That Takes Away the Sins of the World

Tom Shrader examines John the Baptist's declaration of Jesus as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" from John 1:29. He connects this to Isaiah 53's prophecy of the suffering servant, showing how Jesus came not as a conquering king but as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Shrader emphasizes that our deepest problem is not political, economic, or educational, but sin itself, and only Jesus can provide the solution through His atoning death.

“My biggest problem isn't government, my biggest problem is not I wish I had more stuff, my biggest problem is sin, and the only solution is Jesus.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Who is This?

Recorded: 2012

Duration: 51 min

Themes: sin, sacrifice, atonement, salvation, forgiveness, lamb, redemption, grace, struggling with guilt, new believer, seeking forgiveness, questioning salvation, pastor teaching, bible study leader, young adult, feeling unworthy

Scripture: John 1:19-29, Isaiah 53, Matthew 3:1-4, Matthew 11:11, Malachi 3:1, Malachi 4:5, 1 Peter 2:24, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 John 4:10, Romans 3:10-12, John 3:19-21, John 8:46, John 8:52, John 8:56, John 10:58, Psalm 23

Theological Themes: atonement, sacrificial lamb, sin bearer, substitutionary atonement, christology, soteriology, prophetic fulfillment, isaiah 53

Full Transcript

If you would turn to the Gospel of John, John chapter one, verse 19. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand nice and high. If you get a Bible from us, it's page 576.

This series is a little bit different, maybe, than some of the book series we do. Different in this sense: there's a linear thought here. One lesson builds on the next, builds on the next, builds on the next. So we titled it "Who Is This?" We said that from the life of Christ recorded in all four Gospels, Jesus is confronted by people—disciples, the general population, Pontius Pilate, a whole bunch of people—with the question "Who is this? Who are you?" So we're going to ask that question in a series.

The Questions We're Asking

Let me remind you of these questions. We actually technically began the series on Good Friday with the question, "Who is this that died on the cross?" Then the progression: Easter morning, "Who is this who rose from the dead?" "Who is this who exposes darkness?" "Who is this who knew no sin?" Today, "Who is this who takes away the sin of the world?" Next week, in the last session of the series, "Who is this King, Savior, God?"

The answer, by the way, if you're struggling here, is Jesus—to all of these questions. That's the progression. The question is asked of Christ, and Jesus seems to be fairly black and white in terms of saying, "I want to take away from you the option of 'I don't know.'" He says, "You're either for me or against me. I'm going to give you this information, and then you either respond or you don't." But the stakes are large, and the answer's clear.

Looking at the Resurrection Facts

We started on Easter, and we said this is like maybe a TV show or movie you've seen where the closing scene chronologically, or the opening scene chronologically, is the closing scene, and then we come back to that—the resurrection. A great deal of time was spent on the historical fact of the resurrection. We're not going to go back and regurgitate all of these, but let me suggest to you, it's really easy. That's one of the great things about the internet. You can just go and Google "resurrection facts," and you're going to have a ton of information at your fingertips very quickly.

I really think—I was reading something this week from a skeptic who was saying people who believe basically in Christ or religion in general are too lazy to look and too lazy to look at facts and too lazy to do the hard work and aren't very reflective. I thought, can you imagine sitting down with Jonathan Edwards, whom that big Christian publication the Encyclopedia Britannica calls the greatest mind America ever produced, and saying, "You know, you're too lazy to look at facts, and you're too lazy to think"—but it's some guy who's just regurgitating something some pinhead university professor told him. I digress. But I say look at the facts of the resurrection, and I think you might be surprised, honestly. If you've never done it, I think you might be surprised.

Here's what we concluded the first week: Jesus rose from the dead. We said, you know, let's be practical now. If that's true, then I may want to pay special attention to what He said about Himself, about us, about me, and about how all of this comes together.

Who Is This That Exposes the Darkness?

Two weeks ago, my topic was "Who is this that exposes the darkness?" If you just flip back to John chapter three, verse 19, it's right after Jesus says, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." Jesus said this: "This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds are evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, for fear his deed will be exposed."

Paul tells us in Romans chapter three, verses 10, 11, 12, that no one does good. Now that offends really our sense of just common sense, because we look around and say, "Well, my neighbor, when I'm gone, cuts my grass, didn't even ask him to. Storm came in last August when we weren't here, and he came in and swept the pool. That's a good thing, clearly." What Paul is saying to us is in the eyes of God, no one does good, because God's not looking at the action but the heart of the actor.

Our hearts are evil, deceptively so. Even in our good actions—sometimes I like to lift the curtain a little and let you see in there—even in our good actions, the reason we do it is for our own benefit. If you watch the local news and watch them cover an event like Special Olympics, they'll talk to the people that work there, volunteer there, and they'll say, "Why do you do this?" Almost always, they'll say, "It makes me feel so good." So you're doing, on the surface, a good thing, but you're not doing it for a good thing—you're doing it for yourself.

What happens is Jesus comes along and exposes that dark side. All of a sudden, the light comes into the world, and the standard shifts from our own sense of good or bad, or goodness or evil, into God's standard. I come along, and this always happens: all of a sudden, once I see God as He really is, all of a sudden I go, "I'm in real trouble."

Who Is This Who Knew No Sin?

Last week, Tim taught in answer to the question "Who is this who knew no sin?" Obviously the answer is Jesus. Tim hung in John chapter eight last week and shared with you four important points: that Jesus claimed to be—John chapter eight, verse 46—claimed to be sinless. Chapter eight, verse 52, He said He was the only way to God. Chapter eight, verse 56, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy. There are hundreds of Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah that would come, and Jesus fulfills every one of them to the letter, including where He'd be born—all the things that He Himself would have no control over at all.

And then in John chapter 10, verse 58, Jesus indeed asserts that He is God. So what I want to do is to pull together, and it'll be this week and next week, pull together this whole series, and have you see that our sin has separated us from God, that God's plan or provision is for Jesus to come to the earth and to die, to die in our place. We now embrace that, and now we have life.

God's Choice to Save Us

When you teach, I was telling somebody the other day, there are moments that are really frustrating moments, and it's not like frustrating angry moments, they're like frustrating helpless moments. And Good Friday was one of them. I thought, like there are times where you're teaching and you say something, and you don't really think it's much, but the emails light up and everybody goes, that was really incredible, that insight, or whatever it was, not to say it's mine, just something you read or whatever. Then there are times when you think you have something really, really special, because it was really special to me, and then I share it with you, and then it's like no reaction at all. And so I can only assume at those moments that the problem is you, not me. I mean, I'm not willing to, no, I assume it's me.

But there was a thought on Good Friday that I had that I thought was really great. But there was not this wow, and it felt like there should have been. So we'll go down this path again at the appropriate time, when I rub my forehead. So here's the point I'm making. And I hadn't really thought much about it in the context of it until Good Friday this year.

Once you're around this stuff for a while, and once you begin to study, and once you realize that in Genesis chapter one and two, God creates, in Genesis three, man falls, and literally, now, within eight verses, God is already promising a redeemer of salvation. And maybe it's me, and I'm wide open to the fact that it's just me. Maybe it's human nature to think that somehow, God didn't have any choice in that matter. Because we get that it's planned. We get it from beginning to end.

We see chapter one and two of Genesis, creation, chapter three, the fall, redemption, restoration. So we see that, we see it's His plan. We can't read through without seeing that God's in control. But here was the point I tried to make Good Friday, I did make Good Friday, it just wasn't any good.

But here's the point I made Good Friday: that's God's plan, but He didn't have to have that plan. God could have done nothing. I know, that's a big deal, I'm glad you got it. I know, it's really frustrating. But it's like, maybe it's just big for me. It's like I'm going, wow, I keep forgetting that. God could have been very, totally justified and say, you sin, you live with it.

The Only Way to Save Us

Wait till sin is death, have at it, little man, or He could have come and saved everyone, but He didn't do either of those. God sent Jesus, and if God was going to save us, there was only one way to do it. He had to become flesh because the sacrifice is required, and it has to be a perfect sacrifice, and no human born of the flesh could pay the perfect sacrifice.

That's why God had to come to this earth, not beamed down or in a rocket ship, but born of a virgin. So He didn't have our sin nature, therefore could, and in fact did, live a perfect life so that His sacrifice was acceptable to God. But God didn't have to do that, but He did.

John Stott writes this: "If we bring God down to our level, raise ourselves to His, then of course we see no need of a radical salvation, let alone of a radical atonement to secure it. When on the other hand we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge that we are, namely, quote, hell-deserving sinners, then and only then the necessity of the cross appears so obvious that we're astonished we've never seen it before."

That's why we have to come back. That's why we traffic in this over and over again. We're just never going to get very far from the condition of man or from the holiness of God.

Our Need for the Biblical View

So take what Tozer says, put it together with what Stott says. So Tozer says our problem with our theology is that it never ascends high enough or descends low enough. And what he's saying is, now Stott, we bring God down to our level or we bring ourself up to His. But we come back again and again and again because we need this biblical view of ourselves.

So that's what we've kept in front of you. There's a sense in which you should look at this. I was talking with Tim in the back and I said this just feels like what we've been teaching intensely for the last 20 weeks. And in reality, there you go, we've been teaching it for 20 years. It's just who we are because that's what the Bible says we are.

So we are asking these questions: who exposes it? Jesus does. Who knew no sin? Jesus. Who takes away the sin of the world? John chapter 1 verse 19.

John's Testimony Begins

We're going to be introduced, and there are two Johns here. One's John the gospel writer, and he's going to record this incident for us. And the chief character in this story is John the baptizer, or John the Baptist.

Chapter 1 verse 19: "This is the testimony of John." We're talking about John the Baptist. "When the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem, and they said, 'Who are you?'"

So this is John the baptizer. As early as verse 6 of this book, we've already met him. Look at it. "There came a man sent from God. His name was John. He came as a witness to testify." By the way, John the gospel writer loved that phrase, testify, 75 times or more in his writings. So in the Gospel of John,

First, second, third John, Revelation, he talks about testify or testifying. And he says, here's my first witness. It's John. He came as a witness to testify about the light so that all might believe through him. Verse 8 says he's not the light, but he came to testify about the light. So that's what we're going to see fleshed out.

So the priests and the Levites come, not under their own initiative, sent by the Jews to encounter this guy, John the Baptist. He's an odd creature, really, as we look at him humanly. You don't need to turn there if you want to make note of it. That's great. Matthew chapter 3 verse 1, a couple Gospels earlier, Matthew writes this: "Now in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness, saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." For this is the one who is referred to by Isaiah the prophet, and John the Baptist is going to use this in just a minute, quoting now from Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 40: "He's the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."

John's Unusual Character and Jesus' Assessment

Matthew chapter 3 verse 4 gives a little biographical sketch of John: "Now, John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey," and he kind of lived out in the desert. He was an odd guy, we would look at that humanly. Jesus had an assessment of him. Here's what Jesus says, recorded in Matthew chapter 11 verse 11: "Truly I say to you, among those born of women there is not one arisen any greater than John the Baptist."

Now that's a big statement. Let's just look at this secular world. You got Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Cicero, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Hammurabi the lawgiver. There's a whole bunch of those people who lived a life, who did things, wrote things, thought things that still affect our life today. Come now into the Bible world, and you meet Abraham and Moses and David and Joseph and Solomon, Jeremiah, Isaiah. And here's what Jesus says: take all those guys and a whole bunch of people I never mentioned, and not one of them is greater than this John dude.

So this is a major figure who comes to the world and basically has one assignment, and his assignment is to proclaim the truth, to make this path straight. We'll talk about it in a minute.

The Religious Leaders Send an Investigation

So verse 19, the Jews—now that term probably here speaks of the Jewish religious authorities—send a priest. They would be the theological authorities of the day. They were the ones who presided over the religious ceremonies, and they were considered the human intermediary between God and man. And the Levites, the Levites are the ones who would assist the priest. They acted really as the temple police. They would be the security detail for the priests. They come under the instruction of the Jewish leaders, because now John's stirring up all this stuff. An odd little character, but he's got all these guys coming, and they're wondering, "Well what is this? You go ask him." So that's what they do.

"Who are you?" And he says, "Well I can tell you what I'm not. I'm not the Christ." So apparently the idea of the Messiah either being here, or about to be here, that seems to be, at least in John's mind—and I assume he assumes that it's on their mind.

John's Three Denials

So they said, "Well okay, are you Elijah?" There were, through prophecies based on Malachi 3:1, Malachi 4:5, the idea that actually Elijah himself would return in a bodily form before the Messiah came to establish earthly kingdom. In fact, I'm told that to this day, some Jewish people's gatherings, as they celebrate the Seder dinner, they'll leave an empty chair in case Elijah shows up that night. So they're waiting for him. So he says, "No, I'm not that."

"Are you a prophet?" "No." "Well who are you?" Verse 22: "So we may give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" We're here on assignment. We can't just go back and say no, no, no. We got to tell them what you are, not what you aren't.

So he said, "I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord."

The Ancient Practice of Road Preparation

In that day and age, ahead of a king that was coming to town, they would send a group of men who would remove all the impediments on the roadway. If there were bumps, they would smooth them out. If there was a path that was crooked, they would straighten it.

When I was home—I was home two weeks ago. Last week we were in Boston. That's where we were. That's why Tim was teaching. I went with Tyler and Braden to Yale, and we went back for three Red Sox-Yankee games. We did not know, when we scheduled it, that the day we were there was, to the date, the 100th anniversary of the opening of Fenway Park. And it was an amazing day. They did, like, field of dreams. Every living Red Sox—if you played 30 seconds with the Red Sox, they invited you back. It was really cool. If you played for the Red Sox for a second, they had you back. And it was really good.

The worst part of the whole weekend was the game. They're up nine to nothing Saturday, and the Yankees score 14 runs in two innings. It was not pretty. I looked over at Yale at one point, and Yale was just sitting there like this. So the boys were awesome. Then last Sunday, it got rained out. It was 56 degrees cooler there than here. So it was rainy and wind-blowing, went to the aquarium. Fish behind the window.

The week before, that's where I was going. I was in the Quad Cities seeing my mom, and we went to the John Deere Museum. So you see all this earth-moving stuff. They have one they're working on now. They've been working on it five years, and it's

The Lamb of God

John gives us a sequence of events that happens over several days. Verse 29 says "the next day," verse 35 "the next day," verse 43 "the next day," and chapter 2, verse 1, "the next day." This is the day after John's encounter with the priests and Levites. John sees Jesus and declares, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world."

This title "Lamb of God" is exclusive to John's writings among the Gospel writers. In this first chapter alone, John presents Jesus with multiple titles: Rabbi (verse 38), Messiah (verse 41), Son of God (verse 34), King of Israel (verse 49), Son of Man (verse 51), and the one the prophets wrote about, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph (verse 45). Each title reveals something significant about who Jesus is.

Picture the scene: there's a crowd gathered around, and John sees Jesus approaching. He points and declares, "There it is! Behold, the Lamb of God!" The title "Lamb" would immediately resonate with these Jewish listeners as a picture of sacrifice. They understood that God and man were separated because of sin, and reconciliation could never happen without a blood sacrifice. There is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood.

The Daily Sacrifice System

These people lived with the reality of sacrifice. On a daily basis at the temple, and especially during Passover, lambs were slaughtered. Right before Jesus died at Passover, the population of Jerusalem would swell to as many as three million people. During that Passover, they would kill as many as 250,000 lambs.

But they all knew that wasn't the real thing. Those sacrifices were symbols, pointing them toward something greater. When John declares "Behold the Lamb of God," he's saying, "There it is! Not just a lamb, but THE Lamb of God. Not one who's a picture of what might happen, but the one who came to take away the sin of the world."

We used to celebrate a Seder dinner every year, trying to make it as authentic as possible. One of the women helping with food preparation came to me troubled because they couldn't get the lamb cooked right. I suggested calling local synagogues to ask how they prepare it. A few days later, she reported that all three synagogues she contacted said the same thing: "We don't use lamb anymore; we use chicken." Somehow "Behold, the chicken of God, who takes away the sin of the world" loses a bit of the imagery.

Christ the Complete Savior

So who is it that takes away the sin of the world? It's the Lamb of God, and the Lamb of God is Jesus. Let me share from J.C. Ryle's writing on this passage:

"Christ is a Savior. He didn't come to earth to be a conqueror, a philosopher, or merely a teacher of morality." Isn't it interesting that this is probably the prominent role most people give Him—a philosopher or teacher? That's not why He came to earth. Was He a teacher? Sure. Did He share truth with us? Yes. Did He live a life we're to model? Yes. But that's not why He came to earth.

He didn't come as a conquering king. He came as a servant king, and He came to save His people from their sin. He came to save sinners, to do that which man could never do for himself, to do that which money and learning could never obtain, to do that which is essential to man's real happiness. He came to take away sin.

Taking Away Sin Completely

Christ is a complete Savior. He takes away sin. He doesn't merely make vague proclamations of pardon and mercy and forgiveness. He took our sin upon Himself and carried them away. He allowed them to be laid upon Himself, and He bore them in His body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24).

The sins of everyone who believes in Jesus are made as though they had never sinned at all. The Lamb of God has taken them away. He didn't die for Jews only, but for Jews and Gentiles. He didn't suffer for a few persons only—He takes away sin. He died once and for all, but that forgiveness is available to us every day.

Jesus came to be the Savior of all who would come to Him. Behold the Lamb of God—not our lamb, not a lamb that will be slaughtered once, but THE Lamb whose purpose for being here was to take away the shame, the guilt, the wrath, and the punishment that we're due.

The question of the day is: who is this that takes away the sin of the world? The answer is Jesus.

The Messiah We Didn't Expect

The passages that Luke and Frank decided to use to anchor this lesson include John chapter 1 verse 29 that we looked at, and others in the Old Testament. I invite you to turn to page 396 in the Bible we gave you—Isaiah 53. We look at Isaiah 53. The heading in my Bible, and I'm sure it's different in others, is the suffering servant.

It's clear at this point from Isaiah 52-53 that somebody is coming. In Isaiah 53, we understand it's the Messiah. One author says the Messiah steps out into full glorious view. So we see the Messiah. Now again, it's a Messiah different than the Messiah the Jews expected. It's not the conquering Messiah. He's not bringing economic prosperity or political control. He's giving us something we need far deeper than that: to take away our sin.

Our Ultimate Problem

That's our ultimate problem. My ultimate problem is sin. My ultimate problem is not that the government doesn't respond to me. I have a pet peeve—you can't even imagine this. I don't understand why we need mail delivery every day. You get nothing in the mail but bills and birthday cards and advertisements. If you went to the mail every other day—Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday—you could take what is a suck hole, 11 billion dollars they're going to give them this week, and turn it into a profit center. Now, it would mean jobs, I got that. But there's something bigger than jobs. We'll find other jobs, because we'll spawn the economy.

The other day, I was talking to Sandy, and I said I should go get my mail, because I don't think I got my mail for a while. I went over, and there was a sheet of paper in there that says, "You haven't picked up your mail in a while, you need to come to the post office and get it. But we won't give it to you until you give us 24 hour advance notice, so call this number." I called the number. It rang and rang. I put it on speakerphone, did my work, it rang. That was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Thursday, I went down and said, "I didn't get my mail, I got this," and they said, "Well, we don't use this number anymore." I didn't make this up. "We don't use that form anymore." I said, "There's a reason you need 11 billion dollars to bail you out." So I got my mail in a big bucket, went over, and literally just threw tons of that away.

Does that bother me? It drives me nuts. But my biggest problem isn't government. My biggest problem is not, "I wish I had more stuff." My biggest problem is sin. And the only solution is Jesus. That's my problem.

A Different Kind of Revolution

When Jesus comes, isn't it interesting that He doesn't lead a political revolution, or an economic revolution, or an educational revolution? Those aren't the problems. Those are symptoms of the problem. The problem is sin. I came as the Messiah, but it's going to be a very different type of Messiah.

Chapter 53, verse 3: "He is despised." He's despised, forsaken. A man of sorrows. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but there's not one incident recorded in the scripture of Jesus smiling or laughing. Now, I'm sure He did. I'm sure He didn't have this sour, "Oh, the world and the weight of the world upon me" disposition. Here's the way I know it, very simple: the children were attracted to Him, and if He was like that, they wouldn't be attracted to Him. But the characteristic of Jesus' life is not laughter. It is a joy, but it's a joy that's incorporated into sorrow. He says in verse 3, He was despised, and we didn't esteem Him.

The Rejection of the Messiah

John Piper observes this: "We must remember that all through His boyhood, and even into His manhood, speaking of Jesus, He was pursued by nasty cracks about His birth, inferring that He was an illegitimate son born to a faithless maiden who had broken her vow of betrothal. His brothers misunderstood Him and did not believe Him. They were embarrassed at some of the things He said and did, and it wasn't until after the resurrection they believed in Him. He was called a drunkard and a glutton and was said to be possessed by the devil. He was called a Samaritan, which is a disparaging term."

He had no home to go to. He said of Himself, "The foxes have holes, the birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay His head" (Matthew 8:20). Sometimes His disciples left Him alone to go about their own business, and He had to go out to the Garden of Gethsemane and sleep alone beneath the olive trees. He became at one point public enemy number one. In the weeks before the crucifixion, the Pharisees offered a reward to anyone who would turn Him in. Surely He was rejected by men. In the words of the apostle John, "He came to His own, but His own people did not receive Him" (John chapter 1, verse 11).

The Sorrow of Understanding

He was a sorrowful man, but the sorrow was born by His clear understanding of the cause of the human condition and the problem. Jesus is there as Lazarus is dead. Jesus knows He's going to raise him from the dead, but then Jesus wept. He sees the effect of sin all around Him. There's joy—He even talks about "for the joy set before Him," speaking of the cross. There's a joy, there's an anticipation of how God will provide a provision for our deepest need, which is sin, but there's a heaviness here.

Chapter 6, that last part, it said, "The Lord had caused the iniquities of us all to fall on Him." The paraphrase from the message is this: "God piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong, on Him, on Him."

The Weight of Our Sin

Look at the words and the way that it's described to this Messiah in this passage from Isaiah 53. Verse 4: "Surely our griefs He Himself bore." Verse 4: "Our sorrow He carried." Verse 5: "He was pierced through for our transgressions." Verse 5: "He was crushed for our iniquities." Verse 5: "The chastening of our well-being fell upon Him." Verse 5: "And

By His scourging we are healed. Verse six, the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Verse eight, He was stricken for the transgressions of my people. Verse 11, He'll bear our iniquities. Verse 12, He bore the sin of many.

Listen to those words, those verbs: struck, smitten, afflicted, pierced, scourged. These are all the things that Jesus absorbed, and it's very clear for us—our iniquity, our transgressions fell on Him. He was there on our behalf. He took our place.

We've All Gone Our Own Way

Verse six: all of us like sheep have gone astray, each turning to his own way. Let me read you again from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the message, Isaiah 53:6: "We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost. We've all done our own thing, gone our own way."

He said you're a sheep, not a goat. Remember when we studied Psalm 23? We said God's very deliberate here in the image. Sheep are by and large stupid, dumb, dirty, fragile, defenseless animals. Not bright at all. He said we're like sheep in the sense that we've all gone astray—they just tend to wander off. Here's what you've done, the paraphrase from Peterson: you've done your own thing, each one. Verse six: each one have turned to our own ways.

"My Way" - The Anthem of Self-Reliance

When I was not a believer, one of the guys that I loved to listen to—still do, really, it's still on my satellite radio, Sirius—is Sinatra. I love Sinatra. One of the songs that really became a song that was identified with Sinatra was "My Way."

I had this picture, as not a follower of Christ, that at my funeral there would be the appropriate—and I assume abundant—shedding of tears. Then there would be all these great things said about me. Since I had neither done great things nor had anyone said great things to me, I assumed they were saving up for that moment. When the funeral was over, at that moment, everyone would rise and they would take me and wheel me out—I preferred sitting in a chair, but maybe in a casket. Right then, they would put on Sinatra singing "My Way." That was going to be my last little shot.

I can't tell you, as I've shared that over the years, how many men and women have said to me, "I've thought that very same thing."

Let me read you this song: "And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. My friends all say it clear, I'll state my case, of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full. I've traveled each and every highway, and more, much more than this, I did it my way."

"Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do and I saw it through without exemption. I planned"—listen to the singular personal pronoun—"I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway, and more, much more than this, I did it my way."

"There were times, I'm sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew, but through it all, when there was doubt, I ate it up and I spit it out. I faced it all, I stood tall, and I did it." You can hear the defiance in here.

"I've loved, I've laughed and cried, I've had my fill, my share of losing, and now as tears subside, I find it all so amusing to think I did all that, and may I say, not in a shy way, oh no, oh no, not me, I did it my way."

Listen to the defiance—it builds to this crescendo: "For what is a man, what has he got, if not himself, that he's got not, to say the things he truly feels, not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows and I did it my way."

It occurred to me as I was doing this that the majority of people in the six o'clock service will have no idea who Frank Sinatra is. Maybe some of you. But you certainly get that, don't you? It's that self-reliance.

The Modern Version of "My Way"

Here's from USA Today—I check USA Today on my iPad or iPhone every day. This was a story that was on today. This is a little more sophisticated, but it's the same story.

The headline is "Secularist Counter Prayer Day with National Day of Reason." Quote: "As millions of Americans bow their heads Thursday for the annual National Day of Prayer, atheists, humanists, and other non-theists will mark the day their own way." The National Day of Reason, or NDR, is in short that expression of the non-theist community who will also hold May 3rd—part protest, part celebration, totally godless.

One of the guys leading this, the Director of Communications for this Center of Inquiry, quote: "In times of great conflict and worry, people want to look to a higher power, and I'm sympathetic to that. But our day puts the focus"—and he's talking about our day, meaning the day of their celebration, the day of reason—"our day puts the focus back on people and what they can do for themselves. We're trying to make a better world on our own by emphasizing good works and good deeds."

In fact, one group in Putnam, Connecticut is holding a Science for Reason book exchange: "Turn in your Bible and receive a free copy of Darwin's Origin of the Species."

Here's what Spock would say at this moment: "This is typically human, and totally human." This is the defiant call. It's "my way," dressed up in some sort of intellectual gobbledygook.

The Problem We Can't Solve

I hear it all the time. Every presidential election: "He's an intelligent guy." We've had all the intelligent guys—they haven't gotten us there. We did all that. We got a Harvard Law guy. Kennedy brought the best and the brightest—that gave us Vietnam, didn't solve anything. John Kennedy said, "We got ourselves into it, we'll get ourselves out of it." How's that working for you?

Here's the problem we get as followers of Christ: we got ourselves into this, our big problem, we can't get ourselves out of it. Our problem is not education. I'm all for education, but you understand in Nazi Germany, they would smoke great cigars and drink the best brandy and listen to Beethoven as they marched the Jews in to incinerate them. They were plenty smart and sophisticated.

It's not economics, though I'm for that. My biggest problem is sin.

Sin operates like a disease. In this sense, it distorts who we really are, just like a cancer that comes into you or a disease that comes upon you. It distorts what you were meant to be. It takes your faculties and throws them off equilibrium. It saps your energy, numbs you, and causes great pain. Sin produces this pollution.

That's the problem we have. The problem with man is this: our sin has got us here. The arrogance of "my way" or the arrogance of a national day of reason, the arrogance of saying we got ourselves into it and we'll get ourselves out of it. When you're in real trouble, you want to hire power. I'm going to suggest it's those people who are in real trouble who all of a sudden see things as they really are, understand the circumstances, and realize there's nothing they can do.

When Susan was diagnosed seven years ago, they diagnosed her with something that was not curable but treatable. Then we went through all the processes of treating. I cannot tell you how many conversations I had about that. Only to think as people walked away, do you understand that you're not curable but we can treat it? We can postpone what's going to happen. This sin disease that we have is not curable and it's not even treatable by us. There's nothing we can do. We can't make it kind of right. Destruction's inevitable.

The Perfect Sacrifice

Let me tie these last two weeks together. Man is in darkness—he's sinned. Sin has invaded you, everybody. The result is that we're children of wrath. We hate God. We dress it up, but we hate God. We make God in our own image. We make Him less, we make ourselves more than everything in between. But man is in darkness, and it's Jesus who came to this life sinless.

Sinless so He would be the perfect lamb. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21—again, one of those verses we've got to do again and again and again: "God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ."

Who was it that was sinless? It was Jesus. Why? So that He would be the perfect sacrifice. So that He could go to the cross. And that in dying on the cross, He could pay the price for your sin.

God's Love Demonstrated

First John—same John as the gospel writer—chapter 4, verse 10: "In this is love, not that we love God." We said we'll talk about love. He tells us in other places the only reason we do love God is because He first loved us. We come into the world alienated from God and we are determined to not change that. We will construct our own version of a God, but we hate the God of the Bible. We despise Him. We want nothing to do with Him.

Now we may warm up to spiritual things or a God that we like, but not that one. But ultimately there are a whole bunch of people who fall in love with Him. Like in this chapel room right now, in the conference center 45 minutes ago, you all took communion. It was a moment when you proclaimed that Jesus was Lord and Savior and He died in your place. But that's because God did this work in your life.

So John says in First John 4:10, "In this is love, not that we love God but that He loved us." How do we know? "He sent His Son to be"—here's the word—"the propitiation for our sin." The word means to satisfy the wrath of God.

Understanding God's Wrath and Love

So if you start talking to people about God, they want to talk about God—love, love, love, love, love, love, love. I love that God is a God of love. But you have edited Him if you don't talk about Him as a God of wrath. Because He loves righteousness and holiness, He hates sin. These six—yea, seven things the author of Proverbs writes as he speaks of God—God hates.

Propitiation means to satisfy the wrath of someone—to satisfy, in this case, the wrath of God. So here's love. If you want to talk about love, real love, it's this: that God sent Jesus to die on the cross, and in doing so, He propitiated or satisfied God's wrath against your sin. That's all those terms we looked at in Isaiah 53.

Who killed Jesus? Isaiah 53, verse 10: "The Lord was pleased to crush Him, pierce Him." Always in that context, it's not just some arbitrary thing. It's not just to make Jesus suffer. There's always a purpose: to crush Him, to scourge Him, to afflict Him for our sin.

The Healing in the Atonement

When we were doing the preaching collective, there's a verse in Isaiah 53 that bugs me. It's the last part of verse 53: "By His scourging, we are healed." Some of your translations will say "by His stripes you were healed." So I was making a point in the preaching collective—I really hate this, because the health and wealth and prosperity guys use this all the time. "He died for your cancer," and so on. There's no healing in the atonement.

Well, no more than I got these words out, one of the young men there, Tyler Johnson, said, "Well, I disagree. Healing is in the atonement. It's that the ultimate healing is going to take place after death." I said, "You know, this is the reason I never liked you from the very beginning." You get what I'm saying. But there is truth.

Haley sent me the other day a text and said, "Braden's getting ready to send you a note to thank you for going to Boston." Then he turned it over and said, "Nana, I wish you were here. I miss you so much." Yale the other day sent a note to Nana, said, "Can you just—I know you can't come back, but can you just come back for my birthday?" Haley sent me a note saying, "You know, it's been however many months, and to know that she has no pain." That's the ultimate healing.

So Tyler's right. Let's not tell him. Tyler's right. That's the ultimate sense. But it's not that He died so that you all have physical life and healing. He died so you all have spiritual life and healing. Doesn't mean He's going to take away your cancer.

We all die. He died to pay the price for your sin. And now, the issue is, how do you respond to that?

Some of you, because we're going to talk about that next week, some of you can't wait. Some of you are sitting there right now going, I don't want to wait a week. I want to know the answer to this right now. That's why there are going to be men and women who will be in the front of the conference center and the chapel after this service, and they're here to talk to you about what it means to know Jesus.

So here you go. We sinned. Christ lived a perfect life. Christ died on the cross. How do you respond? What difference does that make to you, me, here now, today? That's what we'll take a look at next week.

So if you're over in the conference center, I'm not sure this morning if it's Brian or Matt who are going to come and close that time there. Jake is here in the chapel. He's going to lead us in a time of communion right now. So let's pray together as Jake comes.

Father, thank you for loving us when we were not lovable or loving, for loving us in spite of us. God, thank you that you gave us what we truly needed more than anything else, forgiveness and eternal life that we find in Jesus nowhere else. Father, thanks for that. Pray now as we either leave this place or come into a time of communion that our minds would be focused on you and loving you and our hearts would be filled with gratitude and thanksgiving. We pray it in Christ's name. Amen.