Sunday morning — 1 Corinthians 11

0:00 This morning, we are going to start at the bottom of page four. Yesterday, we looked at some thoughts regarding the deity and the humanity of the Lord Jesus. And we looked at them in the context of what Paul had to say about the Lord's Supper, quoting Jesus, he says, This is my body, do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, do this as often as you drink of it in remembrance of me. So we looked at remembering Him, who He is, His person, His humanity, and His deity.

0:48 This morning, when we were in the Lord's Supper, we were looking at this passage in Philippians two and the backdrop of one of the things that Paul says where he says, At the name of Jesus every knee will bow. Interesting backdrop. So I'm going to go off on a little rabbit trail for a moment and look at that because it has to do with the person of Christ. Go back to Isaiah 45 and this is where Paul gets that statement, every knee will bow. And in Isaiah 45, and I'll just start at the beginning of the chapter, Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, his anointed.

1:44 Well, Cyrus was the first Persian king. Now, Isaiah is writing during the time of the Assyrians. Cyrus isn't even born yet. You've got the Assyrians, then you've got the Babylonians, then you've got the Persians. So Isaiah is writing hundred, hundred twenty five, hundred fifty years before Cyrus and he mentions him by name and he calls him his anointed, and the Hebrew word for anointed is Mashiach, his Messiah.

2:29 So Cyrus was a deliverer, a savior, if you will. And Cyrus is the guy, when you look at the end of second Chronicles 36 and the beginning of Ezra, he's the one that sent the Jews back to Jerusalem. The seventy years of Babylon are up, Cyrus comes in, sends the Jews back. So Isaiah is talking about Cyrus and he comes and he says, well, down to verse four, for the sake of Jacob my servant and Israel my chosen one, I have also called you by your name, Cyrus. I have given you a title of honor, though you have not known me.

3:20 I am the Lord, there is no other besides me, there is no God. So he's kind of reminding Cyrus, you know, all of your little deities that you worship, knock it off. I'm the Lord, there is no other besides me, there is no God. I will gird you though you've not known me that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides me. I am the lord.

3:47 There is no other. The one forming light, creating darkness, causing well-being, creating calamity. I am the lord who does all these things. All right, then jump down to the end of verse 14. Thus says the Lord, the products of Egypt, the merchandise of Cush, the Sabaeans, men of stature, will come over to you and will be yours.

4:15 They will walk behind you. They will come over in chains. They will bow down to you. They will make supplication to you. Surely God is with you and there is no one else or none else, no other God.

4:29 Verse 18, Thus says the Lord who created the heavens. He is the God who created the earth and made it. He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, there is none else. I have not spoken in secret.

4:49 I, in some dark land, I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, seek me in a waste place. I, the Lord, speak righteousness declaring things that are upright. Gather yourselves and come, draw near you fugitives of the nations. They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idol and pray to a God who cannot save. Declare and set forth your case.

5:11 Indeed, let them consult together who has announced from of old, who has long since declared it. Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a savior. There is none except me. Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is no other.

6:05 There is no savior besides me. So you you you've got that picture again from the Old Testament regarding who Jesus is. He is one being with the Father and the Spirit. Three persons, one being. Okay?

6:26 So, let's get off our rabbit trail and come back. Page four, so Paul says, and he quotes Jesus, Do this in remembrance of me. Do this in remembrance of me. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Now when when we look at the death of Christ, you you can't separate the death of Christ from both his deity and his humanity.

7:00 We tend to think of the death of Christ as only a human thing. It's not. Okay, and here's the reason and I'm just reading here. In order for him to actually be a sacrifice, he had to be a man because only man can die. In order for him to be a sacrifice sufficient for all sins of all people of all time, he had to be God.

7:34 So in the death of Christ, both the deity and the humanity have to be brought together. To be the sacrifice, He had to be man. To be the sacrifice sufficient for all sins of all people of all time, He had to be God. And so, we're called upon to not only proclaim the fact of His death and that's typically what we usually emphasize, He died. And I want us to look at this morning, not just at the fact of his death, but at everything he accomplished in his death.

8:12 So, that begins on the next page, page five And we're going to look at some of the different doctrines in the scripture very briefly, obviously we only have a half hour, related to the death of Christ. And and all of those doctrines go back to two things. First of all, he's the substitute. In order for God to deal with sin, I mean he could have dealt with sin with us. You die for your sin and you pay for it forever or a sinless perfect substitute who is not merely a man but also God dies in your place and pays for it.

9:09 And so that's basically what we've got going on here. So if you go back to Romans chapter three, here here you've got Romans three twenty three and six twenty three, you've got the fact of sin. All have sinned. Okay, we all know that. The wages of sin is death.

9:36 So everybody's sin and the wage of sin is death. Sin pays a wage, a wage is what you've earned, you deserve it. So, there's the problem. We die or he dies. And so, and then I've given you a bunch of Old Testament passages that look at the idea of the substitute and the substitute goes all the way back to Genesis three.

10:05 So remember in Genesis two, God said to Adam, in the day you eat from this fruit, you will surely die. Well, Satan comes along in the form of a serpent and says, You're not gonna die. God was just messing with you. It's okay. Just go ahead and eat it.

10:26 And, you know, in fact, God knows that in the day of eat, you eat from the fruit, you're you're gonna be wise. You're gonna be like God. Now, remember back in, Isaiah 14, you've you've got these five I wills that Lucifer says. And the last one was, I will be like the most high. Man, it didn't work for him.

10:48 Now he's using the same lie on Adam and Eve. You'll be like God. Nope, didn't happen. So, they ate, they're separated from God, and they should have dropped dead that day. In the day you eat from it, you will surely die.

11:40 The Leviticus 16 passage deals with the Day of Atonement, the scapegoat. The high priest confesses over it all of their iniquities, transgressions, and sins, covers all the bases, sends it away into the wilderness. It's it's a substitute picturing the taking away of their sin. Turn over to Isaiah 53, a passage that that's familiar with all of us and you you've got the the perfect picture of of the substitute. And beginning in verse four, Our griefs He bore, our sorrows He carried.

12:25 Verse five, He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him by his scourging were healed. All of those things should have happened to us, but instead they happened to him. And remember in Acts eight, the eunuch, he's reading through this passage in Isaiah and he's scratching his head and I just... I don't get it.

12:58 Is the prophet talking about himself or someone else? And the Lord sends Philip, Oh, you're reading Isaiah 53. Let me let me come up and explain that to you, and leads him to the Lord. And then the rest of the verses go through the Old Testament pictures of the sacrifice. John one twenty nine, there's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

13:23 He's the substitute. Romans chapter five, one of my favorite substitute passages, six, eight and ten. Romans five, six, eight and ten and I like the way Paul describes us and then he says what Christ did. Six, we were helpless, still helpless. After all these years, we were still helpless.

13:58 We couldn't do anything to save ourselves. At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. So we're helpless, we're ungodly. Verse eight, God demonstrates his own love toward us. First John says, God manifests his love.

14:20 God doesn't just talk about love. He demonstrates it. He shows it. He demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't wait for us to reach some level of spirituality before doing something.

14:42 He did it while we were still helpless ungodly sinners. Verse 10 takes it one step further, while we were enemies, we weren't just helpless ungodly sinners, we were actively enemies, we were opposed to God, He saved us, We were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. So, good substitution passages. Now, the imputation part. This is where my sin was put on him and so our sin was imputed to Christ, sacrifices made, we believe in the one who made the sacrifice, his righteousness is imputed to us.

16:38 God was satisfied. Now, kind of on a side note, some Bibles, use the word expiation. Expiation and propitiation do not mean the same thing and it's unfortunate when some of the translators use the word expiation. I I can understand why they do it, but they shouldn't have done it. The difference is propitiation deals with the person.

17:14 Expiation deals with the problem. So propitiation satisfies God, expiation deals with the problem of sin. So they're related but they're not the same And in the New Testament and in the Old Testament, the word should be propitiation. So God is satisfied. So in Hebrews chapter two verse 17, he says, had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

18:01 So what he did on the cross satisfied God with regard to our sins. Our sins were imputed to him. He died as the substitute. God is satisfied. First John chapter two.

18:25 Here, he uses a different phrase, He Himself is the propitiation for our sins. The Hebrews passage, He made propitiation for our sins. Here, He is the propitiation for our sins. So, what what the writer of Hebrews and John are saying is what he did satisfied God and who he is satisfied God. This is why God could say, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

19:03 I'm satisfied with who he is and I'm satisfied with what he's come to do and what he's accomplished. So, now that God is satisfied and now that there's nothing left for me to do, the rest of this falls into place. So, and all of these other things from point C on down really take place simultaneously. But point A and point B have to take place in that order. So he had to be a substitute upon whom our sins were imputed, his sacrifice was made, God is propitiated, then everything else happens the moment we place our faith in Christ.

19:56 So, our Lord's death on the cross has now enabled God to forgive our sins and forgiveness simply means that we're pardoned. We were guilty but we're pardoned. K? And and keep in mind, being pardoned doesn't mean you're not guilty. You were guilty, but you've been pardoned because the penalty has been paid by someone else.

20:25 And not only have we been pardoned, He has removed our sins. And again, this is that John one twenty nine, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The removing of our sins is, we would call that remission. They're taken away. But there's another point, He's chosen no longer to remember them.

21:31 And we share some of the blessings of that covenant and this is one of those blessings. Now keep in, notice he doesn't say I'm gonna forget their sins. There's a difference between forgetting and choosing not to remember. Okay? We forget all the time.

21:53 God doesn't forget. Forgetting is, you know, part of growing old, it's a memory lapse. God doesn't have memory lapses. God doesn't grow old. God chooses not to remember.

22:08 Now, remember yesterday we were talking about ice cream headaches? Well, you've got the omniscient God who knows all things, not to know some things. How does that work? So the omniscient God who knows everything there is to know and all of the possibilities chooses no longer to remember our sins. Pretty nice.

22:40 Verse 18, Where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Where you have been pardoned, where your sins have been taken away, where God has chosen to no longer remember them, there's no more offering. There there was a song years and years and years ago and I don't even remember exactly how it goes, but the gist of part of the song was when we confess our sins, it's done. Don't go back later and start confessing the same sin again because god's going to say, what sin? What are you talking about?

23:23 I've I've already chosen not to remember that. Why are you bringing this up again? It's gone. I've taken it away. You've been pardoned.

23:32 I don't remember this. So, our Lord's death on the cross has now enabled him to regenerate us And this is the whole concept of being born again. This is what Jesus was talking about with Nicodemus. I just love that passage. Jesus gets right to the point.

23:59 He doesn't... There's no small talk going on here. Nicodemus comes in, sneaks in at night, afraid of the Jews. Rabbi, we know that you've come from God as a teacher. Now I'm not sure who the we is there because the rest of the Pharisees for the most part didn't believe that.

24:19 Maybe this is, you know, me and Joseph of Arimathea, we know that you've come from God as a teacher because no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. And Jesus doesn't even address that. First words out of His mouth, unless you're born again, you're not going to enter the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. Gets right to the heart of the matter, rebirth. You have to be born again.

24:46 Otherwise, you have nothing. And so in in this order, because of what he's done on the cross, because of what because God is now satisfied, we can be born again and gives us new life, a new nature. So we now have eternal life and we have a new nature. Before, we only had one nature, a sin nature. Paul talks about in Galatians five that this sin nature, the flesh, is constantly at war with the spirit.

25:27 Well, we've got this new nature. We can obey. We don't have to sin. Under the old nature, we could do nothing but sin. With the new nature, I don't have to do that.

26:13 So turn there for a moment. So Romans six:six, and the idea of being purchased is in the context of slavery. So we were slaves of sin and Paul brings in this idea of slavery and now we're no longer. So knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves of sin. We're not slaves of sin because we've been redeemed.

27:14 We've been purchased. And if you jump down to the end of the chapter, he says, verse 22, having now been freed from sin and enslaved to God. So some of the some of the context, some of the passages will talk about you've been redeemed. Some of them will talk about being set free. Some of them will talk about being released.

27:41 Some of them will be you've been set free away from what enslaved you. So there's lots of different nuances to redemption in the New Testament. So the main idea is you've been purchased and you've been released. My favorite passage in that regard is Revelation one five. And it's the end of the verse, I will never understand why they don't start verses at the beginning of a sentence.

28:20 Why do you start a verse in the middle of a sentence? End of verse five. Now, some translations use a past tense. Some New American Standard says, to him who loves us, present tense. Some translations, to him who loved us.

28:50 I prefer the present tense because his love didn't stop at some point. He loves us and released us, past tense. So he continues to love us, but we've been released once. We've been released from our sins by his blood. We've been set free.

29:12 We're no longer slaves of sin. I don't have to do that. So we can't say, well, that's just who I am. Well, you know, that's who you were. That's not who you are.

29:31 So when we sin, we make a choice. Before we came to know Christ, we didn't have a choice. Sin was our nature. Now we've got a new nature because we've been set free from that. Now I make a choice and I don't have to do that.

29:54 Point F, our Lord's death on the cross has now enabled God to reconcile us to Himself. To reconcile simply means to make peace. One of the things you will notice in the New Testament is God is never reconciled. You will never find a passage that says God is reconciled. God is the reconciler.

30:23 We are the ones who are reconciled. God is not reconciled. To reconcile means to change from a position of enmity to a position of peace. God was never our enemy. He doesn't need to change.

30:42 He's not reconciled. We were the enemies. We are the ones who are changed from that enmity to peace. So, every passage that you will find in the New Testament, and I've probably given you all of them, talk about God doing the reconciling. So He's the one who reconciles us to Himself.

31:15 Second Corinthians chapter five. Verse 18, Now all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself. So we've been changed from this position of enmity that Paul talked about in Romans 10 or Romans chapter five verse 10. We've been changed from that enmity to peace through the... Through Christ and he has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

31:54 Namely, so this is our ministry telling the world that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. So that's our ministry. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. You know, so if somebody says, so what do you do for a living?

32:20 I'm an ambassador. Really? Where? Well, my citizenship's in heaven, so I'm an ambassador of heaven. That's what I do.

32:56 And here's where you have to be made care... Be careful. Justification is a declaration of righteousness. Justification does not mean to be made righteous. God declares us righteous.

33:18 And a lot of people confuse justification with sanctification. Justification happened once. The moment we placed our faith in Christ, God declared us righteous. Sanctification deals with holiness and there's there's a twofold thing going on with with sanctification. We've been set apart but we are also being set apart and I'll get that in a moment.

34:00 So He has declared us righteous. Turn over to Romans chapter three again. In verses nine to 18, he paints a picture of mankind. And just to summarize, none righteous, none understands, none seeks for God, none does good, not even one. And then he says, verse 23, all have sinned fall short of the glory of God being justified, declared righteous as a gift by his grace through the redemption because now you've been purchased, you belong to him, which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation, a public display of his satisfaction in his blood through faith.

35:10 So you've got redemption, propitiation, justification, tossed into the salad. We've been declared righteous. So he says in chapter five of Romans, having been justified, past tense, by faith, we have peace with God. That's reconciliation. Okay, so you've got all of these things going on here.

35:40 Now, sanctification, like I said, is not the same. Justification deals with righteousness. Sanctification deals with holiness. Justification is a declaration. Sanctification is both a declaration, but it's also a process.

36:01 Take a look at one Corinthians chapter one. Now, sanctification is something that happens again the moment you place your faith in Christ. You are set apart. In fact, all of these things happen the moment you place your faith in Christ. You've been forgiven, your sins have been removed, your God no longer remembers them.

36:44 You're born again. You're redeemed. You're reconciled. You're justified. You're sanctified.

36:49 So in first Corinthians one verse two, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified. Saints are in Christ Jesus, saints by calling. So the the the word saints goes along with that past tense, you've been sanctified. Now think of the Corinthians. Sanctification saints is the last word I would use for the Corinthians.

37:26 I mean, these people, some of the things they were doing were just nasty. You know, chapter five, some guy is with his stepmom. Really? And these people are sanctified, Suing one another and all of these schisms and idolatry and... But he says you've been sanctified.

37:50 The moment you placed your faith in Christ, you've been sanctified. Now there's the other part of being sanctified. That's an ongoing process. So they have been set apart. They are saints.

38:07 Now God's in the process of conforming them to the image of Christ. That's an ongoing thing. So while justification is a one time action, Sanctification has a one time component, but an ongoing thing as well. So keep those thoughts in mind. Next page, we're just flying through this.

39:33 I've determined that ahead of time. Second thing that's predestined are inheritance. The moment you place your faith in Christ, I have determined ahead of time you will receive an inheritance. And the third thing that's predestined, Romans eight, the moment you place your faith in Christ, I will begin the process of conforming you to the image of my son. It's going to happen.

39:56 Now, you can go along willingly, you can go along kicking or screaming, but it's going to happen. So he says in verse five, in love, and again, right in the middle, why do they put... In love he predestined us to adoption as sons. It's it's already done. God determined ahead of time that the moment you place your faith in Christ, you are a not merely a child of god, you are a son of god.

40:34 And going along with the sonship, jump down to verse 11, in him also, we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will. Now take a look at Galatians chapter four. Here he says, verse four, when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, because under the law they were slaves, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father. It's because we're sons, because we're adopted that we can call God father.

41:44 We're no longer slaves. We're sons. We're not merely children, we're sons. And we have all of the privileges and all of the responsibilities of that sonship. God's able now to glorify us.

42:05 Take a look at Ephesians chapter two. And I want you to notice the tenses of the verbs. Verse four, and verses one to three kind of paints this picture of this is what we were like, dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to the course of this world, sons of disobedience, indulging the lusts of our flesh, children of wrath, but God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, past tense, and raised us up with him, but I'm still here. As far as he's concerned, I've been raised up already. You know, talk about the security of your salvation.

43:10 He already considers every believer as raised up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Past tense. He doesn't say he will raise us up and he will seat us. He says, you've been made alive, you've been raised up, you've been seated with Christ in the heavenlies. From his perspective, we're already glorified and it all goes back to the work of Christ on the cross.

43:46 So quickly, these last few points, because of everything he's done, we can experience daily cleansing from sin. So here you've got this idea again. There's two parts to our cleansing. There's the initial cleansing from sin that establishes our relationship with God, and then there's the daily cleansing from sin that maintains our fellowship with God. Okay?

44:20 Keep those two thoughts separate. We are initially cleansed establishing a relationship that can never change and we are daily cleansed maintaining our fellowship. And this is why, first John chapter one, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and the whole chapter has to do with fellowship with God. We could go off and talk about that a lot. His death on the cross has made it possible for us to approach God, the Father, with confidence.

45:05 We we don't approach him cowering in some corner afraid to say anything. We can come confidently, And we can confess our sins confidently. You know, sometimes we go and we're afraid to confess some heinous thing we've done, you know, as though we're going to shock him. Really? He's the omniscient one.

45:30 He already knows what we're going to confess. We're not going to surprise him. We might be ashamed, but we're not going to surprise him. So we come confidently, boldly, and when I say that, you know, I'm not, I'm, sometimes people come flippantly. We don't approach God flippantly.

45:53 He is God. He's our Father. So we can come confidently, boldly, we're not going to surprise him. We also have now the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and not just the Holy Spirit, but the Father and the Son, according to John 14, indwell us and we've got the Spirit's sealing, we've got the Spirit's pledge, we've got all of that. And, just lastly, His death on the cross destroyed the works of the devil and rendered him powerless.

46:34 Sometimes we have a hard time believing that, but he really is powerless. He can't make us do anything. He can prowl around like a roaring lion seeking to someone to devour, but what does James and Peter say to do? It doesn't say, Flee from him. It says, Resist him.

47:28 He's our substitute. Our sin was imputed to Him. God is satisfied. We've been regenerated, reconciled, redeemed, justified, sanctified, adopted. We've gotten...

47:41 All of these things go back to the death of Christ. So when we proclaim His death, these are some of the things that we're proclaiming. These are the things that He has accomplished for us. These are done. These are ours.

47:59 We just have to realize this is what we've got. This is what He's done for us. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. We thank you for everything that the Lord Jesus has done for us on the cross.

48:17 We thank you that he has died to pay the penalty for our sin as our substitute, and we thank you that you are satisfied. We thank you that all of these things are true and that we belong to you. We thank you in Jesus' name.