Transcript:
Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20: “Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Let’s pray.

Father, please, please, please may I preach Christ. Please open the eyes and ears of all of us that we might see Christ. One gift we ask, and we have chosen the best, O God: Christ, Christ, that we might see Christ. Amen.

We are ambassadors. How can it be? How can it be? It would have been an astounding measure of grace if He just sent us to hell for a while, but He’s kept us out completely. It would have been an astounding measure of grace, an astounding measure if He would have put us someplace neutral where no place could be found for us, and just left us there for an eternity. That would have been grace, in light of our sin.

It would have been inconceivable that He would set us on the same level with angels and make us servants in His court, but He has made us sons. And if that were not enough, ambassadors—ambassadors of Christ, not of the law, not of the letter, but of His own dear Son. Ambassadors of Christ. There’s such majesty in that. There’s such beauty, and yet there is a beauty that is so sharp that it kills the preacher. It has the power to disintegrate his mind and shatter his heart into a million pieces.

Little brethren, you don’t need much; you only need an exalted, a greater, a wider, a higher, a deeper view of Christ. The people of God around the world today, they don’t need strategies. They don’t need the wisdom of men. They don’t need clever ideas. They only need to see Christ.

And that is the burden; that is the terror, the pain, and the beauty of the preacher. Brethren, we are not men of the people, and although we must love them and walk among them, we are primarily men of God. It is our primary task to be in His courts, to be in His courts, to be on His doorstep, and to say nothing: “I’ve had up till now is enough. I must have more of Christ.”

And then to look out over God’s people and see them hungry, with so little power and so wayward and so distracted, and cry out, “Oh God, am I not a preacher? Am I not a preacher? Then consume my heart with Christ that I might stand before your people and in the word I proclaim, they have a greater vision of Him.” And in seeing Christ, it is enough. It is enough.

But then again, that’s the pain of preaching. Why would a man ever take it upon himself to enter a profession where every time he opens his mouth he fails? That there is nothing. He is so great that the mind can’t comprehend him. Spurgeon always lamented that whether you have the vocabulary of the greatest orator, or whether you have the lips of a seraph, it doesn’t matter; all language fails. All language fails.

And so we embark upon something this afternoon that will end in failure.

Christ! Oh, that God would show Him to me and show Him to you.

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.” The gospel of this great crown of doctrine, of this majestic diadem of theology, the center stone that outshines them all, and is the source of the glory of all other doctrines, is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So many people today discussing so many things with regard to eschatology; I can assure you, you will know absolutely everything about the second coming on the day that it occurs. But you will be in an eternity of eternities in glory, and you will have not reached the foothills of the Everest of the gospel of Jesus Christ—an unending comprehension of the greatest Seraph. It will not end; it will go on and on and on as we all gaze from glory to glory in what God has done for us in Christ.

And I can assure you, with the authority of Scripture, that this is the one pure for everything that is the malady in preachers and their churches. You, preacher, go farther and deeper into the heart of the gospel, and as you do, everything else will be set in place.

The gospel! Know it! Be a man who dwells in your study, who reads ancient books, who cries out to God in prayer so that on Sunday, when you go to the pulpit and open up your mouth, you have something to say to God’s people—not about a mere ethic or morality, but about a person that is incomprehensible and full of glory. Full of glory.

And here we have this text. There’s so much to say before we get to this text, but time limits us. I would have to say, first of all, that this text, verse 21, you cannot understand it. You say, “Yes, but Paul, we can’t understand it,” unless we first understand how vile sin truly is.

Yeah, but you can’t understand that, and nor can your people, unless they understand who God is. That is the first step in the gospel. It is not the sin of men; the first step in the gospel is the knowledge of God. You can wrangle with men all day long. You can try to convince them with all your arguments about how horrifying, how putrid, how terrible, how loathsome sin is, but they will never see it.

Your task, preacher, is to study the attributes of God until you burn with them. Reveal God to your people through the proclamation of the Word, and they will see their sin. When you’re preaching on the streets, preach the attributes of God, and in that light, every dark spot will be clearly seen.

Then we have before us here, before we can understand it, we must understand what is the great dilemma. I am surprised at this as I read the ancient books, particularly the Reformers on through the Puritans. It seems like on every page they talk about this theme, and I almost never hear it in modern preaching. The theme is this: the great question of all the Scripture, what it all comes down to according to Paul in chapter 3 of the book of Romans, is this: it is a divine dilemma. How can God be just? How can He truly be just and yet justify the wicked? It is wrong. How can this thing be done?

Before I go to our text, I want to show you using the Old Testament. Turn with me for just a second to Exodus 34. Here we have a revelation of God to Moses. In parallels, Isaiah 6, 34:5, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth, who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.”

Can you see within this text the problem? When he says this forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin, it’s a Hebrew way of piling one term upon another to say that God forgives all types and kinds of sin. And yet this next statement draws us into great confusion for he says this: “Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” How can this be true? How can you have both things in the same passage relating to the same God?

Now, let’s go on. Go to the Book of Psalms for a moment. Chapter 32, verse 1: “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!” Now when you read that, you praise God until you read it in light of who God is.

Listen to what it’s saying: God covers sin! I thought that was the strategy of corrupt earthly judges—to cover sin. How can a holy and just God cover sin? How? The ethical, moral dilemma, theological, philosophical delays!

David should die; Adam should die; Noah should die; Abraham should die; David should die! They should all die! If God is a just God, how can He cover sin?

Go to Proverbs 17, verse 15: “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.”

We get into the New Testament, especially Romans 3 on to Romans 4, and what do we hear? We hear praises of men and apostles and angels with regard to what? That God justifies the wicked! God justifies the wicked! And so we write choruses about it; we preach about it; we exalt in God’s forgiveness of the wicked. But here’s the great problem: it says in the book, and the Scriptures cannot be broken, that anyone who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. So how does the Lord justify the wicked? This is the great question of the gospel, and yet it’s neglected today. People don’t understand that today. Not enough of the attributes of God are being taught.

Then let’s go for just a moment to the Book of Micah, and here we will reveal part of the answer to this dilemma. Micah chapter 7, verse 18: “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever because He delights in unchanging love.” He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. And we write songs about this!

God has taken our sin off of us, and He has thrown it on the ground, and He is trampling underfoot. Our God has taken our sin and rolled it up in a mighty ball and cast it into the sea, never to be seen again! And we rejoice! But that makes no sense whatsoever if it’s not interpreted Christologically.

God did not take your sin off of you. He did not take the sin off of His people and throw it on the ground and trample it. He didn’t take your sin off as an impersonal thing and hurl it into the sea. The answer to this dilemma is found in this: God took your sin off of you and laid it upon the perfect Christ and trampled Him underfoot under the wrath of God.

God took the sin off His elect. God removed the sin from His church. He rolled it up in a ball and He cast it upon Christ and then cast Christ into the sea of His wrath. The only way God, according to Paul, can be just and the justifier of the wicked is because there is a ransom, because there is a propitiation, there is a sacrifice so pure, so mighty, so pleasing to God that it satisfies the demands of God’s justice and quenches His wrath.

Now in light of that, let’s look at our text. He made Him who knew no sin… Now we look at that and what do we think? What do we think? He kept the law; He was born under the law; He kept the law. Yes, that is true. But it’s so much mightier than that; it’s so much greater.

Let me give you an example. What do you suppose would be the greatest sin? Do you think it might be breaking the greatest commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Now listen to me—there has never been a human being on this planet of all the thousands of years of humanity, of all the billions of people who have walked this earth. There has never been, of all that mass, not one person who for one fraction of a second loved the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Think about it! Among the billions of Adam’s seed, not one for a fraction of a second loved the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. And yet this Jesus of Nazareth, there was never one second that He did not love the Lord His God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength.

He’s absolutely amazing! Amazing! Shout it from the mountains; let it tear your heart out of your breast. This is enough to propel a Christian into countless ages of piety. Look at this man, Jesus, and what He did! Our Victor, our Conqueror, our Champion did what none of us could do—not the whole lot of us could do.

And then when it says that He was tempted like us in all ways, oh brethren, think, think, think! Before you preach that text, oh yes, He was tempted like us, just like us. He didn’t fail. Well, yes! But you’re not understanding. Imagine that they’re standing beside me was a world-class power lifter. And so you put an Olympic bar on his back—45 pounds—and you put an Olympic bar on my back. I’m okay; he’s okay. Then you put two wheels on him—two plates. Now you’ve got 135, and you’ve got 135 on me. We’re both still okay.

Let’s take it up another notch. Let’s put more plates on there. So now he’s got 225, and I’ve got 225, and yes, I can still squat that way, so I’m okay. But then you go past, and now we’ve got six plates. We’ve got 315 here, 315 here. I’m beginning to tremble; I don’t want to go down because I’m not coming up. He is okay.

Then we put on eight plates; we’ve got 405. He’s not even breaking a sweat. I have fallen to the ground and been broken into a thousand pieces. The first temptation was laid upon the strongest of us; it was laid upon Him, and we crashed. But sin was heaped; temptation was heaped and heaped and heaped and heaped upon Him, and He stood and He stood and He stood.

What came against Him was infinitely beyond anything that touched the whole lot of us, and yet this broad-shouldered Christ, this deep-chested Savior, He stood His ground in every way. He’s a Champion; He’s a King. And He earned it by His own right in virtue.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin. Years ago, when I first looked at this text, it terrified me. I consulted Calvin, and he told me I was right to be terrified. And he warned me—he warned me. He said, “Don’t say too little; don’t say too little or you’ll rob God’s people of glory, of knowing their Christ. Don’t say too little, but don’t say too much. Don’t go too far with this; this is a dangerous passage. You can enter into the realm of blasphemy.”

What does it mean that He was made sin?

I believe the answer, affirmed also by many, including Martyn Lloyd-Jones, particularly verse 21 answers the question: What does it mean for Christ to have been made sin? What does it mean for us to be righteous?

Look at the text: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ.” The moment that we believed in Christ, did we somehow become infused with such a grace that our natures were transformed beyond the corruptible, and we became perfect beings? Absolutely not!

What happened to us when we believed in Christ? Righteousness was imputed to us.

Now, listen to my language very carefully because I’m going to add a word that is not often heard: the moment we placed our faith in Christ, we were legally or forensic-ally declared to be right with God, and He treated us as right with Him.

Do not forget that word “treated” because it’s important to understanding the cross. The moment we believed in Christ, we were legally declared to be right before the throne of God, and God treats us as right with Him. Even when a Christian comes under the loving discipline of God, it is still in the context of being treated right with Him.

It is not a judge but a father. So how did Christ become sin? On Calvary, the sins of God’s people were imputed to Him, and He is legally declared guilty, and He is treated as such—treated as such.

Does that make you tremble? If not, there’s again a lack of understanding of the attributes of God. For the perfectly holy God to treat the sinner as a sinner is beyond terror. It’s not some sort of Dante’s Inferno, perverted, twisted wrath or torture; it is the blinding white holiness of God manifested against evil.

Do you see, He became sin?

Now it is so hard for us to understand—why? We were conceived in sin; we were born in sin; we come from a people of sinful lips; we drink down iniquity like it was water. How can we understand what it meant for the Holy, Perfect Son of God who had always known perfect communion with the Father? How can we know what it means to bear sin?

Imagine one of your fine women from this church, and she decides that she’s going to have an outreach among the prostitutes of Los Angeles. And she’s the kind of woman you all know; she says she’s pure as any woman has ever been. She’s a dear saint; the slightest thing offends her spirit. But she goes out to win souls in the street.

But as she’s there passing out tracts, all of a sudden, the police come, and they grab the prostitutes and throw them in the paddy wagon, and they grab her along with them and throw her in. The prostitutes are sitting in the paddy wagon, and later in the police office they’re on their cell phones; they’re laughing; they’re talking jokes; they’re filing their nails.

But this dear sister, as they were over in the corner, she can’t breathe. Her entire life is dislocated and fractured—the soil of the men touching her. She’s beside herself. She’s clearly hysterical, out of her mind. That doesn’t even begin! As a matter of fact, I wish I’d not even use it as an illustration; it is so pitiful compared to what Christ knows when He took the sins of His bride upon Himself.

Let’s go on. This text tells us that Christ was made sin. And you think, “Stop, Paul, just stop! It’s enough, He became sin.” Okay, but then just when we think it can’t get any darker, Paul lights a lamp and takes us farther down into the dungeon. Over to Galatians chapter 3. Look what it says!

Galatians 3, verse 10: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law to perform them.'”

Now, it would take several lectures to go through exactly what it means to be a curse. But let me summarize it for you. The sinner, not only before God, but before every holy creature in heaven— the last thing that sinner will hear: he is so vile, so loathsome before God. The last thing that sinner will hear when he takes his first step into hell is all of heaven, all of creation, standing to its feet and applauding God because God has rid the earth of him.

Then verse 13: “Yet Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.'”

I’ve read this passage so many times, but I never cease to be shocked at the coldness of my heart. How can I breathe in light of this truth of what my Savior, what your Savior, did for us?

You see, gentlemen, Paul was right when he wrote Timothy, “The mystery of godliness.” This is the source of salvation, Romans 1:16. This is the source of all true piety. If this is not the source then your piety springs forth from idolatry! We seek to be pious; we seek to please Him because of this, because of the gospel, because of what He’s done.

This is what makes missionaries; this is what makes street preachers; this is what will not allow us to be silent. He became a curse. In the Beatitudes, we have the blessings, don’t we? The kingdom of heaven, seeing God, so in a way, the curse would be the antonym of what we see in the Beatitudes, wouldn’t it?

So let’s just rewrite those. Just listen: the blessed are granted the kingdom of heaven; the cursed are refused entrance. The blessed are recipients of divine comfort; the cursed are objects of divine wrath. The blessed inherit the land; the cursed are cut off from it. The blessed are satisfied; the cursed are miserable and wretched. The blessed receive mercy; the cursed are condemned without pity. 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 and disgraced.

Sometimes we can honestly, if we’re not grounded in the gospel and we’re not Christological, not gospel-centered, we can become so trite. There are things the Puritans said that should only be spoken with a trembling lip. Young men, realize this: it’s not enough to have the Puritan theology; you need to have the Puritan devotion—a trembling lip.

And that is every time I cry out, “I’m blessed!” resonating in the back of my mind, because He was cursed! Every favor, every mercy, every pity, every kindness was bought! That’s why every gift of God should be collected in the box of our heart and sealed with a seal greater than that—that is wax. Everything was bought by His blood! Everything was bought by His suffering! And that is why we are the most joyful and the most broken people all at the same time.

I want to go now to… you don’t have to turn there; we don’t have time. But when He talks about the curse, if we look in Deuteronomy 27 and 28, we find something unusual that happens with the camp of Israel. And what is that? The camp is divided. One part of the camp is sent to Mount Gerizim, and from Mount Gerizim, they are to cry out all the blessings that are to fall upon the covenant keeper. But the other part of the camp is sent to Mount Ebal, where they are to scream out all the curses that are to fall upon the covenant breaker.

I do not think I have to give you a dissertation on radical depravity to know which camp you and I belong in. But here’s the thing that you need to understand: Jehovah has only ever had one servant, one witness, one champion, one son, one covenant keeper. And that covenant keeper took the place of his brethren—us, nothing but vile covenant breakers and rebels—the whole lot of us. But in love and according to the eternal counsels of the Father, the covenant keeper took the place of the covenant breakers and suffered the curse that was theirs.

Now, what I’ve done is I’ve simply gone into these two passages—Deuteronomy 27 and 28—and I’ve pulled it out to show how this applies to Christ. The first sentence I borrow from R.C. Sproul. Now listen, and the rest comes from Deuteronomy. When Christ, from Calvary, cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken Me?” Dr. Sproul says the Father replied, “The Lord, the Lord your God damned Jim.”

The Lord sends upon you curses, confusion and rebuke until you are destroyed, and you perish quickly. The Lord will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart, and you will grow pet moon at noon as the 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.

“Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.” The heavens which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth that is under you, iron. You shall be a horror, and a proverb, and a taunt among all 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.

Common grace is so overlooked every day of the sinner’s life; heaven should be screaming this condemnation at him! Do you understand me? Every place you go, every step you take, every breath you draw in and let out, every beat of your heart—you would only hear resounding in your ears over and over and over: “Cursed! Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!”

And then God’s cursing vindicated on the day of judgment, and then cast into hell where you hear, “Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!” But our elder brother, the covenant keeper, the Messiah, the Son of God, the victor, the champion, He comes and takes our place, and He bears the curse in our place.

I’ve written here: as Christ bore our sin on Calvary, He was cursed as a man who makes an idol and sets it up in secret. He was cursed as one who dishonored his father and 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 due an alien, orphan, or 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 one who does not conform, confirm the words of the law by doing them. You know, it’s interesting, in the book of Proverbs, just by way of illustration, it says, “Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse without cause does not alight.” So how did a curse alight upon the branch? Only because the branch took my place, took your place, and bore our sin.

Again, let’s read the curse. Did not a curse alight? The curse did alight upon the branch—not because of some flaw in His character or error in His deeds, but because He bore the sins of His people and carried their iniquity before the judgment bar of God. There He stood, uncovered, unprotected, and vulnerable to every recourse of divine judgment against us.

David said this: “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 I have written here: on the cross, the sin imputed to Christ was exposed before God and the hosts 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 fell upon Him. In the renewal of the covenant, the covenant in Moab, we hear this. There is a warning given to the nation of Israel, and it goes like this: regarding the covenant breaker, the one who disobeys the law of God, 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 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.

Sometimes when I’m witnessing or I’m preaching on the streets, and some sinner waxes bold with me, I say, “You’re pretty bold, man, because of the group you’re standing in. But on the day of judgment, you will be singled out for adversity. Show me the strength of your knees on that day! Make boast on that day!”

I’m not afraid!

“Sir, listen to me. You will melt before Him like a tiny wax figurine before a blast furnace with none as your advocate unless now you run to Christ!”

There’s a passage there on a blessing; it’s beautiful. But again, we sometimes miss the point. “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.” We teach that to God’s people without telling them this is impossible!

How can God do this to sinners? And it’s only because on the cross, the only one who deserves such a blessing from Yahweh was the one who carried the curse that we might be blessed.

Let’s go to the garden now with the time that we have. This is a travesty. Do you realize because of evangelistic evangelical preaching? Most people think that somehow our sins were atoned for because the Romans beat up Jesus!

Easter is coming, and I’ve read it for the sermons that we’re going to hear. The preacher will say things like this: Christ said, “Let this cup pass from me. Let this cup pass from me. Let this cup pass from me.” And they say—then they usually go on and say—in His omniscience, He looked forward and He saw the cat of nine tails coming across His back. He saw the crown of thorns and the mockery. He saw the nails in His hands and His feet, and it caused Him to sweat as though great drops of blood.

Well, let me tell you something. The physical agony of Christ was absolutely essential in the atonement, and I’ll take nothing away from it. But if that’s all you tell your people, you are not telling them about Calvary, and I’ll prove it.

For the next three centuries, read everything you can on martyrdom. The little disciples, the little sheep of Jesus were carried off to the crosses—some of them crucified upside down—some of them set on fire. And yet the history of martyrdom tells us that they went to those crosses with their chest out, playing the man, singing hymns, counting it a majestic privilege to die like their Lord!

So are you telling me the Champion of their salvation is now cowering in a garden? What was in the cup?

Psalm 75: “For a cup is in the hand of the Lord; in the wine foams, it is well mixed, and He pours out of this. Surely all the wicked of the earth must drain and drink down its dregs.” Jeremiah agrees, for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. He says to me, “Take this cup of the wine of wrath from my hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it. They will drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword that I will send among them.”

I remember one time teaching in a school. It was a school founded upon the tradition of the Reformation. I went there to preach in Chapel, and I said, “Who am I preaching to?” and they said, “Kindergarten through the 12th grade.” I said, “That’s good. I was going to preach on propitiation,” and the headmaster said, “That won’t be a problem here, sir.”

So I began to teach, and as I got to the cup, I asked the student body, “What was in the cup? What was in the cup?” In true reform tradition, this little nine-year-old girl raised her hand. I called on her; she stood beside her desk, put her little hand on the top of her desk, and stood there straight as an arrow.

And she said, “Sir, the wrath of Almighty God was in the cup!” It’s beautiful! This is marvelous! Think, preachers. You oftentimes assume too much that your people understand the cross. But I can tell you all over the world, I’ve had people come up to me in tears and say, “Brother Washer, for 15 years, I have rolled upon Christ. I have trusted Christ, but I never could figure out in all this preaching how the fact that Romans and Jews beat Him up somehow atoned for my sin. But tonight I understand. He was crushed! It pleased the Lord to crush Him! To crush Him!”

Imagine you’re in a little village, and you’re just a quarter of an eighth of a mile away from a dam. You’re at the very bottom of that dam on a river, and the dam is a thousand miles high and a thousand miles wide, and it’s filled to the brim. One morning you wake up to a sound like the world cracking into. You run to the window of your house and you see that the dam is broken, and a wall of water, higher than heaven, is coming toward you.

Your strength or stroke doesn’t matter; how fleet of foot you are does not avail you. You are going to die, and no one will hear from that moment your name. You will be gone; you will be removed from this earth. And before that mighty wave hits you, the ground opens up and drinks it down so that not one spot of water reaches your sock.

So did Christ, our mighty Champion, on Calvary, take our sin and bear the wrath of Almighty God! And I hear men say, “This is cosmic child abuse.” My heart! I don’t know whether to cry or go to battle! It is the most precious truth to me because my sins are so high that only a work like that can save me!

Once, I was preaching at a secular university, and as I was preaching on the atonement, this student stood up and he said, “I got a question for you.” I said, “What?” He said, “How can one man suffering for a few short hours on a cross save a multitude of men—a countless multitude, according to you—of men from eternal judgment?”

I said, “Son, you meant it for evil, but God will mean it for good! Thank you for that question. Now sit down!”

You want to know how that one man dying alone for a few short hours on a tree can save a multitude of men from an eternity in hell? Because that one man is worth more than all of them put together! You take mountains and molehills, crickets and clowns; you take everything—every planet, every star, every form of beauty, everything that sings, everything that brings delight—and you put it all in the scale. Then you put Christ on the other side, and He outweighs them all.

He outweighs them all!

Brethren, this is the one we chase after! Go to your studies! Flee! They’re not to become smarter than the next plan but to behold this glory until it hurts you and disintegrates you and reconstitutes you and makes you a preacher.

One of my favorite writers of all of history is John Flavel. In his “Meditations of Christ,” he says that he writes by moonlight; he can’t paint Him properly. There’s a passage in that first volume, and I’ve retitled it. He’ll forgive me in heaven, but it’s called, I call it “The Father’s Bargain.”

And I want you to listen to it. So concisely, he puts the gospel. The Father speaks in eternity past, and He says, “My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves and now lie open to My justice. Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them. What shall be done for these souls?”

Men, that’s truth!

Christ returns: “Oh my Father, such is my love too, in pity for them.” You know, there are so many fads in Christianity, even in reform circles. One of them, which is a spectacular truth but needs to be understood, is that God has done everything for His own glory. And that is true! True! True!

But sometimes I hear, especially young preachers, using that in a way that would diminish the love of God that He set upon His people. God has done everything He’s done for His own glory. Israel asked, basically in Deuteronomy 7, “Why do you love me?” And God answers with that ontology: “I loved you because I loved you!”

This is for His own glory. He has set His love upon us. The most special thing to me is that Christ went to Calvary out of love for sinners, out of love for His bride. And that’s what Flavel is saying: “Oh my Father, such is my love and pity for them! Then rather they should perish eternally, I will be possible for them as their surety! Who can say that but deity?”

“I Father, I will be responsible for them.”

And then He says this: “Father, bring in all Thy bills that I may see what they owe Thee.”

And then He says this: “Lord, bring them all in, and how I—listen to this! Listen! Lord, bring them all in that there may be no after reckonings with them!”

Did you hear that? No after reckonings! Free! Free! Perfect atonement! Perfect sacrifice! Free! Free! No payment; all the bills are paid!

“Lord, bring them all in that there may be no after reckonings with them! At my hand thou shalt require it! I would rather choose to suffer the wrath due them than that they should suffer it upon me, my Father. Upon me be all their debt!”

And the Father responds, “But my Son, if Thou undertake for them, Thou must reckon to pay the last mite. Expect no abatements!”

When we would be going down the Amazon in an open boat and you would see this cloud burst on the horizon and you would pray because you knew I’ve got just a few minutes to get to shore. If I do not get to shore, we’re sunk! And you would pray that that cloud would abate, that somehow it would divide into—that one would go one direction, the other the other—and you would be safe.

And the waves would be coming over the bow of the boat! You’re praying for an abatement. But He says this: “Expect no abatement, Son! If I spare them, I will not spare you.”

“Content, Father! Let it be so! Charge it all upon me; I am able to discharge it! And though it proved a kind of undoing to me and though it impoverished all my riches—empty all my treasures—yet I am content to undertake it. Content to undertake it!”

I’ll finish by saying this: one of the greatest—and it was mentioned two days ago—one of the greatest narratives of the Old Testament is Abraham, commanded to carry his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and to sacrifice him there. And let me repeat what we said. Listen to the language: “Take now your son, your only son, whom you loved, 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 burden was laid on the old man, and you can see him, as in obedience and yet great sorrow, he makes his way toward the mountain. He prepares the altar, prepares the wood, lays his son, stretches him out, uncovers the flint knife that may have been the very knife he used to circumcise the boy.

He rears up, draws back his hand, and his will gives in to the will of God. And at that moment, his hand is stayed. And then Abraham is told: “Jehovah Jireh provided.”

I don’t want to be bold, and I want no laughter from this statement, but in my presence, don’t ever use the terminology “Jehovah-Jireh” with regard to a house or a Mercedes or prosperity, because my dear friend, you will have a fight on your hands.

He will provide a ram. And all of us hear that story and we’re just like, “What a beautiful ending to that story! What a beautiful ending!” No, it’s not the ending; it’s the intermission! Century after century after century rolls by—a curtain is closed. And then, two thousand years ago, it opens again, and there hangs God’s Son, His only Son, whom He loves.

And He takes the knife out of Abraham’s hand and He thrusts it in the breast of His own Son. One poet said, “Offer up the sacrifice; all creation sends forth the call: offer up the sacrifice! One life to pay for them all! Offer up the sacrifice; the innocent one, the righteous one must be slain! Offer up the sacrifice and bring man back to God again.”

We are ambassadors of this pearl. We are ambassadors of this treasure. How can it be? Brethren, flee from here! Flee from here and go to your studies and seek Him out! And seek Him out! And seek Him out! That you may reveal more and more and more of Him to your people. And to the degree that they grasp this, if their hearts are truly regenerate, they will grow in holiness; they will grow in devotion.

And then go out into the streets! Don’t wrangle about politics; don’t fight with the men about certain ethical standards. Proclaim who God is and what God has done! Go tell it on a mountain! But before you go to the mountain, make sure that when you open up your mouth, something comes out.

And know this: all the knowledge in the world, apart from prayer— all the knowledge in the world without the Spirit of the Living God will avail you nothing!

Men, when I was first called into the ministry, my pastor was an amazing man. He looked at me and he said this: “Boy, can you be alone?” And I thought that what he meant was this: to preach the truth, no one would like me. That’s not what he meant. He meant, while all the other boys are going on Christian retreats and hanging out in bachelor packs and running with the crowd, would you—could you be alone with God?

Can you make Him your dwelling place? Can you be a rare bird? Can you stay with Him for a while?

Men, the world needs Christ and a revelation of Christ, and you have been given the privilege of preaching Christ. Now do your work! And for some of you, it may be necessary, as it has been for me throughout many times, to shut my mouth and open my ears and study and read and cry.

Every time we walk out in a pulpit, we are not movers and shakers. We are not marketers. We are Ezekiel! And God says to us in the middle of that valley of dry bones, because it’s all dry bones, “Can these bones live?”

We will not deny Him in unbelief and say no, and we will not presume upon Him and say yes, but we will respond: “You know, O Lord, You know.” Then: “Prophesy, prophesy!”

Everything about everything in the kingdom is supernatural—not this flimsy, silly supernatural of contemporary evangelicalism. Real supernatural! Men are only converted by a miraculous work of the Spirit, and the Spirit has most promised to work when we prophesy—not some silly idea that we caught on the wind, but the written Word of God.