be no gospel meeting. No good news meeting. There’s no gospel without Christ. Satisfaction that has been made. And we’ll close the meeting just with those three points.

[30:34] A standard that has been missed. The word sin, if you’re not familiar with it, we’ve used it already in this meeting. The word sin simply, in its original language, the Greek word, as the Bible was originally put it, the word means to miss the mark. It was used sometimes in other situations outside of the Bible, when, say, they would go and they would try to recruit people into the army, and it was back in the days of hand-to-hand combat. So you know what all the people wanted to do when you’d go into the city and enlist people, and say you were drafted to fight for whichever empire, say the Roman Empire. All of a sudden, everyone would volunteer to be an archer. Why? Because no hand-to-hand combat. To get to stand far back and pull back the bow and strike people from a distance, less risk. It was amazing how many archers were in every city. And so what the generals decided to do with all this plethora of skilled archers and no one who could use a sword.

[31:35] The general decided to have triumph. They put a target out and one by one all the skilled archers who are very good at using the bow but couldn’t use a sword, they were asked to draw back the bow and fire. And if they missed the target, this Greek word would be called out, hamarkano, the little lieutenant would say, which means, sin, miss, miss the target. And you know what the Apostle Paul is doing here in Romans chapter 3? He’s saying there was a target for how every single one of us were as intended to live. The glory of God!

[32:15] Without exception in this temple, all of them, every girl, every boy, every man and woman, has missed the mark. All have sinned, according to the Bible, and fallen short. Glory of God. That’s the standard. Again, I will echo what you’ve already heard tonight. Sometimes when you come to a meeting like this, I know there are people and they leave very upset because they, they think, well, those people in that particular church, they think everyone else is sinners except them. Now, listen, I’m just a sinner saved by grace. Understand that? It’s all I am. More than that, when we talk about the standard of God, it’s not the standard of any church. It’s not the standard of any creed. It’s not the standard of any influential person in history, any normal person. This is the standard of God. Steve, I were to take somebody, I were to find, if I could, the most admirable person in this tent and bring them up, and I’m not gonna do this, but if I were to ask you all to stand, and I were to list the admirable characteristics and the things this person does and doesn’t do, likely a number of us would be left standing. We haven’t missed his mark or her mark. We’ve lived life about the same!

[33:42] All of us have missed the glory of God. There’s not one person left standing. The Apostle Paul, you’ve already heard a little bit about him. The Osama bin Laden as he was described of that day. Saul of Tarsus. You know, he lived such a righteous life that he said, I wouldn’t even know I had sin. Thus the Bible says, Thou shalt not covet.

[34:09] Covetousness, wanting something that’s not yours. lusting after something that you don’t have. That made Paul, Saul, sit down, it crushed him, the law. And if you were to go to the 10 commandments today and read them, all of us have missed that mark. Whether it’s thou shalt not lie, swearing, lusting, coveting, theft, missed the mark. I should just say, it’s not my subject tonight, But the law, the Bible, the law in the Bible, it’s like a thermometer. When you stick it in and you find out whether you’re doing well or not doing so well. Have you kept them all or have you not? Every one of us, if we stick the 10 commandments in, we’ll all find out we come out the same. We’re sick, sick of sin. You know what you don’t do? You don’t swallow the thermometer to get better. Nobody does that. Nobody got better from COVID by swallowing a thermometer. It’s not better. I’ve heard some strange ideas, but I’ve never heard that one. No, the thermometer tells you you’re sick, but you don’t swallow it to get better. And you don’t try to follow the law to get better. All it does is tell you, I’m sick of this sinner.

[35:25] So the law is a standard for the glory of God, but more than that, you know what the Bible says about Jesus Christ that you’ve already heard about? It says this. It’s a different expression, we might not fully understand it, but this is what the Bible says about it. He is the brightness, God’s glory. He is the outshining of God’s glory. You know what that means? You want to know what the standard of the glory of God is? Look at Jesus Christ. This is the glory of God. This man, watch him as a boy, as a teenager, as a young man. Watch him move with every motive pure, with never doing anything out of selfish ambition, or never seeking his own praises. Every motive, every action, perfect. This is the standard of the glory of God. I would say this, I would say it authoritatively, not dogmatically or rudely, but I would say it authoritatively. Listen, if Jesus Christ, if this standard was here, there’s not one of us in this town, there’s not one of us in this city or in this world who’s left standing compared to him. Every one of us, according to the Bible, there is no difference. All have sinned. For sure. Glory of God. And so we’re all in the same lot. We’ve all missed the mark. God’s standard.

[36:50] So the standard has been missed. That’s what it means to sin. There’s a must with sin. I want you just to remember that. The must. Not what could happen with sin, or what should happen. It’s what must happen. Sin must be punished. Must be. And this is the must that we find in the Bible. I didn’t read the verse tonight, But it says in the Bible, the soul that sins dies. The wages, what a person has earned for serving sin, death. This is the must. This is what God requires for missing that mark. And sometimes people think, that’s so extreme. But remember, it’s God who he’s sinned against, and it’s God who’s been offended. Let me just give you an illustration. I hope it won’t take away from what we’re saying here tonight, but I want you to imagine this. It, it, it helped me just to think about, imagine if you’re out driving, whether you’re driving or in the car, you’re stopped at a stop sign somewhere in the city and somebody comes up, they’re texting or doing something on their phone and they run through the other stop sign and hit you.

[38:15] And there’s major damage in the vehicle. Thankfully, nobody’s hurt. That made your damage to the vehicle and the guy gets out he’s very apologetic for what he did look at my phone I wasn’t and he agrees to pay all the damages so you take it to your mechanic or your auto body shop and you get a quote and out comes the quote for how much it’s gonna be for everything you, and to get it all back to how it was.

[38:41] There you have that quote, and you take it to the man. Let’s just, for example, let’s just say it’s pretty major damage. Let’s call it six grand, $6,000 to get your car back to how it was, to get the paint and everything back to how it is. Then you take the quote of the expenses and you go to this individual who’s hit you. Just before you tell them how much they’re going to owe to fix everything, imagine if I stepped in and I said to this individual hit you, now listen, I know you meant it, you didn’t mean to do that. I know it was an honest mistake. 200 bucks, say you’re sorry, promise never to text and drive and all’s good. Once you came to your senses of what I had just done, once you understood that this is real life and not Peter Pan, that this guy is just interfering And mentally, in my situation, even if you were the sweetest soul on earth, you know what you would say nicely to me? Sir, mind your business.

[39:52] Quit my car. He’s offended me. He hasn’t offended you. What business do you have interfering as to what would settle and satisfy you? You know who that rude person is? Thank you.

[40:12] God has been offended by sin, and religion says, just confess. Just say you’re sorry. Just pay a little bit. Just pray a little bit. Just promise you’ll never do those things again. Just change your life around, and everything will be fine. God hates religion. I’m talking about religion as I’ve just described it. Religion is meddling. For God is the one who has been offended. God is the one who has been wronged. God is the one who must be satisfied. So it doesn’t really matter what I think about sin. Doesn’t really matter if I think that lying is big or small. What does God think about it? You know what God says about lying? Because it’s an abomination. The lying lip, the lying tongue is an abomination in the sight of God.

[41:06] So to use the little car example, I might think that, yeah, running to somebody, distracted driving is a big offense, but maybe keying somebody’s car, I mean, they could still drive it. Hey, if it was your car, if it was your car that I keyed, it wouldn’t be as simple as, yeah, I could still drive it, no problem, carry on. No, you’ve been offended, you’ve been wronged. And there’s a just requirement that must be met. And so I want you to remember that about sin’s must. We don’t have to wonder what God will do to sin. There’s no such thing as, I know I’ve done some mistakes. I know I’ve messed up, who hasn’t? But I’ve also done a lot of these good things. And I wonder when I get before God, when he weighs the scales out of the sins I’ve done, but all the good things I’ve done, I wonder what the verdict will be. You don’t have to wonder.

[41:58] The sentence has already been leveled for every sinner. It was leveled for me as well. I just found a man who took the sentence. That’s the only difference. But it was leveled for me as well. Do you know what the Bible says about the sentence? It’s death. No one has to wonder, what the verdict will be at final justice. The Bible describes us as condemned already.

[42:20] No mystery. No vagueness. All clear. And the one thing God won’t do, He won’t pass over sin. He won’t just pretend like it didn’t happen. He can’t do that. If He did, that, He would cease to be God. God is holy and just and pure. He won’t pass over any, sin. He just lets certain ones into heaven. Listen, you know how many sins it took to make Earth the way it is today? This one. One sin in a perfect garden. It plunged Earth to where we’re at today. Wars and diseases and inciting, shootings. The list could go on. One sin got into heaven, heaven would cease to be heaven. God will not let that happen. It’s a perfect standard. So the standard has been missed by all of us, every one of us in this tent. I hope there’s no one here who would doubt that. Now I talked to a lady not too long ago in Ontario. She’s a Christian now, a dear believer. Her husband was a bit of a hardy animal and he liked to do all the things, but he had no trouble admitting he was a sinner. Listening to the gospel one day when he learned that sinners actually don’t just die like dogs, but after they die, there’s judgment.

[43:37] He literally shook in the meeting and was saved before the night was over. This lady, religious, good, came to meetings far before her husband did, friendly, couldn’t get past this thing that I am a sinner like him. There’s really no difference, that I’m in the same boat, that God doesn’t have a special class for me. Took her a long time. She was telling me the story of when a preacher came to her home and was talking with her, and he asked her to read this verse. That I want you to read this verse. There is none righteous, no not one. So there is none righteous. Stop. So I just can’t agree that there’s no one who is trying the best they can. There’s no one who is, I’m trying the best I can. They went back and forth for a while, and I guess in a moment of inspiration, the preacher said this, OK, I want you to read it like this. There is none righteous. No, not one. Except Dawn.

[44:48] You read it. There is none righteous, but not one. Dawn. And she was gripped with how proud she had been. That the whole Bible puts everybody in the same boat, but she says, except Dawn. And she couldn’t believe it. And the tears flowed down her face. The sin of pride. That she was exempt from what God said had leveled everyone. I wonder if there’s someone like that here tonight. You say, I’m not a sinner. I hope not. No, the Bible says that compared with the glory of God, we’ve all missed the mark. But thankfully, my last point here is just a few minutes. You’ve already heard about it. Yes, the standard has been missed to the glory of God. Yes, sin must be judged. And if that was the end of the message, that would leave us in an awful situation. We’re just sinners that have missed God’s standard and we all should be judged. And the punishment is death.

[45:45] But, this man, I love that word, that three letter word in the Bible. But, maybe it’s because when I was saved, lying across my bed in an upstairs room, not quite the attic, didn’t make it that far, but upstairs anyway, I didn’t know how to get saved. I put my name in a million verses, it felt like, and nothing didn’t do anything. I was on my knees, and I fell across the bed in my sins. No hope, no way of knowing how it could ever be dealt with. And a verse came into my mind I learned in Sunday school. But he, who did for my sins, but he was trust. And I didn’t have my name in any verse all the time I saw my name in them all. You know what I mean? Maybe you don’t. I opened John 3 16 and I tried to put my name that verse like 10 times that night. I opened it the next morning I didn’t have to put my name. See it. Who’s Joe Hubbard? That’s me. He died for me. Oh, my friend, the gospel is all about this man, and this is what the verse says, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin forever. You know, the Lord Jesus, He was God Himself. He came into our world. He became a man. As you’ve heard, He lived an impeccable, perfect, spotless life. But He did not just come to do miracles. He did not come to start a religion.

[47:14] He did not come to teach just a number of people, although He did many of those things. According to the verse, He came for one specific mission, but this man, when He had offered one sacrifice for sin. The Lord Jesus came from heaven to go to a cross, deal with sin. That’s why He came. And the standard that we had all missed, when He went to that cross and they nailed Him there. He’s hanging there between two other criminals, but he has no crimes on his record. This brings me great peace, you know, to think of it. The standard that the Lord Jesus was held to was not the standard of any church.

[48:00] It wasn’t the standard of the holiest person who has ever lived on earth. He was held accountable for sin according to the standard of God. That brings me great peace, you know why? Because in my Christian life, when I was saved, there were certain things that I thought were sins. And as I’ve grown in understanding the Bible, I’ve learned that there’s a whole lot more things that are actually sinful.

[48:24] And I wonder to myself, Well, if Christ was held accountable on that cross by what I think is sin, I may wake up one day and realize he wasn’t held accountable to God’s standard. And it brings me great peace, the verse you already heard tonight. The Lord laid on him. The Lord laid on him. It was God who did it. The standard of God. And the Lord laid on him the sin of us all. Wonder of all wonders. Awesome. It pleased the Lord. crushing. And that’s what happened on the cross. Sin, placed on Christ. According to the Bible, God crushed him for sin. He’s there as a sacrifice. It says here, one, sacrifice for sin’s sin. One sacrifice. It’s all that God required. One payment. Sin question had been settled. Claims of sin had been met. What was the claims? The soul that sins must die. Eternal death. Eternal death. That’s what the standard or the claims are. Eternal death. And here he is on the cross as an eternal, infinite being. God himself. He’s taking the full weight of sin on himself. Dies on that cross. And as the verse goes on to say, this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever. Where is he today?

[49:53] He did it at the right hand of God. Again, it’s not complicated. I hope I haven’t made it complicated. It’s God that we have offended. It’s God that has been offended. It’s God that must be satisfied. Christ was held accountable on that cross according to God’s standard. Christ is back in heaven with God because Christ has satisfied God. And do you know what the Bible says, if we were to keep reading in Romans chapter 3? It says that this is what God has done. Taking his own son and everything he did that satisfied him, it says these words, as a propitiation. Whether it’s a whole list of sins, or just a few that have offended your God, take my slide. These are done, not because of anything you’ve done, but what He’s done. See, sin must be judged. I didn’t do any special dance. I didn’t say any special prayer.

[51:07] The reason my sins, I will never be judged for my sins is because Christ was judged for them. That’s the message of the gospel through this man. And so in these two messages tonight, you’ve heard about this man. I will just close with the same question that you were faced with just up here. If he’s done everything for sin, what’s wrong with him? Why not trust him for long? That’ll be great.

Filed under: Gospel Series, baker-joseph, ramsay-peter