Why Christians don't sacrifice, part 1

[0:01] All right, so we'll open your Bibles to Leviticus. Leviticus, we're going to look at chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. I need to get a drink of water before I read it all.

[0:17] No, we're not going to read at the very beginning here just because there's so much to cover. And so what I want us to do is just to talk for a second about what we're looking at here, looking at Leviticus, and sort of give a couple of words of introduction.

[0:34] Then we'll pray, and then we'll get going. I want to show you a breakdown of these sacrifices, because what we're going to deal with this morning is the sacrifices. Now, if I ask the question, why do Christians not sacrifice these animals?

[0:49] We all know the answer is because of Jesus. And that's an easy answer, but I want to get a little further and deeper into that and say, but why? What is it that Jesus has done for us?

[1:02] What is it these sacrifices point to? And so when you read Leviticus chapter 1 through 7, you're going to find these five sacrifices. And the verse, you can see the first one is chapter 1, verse 1 through verse 17.

[1:17] The parentheses that's there, the 6, 8 through 13, all of the parentheses are about the priests. So in other words, as God gave the law concerning these sacrifices, he told the people what they needed to do, and then he told the priests what they needed to do.

[1:37] So when you read through the first seven chapters, and you find yourself going like, wait a minute, didn't we already talk about the burnt offering? Yes, you did. And you're going to talk about it again, because the people and the priests have to be instructed.

[1:52] Today, I'm going to preach half a sermon, because I was going to preach a whole sermon, but I decided last night that I don't want to rush it, and I don't want this to take a couple of hours, because that's what would happen.

[2:07] So we're going to cover the offerings that are in yellow, because these are the sacrifices that deal with sin. The other two in white are sacrifices that express worship.

[2:19] And those are the two points of my sermon, right? Sacrifices that deal with sin, sacrifices that express worship. We're going to deal with the first one, the first three. Now, that's where we're headed.

[2:31] But before we get there, we need to take a look at a couple of pictures of the tabernacle and think about the tabernacle. This is what a tabernacle kind of looked like. This is the exterior of the tabernacle.

[2:42] You've got the courtyard that's marked off. You couldn't just walk across the yard, the front yard of the tabernacle, and be like, yo, God, what's up? Like, you know, you're probably going to be struck dead, okay?

[2:54] You just don't do that. There's an entrance, and you can only come to this entrance when you're bringing a sacrifice. You see all the tables out to the side? You would sacrifice your own animal there at a table.

[3:06] Then the bronze altar or the brazen altar or the altar at the entrance of the tent of meeting is this little thing right there, and that's where the priest would go to do what he needed to do with the sacrifice.

[3:20] Further back, you see what's called the brazen laver. It's a big bowl of water, and it is not for you, but it's for the priests. The priests use that in order to do all kinds of washings, and we may get into some of that as we go.

[3:35] Now, the next picture is of the inside of the actual tabernacle because you had a holy. It was holy on the outside.

[3:45] It's holier in the first room, and it's the holiest place back there where the ark is, the most holy place or the holy of holies. In the front room, you've got the table of showbread, the lampstand or the menorah, and you have an altar of incense.

[4:02] Outside, it's bronze. Inside, it's gold. So the further you go, the more glorious it's getting. Then in that holy of holies is the ark of the covenant.

[4:14] The ark of the covenant is this box. It's got some angels on it. We'll talk more about it at another time, but just know no one could go into that place except for the high priest in only one time a year.

[4:25] That was off limits. And that's one of the things you'll see as you look at the tabernacle is you see all of these fences, all these places that you cannot go past. But as they were to bring their sacrifices, they were coming into that courtyard to the brazen altar, the bronze altar, the altar at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and that's where a lot of this will happen.

[4:47] I'm showing you that because as we read, you're going to begin to hear some of these pieces of furniture. The third thing that I need to say is I need to introduce you to a word from, well, it's a word that actually comes from 1 Corinthians, but the concept is captured in our passage in Luke 24.

[5:08] And this verse is the verse that just played on the screen for just a few minutes ago. And this is Jesus speaking, and he says, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me, everything written about me, in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

[5:29] One of the implications of this is that the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms are all about Jesus. It was all written about him, about the Christ, about the gospel, about the people of God, the whole shebang.

[5:46] There's a word that's used theologically for this. It's the word called typology. Everybody say typology. Now, you don't know what that means, or maybe some of you do, but it's okay.

[5:59] So let me just explain for a second. If I come and I stand right here, right there on that table is a shadow of my head. You can't see it, but I can, because the light's behind me and there's the table.

[6:12] There's the shadow, that's me, and there's the substance, and this is really me. That's not really me, but it looks like me, except it's thinner. Here, here is the real me.

[6:25] This is the substance, that's the shadow. That's a pretty simple concept, right? Typology is nothing more than the Old Testament being full of shadows with an attempt to look into the New Testament for the substance.

[6:41] I'll give you one example. In the book of Numbers chapter 21, all the people are being bitten by snakes, and they're all dying, and God tells Moses, take and make a bronze serpent, that looks like the serpents that are biting the people, put it on a pole, put it outside the camp, and tell everybody that if they wish to live, look at the snake.

[7:01] Well, it's a story that really happened. It's something that actually took place for the people of Israel, but what it taught them is it taught them by an object lesson, by a shadow, what the Christ was to be like.

[7:16] And the way we know that is because Jesus, in John chapter 3, said that even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of Man must be lifted up.

[7:29] The point is, is that what's in the Old Testament is a shadow, and Christ is the substance. So as we look at these sacrifices, one of the reasons that we don't do these sacrifices anymore is because the substance, the real thing, has come.

[7:47] This was just shadow, this was just a foretelling, this was just pointing forward to something else. So with that background as what we're going to look at, I want us to pray, and then we will launch into this.

[8:03] So let's pray together. Father, we thank you for the opportunity to just look at your word, and I pray, Father, that you would help us as your people to learn, to delight, and to obey you.

[8:21] And I pray that you would teach us this day for your namesake. In Christ's name, amen. Now here's my goal. My goal is this, that when we're done, that when we're done with this particular part of this sermon today, that you will leave out of here more trusting, loving, worshipful of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[8:48] Because what you're about to see as a lesson to Israel was a lesson for us to learn something about what our salvation is all about. And so I want us to look at these three sacrifices, the burnt offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering, and I want us to see how they deal with sin.

[9:08] Let's take a look at the first one. It's the burnt offering. It's chapter 1, verse 3 through 9. And when you think burnt offering, I want you to think the word reconciliation.

[9:20] Reconciliation. Everybody say reconciliation. Reconciliation. There we go. Here's the burnt offering in Leviticus chapter 1, beginning in verse 3. If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a mail without blemish.

[9:34] He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

[9:46] Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord, and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the size of the altar that's at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

[9:57] Then they shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall put fire on the altar and arrange the wood on the fire. And Aaron's sons, the priests, shall arrange the pieces, the head and the fat on the wood that is on the fire on the altar.

[10:15] But its entrails and its legs he shall wash with water, and the priests shall burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

[10:27] Now as we go through this, you're going to begin to see in some of these sacrifices things that overlap, things that are kind of, well they all sort of do that kind of a thing, and they all sort of say that kind of a thing, but some of them have some key features about them that we want to look at, and we're not going to cover this exhaustively.

[10:44] I'm just giving you a big bird's eye view of this, okay? So you start asking me questions about, well what about this? I'm going to tell you, just hold on to the bird's eye view, okay? Hold on to that.

[10:54] So a couple of things about this is that you had to offer a male animal, because a male was more expensive than a female animal. It had to be one without blemish, because one without blemish was perfect, whereas one that had a blemish didn't cost you as much money.

[11:08] This had to be something that cost you something. This animal then was brought before the priest, and you had to lay your hand on its head.

[11:18] any time you lay the hand on the head of the animal, what you are doing is you are transferring or you are imputing or you are giving your sin to that animal.

[11:33] And this putting the hand on the head was not just some sort of like, touch the animal like me, like I'm afraid of animals, so I'm going to touch them like this, like that, you know? No, this is a put the hand on the head, and you've got it in your grip, and you are pressing down as though the burden and the weight of your sin is falling onto this animal.

[11:54] So you've got, you're confessing, and then that animal stands for you, not anybody else. It's your animal. You don't lay the hand on the head of an animal for somebody else, you lay it on the head of the animal for yourself.

[12:08] If you were poor and could not afford an animal from the herd, you keep reading through Leviticus 1, and it would say, okay, well then something from the flock.

[12:20] Still too poor? Okay, then you can offer a couple of birds. So in other words, there's no excuse for anyone not to come and offer this sacrifice because the Lord understood that not everybody was at the same place in their wealth, and so he gave an opportunity for everyone to be able to offer this sacrifice.

[12:39] And it's told to us that this sacrifice is to bring atonement. To bring atonement. This word atonement is this idea of reconciliation.

[12:50] I told you, when you think burnt offering, think reconciliation. Reconciliation is when two parties are at odds with each other, and you bring them together so that they have peace.

[13:03] Right? So, if you sin, as an Israelite, you've broken God's law, now you are at odds with God.

[13:14] You've broken his law, and now the relationship is severed. So you offer a burnt offering in order to be brought back to God because the offering is the ransom price.

[13:27] It's the ransom price of the atonement to make reconciliation. That's a lot of words, but you got me? Are you with me? Let me just clear one little thing up.

[13:38] In modern language, when we think of ransom, we think of a good guy paying a bad guy in order to get something back from the bad guy.

[13:50] Right? Like in kidnapping, right? The idea is the bad guy has done something bad, so a good guy pays a bad guy to make the bad guy stop. That's modern. That's not what's in the Bible.

[14:03] Ransom in the Bible is a bad guy who's broken law, deserving punishment, paying a good guy a lump sum in order to save his net.

[14:16] Make sense? So here's what's happening. This animal is coming and it is being the sacrifice, the atonement, the ransom price, and the payment is paid, and that's the first half of this, and because of that, then now the worshiper can be brought near to God.

[14:33] Now God can be brought near to the worshiper. They are now reconciled because of the ransom price paid for the sin. It's very personal.

[14:43] The sinner himself has violated God's law. He deserves to die, but God gave a way for this sinner to be reconciled to himself by the ransom price paid by the substitute of the lamb.

[14:59] Now that's the burnt offering. Okay? Everybody say burnt offering, reconciliation. Alright, now we're going to talk about the sin offering. When I say sin offering, you need to think purification.

[15:16] Everybody say purification. I'm going to learn you. I'm going to learn you before we're done. The purification or the sin offering in Leviticus chapter four, verse one through six.

[15:27] It says, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel saying, if anyone sins unintentionally in any of the Lord's commandments about things not to be done and does any one of them, if it is the anointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people, then he shall offer for the sin that he has committed a bull from the herd without blemish to the Lord for a sin offering.

[15:53] He shall bring the bull to the entrance of the tent of meeting before the Lord and lay his hand on the head of the bull and kill the bull before the Lord. And the anointed priest shall take some of the blood of the bull and bring it into the tent of meeting, not just outside, but into the tent of meeting, and the priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle part of the blood seven times before the Lord in front of the veil of the sanctuary.

[16:21] Okay. Well, it's similar to the burnt offering, but obviously it has some differences. First of all, this is about sins committed unintentionally.

[16:36] Unintentionally. It's a very interesting thing. What does it mean to sin unintentionally? Well, we're not left by ourselves to understand that.

[16:46] In Numbers chapter 15, Moses is talking again to the people about something similar with the sin offering, and he contrasts sinning unintentionally with sinning with a high hand.

[17:00] Okay, so you can sin unintentionally or you can sin with a high hand. Now, what does it mean to sin with a high hand? It means that you hold your hand up and you say, ha? No, it doesn't mean that at all.

[17:12] What it means is that you look at this and you hear this commandment from the Lord, thou shalt not lie. It's right in your face. You have nothing pressing you. to disobey this commandment but you go like, I don't care what God says.

[17:25] I'm going to do what I want to. That's a high hand. Well, you don't even care that God said something. You're not even concerned with how this is going to roll out.

[17:38] You're not even concerned about consequences because you think you're right and God's wrong. That is sinning with a high hand. It's with a prideful heart. Sinning unintentionally, most of us understand this.

[17:50] we know that there are times in our lives that we're more susceptible to sin than other times because normally we keep ourselves from sinning because we've got some sort of physical control over our emotional state.

[18:05] Lose a couple of nights sleep and how much more difficult is it to hold your tongue? You understand? And when you do say that thing that was so biting and cutting and sinful, don't you find yourself looking at that and going like, oh Lord, please, I don't want to ever do that again.

[18:27] I don't want to act that way. I don't want to treat my wife that way. I don't want to treat my kids that way. But if you kind of come to it and you kind of go like, well yeah, I did say that and who are you to talk to me about that?

[18:38] Well that's sinning with a high hand and you need to understand that in Israel there was no sacrifice for sinning with a high hand. But there is a sacrifice for those who sin unintentionally.

[18:51] When your emotions get the better of you, when the passions get the better of you, when suffering presses upon you and you still sin, you're still guilty, but there is forgiveness for that sin.

[19:04] This sin sacrifice, this sin offering, is there because sin defiles you. That's why the priest has to dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle it seven times because blood is the disinfectant.

[19:22] Blood is the disinfectant. And you read through this sin offering, you'll notice that it's about whether the priest sins or a leader sins or the common people sin. And it's this idea of sprinkling the blood in order to cleanse.

[19:36] It's to disinfect the sinner because the sinner by his sin has made himself unclean and anything that he touches becomes unclean.

[19:46] As a matter of fact, when we get to the clean and unclean laws, you're going to see the sin offering is quite central to that. It's what disinfects. Why? Because blood disinfects because of our sin.

[19:57] So it's this idea of purification. It's this idea that God is wiping us clean. He's making a new start in us. sin. Because the problem with sin is not only does it cause a legal problem between us and God and therefore we need reconciliation, it causes a impurity problem between us and God and we need to be cleansed.

[20:26] We need both reconciliation and to be cleansed. Now let's talk about the third offering. It's the guilt offering. And with a guilt offering, you need to think the word restitution.

[20:40] Restitution. Everybody say restitution. Now how many of you know what restitution is? Now some of you, it's a little bit of a legal term.

[20:50] It also can be an idea of financial terms because there's some financial aspects to it. The idea is that when you have violated someone, you've broken a law against someone, not only do you get punished by the law, but usually you have to pay restitution to them.

[21:05] You have to give them some sort of sum of money to help make up for what it is that they lack. When I was a kid, I think I told some of you, maybe on a Sunday morning, I can't remember now, about my house being shot up when I was a kid.

[21:19] The guy who did that when he was finally captured, sentenced to prison and all that sort of stuff, he also had to pay my family restitution. He had to pay a lump sum of money in order to help give back at least some of what he took from us.

[21:33] So this idea of restitution is that there is something to be paid back. Look at Leviticus chapter 5, verse 14 through 16. The Lord spoke to Moses, this is about the guilt offering, if anyone commits a breach of faith and sins unintentionally and into the holy things of the Lord, he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation, restitution, compensation, a ram without blemish of the flock valued in silver shekels according to the shekel of the sanctuary for a guilt offering.

[22:06] He shall also make restitution for what he has done amiss in the holy thing and shall add a fifth to it and give it to the priest and the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering and he shall be forgiven.

[22:22] Now here you can only offer a ram. You can't offer anything else. It's got to be a ram and this ram has to be without blemish and the ram has to be valued according to the sanctuary silver shekel.

[22:34] And once you understand how much it's valued at then you add a fifth to that. So you've got to add more money on top of this ram as you offer it because if you sin against others then you're sinning against God and God has incurred or you have incurred a debt with God.

[22:57] When you sin against God you are robbing God of obedience that he deserves. When we sin against God we're robbing God of worship that he deserves.

[23:13] And because of that we must pay him back for that worship that we've robbed him of of that obedience that we have robbed him of. Reconciliation then is looking at things from the legal standpoint.

[23:29] Purification is looking at things from a medical standpoint. We have to be cleansed. Restitution is looking at things from a financial standpoint. When we sin against God we incur a debt.

[23:42] We've violated his laws. We've become unclean and all that we touch needs to be disinfected. I don't just have my sins to be forgiven.

[23:53] I have a debt that needs to be paid back. I have restitution that needs to be paid for stealing worship and obedience from God. So God has established these three offerings that deal with sin.

[24:08] Now here's the question. Why don't we offer these three sacrifices? Well obviously Jesus' death takes their place.

[24:20] Can you begin to see how? Hopefully as I've gone I've tried to use the language and be consistent with this. I think you probably some of you probably begin to already piece the puzzle together. But here's where we go.

[24:33] When we think of reconciliation you have to remember that Jesus Christ paid the ransom price for our sin so that we could be brought back to God so that we could be reconciled.

[24:44] In Mark chapter 10 verse 45 listen to Jesus. He says for even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

[24:57] He's the ransom price. He's the atoning sacrifice that brings the reconciliation between us and God.

[25:13] Remember in the Old Testament in the Bible ransom is a bad guy paying a good guy a lump sum. So Jesus comes to give his life as a ransom.

[25:24] He's saying listen I will take your place as the sinner. I will take your place as the violator. I will take your place as the criminal and I will offer myself as the ransom price for you.

[25:37] I will give my life to him to pay off what you have done. In Colossians chapter 1 verse 21 says in you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

[26:07] We were enemies of God. Well if you're not a Christian you are God's enemy by his standard and yours.

[26:22] And the only thing that brings us together is the ransom price of the blood of Jesus Christ. There's no amount of good you can do.

[26:33] There's no amount of money you can give. There's no amount of reading your Bible you can do. There's no amount of going to church that you can do. There's no amount of good deeds you can do that will ever pay the ransom price to make God hold off his wrath upon your life.

[26:49] The only price that will pay is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the ransom price paid. He is our reconciliation. Think about purification.

[27:03] Christ's blood is for the purification of our evil consciences. You see when we sin even if we are forgiven and we don't face the punishment that our sins deserve or the consequences that our sins deserve we have a tendency to think to ourselves that there's still something wrong with us or we have a tendency to think to ourselves well maybe I can't come to God because there's still something wrong with me and what most Christians who struggle with their assurance of salvation have never recognized is that not only does his death forgive you but his death death cleanses you.

[27:45] It cleanses you. Listen to Hebrews chapter 10. He says therefore brothers since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh that's tabernacle language that curtain that veil right.

[28:03] Verse 21 and since we have a great high priest over the house of God let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.

[28:20] Now from that point backwards you start looking at it's his death it's his blood that's how he's got us there and he has given us this full assurance of faith our hearts are sprinkled clean by his blood from an evil conscience and then he says and our bodies washed with water which I think he is making some sort of side reference to baptism there but the point is is that our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.

[28:48] One of the things that I like to use as an illustration to think about what it is that happens in salvation is that this this represents a hard black stony heart and when we trust Jesus in his death and resurrection for us the Bible talks about the word justification and it's this idea that God declares us in sort of a legal way he declares us righteous.

[29:18] He doesn't declare us innocent but he declares us something better than innocent he declares us righteous and what happens is that we're covered with the righteousness of Christ.

[29:30] It's like a child putting on their dad's jacket right we're putting on the righteousness of Christ so when God the father looks at us he sees nothing but the righteousness of his son Jesus Christ.

[29:44] He doesn't see our sin any longer. But one of the things that happens is that for many Christians they still have this notion that if this is all there is if he's just declaring this then what am I going to do?

[29:59] How am I going to make up for this? I used to say it this way that if Christ died for me that I'm going to live for him. And the way that I thought of that is that I thought to myself that because his death was so good because his death was so great and it forgave me of my sin I was going to have to live in such a way as to match that in order to continue to have that righteousness.

[30:23] In other words I was trying to earn that righteousness and continue to earn it for the rest of my life as I do my thing. He did his thing now I got to do my thing. That is not what his his blood not only sets me free but cleanses me.

[30:40] I want you to think about it this way. When he died upon the cross and he said it is finished. The filthiness that every single sin that you have ever committed in your life and you will still commit in your life the filthiness of that the stain of that has been washed away.

[31:00] Amen. Do you believe it? Because that right there that right there is the crux. For people who struggle with assurance of salvation.

[31:15] We'll come back to that. Restitution. So we talked about reconciliation purification let's talk about restitution. Christ's death is the payment.

[31:28] Christ's death is the restitution for the worship that we stole from God. In his one time offering of himself upon the cross he paid back the debt we incurred by not being obedient to God.

[31:50] Colossians 2.13-14 says this and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh God made alive together with him having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

[32:11] This he set aside nailing it to the cross. By his death he canceled our debt. Every sin that you've ever committed.

[32:24] Every sin that you were yet to commit because I'm just gonna I guess newsflash maybe I should tell you this. So long as you're breathing in this world you're gonna sin. Oh me?

[32:37] Oh me. That's just gonna be the nature of it because we are not perfect yet. And every time we sin we have that debt with God.

[32:51] But we don't have to go back and re-crucify Jesus because in his death he once for all satisfied all of it. Christians I wish that I could get into your head and grab truth and nail it into your brain.

[33:15] I wish that I could just I don't know if that would work I know there's all kinds of metaphysical problems with that but I just I believe that these truths are so foundational to your understanding of what Christ has done.

[33:28] That you must remember a couple of things. You need to remember that you deserve death and hell and nothing else. If you cannot say that to yourself if you cannot believe that about yourself that you deserve nothing but death and hell then nothing else matters of anything else that we're saying.

[33:46] But if you understand that and you believe that with all your heart that you know that your sin makes you worthy of nothing more than death and hell and that's all we deserve then you can understand that Christ has been your substitute and your ransom price.

[34:01] He has paid the price for you. And you need to believe that we're defiled by our sin that it makes us unclean it makes us unable to come you know this is why so many Christians I've had so many Christians who've come to me and say listen I don't think I'm going to take the Lord's Supper today because it's just not been a very good week.

[34:22] Man I was kind of sinful this week. And I'm going like well then none of us should take it. But his death has cleansed us. And we can approach God.

[34:32] You know that verse you know that verse that says that because we have such a great high priest we can now approach the throne of grace with boldness. Why is that? Because we've been cleansed we've been disinfected by the blood.

[34:46] And you need to understand that your debt to God has been paid so you are free. So it means just a couple of things and I'm just going to make some application press some conscience make you mad and we're going to quit.

[35:05] If this is true if this is true there's several things we could say but if all that I'm saying is true and that's we don't make these sacrifices because in Jesus we have a perfect one sacrifice.

[35:17] And it does these three things for us reconcile, purify and pay restitution. Then Christians stop holding grudges.

[35:36] Stop holding grudges. Because maybe it's a spouse maybe it's a child maybe it's a co-worker maybe it's a church member maybe it's somebody that you're friends with or maybe it's somebody you used to be friends with.

[35:54] Maybe it's somebody that you used to talk to. But because they hurt you because they said something to you because they didn't listen to you because they fill in the blank back of your mind it's like nope never again.

[36:10] Never again. And there's a difference between staying safe from somebody who's not a safe person and then stepping back and going like nope never again. You understand what I'm saying?

[36:24] If that person is a Christian specifically if that person is a Christian then when you hold a grudge and refuse to forgive you are saying that the death of Jesus and all that it has done for that person is not enough.

[36:45] And if that's where your mind is then I just tell you repent repent for your lack of forgiveness. You see forgiveness is not about feeling something first and then doing something later.

[37:01] Forgiveness is a command by the Lord that we're to obey and maybe the feelings follow down the road and maybe they don't. But we don't care what the feelings do. We just need to forgive and stop holding the grudge.

[37:15] and maybe it's somebody who's dead and gone and you still hold on to it. Not only do you need to let it go but you need to understand this that even your lack of forgiveness Christ is taken to the cross.

[37:38] And I would say one final thing here and that is this that if you're a Christian and these things are true then you need to stop looking over your shoulder at your own sin.

[37:55] You know I believe that as Christians we ought to do all that we can to try to live holy lives and we definitely need to see where we have failed the Lord and we need to go to 1 John 1.9 and confess our sins.

[38:05] He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But sometimes there's an unhealthy introspection that looks at our sin like navel gazing and holds on to it and no forward progress is made in the life of that Christian as they struggle with assurance of salvation.

[38:23] It would be like having a disease or thinking you have a disease and you say that you've got this disease and this is a terrible disease and I've got to get the cure but the cure is a terrible cure.

[38:37] But yet you've got you know 20 doctors who've done tests on you and they say no you don't have the disease but you just will not listen to them and you say no no no I'm going to get the cure because I need it because there's just something wrong with me.

[38:53] How many doctors would it take telling you that you don't have the disease for you to believe that you don't have the disease? And yet what do we do as Christians? As Christians we have been forgiven we have been we've had the restitution paid we've had the purification we've been reconciled what else do you need to have happen for you to not hang on to your sin from the past and bring it into the future?

[39:23] Christ has paid the price. And if you're not a Christian one of the things that you need to understand is that all of this that I'm talking about you've got to come back to point A and point A is this is that you you are separated from God you're not reconciled to Him because you're an enemy of His because you have broken His law and that makes you an enemy of His and the only way to be reconciled to Him is through the death of Jesus and not only that but the sin that you commit it violates your mind it destroys your mind it it it it it it makes your mind unclean it defiles that's the word I was looking for it defiles your mind that's why people who give themselves wholeheartedly to all kinds of sin can't even look at the world around them and say that God created it because their minds have been so darkened by their own sin and if you continue down your path not trusting in the Lord

[40:27] Jesus Christ then your mind is going to be darkened the further you go but not only that you still have a mountain of debt against God and God against you because you have sinned and it's never been paid off and your only hope is to admit that you're a sinner and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ because he's he's paid it all so will you stop being the boss of your own life and turn to him that's the question and I pray that you will