The Passover and the Crucifixion

Okay, how's that? Thank you for the reminder, brother. It is good to be in the house of the Lord, and it's a blessing to see you folks here today. I'm grateful that you've taken the time to come and visit us and get out of bed and be here to worship the Lord together with other brothers and sisters in Christ. So, if you were here this morning, you realize that I covered a lot of territory for the Sunday school lesson.

Well, I'm gonna be doing the same thing for the service this morning. I jokingly said you're going be here until 03:00. I hope it won't be that long, but I do have a lot of material to cover, and I may have to cut things out as I go along. But this morning, I'd like for you to just open your bibles to John one twenty nine. There's several passages, but we're just gonna use this as an effort to focus our attention on what we're doing here this morning.

John one twenty nine. John one twenty nine, and let's let's read that one verse there. This is the story of John the Baptist. So that's the John we're reading about here. The next day, seeth Jesus coming onto him and saith, behold the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

Right. So we're gonna focus this morning on the topic of the Passover and the crucifixion. And the details of Christ's crucifixion fulfill the true prophetic spiritual meaning of the Passover. So we're gonna see how this relates together. This morning, I focused on the first five books of the Old Testament known as the Pentateuch, which means Five.

Very good. Some of you who were here learned five scrolls is what Pentateuch means. It's also known as the Torah. You probably heard that word. And so there are a lot of details about the ministry and the life of Christ that can only really fully be grasped and understood if you are acquainted with the Pentateuch in particular.

So we're gonna be going back and forth in our minds today, seeing how some of the teachings from the Old Testament relate to Christ's ministry and how he fulfilled those prophecies in the New Testament. So this morning, as I said, we looked at the relationship between the Torah or the Pentateuch and the life and ministry of Christ in the New Testament. So awareness of the things that are explained in the Old Testament can give us a full appreciation for what Jesus did. It can stir up an amazement and a sense of awe and adoration for God's great wisdom and orchestrating what seem like totally unrelated events that occur at very different times throughout history in order to fulfill his great redemptive plan for all mankind. Now with those thoughts in our mind, let's take time to pray and ask God's blessing on the message today.

Heavenly Father, we're deeply grateful for the privilege to be gathered together here with other precious brothers and sisters in Christ and perhaps some folks who don't know you, but, you would like to know them. You would like to have them part of your family. Perhaps this will be the day of their salvation. But Lord, we ask of you that you would be present with us in the person of your dear Holy Spirit, that you would open the eyes of our understanding, that you would fill our hearts with a greater love for you and appreciation for what you've done for us, that we might worship you in spirit and in truth as you desire, and that you would be exalted in our midst, glorified in our presence. And we desire, Lord Jesus, you would likewise have mercy on our fellow citizens in America.

This is a great land that you've blessed us with the privilege of being citizens of, Lord, and we're in great need of your protection, your mercy, your blessing, your forgiveness. Please give to our leaders wisdom. Please, especially right now, be with our military personnel, many of whom are in harm's way, facing grave danger, endeavoring to protect our nation. And we thank you for their sacrificial endeavors to do this. Please bless them and encourage them.

Please bring comfort to those who've already lost some of their loved ones in the conflict going on in Iran. And please, Lord, help us to be faithful servants of yours every day that you help us to draw breath until the day that we see you. May you be exalted now through this message in Jesus name I pray. Amen. So in light of the approach of our annual celebration resurrection of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, I want us to more deeply consider just how the story of the Exodus and the first Passover underlie and relate to the story of that final week of Jesus' life on earth, especially leading up to its culmination in His crucifixion on Good Friday.

Now, the New Testament looks at Jesus' crucifixion through the theological framework of the Passover, which was established in Exodus 12. Alright? So in other words, when the New Testament talks about what Christ did on the cross, it's making reference back to the Passover, which we learned was established in Exodus 12. We talked about that this morning. We won't have time to actually read this passage, but I'll make reference to various verses in Exodus as we go along here.

If you wanna make notes, you can look them up later on when it's convenient for you. I'm sorry. Just we don't have enough time to look everything up. So the Passover originates as a divinely ordained commemoration. Was established by God's instruction to Moses and Aaron in Egypt as the beginning of Israel's religious calendar.

And that's in Exodus twelve:one-two. So this observance centers on a carefully prescribed ritual that involves sacrificial animal and protective symbolism. And we'll see what this is all about as we go along. First of all, let's just consider the meaning of the Hebrew word, which we call the Passover. The English translation Passover doesn't fully get the whole idea behind the Hebrew word Pesach.

So the word Pesach has to do it's a verb. It has to do with protection. And if you'll look at Isaiah thirty one five just briefly turn there. Isaiah thirty one five, you will see this very word used, and you'll get a full appreciation for the meaning of that word. Okay.

So Isaiah thirty one five, it says there, as birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem. Defending also, he will deliver it, and passing over, he will preserve it. So there you see the word passing over, that's the word Pesach. But the other verbs there relates to it. So the verb you see, defend, defending, deliver, preserve.

So the Lord is not portrayed in Exodus as passing over the door, but more as protecting the entrance from the slaughtering angel. We're talking now about the original time of the Exodus when God told the Jews, get ready, you're gonna be delivered, And I want you to sacrifice the lamb. And I want you to put the blood on the post and the lintels. Okay? So the reason for that, we'll find out about that later on.

But right now, we want you to see that the Lord, when He passes over, He's protecting the people inside that door that has the blood on it from the death angel that's coming by. Okay? So that's one of the broader meanings of the word that's translated Passover. Okay? So the blood on the doorpost and lintel are now seen as both purifying the doorway and by extension, those who are residing inside the house, the people who took the time and exercise faith to obey God and slaughter the animal and put the blood on their door frame there.

Those people are now they're safe inside their house, and they have been purified as well as being protected. Okay? So this Hebrew word, Pesach, comes from a root meaning to pass through or to leap. Figuratively figuratively, it means to pass by in a sense of sparing or showing mercy. Alright?

That's what God did with those first Jews that experienced that first Passover. So the elements of the Passover. What exactly did the first Jews have to do? And what exactly do all the Jews since that time do every time they celebrate the Passover? Well, there's several different elements of it.

First one is the sacrificial animal and the requirements for that animal. Each household was a select and unblemished male year old lamb. It could be from the sheeps sheep rather or the goats, but but it had to be a lamb. So it had to be a young one year old lamb from the lambs from sheep or the goats. And it was selected on the tenth day of the month.

This is in Exodus twelve three and five three through five. So that lamb had to be unblemished. It means it had to be, first of all, had to be healthy, could have no unusual markings. It had to be fit as a sacrificial animal for God. So that tenth day of the month was five days before the Passover, and that is equivalent to Palm Sunday.

Okay? So when they were selecting the Passover lamb in Jerusalem, the time of Jesus, he was riding into Jerusalem on the donkey, Palm Sunday. People were acknowledging him as the son of David, the Messiah. That's what was happening when they were selecting the lamb. So the lamb was then kept until the fourteenth day when the entire Israelite assembly, all the Jews at the time who were still slaves in Egypt, they would then gather together in their homes.

They would slaughter the lamb that they had selected, and they observed it for those four days from the tenth day to the fourteenth day. They observed it to make sure it's healthy, it's in good condition, it's a suitable, good, sacrificial creature. This day, the fourteenth day was the day before the Passover. They slaughtered this lamb that evening right before sunset. So it became the next day, it was Friday.

The meat was then consumed the same night. It was prepared by roasting. It was eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. This is Exodus twelve:eight-nine. No bone was to be broken, Exodus 12 through twelve forty six and Numbers nine twelve.

Nothing was allowed to remain until the morning. Any leftovers were supposed to be burned. That's Exodus twelve ten. And this signified that the Passover lamb was a complete and satisfactory acceptable sacrifice. So the people were both purified from their sins and they were thereby protected from God's wrath and judgment, signified by the death angel striking down the firstborn.

So there we saw the sacrificial animal and the requirements for that animal. Now we're gonna look at the protective significance of what happened. So the blood served a critical protective function. The Israelites were instructed to apply the blood on the doorposts and the lintels of their homes. That's Exodus twelve:seven.

And God announced that He would pass through Egypt that night, striking down all the firstborn, human and animals alike. But he was gonna pass over the houses marked with blood. He was gonna protect them, the inhabitants of those homes, and he would spare them from the destruction that was coming on all the others who ignored this procedure, this ritual that God had set forth. So we read about this in Exodus twelve twelve and thirteen and twenty three. So the act of marking doorpost with the lamb's blood symbolizes God's protection over the Israelite households.

And this distinguished them from the Egyptians during the divine judgment that was about to fall on them. Okay? So the Egyptians, they said, Pharaoh said, who's the God of the Israelites that I should worship and honor him? They basically thumbed their nose at God and they're about to suffer for what they their attitude there. So those people who feared Yahweh, the God of Israel, the one who was His name was brought to them through Moses, the prophet.

It was Moses who was sent to deliver them. Right? So now we're going to look at the commemorative nature. So the sacrificial animal, the protection that was showing up there, the commemoration. This was something that God established as a festival, a ritual to be fulfilled every year from this time forward.

And it's been going on every year from that time to this day, about three thousand five hundred years. Every year, and it's soon coming up again, Passover. It occurs, in the Jewish calendar during the month of it's now called Nisan, we used to call it Aviv. It's basically March and April of our year. So it's the springtime and it occurs every year in that particular time of the year.

And funny how it's always linked with the resurrection and Easter, the resurrection, right? The crucifixion rather and the resurrection. So the meal itself was eaten in a posture of readiness, They had their loins girded. In other words, back then they wore like robes. And if you were gonna do some work or move quickly, they would use some sort of a belt and tie their robes up so that they weren't in their way so they could move fast and walk and not trip and stumble.

So the loins were girded, getting ready to go somewhere, shoes on their feet, getting ready to go somewhere, staff in their hand, getting ready to go somewhere, and they ate it quickly as the Lord's Passover, Exodus twelve eleven. So this was not merely a meal, but it was an enacted memorial of divine deliverance. This is what it says in Exodus twelve fourteen. So a pattern of remembrance was established that would define Israel's identity in the religious calendar for centuries to come from that time forward. So to this day, Jews around the world gather in their homes to recite the Passover Seder.

You may have heard that word Seder. It means ordered. The word seder means ordered. It refers to the ordered ceremony retelling the meaning and the details of the first Passover. And it's interesting that in their retelling of the story, the Jews today, as they tell this story to their children and the people who are gathered together with their family, they're identifying themselves as having been the ones who were in slavery and were being about to be delivered.

And they are the ones that God delivered. Very interesting. This is what they're thinking. This is what they're portraying in their Passover Seder. And yet, how few Jews really acknowledge what really happened to them when the Messiah came and did deliver them.

So now we know the meaning of the word and the elements of the ritual. We need to think about the connection between this original and every subsequent Passover and what Christ did on the cross. So how is Christ a Passover lamb? I'm gonna consider several factors here. First of all, by his character and his purity.

Christ is designated as a lamb to signify his innocence, his meekness, his sufficiency for his people. The lamb's meekness, it's harmlessness, it's willingness to be led to slaughter without resistance, provides an emblem of patience that mirrors Christ's humility and submission. Peter describes him as a lamb without blemish and without spot or defect. That's first Peter one nineteen, if you'd like to look that up. This echoes the Passover requirement that the sacrificial animal be unblemished.

This purity qualifies him to bear the weight of redemption. So as we read John one twenty nine, was it? The right? Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He's going to bear the weight of redemption.

In other words, he's gonna carry upon his body on the cross as it says, various places in the testament, all the weight of all the sins of all mankind for all history. That's a weight. If he just took my sins alone, that would be a weight enough. He took the weight of all of our sins when he died on the cross. So he is qualified to bear that weight of redemption because of his purity.

Also by his sacrificial function. The Paschal lamb, Paschal refers to Passover, functioned as both a sacrifice and a feast. And so it was a sacrifice in its killing and blood sprinkling. This was typical of sacrifices, sacrificial animals. They were slaughtered.

Their blood was taken and spread around on the altar, in this case, the doorpost and lintels. And then it was a feast also because the people gathered together to eat this slaughtered lamb. They cooked it and they ate it. So Christ similarly represents himself as a victim, sacrificial lamb, satisfying God, and as nourishment refreshing believers. Think the Lord's Supper.

Right? Jesus said this bread is symbolic of my body and you're gonna eat it now. The cup symbolic of the blood I'm gonna be shedding. You're gonna drink it now. So it's a fulfillment of the Passover there.

So Jesus was offered to God for sins, expiation, and is offered to us for application to our souls. I'm gonna skip over talking about what that means with regard to expiation. That's a big theological word. It's one of those words I learned in bible school, but I have to keep looking up every time I refer to it because I can't remember it. But basically it refers to the fact that His death and His bloodshedding provided deliverance from our sins and reconciliation with God.

So He saved His people forever from the consequences of their sin, which was the eternal condemnation that their sins deserve from a Holy God. The redemptive scope, right? We saw Him as the sacrificial lamb. We saw what that means. How does it tie in with redemption?

Well, the slain lamb is a type of the lamb of God. So the original Passover lamb and every Passover lamb that was slaughtered from that time forward was a type of the lamb of God whose blood was shed on Calvary. And when the Jews dipped something into the blood and sprinkled it and painted it on their doorframe, they used something called hyssop. Hyssop was a plant that was suitable, could be used like a brush or a broom, and was very common in that area at that time. And it typifies faith Because unless they had the faith to take that piece of hyssop and sprinkle that blood all over their doorframe, they weren't gonna be safe from the avenging death angel.

So applying the lamb's blood to the doorposts of the Israelite houses in Egypt had the same effect as our applying Christ shed blood to our hearts by faith. As they were sheltered from the death angel, so the believer is shielded from God's wrath as a result of salvation. First Corinthians five seven. I'd like you to turn there, please. New Testament.

First Corinthians chapter five verse seven. The latter part of that verse we read, for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. So very clearly, apostle Paul makes the connection between what happened to Christ on the cross of Calvary and his participation in the last supper. All this ties into the Passover. And from Paul's understanding and perspective, remember he was a scholar of the Old Testament.

He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees before he became a Christian. He understood and knew the Old Testament. And he's saying Christ is the symbolic Passover lamb. He fulfilled everything that the Passover lamb stood for. So the requirement that the lamb be roasted symbolizes the sufferings of Christ under the wrath of God.

When he was on the cross on Good Friday during the crucifixion, he bore the sins of many and He suffered the wrath of God against the sins that we've all committed. Because sin brings forth judgment. It must be judged because God is holy. So Christ suffered under God's wrath. That's what the lamb being roasted in the first Passover symbolizes.

The unleavened bread accompanying the roast lamb shows the essential separation of the Israelites from Egypt and also their hurried departure from that land. The bitter herbs remind the redeemed of their bondage under Pharaoh. They were slaves. They were forced to work to build the cities of Pharaoh. They were not being paid for their labor.

They were beaten. They they suffered having many of their male babies being murdered by being cast into the Nile River. They were under great affliction, and that was symbolized by the bitter herbs. What a bitter life it must have been for them. So Israel's Passover represented an incredible act of God, a miracle really of deliverance, but it was only a shadow of the redemption that Christ's life, death, and resurrection brought to those who put their trust in him.

The Passover meal looked back to the historic Exodus and forward prophetically to its fulfillment in Christ, God's precious spotless lamb. So let's move now from considering how Christ fulfills the role of the Passover lamb to thinking about the timing of his crucifixion and how it fulfilled that aspect of the Passover. So the time of the crucifixion. Jesus was crucified on the day of the preparation of the Sabbath, which John's gospel identifies as being the day of preparation for the Passover. This is in John chapter 10 verses 14 through 18.

So John emphasizes that Jesus died on the cross during the precise time when the temple priests were slaughtering the Passover lambs. What a coincidence. It's amazing how when you stop to think about it and you realize the connection between what happened, what was prophesied in the Old Testament, what has been reenacted for thousands of years was completely fulfilled exactly to the very timing in the life of Christ, what he did. And that that just helps to further cement the understanding that Christ is the promised foretold prophet. He is the Messiah.

Okay? So the tenth of Nisan or Aviv, when they first selected the lamb, I mentioned that earlier, that was Palm Sunday. The fourteenth, this is the day of Passover, was the following Friday, and that's the date of Jesus' crucifixion. We don't have time to look at it right now, but if you look later on at Luke 22 verses seven through 20, you'll see several comments relating to things related to the preparation of the Passover. Okay?

So and you will see how that coordinates with Passover events in the the last few days of Christ's life, how it fulfills many of those events. Now, for those people who are really paying attention, when you read the, synoptic gospels, and then you read John, who's not one of the synoptic gospels, he takes sort of a different perspective. He talks about some of the things that are different from what the other three talk about. You might notice that there's a slightly different chronology in the timing and that's caused confusion, of course. This was something I'd heard about and I'd studied when was in Bible school and I never really came to a full understanding of it.

But as I was preparing for this message, I came across a very helpful explanation. So I'm gonna just read what that explanation is. So the there's an apparent problem, apparent contradiction in the New Testament where Mark fourteen twelve through 16 says that the first Lord's Supper in the upper room was a Passover meal. In John eighteen twenty eight, there, John says the Passover had not yet occurred. He says that as John says, the Pharisees had not yet eaten the Passover on the morning of Jesus' crucifixion.

So possibly the last supper was a home based Passover Seder. The last supper, remember they met in the upper room? It was in somebody's home. This was typical for what the Jews did to celebrate the Passover. But by this time in the Jewish history, there was also quite possibly a a national celebration of the Passover, which took place at the temple in Jerusalem.

And so that was off by one day, and that would account for this conflict here or this apparent contradiction. So the national temple based service took place on the next day, and this explains the apparent discrepancy. So there was a sacrificial substitution. Paul explicitly identifies Christ as our Passover who is sacrificed for us. We already looked at that in first Corinthians five seven.

John the Baptist declares Jesus as the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. That's John one twenty nine. And so we see that the cross, the crucifixion is a vicarious sacrifice of atonement. And this understanding simultaneously unveils or makes clear to us the inner meaning of the Passover. It wasn't so clear to the Jews of the first Passover who were coming out of Egypt during the Exodus, And it wasn't sadly, it hasn't been clear to most Jews since that time.

But God made it clear through ministry and the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So there is a redemptive fulfillment. The New Testament authors describe Jesus' death as accomplishing a new exodus of freeing people from Satan's power, ransoming them from death's domain. Jesus becomes the sacrificial son, the lamb of God. His death rescues humanity from sin's destructive and powerful death grip.

The original Passover lamb's death secured Israel's liberation from slavery in Egypt. That was a symbol of the world's powerful grip on sinful humanity. As the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt through God's mighty work at Passover, Christians are redeemed from our vain conversation. That is our empty pointless meaningless way of life with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Once again, first Peter one eighteen and nineteen.

Now, when the soldiers came to Jesus during the crucifixion, they discovered that he was already dead. Therefore, they did not break his legs. What's that all about? Why is that even important? Why would John even mention that?

It's in John chapter 19 verses 31 to 36. This is a detail that John emphasizes as theologically significant. This is very, very important from God's perspective. It wasn't just a mere circumstantial thing that he pointed out. So the immediate reason was practical.

Why would they break the legs of people hanging on the cross? Breaking the bones of crucifixion victims served partly as an act of mercy to hasten death. But Jesus had died unusually quickly that afternoon. See, when a person is hanging on a cross, the mode that ultimately leads to their dying is they suffocate because their whole body weight is pulling down, and they can't breathe. They have to raise themselves up on their legs to open up their chest cavity so they can get more air to breathe.

Ultimately, they can't do it any longer, and they just hang there and they suffocate. So to hasten the death of criminals who are already suffering horribly, the soldiers would come along at a certain time. They would see they're still alive. They would use a mallet or hammer or something, break their legs so they could not support their body. Therefore, it would hasten this suffocation that would lead to their death.

So John's gospel frames this event as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. John explicitly states the unbroken bones fulfilled scripture. A bone of him shall not be broken. This connects to multiple scriptural passages in the Old Testament. Psalm 34 20 depicts God's protection of the righteous where it says, He protects all His bones, not one of them will be broken.

Psalm 34 20 that is. Exodus twelve forty six and Numbers nine twelve specify that no bone of the Passover lamb may be broken. They didn't break the bones. So these unbroken bones point to Jesus as the Passover lamb. And you remember also, this is slightly apart from the Passover lamb, but it was also a significant fulfillment of prophecy.

When they noticed that he was already dead, what happened next? Remember? Spear into his heart, into his side. Right? That fulfilled Zechariah chapter 12 verse 10, a prophecy saying that this would happen.

And this identifies Jesus as a member of the messianic or Davidic line establishing through the manner of his death that Jesus was both the lamb of God and the messianic king. No bones were broken, lamb of God, Passover lamb. And being pierced in his side, messianic king. Now this is interesting. I came across this as I was studying.

In Jewish thought, disfigurement, which would be if the bones were broken, that would be a part of the disfigurement. That sort of thing was considered an obstacle to resurrection. So to the Jews at that time, it was very important that the body's integrity be preserved so that that person could participate in the resurrection. This is what the Jews thought, of course. So, this is especially significant for the resurrection narrative because you had no broken bones.

From the Jews perspective, he could be qualified, so to speak, to be resurrected, which he was, of course. So he had no broken bones. Jesus' body wasn't allowed to stay on the cross until the next morning, John nineteen thirty one and thirty eight. Just as the remains of the Passover meal were not to be left over until the next day, but instead they were burned. So we see another parallel between Jesus' crucifixion and the Passover.

Now there's a spiritual continuity here between the Passover and the crucifixion. So according to the gospels, the last supper ever after commemorated as the Lord's supper, which we were going to celebrate on the last Sunday of this month, That was a Passover meal. And the Israelites proclaim the Passover lamb's death through eating it. Whereas Christians proclaim the Lord's death through the Lord's Supper, symbolically eating his flesh by eating the bread, Symbolically drinking his blood by drinking the cup, the juice. So we're keeping that commemorative purpose of the Passover alive at the command or direction of the Lord Himself.

So He's transforming the ultimate understanding of what happened with the first Passover. He's now fulfilled it. And He wants us to remember that this is what He's done. So as long as we continue celebrating the Lord's Supper, we will remember what he did. So it should be apparent how we ought to apply the word of God regarding the Passover celebration and its obvious connection to the crucifixion.

The fulfilled meaning of the Passover should be crystal clear to those with eyes to see. God gave not just the Jews, but all mankind a picture of these spiritual truths. We're all slaves, captives of our own inborn sin nature. We're absolutely incapable of delivering ourselves. That's one point.

Number two, it's gonna take a miracle of God to redeem us just as it took a miracle of God to deliver the Jews from their Egyptian slavery, their bondage. We, in a similar fashion, are slaves and in bondage to the power of our sin nature. There's no way we can deliver ourselves. You can try. I tried before I became a believer, and I failed miserably.

I learned there's just no way I can keep those 10 commandments even if I want to, even if I realize and acknowledge their importance and value, I could not keep one of them. And so not only does it take a miracle to redeem the Jews from their Egyptian bondage, it takes that same kind of a miracle, the death of Christ, God's intervention for us to save us. And in order for that to happen, only a suitable sacrificial substitute is sufficient to purge our sins and protect us from God's wrathful judgment. God had to be the one to provide that sacrificial lamb. We couldn't do it.

I mean, the Jews were required to select one and observe it for four days and make sure it was unblemished and all that. They were just fulfilling the picture of what Christ ultimately fulfilled permanently in his own body as he suffered and died on the cross. So each one of us must by faith apply the blood of the perfect lamb of God to our sinful heart if we hope to find redemption. Just like those Jews getting ready to be delivered from bondage. They had to exercise faith.

If they didn't slaughter that lamb, if they didn't put the blood on the post, they were gonna get slaughtered by the death angel. At least the firstborn in their families would die. So they exercised faith when they took the hyssop and they painted the blood on the doorframe. We exercise faith by putting our trust in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ as he died on the cross. So here's the difference though.

Passover is only a picture of the perfect substitutionary atoning sacrifice made by Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. Whereas Christ fully, permanently, effectually secured the eternal redemption of everyone who puts his trust in Jesus' complete once for all forever sacrifice for sin. The first time I ever heard that message, I thought to myself, that's the best news I have ever heard. How come nobody ever told me that before? So I hope it's not your first time to hear this message today, but perhaps it is.

Perhaps you're one of those individuals who never really fully put it all together. You've maybe read the Bible, you've heard this message before, you never quite grasped the significance of it. Well, please listen in closing here to several passages, some in Hebrews. If you'd like to turn there, I'll be reading first from Hebrews chapter nine, several verses. Hebrews chapter nine verse 22.

I'm wrapping things up here just by reading scripture. Let the word of God speak to your heart. Hebrews nine twenty two. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood and without shedding of blood is no remission. There's no forgiveness of sins unless there's been a blood sacrifice.

Hebrews nine twenty eight. So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many and under them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin and the salvation. Hebrews ten twelve. Move over to the next chapter, verse 12. But this man referring to Jesus Christ, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever when he died on the cross of Calvary, sat down on the right hand of God.

That means that the sacrifice was completed. It was acceptable because no priest ever sat down to offer sacrifices. When they sat down, the sacrifice was done. And it says here, he offered one sacrifice for sins forever. It's done.

In fact, Jesus said that before he died. It's finished. It's done. Everything that God required has been done and he gave up the ghost. Okay?

So now in conclusion, first Peter two twenty four, turn a few more pages over in your bibles. First Peter two twenty four. Again, talking about Jesus Christ who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead to sins should live under righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. We all had a sickness. We're born with it.

We have terminal illness, disease that ultimately is gonna kill us from the moment of our conception. That disease, of course, is sin. The Bible makes it very plain and human experience makes it plain that the wages of sin is death. That's the punishment. That's what's the ultimate outcome.

It's going to happen sooner or later to all of us at one time, unless we're alive when Jesus returns and we have put our trust in him. But the fact that we have this sin problem ought to make us all seek salvation. We don't want the ultimate punishment for sin. I don't want it. Do you want to die forever and be separated from God forever?

Your creator, the one who made you for to be enjoying his fellowship for all eternity. Do you wanna be separated from that God? I don't wanna be separated from him. No. But if we reject this message of the gospel, if we turn up our noses at the cross and we say, I don't need that.

I'm good enough. I can do it on my own. And how many people do you know who think that very thought? Right? Many, many people think that way.

If you die in that condition, there's no hope. Just like the first Israelites that lived through the Exodus and the Passover. If they failed to heed God's warning and do what he said with regard to the first Passover, they would lose their firstborn son, their firstborn animals if they didn't exercise faith. And it's the same today. We as individuals must exercise faith in the lamb of God that came to take away the sin of the world.

He came to take away my sin, He came to take away your sin. It's personal and it's individual. You must be born again, Jesus said. And unless you are born again, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You will never face God as your loving father, but you will face him as your wrathful judge because he must judge our sins that haven't been judged in the cross.

If you reject the cross, you're on your own. You've got no hope of redemption. No hope for salvation. No hope. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we're so thankful that you have made it possible for us to have hope, to have a meaningful life, a purposeful life, one that is free from the fear of death, that has been delivered from the power of Satan and the sin that so easily besets us. We cannot thank you enough for having made this salvation available to us through what you did on the cross. We thank you, Jesus. We worship you, Lord. We're grateful, and we look forward to your soon return.

Lord, there's possibly people here today who, even though they have heard this message countless times, never really fully grasped it or never really took that step of faith to apply it to their own souls need for a savior. My prayer, Lord, is if there's somebody like that within the hearing of my voice today, whether they're present in this auditorium, whether they're hearing it through, streaming or online through YouTube, I don't know. You work in amazing ways to get the gospel to people who need to be saved. And I pray that you'll do that right now. And those people who recognize and are not they're willing they'll be willing to acknowledge what their hearts are telling them is true, that they are lost, they need a savior, and that Jesus is that savior.

Help them to take the step of faith they need to trust Jesus. And Lord, as Peter wrote here, he said, we being dead to our sins when we've trusted Christ should now live under righteousness. We pray that you'll help us to live godly, righteous lives that bring you glory and honor. That cause people around us who observe us and the change in our lives to realize something truly amazing has taken place and that they will seek the savior themselves. We ask all this in Jesus' precious name.

Amen.