Reading: Hebrews 1
Text: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.”
Hebrews 1:1 to 4 NIV
There once were a group of goldfish who lived in a bowl. They had lived there as long as they could remember and none of them had ever left the bowl and come back to tell what was on the outside. One day, one goldfish asked another, “What do you think is outside the bowl?” This question generated quite a bit of speculation and, after a while, the goldfish came up with several possible answers to this problem. One goldfish suggested that there was nothing outside the goldfish bowl. He maintained that, since he could see nothing in the side of the bowl other than his own reflection, it was silly to believe in the existence of anything that could not be seen. Another goldfish suggested that perhaps the goldfish bowl was surrounded by another goldfish bowl and that this bowl sat inside another bowl which itself was in a bigger bowl. He theorized that there might be an endless succession of goldfish bowls. A third fish stated that the goldfish bowl must have come into existence just by chance and that it was the result of a ‘big bang’. He described this phenomenon in very big words so that the other goldfish would be suitably impressed.
However, there was one little goldfish who was unhappy with all of the theories of his companions and he decided that the only way to find out what was on the outside the bowl would be to try to leave it. With this in mind, he circled three times and then swam straight up as fast as he could.
The other goldfish watched him as he jumped out through the shimmering surface of the water. They continued to watch, but the brave little goldfish never returned. After a while, the first goldfish said, “He must have ceased to exist, because we all know that nothing can exist outside the bowl.” The second goldfish said, “Oh no, he moved up to a higher plane of existence. He has gone on to that larger bowl.” The third goldfish said, “You are both wrong. He has evolved and changed into a new life form.” And to this day, the three goldfish still disagree as to what happened to their small companion.
We are not goldfish, but we do share a similar characteristic. We all live in a bowl that we could call the natural world. By this, I mean that we are bounded by time and space. There is a whole world of the supernatural that is unknown to us because we are limited by our natural bodies. We are unequipped to know anything about God or about angels or about life outside our own physical existence. But we do not have to remain ignorant about these things. God has spoken. He has spoken through prophets and He has spoken through dreams and He has spoken through signs and He has spoken through His written word. Most importantly, He has spoken through His Son. Jesus Christ entered this world by becoming one of us.
This is the message of the book of Hebrews. It is that God has made Himself known to man by becoming a man in the person of Jesus.
The writer begins the book of Hebrews in the form of an essay. He skips over the customary salutation and greeting that would normally be found in an epistle and goes right to the heart of the matter. He is going to talk about the fact that God has spoken. This is not argued. It is not proven by the author. It is simply taken for granted as an obvious truth. God is on the outside of the goldfish bowl of our physical existence. He cannot be seen by our eyes or measured in a laboratory. He cannot be reproduced in a test tube. This means that, unless He had spoken to us, we could never know Him.
Now the scriptures tell us that God has spoken to mankind at many times and in many ways. He spoke to Job out of a whirlwind; He spoke to Joseph in dreams; He spoke to Moses in a burning bush; He spoke to Joshua through an angel; He spoke to Samuel as a voice in the night; He spoke to Elijah is a still, small voice; He spoke to Daniel in a vision.
Now the revelation of God through the Old Testament prophets was fragmentary. It was here a little, there a little. It was also progressive. Each writer added to the pool of knowledge about God and about existence outside the goldfish bowl of our existence. In each case, the Old Testament prophets came away with another glimpse of the character and the person of God. But the final and complete communication of God was not accomplished through any of these means. The final and complete communication of God was accomplished through His Son. “2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” (Hebrews 1:2). We have seen the many ways that God spoke to the fathers through the prophets. But here we see that God has spoken AGAIN.
After God spoke through the prophets there was a great silence. For 400 years there had been no prophets to speak the word of the Lord. But now, in these last days, God has spoken through a new agency which had never before been used. He now spoke to mankind through His Son. This is the fullest revelation of God. It is the person of Jesus Christ. It is the person of the One who was God and who became man so that He might communicate the Father to us.
Now I want to ask you a question. Why is the writer making such a point? Why is it so important to know that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God? It is because the Jews to whom he is writing are in danger of turning away from Jesus to go back to the incomplete teachings of the Old Testament prophets. This is important! The teaching of the Old Testament prophets was not wrong. They were only incomplete.
They were a partial revelation. But the revelation that came in the person of Jesus is a complete revelation. He was better than the prophets because He exhibited the very person and character of God. He said to Philip on the night of the Last Supper, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9). None of the prophets could ever make a claim like that. Their knowledge of God was always limited. But Jesus had an experiential knowledge of God because He was the Son of God. Let me illustrate this - If you wanted to find out more about me, you could talk to someone who knows me well. They could tell you a lot about me. You might come away with a certain amount of knowledge about me and what I do for a living. But if you really wanted to get to know me, surely the best way would be to talk to me. The same is true of God. The best way to learn about God is to meet Him in the flesh. You meet Him in the flesh when you meet Jesus Christ. God has been revealed in the prophets. He has been revealed in the Bible. But the best revelation of God came through Jesus Christ - “2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. 3The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:2-3).
The Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. The heavens declare, “How glorious is Jesus Christ our Creator.” The firmament says, “We reveal the handiwork of the Son of God who made us.” The Son of God also speaks through your conscience, that great divine monitor that He has set within every single person he has created. He has bid them come into His presence, and revealed His will to them. The Son became incarnate and with his own voice He has spoken to us.
His disciples came to Him, and He taught them saying, “ 3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. 10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” How wonderful are those truths. Shakespeare never wrote any words like that.
I’ve read much that’s great in the literature of mankind, but there is nothing that compares to the words of the Son of God. “ 28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” How easy those words of Jesus recorded by Matthew trip off our tongues, yet there is nothing in the heart of John’s Gospel so magnificent. This is the Son who has spoken; this is the Son who prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do;” this is the Son who claimed identity with God, “30I and the Father are one; if you’ve seen Me, you have seen the Father.” He is God manifestly seen and heard and heaven’s beloved One. This is the One of whom our text is speaking; this is the One who purged our sins.
Our text’s context answers the question, “Who is this?” It tells us that he is greater than the angels because he made the angels, and he is the Lord of the angels. He is greater than the universe because he made the universe. Here at the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews the credentials of Christ are set out. The Son of God made every single thing that has ever been made. Nothing exists unless it was created by Christ. Paul also set these same credentials in his letter to the Colossians, when he says in chapter 1 and verse 16 that, “16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.”
Mankind is so fascinated with origins. Where did it all come from? At one time there was nothing. It isn’t that at one time there was space. There were no dimensions whatsoever; there was simply, absolutely unimaginable nothing. There was God alone and at one moment He spoke, and creation begins.
Then creation develops step by step as God decrees. We Christians make a great claim, that our saviour, who lived on this earth and shared in our suffering made the universe. This Christ who held a child in His arms, who was crucified on Golgotha, He made the heavens and the earth. He made the tree out of which that cross was shaped. He made the iron out of which the nails were formed which impaled him to the cross.
These verses before us this evening tell us exactly who the Son of God is. He is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. Do you remember the glory of God seen in the Seraphim and revealed to Isaiah in the temple? Do you will remember when Moses drew near to Him, how his face shone with that glory? Do you remember how, when Christ came, His glory was seen on the Mount of Transfiguration? Do you recall the brightness of His glory when He met with Saul on the road to Damascus, or when He appeared on Patmos to the imprisoned and elderly John? But the glory of God, John tells us, is not so much the greatness of his heavenly majesty, but the glory of His grace and truth, “And we beheld that glory,” the apostle says on behalf of all those eyewitnesses, “in the incarnate Son of God.” The Son is the apex of glory, not like the moon reflecting the glory of the sun. He is the very brightness of God’s glory, not at all some kind of reflection of it. You can see that glory comprehensively in Jesus Christ. He is the express image of the only God there is. He is the exact representation of that eternal living God so that there is absolutely nothing in deity lacking in God the Son. There was a debate in the early church where some in the church were saying, “Jesus Christ is very like God.”
Others who were more mature and orthodox shot back, “No! He is not very like God at all, because He is very God. He is Jehovah. He is just as much God, as the Father is God, or the Spirit is God. He has all the names of God, all the titles of God, all the attributes of God, and all the prerogatives that are divine. They are all His, with no divine attribute omitted.”
God is love and when we see Jesus, on His knees, washing the feet of His disciples, we are seeing God’s own love incarnate. Or when we see Him on the cross, in agony, there we survey the whole likeness of God’s love. There is the heart of God. That was the most Godlike thing that God ever did. Calvary and the broken body of Jesus display the glory of God’s grace and love most powerfully.
Who is the One of whom these verses speak? This is God the Son, greater than the angels as their maker. The God of the prophets spoke through them - the Creator who is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells us that Christ purged our sins. To do this it was necessary for Him to come into the closest possible contact with men and women. He came into contact with them as they sinned. There was their failure to love God and to love their neighbours as themselves. They had other gods before Him; they made idols; they took His name is vain; they failed to set apart one day each week to him; they didn’t honour their parents; they killed; they committed adultery; they lied; they stole they coveted. The Son of God was surrounded by people who behaved like this. They were his family, and the neighbours who lived on his street, and the boys he went to school with, and the customers who came to Joseph’s carpenter shop for furniture and implements. They were all sinners, and their behaviour defiled them. It made them dirty of spirit and heart, and so they needed more than a little washing. Their very beings needed a purging. In other words, you sin, and you’re unclean. You act in that way, you are dirty. You say those cruel words and you are defiled.
I know a fount where sins are washed away,
I know a place where night is turned to day.
Burdens are lifted and blind eyes made to see;
There’s a wonder-working power in the blood of Calvary.
Our sins have made us, the Bible says, as black as night, as spotted as a leopard, as red as crimson, but the Son of God has come to do something about these sins. He has come to purge our sins. “Our sins” - purged away, that is, totally removed. Whose sins? Who is he writing to? Hebrew Christians in the church. He is not writing this letter to the Sanhedrin. Is he writing it to Caiaphas or Annas the High Priests? Is he writing this letter to the persecuting Pharisees? Is he writing it to the rationalistic Sanhedrin? No, this is a letter to a certain constituency, a definite constituency, a particular constituency, a limited constituency. It is not a public letter; it’s not a promiscuous letter. It’s a letter to a church, to the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he said, “Christ died for our sins.” He was effectively acknowledging that the death of the Lamb of God was as much his hope and the foundation of his pardon, as the youngest beginner, or the most menial slave who had confessed Christ in the Corinthian church. When he wrote to the Ephesians, he said, “Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it.” - and when he wrote of God breaking into his own experience and shattering the shackles that bound him to sin, he said, “He loved me and gave Himself for me.” Christ’s work on the cross is always so particular; it is always as definitive as that. It is never for the anonymous mass. It is for those whose sins have been once and for all dealt with by the One greater than the angels, the mighty Creator who is the brightness of God’s glory.
Those who benefit admit and confess their sins, acknowledging that the total answer to their guilt and condemnation is found in this, that “He purged our sins.”
So this glorious divine Christ is set before us as the one who has purged his people’s sins. The consequences for those of us whose sins have been purged away are unbelievable. For me it means that my sins today are as though they never were. What a magnificent and incredible concept that is, that our sins do not control, or modify, our relation to God today. It is as if they were not there. There is no defilement, no dirt; it is all removed, every single speck of it. Christ has taken our sin, past sin, present sin, future sin, and He has put it away. He has covered it so that all for whom he has died are whiter than snow. I am not sure my conscience believes it. I am not sure there is not some part of me that wants to cling in self-pity to some remnants of guilt so that I may be able to feel sorry for myself. Aren’t such feelings the whole basis of the invention of purgatory, that mythical place where most people end up where their guilt will be slowly cleansed away? Isn’t there some pride in every human heart that want to go bravely into that fantasy land to make amends for a messed-up dirty life?
If only I can let this truth be the whole truth about the way things are between me and God, that there is no barrier whatsoever between God and me; that there is no impediment whatsoever. It is all forgiven. It is all blotted out. The only way I am permitted to look at my past sins is to see them as forgiven sins. It may even be that sometimes we use a vague assumption that all is not right between ourselves and God to justify a little less commitment, a little less discipleship, a little less purity because, we reason, all is not forgiven. But I am saying it is all forgiven! He has purged it; he has borne it all away, all the guilt - every spot, and every sin was laid on Christ by the Father. The glorious Son of God took the liability for my sin. The single determinant of your relationship with God today is what happened on the cross. Nothing else matters. Nothing else is relevant.
There are only two factors in the equation: what Christ did and how God responded. How you might feel and how you struggle, and what you achieve, and how you’ll fail in the future, all that is not relevant. The one and only thing relevant to may forgiveness is what Christ did on the cross.
I do not for a moment believe that the heart that knows this will take advantage of it and go from that to live a life without law, because that cross, that grace, won’t allow it. On the other hand, I also believe that a bad conscience, a feeling that God has something against you, often serves as the basis of an unconscious grudge against God, and that idea will seek to justify our being less than perfect. It will try to justify a relapse here, and a shortcoming there. I want every Christian to know; in the depth of their hearts that Jesus Christ has made a good, decent and proper job of the work God gave Him to do. He has. No angel came to do it. No creature. The angels’ Lord himself did it. Jehovah Jesus has made a real purging of our sins. Consider who He is, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
How focused He was from the moment His public ministry began. He set His face steadfastly towards Jerusalem. There was a task, and an eternal vocation before Him. He was walking with destiny, and His goal was Golgotha. There were those his Father had given to him whom nothing would prevent him from saving. There, in His great and royal death, He would deal with sin, our defilement, the way God hates our shame, the way it has created a gulf between God and ourselves, the way sin corrupts us, poisoning and perverting all that is good. The Son of God came to deal with all this, as the Almighty One who raised the dead. Christ appeared as the One who spoke and the winds and waves obeyed Him. Jehovah Jesus, the Messiah long prophesied, came, but there was one thing more He had to do before He could cry out, “It is finished! Father, into your arms I commend my spirit.” He had to purge our sins.
He had to remove that defilement that corrupts every single thing we have done, and the guilt of every failure. Christ had to be made sin for us, taking all our foulness to Himself, and then purge and wash it from us, every single atom of contamination, leaving us completely de-sinned - without spot, without wrinkle, as sinless as God is sinless, as free from any stain. Because He has purged us from our sins so that we can cry to the world, “Look! There is flowing a crimson tide, whiter than snow, you may be today.”
Now you see one consequence of this that there is no need of another purging because there is absolutely nothing left to purge, and no other purifier for sin can be found, either in this world or the world to come. The angels may scour the universe in vain to try to find one. Not all the oceans of this world can cleanse a sinner of his sin. But Christ the Lamb of God takes all our sin away, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than all the world’s refiners.
He has accomplished everything. He has undefiled a company of people more than any man can number. He has borne all their punishment. He has won for them eternal life. When they see Him, they will be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is. Until then He is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
The Lord could speak to the dying thief and say, “Today, you shall be with Me in paradise.” He didn’t do half a job on Calvary did he? “Ninety nine-and-a-half won’t do,” goes the old song. Quite right! He didn’t leave a little bit for us to do in suffering in this world, and then in some nebulous fantasy state of darkness and suffering in the world to come. If I should have some contribution to make in the purging away of my own sin then I am a lost man because I can never do anything without sinning. No! He - by Himself - purged our sins.
The third thing we need to see is that He did it by Himself. We’ve talked about who He was and what he did. He was offering Himself without spot to God; He wasn’t offering His sufferings only; He wasn’t offering His blood only; He wasn’t offering His obedience or His human nature. He was offering Himself without spot to God. He is the ransom price. The price then has been paid once and for all. Every penny. There is nothing at all left outstanding. We are free. He Himself is the propitiation for our sins. God’s anger towards us is absolutely and utterly appeased. Now we are all welcomed as returning prodigals by our loving Father. See him run to embrace each one of us. He will never let us leave him again. O love that will not let me go! He is the price of our liberation. There is nothing overlooked for anyone, nor is there anything unpaid. The most hypocritical and deeply dyed stain that has seemed to drip on us all through our lives has been all washed away by Christ.
He made a comprehensive purging for sin, not trembling before any stain, and He did this, not by enabling you to do something, not by inspiring you to choose, not by encouraging you to repent, not by challenging you to discipleship, not by exalting you to faith, not by commanding you to live a holy life, nor by pleading with you to be compassionate towards your fellow men. If my standing before God today depended on my repentance, my faith, my compassion, my holy living, then I would have no hope at all before God. But He did something, and He did something by Himself.
Do you remember after the temptations when angels came to minister to Him in the wilderness? At His baptism God spoke to Him and assured Him of His love and flooded His heart with a divine affection. At His transfiguration towards the close of His ministry, again, that affirmation of Son ship was given by God Himself. In the Garden an angel came to comfort Him. But on Calvary, there was no voice of affection coming down from heaven. There was rather a cry of abandonment ascending from earth: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He was all by Himself.
There were no friends; there was no family, and no disciples there. They had all forsaken Him and fled. They were a broken group standing way off, none attempting to encourage, none trying to catch His eye and pour through a glance love and a wordless intense look saying, “I know what You are doing and I love You for doing it.”
You and I were no help to Jesus as He hung on that cross. You were no support to Him. He was His own support, and by Himself our brave Prince of Glory purged all our sins. What could be more glorious and liberating than that? There is a real and a total purging of sin which He Himself has accomplished. He did it by Himself. That is the great theme of the Bible from beginning to end, that the work of salvation is entirely, and only, and exclusively, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nobody had any share in it. There was nobody with him. All that has been done, He has achieved by himself. Do not bring a scrap or a shred of your righteousness (which is as filthy rags) anywhere near him. If you glory, glory in the Lord. Do not talk about your faith, your cleverness in choosing Him, your goodness, your works and your efforts. Redemption is all accomplished by Him alone. Thank God it is.
The fourth thing we are told here in Hebrews 1 is that after he purged our sins He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High. In other words, He is a sitting Savoir. Now, what do we do with that? It means, of course, that He finished the work that He had been given to do. It is all over, and perfectly accomplished. So He sits down. You may remember that in both the Old Testament tabernacle and temple there were no chairs. There were tables and altars and candles and curtains . . . but no chairs. The work of sacrifice never ended, morning and evening, year after year, they were busy, busy, busy, doing, doing, doing. But now that this great High Priest after the order of Melchizedek has finished His work, He sits at the right hand of the Majesty on High.
Just as God surveyed the original work of creation and pronounced it to be very good, so today, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, look at the whole picture of cosmic redemption, all the pain and suffering, the accomplished work of the Servant, the obedience to the death of the cross, and the Triune God is utterly and completely satisfied. This is the most glorious thing in this world or in heaven itself, that Jesus Christ is completely satisfied with His own work. He looks at Golgotha and He says, “Very good,” and He sits down and He now rests. God the Father looks at the work of His Son, and He rests in love for Him, and God the Holy Spirit looks at the work of Christ and He rests in eternal delight. And the angels in glory look at that work - they can’t believe what they’ve seen - and they are filled with wonder, love and praise.
The fearful fact is that everybody is happy with it except you. You feel you must contribute a little bit of yourself. You must think, “Yes, but he couldn’t have saved me unless I had agreed to co-operate.” And you want to throw in a little bit of Christian experience, and you’ve got to present to God some gifts of yours. You’ve got to offer a little growth, and some progress, and a little suffering, and some witnessing, and a taste of pain and patience in providence. Then it will be absolutely perfect when you’ve made your contribution to the work that Christ has done. You won’t sit down, you see. You won’t rest in the work of Christ. Notice what God the Son did, how He sits and He is satisfied. Consider God the Father, He is thrilled, and God the Holy Spirit is delighted. All the angels in glory are overwhelmed by it, and the church that is glorified now in the presence of God, is singing: “To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory and praise and dominion forever and ever,” When they reach that destination, they are never thinking about what they did during their pilgrimage. Instead, they are saying, “Worthy is the Lamb! You are worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing.”
They see that He has made a complete purging, and I am saying to you, there is nothing in the whole world more glorious than that. That is why this Bible is such a magnificent Book! That is why you all have a Bible and you read the Scriptures, and you want the Word preached to you. “Feed me now and evermore,” you say, because you live by these words that proceed from the mouth of God. I am saying that if you are a Bible Christian, you sit in awe at what Jesus did, when by himself he purged your sins. You are filled with wonder, love, and praise.
So, what do I want you to do? Well, I want you to do nothing, absolutely nothing. I don’t want you to get out of your seats. I don’t want you to come to the front; I don’t want you to make any resolutions that after today and from now on you are going to become more religious. I don’t want you even to think of what you are going to do. I want you to sit. I want you to sit absolutely still. Don’t move, don’t plan, and don’t decide. I want you passive. You have learned what Jesus Christ has done, all by Himself, His glorious, eternal achievement for sinners. You have heard that all alone He has purged us of all our sins and sat down.
Jesus, my great High Priest,
Offered His blood and died.
My guilty conscience seeks no sacrifice beside.
His powerful blood did once atone,
And now it pleads before the throne.
(Isaac Watts)
Christ is absolutely satisfied with his accomplished redemption, and the question is this: Are you satisfied with that? Are you completely and totally contented? You feel your sins, you acknowledge, but Christ purged your sins in His own body on the tree. Is that your only and exclusive answer to a righteous God?
When Satan comes to remind you of one sad episode and another episode in your life do you say, “But Christ, by Himself purged my sin”? If so, you are a Christian, and when you fall again for the thousandth time into the sins of omission, the sins of imagination, the sins of thought and word and deed, do you say, “Christ Himself purged my sins.” Do you believe that? Then you are a Christian. It is settled once and for all. When were you saved? You were saved over 2,000 years ago, half an hour’s walk away from downtown Jerusalem. There was this enormous problem of a mountain of sin and guilt, but you left it all with Jesus long ago.
When a man is drowning and a lifeguard swims alongside him, he doesn’t say, “Now look, see the shore? That’s the way to go. Good luck!” He doesn’t do that. He saves him. He says, “Stop struggling,” and he holds him up and he keeps his head above the waves and he powerfully delivers him from the watery grave. So for you too, I don’t want you to move until that is settled. I want you to sit. I don’t want you to bat an eyelid. I don’t want you to breathe. I want you to purge the word ’do’ from your mind. I never want you to think in terms of doing,
Until to Jesus’ work you cling by a simple faith.
Doing is a deadly thing; doing ends in death.
Sit, and consider what God the Son has done, and be absolutely satisfied with that. Let your conscience be satisfied with it, and your intellect and your past. If God is satisfied with it, my friend, you and that tender conscience of yours can be satisfied with it. Here is the answer. The Lord of glory is satisfied with the work of Christ. So bring your past, your hope in death, your conscience, your intellect, to that work of Christ. Don’t move a muscle, until you settle on this: “I am the chief of sinners, but Jesus died for me.”
This world of ours is full of religion; new religions appear every month, “Do, do, do, do this, and do that,” they say.
“Do, do, do!” Christ says, “Sit, look, behold, the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world; be satisfied with that.” And beholding the life and death of Christ in faith, we find salvation. That is grace! That is eternal life! Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we must be saved. He invites you, “Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else . . . Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts”.
You know that the dying thief brought one plea to Christ, just one – “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” That man, as he contemplated the One who had all of heaven under His authority, asked Jesus not to forget him while He was governing the universe - make that your prayer.
My dear friends, our Lord is Great, and greatly to be praised. He is my Lord and Saviour. I want Him to be your Lord and Saviour too. However, Jesus will not force Himself on you if you don’t want Him. However, He waits with outstretched arms for you to receive Him as your personal Saviour. He will come into your life and change you completely. God has given you another chance to hear the Gospel tonight. You may not have another one! You cannot play with God, for he has said, “My spirit will not always strive with man.” (Genesis 6:3). My friends, if God has been dealing with your heart turn to Him now, and ask Him to be your saviour. Ask Him to forgive your sins. Ask Him to cleanse you of your sins. Come to Him in faith, believe and receive this wondrous gift from the Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN
