The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Paul Washer with the message, The Center of All Things, The Gospel. Of the Gospel. Please open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians. Chapter 5, verse 21. Verse 21.

He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. God made him, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. When I read this text, I'm reminded of the hymn. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene.

What this text says about Him can be said of no one. No one else. No one. When we read through the Gospels, we marvel at so many things. There's an eternity of marveling in the Gospels.

Infinite wonder in every step of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and yet here, We have something that goes beyond every miracle He ever performed. Jesus of Nazareth knew no sin. He knew no sin. Let me put this in perspective for us. There has never been one moment of your life, not even one moment of your life that you have loved the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Now let me put that in perspective by saying this. Someone asked me one time, Brother Paul, what is the greatest sin you can commit? And I said, well, I suppose it would be breaking the greatest commandments. The greatest sin would be to not love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. There has never been one moment when a human being has loved God in a way that God deserves to be loved.

And yet, in this man Jesus, there was never one moment that He did not love the Lord His God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength. There has never been one moment in your life when you did what you did completely and perfectly for the glory of God without a mixed motive. And yet, When we look at the Nazarene, there was never one moment when his motives were mixed. He did everything he did. For the glory of God.

Jehovah's only had one witness. He's only ever had one true servant. And it is this man. Jesus Christ. There is an eternity, saints, in looking at texts like these, and looking at them and looking at them, understanding that there is gold there that may not be seen on the surface.

For you to know Christ and to love Christ and to serve Christ, one of the things that I want to say to you before I begin to preach is that you must stop reading texts like this as though you have read them a thousand times and you have exhausted their beauty. You say yes, we can talk about the sinless perfection of Christ, but to truly understand that will break you into a million pieces. It will cause you to just your entire body, it seems, turns to liquid and is poured out at the grandeur of this person, your elder brother, the one who was made like you in all things, who suffered all things and yet without sin. He is God's great champion, and he is God's great boast, But He is also our great champion. Our boast.

Our passion. He swallows up everything. As Abraham Kuyper said, when he comes back to earth, he'll stretch forth his hand and say, mine, mine, mine, mine. But He does that in the heart of the saint, when the saint begins to look at the scriptures they've looked at a million times, to ponder them and to cry out to God that God might reveal His glory in these verses. And when you see these beautiful things about Christ, Christ takes you, takes your heart, takes your mind.

This is what you want to transfer to the next generation. I hear so many people take Deuteronomy 6, And they don't preach it correctly. They turn it into they're supposed to teach their children all sorts of things about epics. No, the design of Deuteronomy 6 is that you would love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Parents, what are we to do with our children?

Evangelists, what are we to do with the world? There's no strong medicine. There's nothing strong enough to break through those stony hearts except the gospel of Jesus Christ and the beauty that is found there. And as men, one of your primary objectives is to shut yourself away and mind the goal that is Jesus Christ, and then pour it out on your family. Tell them about Jesus.

Tell them about Jesus. I was sitting in a sermon that one of the elders in our church was preaching on Christ walking on the water. And he explained the natural that Christ had come and that as the Messiah and as God, He was demonstrating His power over nature, and He was going on and on, and everything He said was theologically pure. And then all of a sudden, in His eyes, He saw what He was doing. He was talking about these things as though he was a National Geographic scientist explaining the cold, hard facts of nature.

And all of a sudden, he just dropped his arms and he said, Do I even hear what I'm saying? Do you hear what I'm saying? He walked on water. The marvel of this man. And that's what I want to do tonight.

I want to preach the Gospel that those of you who know the Gospel might Marvel in the Gospel and communicate that Gospel to others. That those of you who do not know the Gospel, that the Spirit of the living God would resurrect your heart, that He would change your heart, that it might have godly affection, that it might lay its eyes upon Christ and for the first time see the beauty that is Jesus Christ. We look at this passage. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. Now what does that mean?

I want you to think about that. This is a very important statement, but what does it mean? That He who knew no sin, God made him to be sin on our behalf. Does that mean that when Jesus Christ was on that tree that somehow He became defiled? Did his character, did his nature somehow devolve and he become corrupt himself?

Corrupt to the very core. I mean, what does it mean that he became sin? That he was made sin? Well, it doesn't mean that. When Christ was on that tree, he remained.

The spotless lamb of God, holy, holy, holy, then what does it mean that He was made sin on our behalf? Well, the answer is found in the second part of this phrase. It says, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. When a man believes in Jesus Christ, does that mean at that very moment he is turned into a perfectly righteous creature? Absolutely not.

When a man believes in Jesus Christ afterwards, he is justified by faith. But that does not mean that his nature is changed in such a way that he will never sin again, or that he becomes some sinless creature that is now immune to all failings with regard to the law of God. No, when a man believes in Jesus, what happens? He is legally declared right before God. And, here's the key term, Not only is he legally declared to be right before God, but he is treated as such.

He is treated as such. Now let's take this back to Christ. When Christ is on that tree, He remained the holy, the spotless Lamb of God without sin. But then what happened? The sins of God's people, the guilt of God's people was imputed to him.

And he was treated as such. Now I want you to understand this. This is so very important in our understanding of the Gospel. When we believe in Christ, We are declared right with God. We are legally, we are forensically declared right with Him.

We are justified the moment we believe, and God treats you as right with Him. That's an absolutely amazing statement. When Christ was on that tree, our sin, your sin was imputed to Him. And He was treated in your place. He stood in your law place.

And He was treated with the same judgment and the same wrath that should have been yours. Now it is absolutely phenomenal when we begin to understand what went on on the cross. It's absolutely beyond the power of a preacher or an angel to explain. Every metaphor falls short. Every illustration just sounds foolish and impotent the moment it comes out of the preacher's mouth.

I mean, here is the sinless, spotless Lamb of God who knew no sin throughout eternity living in a perfect, unbroken fellowship with the Father. The Father is His delight. He is the delight of the Father. Absolute bliss in the Trinity. They did not create because they had some need to pour themselves out on some other individual.

They poured themselves out on themselves in perfect unity and harmony and love and satisfaction. The world was created not because of need, but because of the overflow. And here on this tree, The very delight of delights of the Father takes the sin of His people upon Himself and is treated by a holy and righteous God in the way that I, that you, should be treated and beyond. You see, this is so hard for us to understand. You and I were born in sin.

We have lived lives of drinking down iniquity like it was water. We can no more understand the circumstance of sin than a fish can understand the circumstance of water. It is all we have ever known. Even the most holy saint still has something of a cloud between him and the fullness of God. There is still having to deal with sin.

We still have that feeling, that taint. We do not know what it is like to walk in perfect communion with God. We do not know what it is like to be perfectly and completely clean. And yet here is the Son of God who knew that. And yet on that tree bears the guilt, the crime, of every filthy, wretched, horrid thing you have ever spoken, you have ever done, you have ever thought.

Imagine some of you fine young ladies who you're delicate and you've been protected. You're like the woman who never even set her foot on the dirt. You've always been covered in a shoe. You've always been well protected. And have a great innocence to you as far as a human being can be innocent.

But one day you decide to go into the inner city of Chicago, the hood, and you decide that you're going to witness to other girls. And as you're there, you don't know that you've fallen in among a bunch of prostitutes. And as you're handing out tracts, the paddy wagon comes by and it takes you up, treats you just like the rest of the prostitutes. You're thrown in the back of that paddy wagon. You're taken to jail.

You're roughly treated and you're thrown into a cell. All the women that are there, they're talking on their cell phones, they're painting their nails, they're laughing. They've been through this a million times. It doesn't bother them at all. But you're there in the corner.

You can hardly breathe. It's as though your very heart is going to be torn in two. You do not know this kind of evil. The thing that they laugh about is a terror to you. And yet the Son of God on that tree takes upon Himself a filth to which you and I are accustomed, but a filth that he never knew and did not have to know.

Now as he did that, the Bible says something very, very important. It says in the book of Galatians, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the Law to perform them.'" As He took our sin upon Himself, He came under a curse. He bore the very divine curse of God. Now what does that mean? What does it mean that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us, taking the curse that belonged to us and to carry it upon His shoulders.

What does that mean? Well, let's look at this for a moment. First of all, let's just look at the beatitudes. I'm sure you're all familiar with the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for there's the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Let's take the Beatitudes for a moment and let's turn them on their head. The Bible says the blessed are granted the kingdom of heaven, but the cursed are refused entrants. The blessed are recipients of divine comfort, but the cursed are objects of divine wrath. According to the Beatitudes, the blessed are satisfied, but the cursed are miserable and wretched.

The blessed received mercy, but the cursed are condemned without any form of divine pity offered. The blessed shall see God. The cursed are cut off from His presence. The blessed are sons and daughters of God. And the cursed are disowned in disgrace." I hear so many people, so many Christians.

I'll ask them. I have a dear brother. He's here tonight and I just love it. Every time I ask him, how are you doing, brother? He says I'm blessed.

I'm blessed. Many of you will say the same thing. How are you doing? I'm blessed. But you see, this is what you must understand.

This is both the beauty and the solemnity of your statement. You are blessed only because He was cursed. Do you understand that? It doesn't bring a debt upon us that weighs us down. It calls us the glory in Christ.

When I get up in the morning and I have more breath to breathe, I am blessed because he was cursed. When I look at my family, I am blessed because he was cursed. When I enjoy a cool drink or a fine meal, I am blessed because he was cursed. When I bow my knees in prayer and in those unusual night watches, the Spirit of the living God comes and comforts my heart and bears witness that I'm a child of God. I am blessed because he was cursed.

Every good thing in my life is because of every horrid thing that he suffered on that tree. Everything, everything, every breath, every blessing, every green leaf on a tree, every beautiful mountain stream, everything! And that is why not only, that is why all the world will be so harshly judged on that final day because even every good thing that fell upon the wicked was only because of Him, because of that tree, because of what was done there. You're blessed because he was cursed. That does not bring a sadness in our heart, but it brings such a wonder, such a devotion, such a marveling.

Who is this man? Who is this man? In the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 27 and 28, we see that the nation of Israel is divided into two groups. One group is to stand upon Mount Ebal, and from Mount Ebal they are to pronounce all the curses that are supposed to fall upon the covenant breaker. And then the other half is to stand upon Mount Gerasim and to pronounce all the blessings that are to fall upon the covenant keeper.

Now here's what I want you to understand. It is not Mount Gerasim that calls out to you. It is not Mount Gerasim that tells you, come to me, you who are blessed, you covenant keeper. No, it is Mount Ebal that calls out to you, come hither and be judged, thou wicked man, thou wicked woman, thou wicked girl. That is our lot because of our sin only to hear the voice of Mount Ebal.

But our great champion Jesus Christ, in order to save us from the curses of Mount Ebal, The one covenant keeper that Yahweh had took the place of all his rebellious children and died in their place, having suffered their curse. R.C. Sproul said this. It shocked the entire congregation when he did. But it was true.

The one covenant keeper, the one obedient son. Our elder brother. Who knew no sin. When He was on that tree, He bore our sin. And when He cried out from the cross to His Father, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

God in His righteousness looked down and declared, God, Your God, damns Thee. I've taken all the curses from Mount Ebal and I've applied them to Calvary. And I want you to just think for a moment about what the Son of God bore in your place. He cries out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? His Father replies, The Lord damns you.

The Lord sends upon you curses, confusion, and rebuke until you are destroyed and you perish quickly. The Lord smites you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart, and you will grope at noon as a blind man gropes in darkness with none to save you. The Lord delights over you to make you perish and destroy you, and you will be torn from the land. Curse shall you be in the city, and curse shall you be in the field, curse shall you be when you come in, and curse shall you be when you go out. The heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron.

You shall be a horror, you shall be a proverb, you shall be a taunt among the people. Let all these curses come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. These curses should be piled upon our heads, but they were piled upon the Christ. Some of you, you dress properly, and you speak properly, and you talk properly, and I commend you for that. But at least some of you, you have within you a heart so vile that every one of these curses belong to you and when God throws them down on your head one day, all of creation will stand to its feet and applaud His righteousness in dealing so severe with you.

And yet on that tree, Christ took this. He suffered this. I have written here in my notes, as Christ bore our sin upon Calvary, He was cursed as a man who makes an idol and sets it up in secret. He was cursed as one who dishonors his father or mother, who moves his neighbor's boundary mark, or misleads a blind person on the road. He was cursed as one who distorts the justice to an alien orphan and widow.

He was cursed as one who is guilty of every manner of immorality and perversion, who wounds his neighbor in secret or accepts a bribe to strike down the innocent. He was cursed as a one who does not confirm the words of the law by doing them. In the book of Proverbs, we read that like a sparrow in its flitting and like a swallow in its flying, so a curse without cause does not alight. And all of creation on that day must have cried out, How could the curse of all curses alight upon this branch, This one holy branch from the seed of Israel, how could such a curse lie upon him? And there was only one reason, because on that day he bore your sin.

He bore it. From where does zeal come? From where does courage come? It doesn't come from some sort of John Wayne power within us. It does not come from some natural steel in our backbones.

It comes from this. What Christ paid changes everything. A man or a woman grabs a hold of this truth and they will be imprisoned for the rest of their life within the confines of the love of God. It will be these truths that drive them. This, this, this is the mystery of all true piety and godliness, that Christ has come and that He has taken our sins upon Himself and that He has died.

This is what must drive you. Not even the desire to change culture or to fix this world should drive you. If that is your driving strength, it's idolatry. The thing that must drive you is what God has done for you in Christ. It is this very story.

David cries out, How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Yet on the cross the sin imputed to Christ was exposed before God and the host of heaven. He was placarded before men and made a spectacle to angels and devils alike. The transgressions he bore were not forgiven him, and the sins he carried were not covered.

If a man is counted blessed because iniquity is not imputed to him, then Christ was cursed beyond measure because the iniquity of us all was imputed to him. He was treated as the covenant breaker, spoken of in the renewal of the covenant in Moab. Listen to this renewal. Because in it, you're going to see something that goes beyond just the words for that time. Listen to what it says.

Speaking about the covenant breaker, the one who would break the covenant, God says, The anger of the Lord and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on Him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven, then listen, then the Lord will single him out for adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant which are written in the book of the law. You and I, each one of us. You see, Judgment Day is coming. And although all of creation, every man since Adam will stand before God. It will be a judgment in group, but it will not be a judgment in mass.

And what do I mean by that? Although nations and peoples and churches and all sorts of groupings together will be judged, Know this also, you yourself will be singled out alone, and no one will stand by your side. You should be, I should be, we all should be singled out for the adversity of God. We should be singled out from all the nations so that God might properly declare war against us. But on that tree, Christ, the covenant keeper, was singled out.

And all the judgment, all of it, fell on him. I wished many times that I had been raised in a very proper setting and been spared from the filth I have known. And that still has upon me scars. The wickedness, the unspeakable unrighteousness of my life, I wish I had never known it, and I pray that you will never know it, but yet at the same time, she loved much because she knew she had been forgiven much, and she knew she had been forgiven much because she had a sense of her sin. The greatest grace that God could pour out on some of you fine people is to cut through your finery and show you the filth, the unspeakable horror of your heart so that Christ might become precious to you, so that The Gospel would consume you.

I want us to go for just a moment. Go to Numbers 6, and I'm going to show you one of the greatest theological problems in the Bible. Numbers 6. Bible. Numbers, chapter six.

Verse twenty three. Speak to Aaron and his son, saying, Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace.

To the well-read theologian, this is one of the greatest problems in all the Scripture. I mean, It's unbelievable that this would be here. It's wrong. It doesn't belong. It should have never been fed.

You say, well, why not? Why can't God bless? God is holy. God is just. Israel was full of wickedness and idolatry.

And it goes back to the thing that Paul spoke about in Romans 3. How can a just God bless the wicked? How can a just God justify the wicked? He's going to bless Israel. He should judge them.

Justice calls for their judgment. A few years ago I was teaching in a university in Europe. They'd gathered a bunch of students together and I was preaching to them. And they were loaded for bear. They had come to fight, to see this social dinosaur with this incredibly antiquated message.

And I'm back in the pacing back and forth and back and forth behind the curtain, Lord, I don't want to just die a martyr. I want these people to understand truth. I don't just want to walk out of here and boast about how much they hated me. I want these people to be converted. Lord, give me, what do I say?

I walked out there and as I walked out there and looked at all those people, I said, I am going to tell you, just right off the bat, the most terrifying truth that Scripture reveals to men. If you're fainted heart, prepare yourself. You may want to leave. But prepare yourself, because right now, I am going to tell you the most terrifying, grotesquely terrifying truth that can be known to men. I could see them brace themselves, and I said this, God is good.

And you could see just the ripple effect. People begin to laugh. They begin to ease up. You could see them talking to one another. Well, what's the problem with that?

And I said this, many of you do not understand the terror of the words God is good. And you're saying, well, why is that a problem? Here's why it's a problem. You're not. Now what does a good God do with the likes of you when all of creation is calling for your extermination?

Because of the evil in your heart. And that's what we have here, is that the Lord bless you and keep you. I can almost see an angelic council looking at one another, wondering what on earth is going on. How can this God that we know that tolerates no injustice bless this people? Because he knew.

That there would one day come the branch. He knew that the Messiah would one day come. And He would take the judgment that this people and all the people of God that have ever lived, that He would take their judgment to His bosom. And He would exterminate it there. I mentioned this the first time I preached here.

I'll mention it again. So many people somehow just understand the Gospel in this way, that because the Jews rejected Jesus and the Romans treated Him severely and beat Him up and nailed Him to a tree, that somehow That pays for our sins. Is that what you think? I do not want to take anything away from the suffering of the cross. It was necessary.

It had to be a bloody death. But so many people somehow believe that our sins were paid for because the Romans beat up Jesus. I can see it. Every Easter sermon I've almost every heard is just a romanticized version of the Gospel. The preacher will tell you, look at the crown of thorns on his head, look at the nails in his hands and feet, look at the spear in his side, look at the terrible pain of the cross.

And I'm going, yes, but when are you going to get to the pain of the cross? If you're saved here today, you are not saved merely because the Romans beat up Jesus and nailed Him to a tree. You are saved because on that tree He bore your sin and God the Father crushed His only begotten Son under the very wrath that you and I deserve. And in doing that, He satisfied justice and made it possible for a just God to extend mercy to a wicked people. This is also something I mentioned in the first sermon, the first time I preached here, but I want to mention it again before we go on.

When Jesus said, let this cup pass from Me, I've heard preachers say that he looked forward in his omniscience and saw the cat of nine tails coming down upon his back. He saw nails in his hands and his feet. And he trembled with anguish under that thought. That's preposterous. Because just a few decades later, thousands of Christians would die on the same kind of cross.

Some of them even set on fire. And historical accounts tell us that they went to that cross singing hymns and counting it joy to suffer in the same way that their master suffered. So would the very disciples of Christ joyfully embrace the death of crucifixion while the captain of their salvation cowers in a garden, sweating drops of blood because he is so terrified of the same means of execution. My dear friend, what he experienced on that tree, The cup he had to drink was something no Christian will ever have to drink. It's not a wooden beam.

It's not a nine inch nail. It is the wrath of Almighty God. Jeremiah said this, "'For the cup is in the hand of the Lord, the wine foams, it is well mixed and he pours out of this. Surely all the wicked of the earth must drink, must drain and drink down its dregs. That's you.

That cup should be placed in your hand. And you should be forced by omnipotence, divine omnipotence, to put it to your mouth and gobble it down throughout the rest of eternity. That is your lot. You deserve hell. And though you may not agree, though many fine people may not agree, know this, that all of creation one day will stand to its feet.

They will take a lottery for the opportunity to be able to give you the cup. You are so deserving of divine wrath that when you drink of it in eternity, creation will applaud God for His justice, but you can be saved. And it is only that Christ for His people stood in their place, took the cup, and drank it down that they might never have to do so. I want you to imagine for a moment Just a giant, massive dam. A thousand miles wide, a thousand miles high, filled to the brim with water.

And you're at the very bottom in a tiny village an eighth of a mile away. And one morning, you awaken to the sound of something that's cracked like an explosion. You run to the front of your village door. And there you see that dam has been removed and that deluge is coming towards your village. It doesn't matter, the fleet of foot cannot outrun it, the strongest swimmer cannot outswim it.

You are doomed. There is no hope. But right before that crushing blow touches even the hem of your garment, the ground opens up and swallows the full force of it down, and you are saved. So Christ opened Himself, taking on a body. He opened Himself to divine wrath.

He drank it down. He took it within Himself. The deity He had did not make His suffering any less. It simply sustained his humanity so that humanity could suffer it in full. And he extinguished it completely.

This is a marvel. Who is this man? Who is this man? He is one worth giving a thousand lives to. He is one worth giving every moment, every thought, every event of our life, everything.

Honor to Him, honor to Him, honor to Him. If we breathe, it is for Him. The heart beats, it is for Him, all for Him. Because He is so, so worthy of our loyalty, of our devotion. I am not a well-read man.

It's not that I don't attempt to. It's just I think I'm the tortoise in the race when it comes to the intellect. But there is one man that seems to warm my heart more than any other. I understand him, I think, and I long to meet him when I go to glory. And that man is John Flabel.

And if I could recommend a book to you, it would be his his first volume one, the Mediterranean glories of Christ. And in that, I found something that I call the father's bargain. And I want to read it to you. Flavell says this. Here you may suppose the Father to say, when driving His bargain with Christ for you.

He's talking about in eternity, the Father and the Son discussing your redemption. The Father speaks, My son, here is a company of poor, miserable souls. Do you identify with that? Can you say that about yourself? You cannot be saved if you don't see this in you.

If you've never felt the misery of your condition, the darkness of your heart, the hopelessness of going on to the throne of God without a cleansing, the hopelessness of being called forth in judgment without an advocate, a miserable soul. My son here is a company of poor, miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves. We're the ones to blame. I suppose it would be a magnificent thing if Christ died for victims, but He died for culprits who have undone themselves. You look at society and you judge it, and rightfully so.

Know this, you who are pious, The darkness of our present society is just a small reflection of your heart in its unregenerate state. Every vile and wicked thing that you can see in the West was birthed in your heart. And apart from Christ, you are undone. And you can undo yourself smoking crack in the hood. And you can undo yourself and your finery and your morality and your education.

Without Christ, your wicked heart has the capability of taking anything, even the best of things, and working it for your undoing. Or in other words, for your own damnation. And this is what we are. My Son, here is a company of poor, miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves, and they now lie open to my justice. Justice demands satisfaction for them or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them.

Do you understand what's being taught here? God is just. It is not sin that was so much against you. It was not the devil coming after you. It was a just, holy, righteous God coming after you.

It was the justice of God demanding your death. He cannot set aside his attributes. He cannot give one favor to another. He is perfect and complete and consistent in all that he is. So if he is going to save vile wretches like ourselves, he is first going to have to satisfy His justice against us.

And He says, What shall be done for these souls? And thus Christ returns. Oh, my Father. Such is my love. And pity for them.

Here's so many men say, I don't want anybody pitying me. Then, sir, you must go to hell. Because the only way you will go To heaven is through pity. It is through mercy. God showing kindness to the pitiful likes of you.

But Jesus says, Oh My Father, such is My love to and pity for them that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their guarantee. And then He says this to the Father, Father, bring in all thy bills that I may see what they owe thee. Now this is amazing. I hear so many young men that before they're married, they're writing poetry, they're in love with love, they're so excited, six months later they come back to me, they show me the ring and they say, what have I done to myself? If I only knew how difficult this would be, you see, they jumped into something in the name of love without knowing the requirements that would be heaped upon them, but not Christ.

He says, Father, bring in all Thy bills, that I may see what they owe Thee. He knew what He would have to pay for you, But He loved you so much. That is very proper today. And it is biblically correct to talk about Christ died for God, Christ died for the glory of God, God does everything He does for His own glory. All those types of statements are true, true, true, but in the mouth of a fool, they become very dangerous.

Because when we say that Christ died for God, when we say that God does everything for His own glory, that does not extinguish His Real love for His redeemed. This is amazing. He loves His people. And He loved them when they were vile and hating. He loved them when His holiness would not even allow Him to look upon them.

He loved them. He really, really loves you. This is amazing. This is not just some God coldly manipulating things in order to demonstrate how great He is. This is not God just coldly wanting to show something to creation about who He is.

He loves you. This is the thing that is most amazing to me. He loves me. I mean, really. It's not just a legal thing.

It's not just something that was worked out contractually. And although founded upon covenant, it doesn't end with just some agreement. He was moved by pity. And Israel says basically in Deuteronomy, why have you loved me? And God answers, I loved you because I loved you.

It had absolutely nothing to do with you, but my divine choice to show you affection. One of the most powerful things in the life of a believer is to know that they have been loved with an eternal love that worked out a plan of retention far beyond the minds of men and angels. You see, that is why Paul talked about being a prisoner. If you were to point out his chains, he would have laughed at his chains. He would have said, I'm not chained by these.

He was constrained by the love of Christ. Not Christ's, not His love for Jesus, but Jesus' love for Him. I hear people singing, you know, saying, Oh, how I love Jesus. It's a beautiful song. It's an appropriate song.

But I find myself turning the words around, Oh, how Jesus loves me. I find so little to sing about when I look at my love for Him, and when I look at His love for me, it is my theology that it is a love so great that we must be supernaturally strengthened to even feel the glimmer of it. For it is so great it would explode our hearts, it would disintegrate our psyche, It would disintegrate us entirely. The reason for a transformation in heaven is not merely that you be sinless, it's that you be able to behold such glory and to feel, to experience such love. He says I love them.

I will be responsible for them. Lord, bring in all Thy bills that I may see what they owe Thee. Bring them all in. And this is one of my favorite statements in the whole world apart from the Bible. He says, bring them all in that there may be no after reckonings with them.

You don't understand what I just read, do you? Do you not understand what I just read? Bring in all Thy bills, Father, so that when I pay, I've paid them all, And there will never again be a reckoning with them. They will never be charged with anything. Nothing will ever be thrown to their account that they have to pay.

It is paid. Believer, that is so freeing. It's all paid. All of it is done. Even my sins that will come in the future, sins that I hate, that I despise, that I'm shameful of, things and failures in my life, They cannot discourage me.

There is no after reckoning with me. There's none. Oh, oh, what an arm that is against the devil. Oh, let him come with all his might, but with only one question, I will defeat him. Would you like to speak with my elder brother on this matter of my sin?

Condemn me, call me out, shame me, do whatever you want, but if I call his name and he comes forward, he is my justification. He is my sanctification. He is my hope of glorification. He's everything. You see, this is, it's just, it's all Him.

Everything is Him. All the glory. Everything is Him. Everything is Him. There's nothing but Him.

Everything. Even our afterward obedience. It's nothing. Our devotion is nothing. It's all Him.

Everything. He's everything. He's everything. A love so amazing. So preaching is the most pitiful thing that there is.

How can a man talk about these things that take his breath away? Oh, the love of Christ. No after-reckonings because of what He did. He says, Father, at My hand, Thou shalt require it. I will rather choose to suffer the wrath that belongs to them than that they should suffer it.

Upon Me, My Father, upon Me be all their debt." Look at that! Upon Me, Father! I'll take it all for My people. And the Father replies, "...but My Son, if Thou undertake for them, Thou must reckon to pay the last mite. Expect no abatements.

We'd be going down the river in Peru and you'd be in this boat and a storm would be coming and a storm on the Amazon can just sink your tiny 18 foot launch in a moment. And you're praying, let that storm abate, let it turn aside, let it abate, Let it not be as strong as it seems to be as it's coming down the river. It'll swamp us before we get to the side. The father's looking at the son and says, Son, If you take their place, expect no abatements from Me. I will not lessen the punishment that must be given.

And then Flabel says this, Out of the mouth of the Father comes these words, Son, If I spare them, I will not spare you. Expect no abatements from My justice. And then the son says, Content, Father. Let it be so. Charge it all upon Me." And then he says something here that I so admire.

It shows us that we have a deep-chested and a broad-shouldered Christ. He says this, Charge it all upon me, I am able to discharge it. No man, no angel, no demagogue, No one can say these words except the Son of God. He throws back His shoulders. Lay it upon me.

I am able to discharge it, And though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, though it empty all my treasures, yet I am content to undertake it. Why did the payment have to be so great? It is because your evil is so vile. It is because God is so holy. I want to end this portion with one of the most epic narratives that we have in the Old Testament.

God comes to Abraham and He says this. Before I read this, let me say something about the Old Testament. If Christ is not found on every page of the Old Testament, then all you have in the Old Testament are a bunch of moral stories. And I believe that written within, weaved within every word of the Old Testament is something about Jesus, something pointing to Him. So God comes to Abraham and He says this.

Now listen to this language. Take now your Son, your only Son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." The old man in obedience to the will of God takes his son. Isaac seems to render himself, to yield himself to his father to the will of God. The old man, his will given in to the will of God, draws back the flint blade and begins to press it into the heart of His Son, and He hears these words, Abraham, Abraham, do not stretch out your hand against the lad and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your Son, your only Son, from me." And at the sound of his voice, Abraham withdraws his hand. He turns around and there's a ram in the thicket caught by its horns.

And the ram is offered in the place of Abraham's son. We hear that story and we sigh with a relief. Whoa. It was touch and go there for a while. Boy, that was intense.

What a wonderful ending to that story. It wasn't the ending. It was the intermission. Generation after generation after generation passes. And the curtains on this theater open up once again as we all take our seats.

And there we see the Son of God hanging on Calvary. He is broken. He is beaten. He is bleeding. Darkness has engulfed Him as Our sins lay heavy upon His shoulders.

And God takes the knife out of Abraham's hand and He draws it back and He slaughters His only begotten Son. No ram will take away our sin. Someone from our stock had to be offered. Someone fully man, and someone fully God, had to suffer on that tree. And it pleased the Lord to crush Him.

For your sin, What manner of love is this? And you say, oh, Finally, what a beautiful ending to the story. No, it's the intermission. Because on the third day, up from the grave, he arose with a mighty triumph o'er his foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain, and he lives forever with his saints to reign.

All hail King Jesus. Romans 1.4 tells us that it was God's vindication, declaring Him publicly to be the Son of God. Romans 4.25, that that resurrection was proof that Christ's death satisfied the demands of God's justice, appeased His wrath, was evidence of our justification. Peter tells the Jews that it was God's word to them that this Jesus whom they crucified, God has made him both Lord and Christ. And Paul tells the Gentiles that it is evidence that the whole world will one day be judged by God through Jesus of Nazareth.

I want to end this story in the book of Daniel. Chapter 7. Verse 13, Chapter 7. Verse 13, I kept looking in the night visions and behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like a Son of Man was coming. And He came up to the ancient of days and was presented before Him.

It's almost when you read this passage, something of déjà vu, you think, where have I heard this kind of thing before? You go back to the Gospels, there's some reference to this, but I go back to Joseph in Egypt. There he is in this prison cell. And just in a moment, this one who was so mistreated by the Gentiles, he has just taken forth from the prison cell almost without notice, just in a matter of moments. And he is presented before Pharaoh.

And Pharaoh looks down at him and says, Basically this, not one tongue will wag, not one finger will move, not one foot will stir in all of Egypt except at this man's command. Christ is raised from the dead. And this Son of Man is brought before the throne of God. And it is told to him this in verse 14, and to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

He is that rock that was cut out of the mountain without hands, that was thrown down to this earth, that will consume all the nations of this world. The cross has so much power for us. The death of Christ evokes affection in our heart, but we do not stay there with a crucifix. For this one who died in weakness was raised in power and glory, and unto him has been given everything that is. Although I am called and will submit to authorities that have been placed by God, I look at them with pity, knowing that they are only little boys sitting on papier-mâché thrones with little tin crowns.

There is only one King and His name is Jesus Christ! One King! We will never take up arms. We will not shed blood. We will not hurt men.

We will serve. We will preach and we will die, but we will tell the greatest powers on this earth that we pity them! That we pray for them! Because for the last 2, 000 years, there's only been one real King and one real Kingdom. And it is this Jesus.

And He will come. And it is not only our task as preachers to plead with men, to weep with men, that they might repent and believe the gospel, but to warn them to kiss the Son, and to do it quickly lest He become angry with them, and He turn against them with His wrath and they are destroyed. This is a king who dies. This is a king who rises again. This is a king that breaks our heart with his compassion and pity.

This is a king that in his glory even causes his beloved subjects to tremble. Not out of some inconsistency in his character, no. Out of the majesty and might of His power. Oh, young men, old men, talk about wanting to give so much to your families. Give them a gleam in your eye when the name of Jesus is mentioned.

Give them a shining face whenever the Gospel is preached. Let them know that you are not simply or merely a man given to principle or to rule or to ethic, or to even law. But you are a man given to Christ. To this one. Every preacher acknowledges the pain of preaching.

The pain of preaching is not rejection. The pain of Preaching is not having things thrown at you or written about you. The pain of preaching is just the utter failure of it. To count what cannot be counted, to paint what cannot be painted, To describe even what the preacher cannot understand. This is why we have things like apocalyptic literature.

You see prophets talking about wheels and fire and turning within turning. You wonder what they're saying. They are men who have caught a glimpse of the glory of God. And it almost drives them mad. Paul dealt with this in 2 Corinthians.

If I'm mad, if I'm insane, if I'm beside myself, it is for God. If I'm of a sane mind, it is for you. What I did here tonight was not proper. Being proper sometimes has to give way to passion. That that passion would be communicated to you and through your life.

Others. God bless you. For more messages articles and videos on the subject of Conforming the church and the family to the word of God and for more information about the National Center for family integrated churches Where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area log on to our website ncfic.org.