Why Jesus Came to Die

Romans chapter 3 verses 9 to 31, and Sarah Pierce is going to come and read that for us.

What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all. For we have already made the charge that Jews and gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written, there is no 1 righteous, not even 1.

There is no 1 who understands. There is no 1 who seeks god. All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no 1 who does good, not even 1.

Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways. And the way of peace, they do not know. There is no fear of god before their eyes.

Now we know that whatever the law says, It says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to god. Therefore, no 1 will be declared righteous in god's sight by the works of the law. Rather through the law, we become conscious of our sin. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of god has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

There is no difference between you and gentile for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness. Because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time.

So as to be just and the 1 who justifies those who have faith in Jesus, Where then is boasting? It is excluded because of what law, the law that requires works? No. Because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, or is god the god of Jews only?

Is he not the god of gentiles too? Yes, of gentiles too. Since there is only 1 god who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all, rather we uphold the law.

Sarah, thank you very much for reading that to us. And if you could, keep that passage from Romans's 3 open in front of you, that would be great. My name is Tom Sweitman. I'm 1 of the pastors here. If we haven't met and a very warm welcome to you, particularly if you are visiting us here this evening and, welcome if you are coming off the back of rising lights as well.

I know some people in the congregation were away this week. This new national FIAEC family conference down in Turkey and, a number of folks here at Cornerstone were attending or serving at that. So if you're here on Sunday after a busy week, welcome to. Good to have you. And, we are beginning a new series this evening.

So good time to be here. We have just finished our long walk through Matthews's gospel. And, now we are beginning a new series based on a book that was written by an American pastor and theologian called John Piper, and the book is called 50 reasons that Jesus came to die. Now, the plan is not to go through all 50 tonight or even in the course of this series. But rather we are going to be looking at some of those chapters, some of those reasons that Jesus came to die because the death of Christ on a cross is not just a flat thing that can be described in 1 way.

It is a multi dimensional, glorious achievement of god on our behalf. And so there are many, many ways in which the scripture helps us to see what Christ did on a cross and apply it to us. And our intention in this series is to spend some time looking at some of those different aspect, so hopefully it'll be a great help to us. And we are beginning with number 1 this evening. 50 reasons Jesus came to die.

Number 1 in the book, which you can actually download for free. You can get the PDF online for free. Number 1 is to absorb the wrath of god. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for the cross of the lord Jesus.

We thank you that even an eternity is not enough time to plumb the depths of your grace and mercy and justice and love and righteousness, that was shown there at the cross, and we pray that in this series, and we pray this evening, that you would help us to understand either something we know already in a deeper and fresh way, or something that we would come to understand for the very first time. And that we would all, the wide eyes and wandering at the love that you've shown us in Christ on the cross, and we ask these things in his name. Our men. Now in the, in the bible, in both the new testament and the old testament, there are hundreds of references, to the anger of god. And the fury of god and the wrath of god.

In both testaments, not just the old testament, but in the new testament as well, in Genesis right the way through to revelation, the anger of god and the wrath of god is something that's, not just meant in the bible. It is mentioned without apology and is actually something celebrated by the Biblical authors. And so I want to begin with a question this evening. How how do you feel about a god who is or who gets angry. How do you feel about that?

See, some of us here might think that's great. And I've always loved the idea that God is angry, and I want an angry god. And yes, I believe in that, and I love that. But others might be a bit unsure of that. And we might have suspicions that ideas of anger and wrath are in some way unworthy of god.

And that those are human things that we put onto him, and he can't really be like that. Some of us may not be may not be sure. Well, maybe it would help then to ask a clarifying question. Would we like or do we want a god that is angry or gets angry in the same ways that we do. And that's a much easier 1 to answer, isn't it?

The answer's no. If you just think for a minute, about how anger operates in your own life, and the sort of things that make you angry. I mean, on some occasions, we might say that we feel something like righteous anger But very, very often, the anger of humans does not produce the righteousness that god desires. Our anger can be very nasty to behold, can't it? It can be explosive Sometimes we just ex we're so explosive.

We get angry, and we're cruel, and we shout, and we say things. And sometimes our anger can be so horrible that it can actually even take us by surprise. Can't it? And we think I didn't actually know I had that in me. Or we reflect on ways in which we've behaved and things we've said, and we think I can't believe I was so cruel in that moment.

Why did I do that? Or anger can be less explosive and something that we internalize. And we allow it to fester in our own hearts and lives for weeks, months, years. And as we've seen in Hebrews, a root of bitterness can develop within us which defiles everyone around us. It's this kind of slow, internal seething anger that takes hold of us.

And then you think about some of the things that actually make us angry. I think very often the things that make us angry are because we're just too preoccupied with ourselves. And we feel that we deserve more recognition and more respect and more attention than we get, and we're angry because we feel worthy of more. You know, this is my lane. You don't cut into my lane.

I want my opinion to be heard and treasured above other people's opinions. When I've got something to say, I want it to be listened to. I want to be respected as much as that. I don't wanna be laughed at when I say something serious. I deserve more.

And I'm angry that my name isn't given the glory and the honor that I feel it deserves. Those are the kind of things that make us angry. And so would we like it if god were angry in the ways that we get angry? No. None of us would want a god who is like us, would we?

But still, that leaves us with a question. Do we want god to be angry in any way? Is it right for him in any way to be angry? And that I think depends on how you define it. JI Packer, who's a great English theologian, wrote a book, a kind of very accessible systematic theology called knowing God, which is if you haven't read, it's just well worth your time.

He says this, about the wrath or the anger of god. God's wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is, it is instead a right, unnecessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry, where anger is called for. And in a very helpful paragraph, I think that first line is is just so good. God's wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, you know, capricious, you think about a capricious person.

It's someone who is very unstable, someone who is volatile, something who is not led by rational conviction, but they're irrational. And you don't know where you are with them. A capricious person is the boss who 1 minute loves you and is so kind to you, but you make 1 more small mistake and you're fired the next day. And they're volatile, and you never know where you are with them. They act just on impulse.

You know, they fire off an email or they fire off an aggressive WhatsApp message or a text, and they haven't considered it or thought through. There's nothing rational about it. It's just exploded into the world. That's capricious. And interestingly, when you look at the description of pagan gods in the old testament, that's what they're like.

You never know where you are with them. 1 minute they send the rains, you do something wrong, bang. They kill all your off offspring. And you don't know what you've done because they're capricious and volatile. God's anger is never like that.

It is never self indulgent or irritable. It is never the things that human anger so often are. It is a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. Or to say it another way, god's anger is not the opposite of his love. I think lots of people want to set those things against each other.

God is loving. That's 1 thing. God is love. We know that. But god is also full of wrath and vengeance.

Name him chapter 1, and those things are sort of set against each other. But, actually, that's not how the Bible describes the character of God. It's not that god's love and god's anger are against each other, but rather god's anger is an expression of his love for all that is good and beautiful and true in the world. It's very important that that god loves beauty and truth and life and justice, and he loves his son very much. And so when those things, those beauties are dishonored in the world, that draws down his wrath.

His wrath is an expression of his love for what is beautiful and true and good. And I think when we define it that way, most of us or many of us would say I can see why the writers of the Bible celebrate that because that's a good thing. That's a good thing. And actually, the alternatives would be horrible. I'm sure in the past, couple of weeks or last week, you will have seen images from, artemis to this, latest NASA mission that went round the far side of the moon, and you will have seen some of these fresh pictures of earth from space.

And, again, it's just interesting looking at the words of the astronauts, you know, even though they will have seen this on the telly and on Google images before, there is something breathtaking. About looking down at earth from space and seeing the beauty, really the beauty of the planet that we live on. And yet we know that if you were to just put a pin in any 1 of those locations on earth and go down into it, beneath the beauty of the clouds, there is great evil. There is great evil unfolding and being played out everywhere you'd put a pin on that beautiful planet. Perhaps you you saw just I just saw it in the news just before I came out.

Over the weekend in Epsom. Just just a few, you know, minutes from where we are. There's a woman who's gone out clubbing with her friends. She comes home and in the grounds of Epsom Methodist Church. She is, you know, and sorry for the phrase, but she's gang raped by 4 men just over the week, just down the road, in Epson Methodist Church.

That's where we live, isn't it? That's our that's our very own borough, just this weekend. Last Saturday, there was an organization, using the hub. It's a group that tries to raise awareness about some of the evils that take place in Iran under the Iranian regime. And, I was just came to pick something up and they gave me 1 of their publications.

And even though this stuff is well known and well publicized, you know, I was reading through it over the over the past week. And, you know, some of that's at the the executions that go on there and the executions of women, particularly, you know, there are laws there, which basically allow husbands to commit all manner of domestic violence, against their wives, but if their wives in self defense inflict any injury upon their husbands, it's hung. First thing, you know, out and you're hung executed many, many women like that. The way that under the regime, the legal age for women to be married was changed from 18 to 9 years old. And then as a concession put up to 13, you know, the the wherever you would put a pin in the world, there are great evils unfolding.

And the question is, if we feel that righteous anger is in some way unworthy of God, how would we prefer him to respond to the moral evils in the world? Would we like him to be more like Buddha who is blissfully unaware and blissfully removed from the evils and injustice of the world, and he doesn't want to know about them. And even if he's told about them, he doesn't want to think about them, because in Buddhism, at the moment your mind has to start thinking about how to overcome a problem, that suffering. That's a type of suffering, and so better just to have it com be to be completely free of all the knowledge of it and to escape it entirely. Would we prefer the god of heaven to just blissfully remove himself and be unaware and unfeeling towards these evils?

Or would we rather the god of heaven was 1 who took up a big rug and just turned his back and just covered over all of the evils in the world and the injustices. You see, I think when we consider the alternatives to a righteously angry god, we're left with something altogether more horrible. A god that either doesn't care or doesn't know or doesn't want to know or just covers it up and pretends it's all not going on. And so the more we consider, the more we realize Oh, yeah. It's it's good.

I see why the Bible writers, not just explain, but celebrate the righteous, right anger, and justice of God. But here's the problem for us. Evil in the world is not just something out there. You know, it's not like evil exists in the world like a load of sort of balloons, you know, hovering around the planet, and that evil has a has a life of its own, evil comes from somewhere, doesn't it? Evil has a source.

Now if you go far enough back, that would be Satan, the committer of the first great sin who opens the door to evil in the world, but the Bible also speaks of another source from which the majority of evil in the world comes. Jesus puts his finger on it in Mark chapter 7 on the screen. Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn't go into their heart, but into their stomach and then out of the body. In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.

He went on. What comes out of a person is what defiles them for it is from within out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come. Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery greed, malice deceit, lewdness envy, slander arrogance, and folly, all these evils come from inside and defile a person. You see what he's saying? That this evil in the world, which draws down the wrath of god, comes from somewhere.

He is angry, not just that bad things in the world, but from the place from which bad things are birthed. Into the world. If you've been in church or around Christians for any length of time, you may have heard the phrase. God loves the sinner, but hates the sin. God loves the sinner, but hates the sin.

It's not as common now, I guess, as it once was. But it's an interesting 1, isn't it? God loves the sinner, but hates the sin. And it's trying to say something good, I think. That the god of heaven who created all life and sustains all life, loves all of his creatures with a kind of providential love.

He made us. He sustains us, and therefore he loves us, but we don't want to affirm that god loves sin. God hates sin, but he has a love for sinners. And so he loves the sinner but hates the sin. And I think when it comes to us and how we think about our neighbors, there is something helpful about that way of thinking.

You know, I I love my neighbor. And I wanted to come to know Jesus, but I don't love the sin that keeps him from Jesus. And so I hate the sin, but love the sinner. But even that way of describing things is actually very, very misleading. Because it puts an artificial distinction between the things that people do and the place from which it comes.

See, if you imagine you go to work tomorrow and your boss gathers your whole department together, and says, look, I'm afraid to say, that in the past week, there's been an incident of sexual abuse in the office. And, as you know, we take that sort of thing extremely seriously in our workplace. And so we've decided to take decisive action in the last few days, and we have decided to fire sexual immorality from the office, but we've kept the employee who committed it. Because we are a company who fires the sin but keeps the employee. We hate the sin, but we love the sinner.

There's something unhelpful about that, isn't it? Because we know that the thing has come from some it doesn't have a life of its own. It's not this evil thing floating around in the office doing stuff to people. It has been birthed this evil from the human heart. That's what Jesus says.

Adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils, which provoke the wrath of God, have come from inside a person's heart. We saw that at the beginning of our reading, didn't we? Romans 3, if you wanna just have a look at that again. Verse 9.

We have already made the charge that Jews and gentiles alike are all under the power of sin as it is written. There is no 1 righteous, not even 1. There is no 1 who understands. There is no 1 who seeks god. All have turned away.

They've together become worthless. There is no 1 who does good, not even 1. And then it's not just, you know, Here's a load of things God doesn't like, deceit, cursing, shedding blood. He says their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, fight the poison ups on their lips, their feet are swift to ship blood. It's them that do it.

It's the people that bring the evil into the world. And so here's where we're up to. The anger of god is a good thing. That god is righteously wrathful against injustice is a good thing. The alternatives don't bear thinking about.

But we've now just seen that we are the source of much that makes god angry. And therefore, god is not just rightly angry at sin. He is rightly angry at sinners. He is angry at you and me. The people who, by nature, have brought this evil into the world.

That's why Paul says in ephesians 2, like the rest, we were by nature, children of wrath. We were by nature, not now in our new natures, if you're a Christian, but we were by first nature, children of wrath. And you might say, well, hold on. I thought the Bible says God loves the world. God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

Yeah. That's true. That is true. But it's not all that is true. And you have to ask what sort of love does god love the world with?

He loves the world with an uncompromising love. He loves the world with a holy love Whereas, he can stand over everyone that he has made and say, I love them. They are my creatures, and I've given my son for them, and I desire that none should perish, but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved. And yet I also stand in anger over the sin that they have committed. He stands over us with a kind of loving, holy, uncompromising anger that both loves and is angry at us by nature.

And therefore, the question that we now have to come to is is there any way that you and I can be delivered from the wrath that we deserve. And the answer is yes. And the answer is the book of Romans. See if we've been reading from chapters 1 and through chapter 1 and 2 of Romans tonight as well, we would have learned this about the wrath of god. We would have learned from chapter 1 that the wrath of god is already being revealed against humanity that all people wherever there are people, have chosen to suppress the knowledge of god that is plain to them, that we have chosen to exchange the glory of god for lies and idols.

And we have given ourselves over and have been given over to our sinful ambitions. And so we mustn't think that the wrath of god is just the the lightning bolt that falls every time we do something wrong. But rather god's wrath is revealed in his handing over of us to our sinful desires. We would have learned that from chapter 1. From chapter 2, we then would have learned that god is not going to allow that to continue forever.

He also says there that people are storing up wrath for themselves for the day of wrath, that there is a day coming when the lord Jesus Christ is gonna return, and there will be trouble and stress for every human being who has done evil. It says that in chapter 2 verse 9, trouble and distress for every human being who has done evil. In other words, there is a day of wrath coming. Roth revealed now, day of wrath to come. And so the question as we come to chapter 3, a question which is now being forced upon us is given all that we've seen.

Can we escape? Can we be delivered? And the answer comes in Romans 3. In chapter 3 verse 25, Paul uses this phrase, sacrifice of atonement. To describe what Jesus did for us on the cross.

But in other translations, we we learn a different word in the more literal translations like the ESV. They use a word propitiation. Chapter 3 verse 25, god presented Christ as a propitiation through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. And that's 1 of those theological words, which is worth us bringing into our vocabulary. It's not just, you know, a jargon word.

It's a word that we ought to understand. The word propitiation has its roots in the Old Testament and in the day of atonement. Now if you've been following along in our Hebrew series in the morning, you should all be very well versed by now on Old Testament rituals and ceremonies in the day of atonement. But if you're not familiar with it, the day of atonement was the high point of the festival year in the Old Testament, where god's people once a year would all gather, and there would be 2 sacrifices brought to the tent of meeting. On 1 of those sacrifices, the sins of the people would be confessed, and then symbolically, a goat would be released into the wilderness, and that goat was seen to be taking away or carrying away the sins of the people from the people so that they could be free.

But the other goat, the other sacrifice, had the sins of the people confessed upon it, and it was symbolically then but the judgment that the people deserved for those sins fell on the sacrifice instead of them. And then the blood of that sacrifice was taken into the holy of holies, and it was sprinkled upon the mercy seat. That was the top of the arc of the covenant, and it was the very place where god dwelt with his people. And the blood is sprinkled on the mercy seat so that the people could be right with god. That's where this word propitiation comes from, and the idea behind it is that a sacrifice has borne the rough and the judgment that the people deserved So that the people could then know the blessing and the favor, and the smile, and the joy of God.

And when Paul comes to describe the cross, that's exactly what he wants us to think. He wants us to think propitiation. He wants us to think that when Jesus Christ our lord died for us upon a cross, it's not as if god the father looked upon what Jesus was doing and said, oh, you know, what what a marvelous kind of, way of loving the people. I'm going to cancel my wrath now. Or I'm going to, on the basis of what I see here, I'm going to withdraw my wrath.

That is not how he thought. It was not a counseling, and it was not a withdrawal. It was rather that Jesus Christ, our lord, absorbed the wrath of God that we deserve so that we could get what we don't deserve. Which is adoption into the family of god. Do you see that?

It's not that the wrath is canceled or withdrawn. It's diverted onto our onto him so that we can have what we don't deserve. That's what Paul has in mind here, not the counseling, not withdrawing. He has propitiation in mind that Christ absorbs the wrath that we deserve. And, you know, if you were here this morning, I think it ties in very well.

This morning, we were thinking about these 2 mountains. We were thinking about Mount Tsai at Mount Zion, and Mount Zion, and we read Exodus 19. And we saw that god in Exodus 19 is just terrifying in his holiness that you cannot draw near or you're gonna die. Anything that touches this mountain will die. But it's not as if when we come to the new testament, we find god who says, you know, you know, I don't really fancy being like that anymore.

You know, I've had my old testament time of my cyanide time, and I'm just gonna change myself up a bit for these new testament times. It's not that god is any less holy or any less of a consuming fire. He is all those things and forever will be, but it's that Christ has now borne the terror of cyanide that he is born the frightening thunder clouds and the fire of god's wrath upon himself so that we no longer have to fear that we can approach Mount Zion, this spiritual place of new covenant peace and forgiveness. God hasn't changed or withdrawn or canceled Christ has absorbed on our behalf. J.

I packer puts it again so well. Between us sinners and the thunder clouds of divine wrath stands the cross of the lord Jesus. If we are Christ through faith, then we are justified through his cross. And the wrath will never touch us neither here nor hereafter. That's why Paul goes on to say that god through the cross is both 1 who justifies those who have faith in Jesus and remains just because he has counted us right through faith without compromising his holiness and his justice.

He has remained those things. He has punished sin, but in the savior, and not in the people he love. That's the gospel. That's the gospel. And I think the way that we must respond to that is firstly by beholding and marveling in the love that Christ has showed us on the cross.

But also, this is an encouragement to retain our confidence in the holy right anger of god. You see, what's gonna happen brothers and sisters, if we try to water down the god of scripture who is rightly angry at sin and sinners, Then the love of Christ on the cross is gonna grow smaller in our eyes, and the power of Christ on the cross is gonna go weaker in our eyes, and our urgency in evangelism is gonna diminish and our own joy in our salvation is also gonna diminish. You see, our joy in the love of god only rises as high as our confidence in the holiness of God. If we if we no longer have confidence that god is holy and angry at sin, and that's a good thing, then our joy in the gospel is gonna diminish. We we must keep the 1 in order to keep the other.

And this is why, and we're gonna see it in our last 2 songs. Propitiation, it it is not just a theological word to argue about. It it is a reality to to sing off. You know, we just had it in our song, sweet forgiveness, precious peace, condemned no more. My soul is free.

How do we sing that with any conviction? Condemned no more. My soul is free because Christ has borne the condemnation that we deserve. He's exhausted the wrath of god that we deserve, and therefore we can sing. Sweet forgiveness precious peace.

My soul is free. We're about to sing of how Christ stood before the wrath of god for us, bore the blame that we deserve. These are things that when the Christian heart gets hold of them, they wanna sing because it's good. That god is angry. It's good because he takes him seriously, but we now know Christ has borne that for us.

And so I wanna put it to you this evening. The anger of god is a real thing. The wrath of god is a real thing. And the question for us is, will we absorb it in our own selves, or will we trust that Christ on the cross absorbed it in our place. And it might be that for the very first time tonight, you need to come and say lord Jesus, that's exactly what I need.

I need you to have taken the blame, borne the curse, taken the wrath I deserve. I wanna be free. I don't wanna face that in my own body. I don't I don't wanna face that in my own body. I want you to have borne it for me, and you can come to the lord Jesus.

We're gonna pray, and then we're gonna sing of these great truths. Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you that there were many, many, many, many reasons you came to die. We thank you for this first 1. That you came to absorb the wrath of god. We thank you our father in heaven that you are a holy and righteous god.

We thank you that you feel rightly about evil and injustices in the world. We thank you that your anger is nothing like our anger, and we thank you that our lord Jesus was willing to drink the cup for us, to bear the curse to absorb the wrath so that we can stand before you free and forgiven. How sweet it is to know that you have not just decided to cancel or withdraw your wrath. But that you have lovingly diverted it onto your son so that we can be free. Thank you that there is something that stands between us and the thunder clouds of divine wrath, and it is the cross of the lord Jesus.

And thank you now that we have just your smile to enjoy. We were hearing this morning that we can live our lives before your face, and we praise you that it is a smiling face because of Christ. And there is no condemnation now. We pray that you would help us, please. We know this doctrine and doctrines like this are things that are constantly under attack by satan and through false teaching.

We ask you please that you'd help us help us not just to talk of it, but to exalt in it as a precious thing, a precious part of your character. And we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.