Gospel Deep
Jesus Lived a Sinless Life - 1 Peter 2:21
-Stanford Band Video
-I love watching videos of Sports Bloopers!
-The one you just watched happened in 1982 and has been immortalized as one of the biggest mess-ups in sports history!
-Stanford was playing Cal who is their across the bay rival.
-With 4 seconds left in the game Stanford kicked a field goal to take the lead 20-19.
-Four seconds was just enough for Stanford to kick the ball and Cal to try and return it.
-For all practical purposes Stanford had won the game. But there was still 4 seconds on the clock.
-Coaches know that a lot can happen in 4 seconds but apparently, band members don’t know that!
-As the ball was kicked some enthusiastic band members rushed the field while Cal was returning the ball.
-With 5 lateral passes and dozens of band members storming the field a player named Kevin Moen managed to weave through the Stanford defense (and band members) on his way to the end zone
-With 4 seconds left Cal scored the winning touchdown and won the “Big Game” 25-20…thanks in part to that crazy Stanford band!
-Nobody’s perfect, right? If everyone did what they were supposed to all the time we’d have no sports bloopers!
-If every did what they were supposed to every time…
-We’d have no crime! We’d have no problems! No regrets!
-That sounds good but that’s not reality. “Nobody’s perfect!”
-That might be the most understated cliché of all time!
-We have a whole book that chronicles the universal struggles of all people for all of time!
-The Bible tells us emphatically that nobody’s perfect…and even if the Bible didn’t say that…we all know it! We can see that!
-One of the most fascinating things in the Bible is the account of the only sinless person in history: God’s One and Only Son Jesus.
-We are in week 2 of our series Gospel Deep and we are learning the basic gospel message and the response to it.
-If you weren’t here last week get on the web or the app and listen to message number one.
-Last week we talked about why Jesus came! Jesus came to save!
-Today we’re talking about something that is critical to understanding the gospel; Jesus never sinned.
-Before we get into that…hold up your right hand and let’s go
through that simple gospel outline. If your neighbor isn’t holding up there hand it’s ok to secretly judge them just a little! ?
WHAT ARE THE BASIC POINTS OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE?
• Jesus came to save.
• Jesus never sinned.
• Jesus died on the cross.
• Jesus rose from the grave.
• Jesus is coming back.
-If you know those basic points you’ll be able to share the basic message about Jesus. Hold up that left hand.
-In response to that Good News message of Jesus…we:
• Admit my sin.
• Trust in Jesus.
• Turn away from sin.
• Be baptized.
• Follow Jesus.
-That’s the basic gospel in a nutshell.
-And please remember that gospel just means “Good News”.
-Jesus came with good news for all the people in the world!
-But in order to share the Good News about Jesus with people, you have to know it.
-So practice this. Our youth group is learning this.
-My daughter came home from youth group and did all 10 fingers!
-Teach it to your little kids at home.
-Have fun with it. Quiz each other. If the whole family gets its …Frosties for everyone at Wendy’s!
-Jesus came to save and Jesus never sinned.
-We’re dig deeper into that topic of Christ’s sinlessness.
1 John 3:5 “And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him.”
JESUS NEVER SINNED…WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? (1 John 3:5)
-First, we have to know what sin is. In the Bible one of the Greek words that is frequently translated “sin” is hamartia.
-Sin (hamartia) is missing the mark.
-At summer camp, they have archery and the kids are aiming at targets that have a bullseye on them.
-That’s the mark. And when you have 4th – 6th graders shooting arrows it’s a pretty rare occurrence to see a bullseye.
-So when anyone hits the mark it’s a big deal! I got a bullseye!
-But more often than not, the arrows miss the mark…and sometimes the whole target.
-That’s what sin is. It is missing the mark.
-Jesus never missed the mark.
-Jesus never missed! Jesus never got off target; Jesus never sinned
-Let that sink in for a moment: He never sinned.
-Not one time. Not one moment. Not once in his whole life.
-That is so far from our reality that it’s hard to even imagine what it would look like.
-People have fun speculating about this. They imagine that…
-The boy Jesus aced every test, never struck out in little league,
-Adolescent Jesus never picked on the nerdy kids and he always plugged his ears when his buddies were telling dirty jokes.
-That’s not that what being sinless looks like.
-It’s so far beyond all that!!! Let this single fact sink in:
-You and I have never met a sinless person.
-Not you, not your saintly grandmother, certainly not your pastor.
-Not even Billy Graham, Mother Teresa…not saint peter!
-You and I have never met a sinless person.
-A pastor once preached a message calling people to turn from sin
-As the people were shuffling out the pastor was shaking hands at the door and a proud old man approached him.
-Sticking out her his she said, “Thank you for the strong message pastor. These people really needed to hear that.
-But I myself haven’t sinned in 32 years.”
-Annoyed by his obvious self-righteousness and recalling that Jesus died at age 33…the pastor replied, “Well, 1 more year and you’ll have the record!”
1 John 1:8 “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
-Only one person in all of human history lived sinless life.
-No sinless person ever existed before Jesus.
-No sinless person has existed since Jesus left the planet.
-This is what God’s Word says about sin:
Romans 3:23-24 “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.”
-Everyone sins. EV-ER-Y-ONE. Don’t look around.
-Don’t nudge your neighbor. “Everyone sins” includes you!
-The cat is out the bag! Everyone here has been outed as a sinner
-Don’t act surprised! Don’t be offended! Don’t deny it!
-Everyone sins! Everyone falls short of God’s standard.
-The struggles are different for each person. The sins may vary.
-But from God’s vantage point we are all in the same boat: we’re sinners who fall short of his glorious standard.
-Every person who’s ever lived has sinned; except for Jesus.
-So what does it mean that Jesus never sinned?
JESUS NEVER FELL SHORT OF GOD’S STANDARD. (Rom 3:23)
-You might ask, “What exactly is God’s standard?”
-His standard is perfection. The Bible uses another word to describe God’s perfection.
-The Bibles says that God is “Holy”
-Holy means pure, undefiled, uncorrupted, without spot, stain or blemish. Holy means set apart and without a trace of evil.
-Our Holy God’s standard is perfection.
-We don’t live up to that standard!
-We can’t live up to that standard; but Jesus did.
-Jesus never fell short of God’s standard.
-When you moms tell your kids to clean their rooms you have a standard in mind.
-Your kids come tell you, my room is all clean! It’s all done!
-But you moms go look for yourselves…because you have a different standard of “clean room” than your kids do.
-What clean means to you and clean means to them are different.
-So, it goes with us and God.
-People say, “By the end I’ll have done more good than bad.”
-That sounds reasonable, right? “I did more good than bad.”
-That might be your standard but that’s not God’s standard!
-And he’s under no obligation to lower his standard to meet ours!
-Our Holy God is perfect. He lives in holy perfection.
-His standard is perfection.
-And I don’t know if you’ve noticed…we are far from perfect.
-Every person has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard…except for Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 53:6 “All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have
left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him
the sins of us all.”
-Even when we’re trying to go with God, we have this tendency to
go our own way.
-Every person who ever lived has strayed from God’s ways…except for Jesus.
-What does it mean that Jesus never sinned?
-He never strayed from God’s path. (Is 53:6, Heb 4:15)
-Jesus never wandered off the straight and narrow path.
-And let’s be crystal clear on this. Not one time.
-It’s tempting to think that it was easy for him.
-He is God’s One and Only Son: it’s genetic.
-It came natural to him. It was easy for Jesus to be perfect.
-It’s tempting to think that but that would mean that Jesus didn’t have a fully human experience and the Bible clearly says he did!
Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”
-Jesus had every opportunity to sin.
-Temptation was no less tempting for Jesus than it is for us.
-He faced all the temptations we face and yet he never sinned.
-He faced the temptation of greed.
-He faced the temptation of power.
-He faced the temptation of lust and sexual sin.
-He faced the temptation of lying, cheating, stealing & gossiping.
-He was tempted with drunkenness, anger, idolatry, gluttony, laziness, and every other kind of sin you can imagine.
-He was tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin!
-I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live that way!
-I can’t deny that I sin every single day. We all sin every single day.
-Sin comes so naturally to us, we don’t even realize we’ve sinned.
-I don’t know any experienced Christians who’d even argue this.
-We sin every day by the things we do.
-We sin every day by the things we neglected to do.
-We sin in our words. With our thoughts. We sin in our attitudes.
-We sin by what we give our allegiance to.
-We are desperately hopeless habitual sinners.
-The only chance I have to make it a day without sin is to be in a coma! Just avoiding sin for one day is a challenge!
-But Jesus lived without sin every single day of his life.
-I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live that way!
-To live a life without sin would be…heaven.
-And oh by the way…that’s where Jesus comes from.
-What does it mean that Jesus never sinned?
JESUS NEVER SINNED…HE WAS ABLE TO GIVE HIMSELF AS A PERFECT SACRIFICE. (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Peter 2:21-25)
2 Cor 5:21 “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”
-It’s not a coincidence that Jesus was sinless and an offering for sin. These things go hand in hand.
-There’s no nice way to say to this; “The appropriate punishment for sin is death.”
-That sounds kind of radical, maybe a bit harsh.
-Non-Christians often bristle at the idea that their sins demand death. They don’t like the idea of blood being spilled or a sacrifice being made. It seems gruesome and unreasonable.
-Even Christians struggle with the notion that our sins are punishable by death.
-That struggle reveals two things that we have all grossly underestimated.
-First, we don’t understand how serious sin is.
-Second, we don’t understand the Holiness of our God.
-One sin would disqualify us from heaven and we’ve committed thousands of sins! Too many to count.
-God’s standard is perfection.
-So, ANY sin…no matter how big or how small you think it is…is less than perfection.
-We bought a new car for Laura 10 years ago and we’ve driven the wheels off that thing. That car is now Sadie’s car and we bought Laura another new car that we plan to drive for another 10 years.
-The first month we had it, a little kid threw open his car door and chipped the paint on our brand-new car.
-That car was in perfect condition.
-Not even a 1000 miles on it. And the paint was chipped down to the metal with and had a small dent in the door.
-I knew right away that wasn’t going to buff out!
-The people were very gracious and insisted on having it fixed.
-And the question crossed my mind…should we just let it go?
-I thought maybe we could take care of it ourselves.
-I got an estimate to fix it and it was $700! I didn’t have $700!
-The dilemma was should we fix it or be content to have a slightly less than perfect brand new car?
-It’s just half an inch dent with missing paint on an otherwise perfect car. Most people wouldn’t notice...it’s so small.
-But I couldn’t help but notice! It was a glaring imperfection!
-That little dent that most people wouldn’t even see, was like a neon-sign to me! I saw it every day!
-Because I knew what that car looked like when it was “perfect”
-So we humbly accepted their offer to make it perfect again.
-And that is what Jesus has done for us.
-People are so used to their own sin that they don’t even notice it.
-We are so accustomed to living with less than perfect.
-Perfection is not our standard. We live with our own imperfections every day and it’s no big deal.
-But to our Holy God those are glaring imperfections!
-He sees them because he knows what perfect looks like.
-And He will not accept anything less than perfect in his Kingdom.
-So we naturally think, I’ll fix it, I’ll make it right.
-But there is no price that imperfect people could pay to have our sinful imperfections removed.
-Sin doesn’t buff out!
-So God graciously offers to fix what’s wrong, to pay the price for us…so that we can be made be made perfect.
-Someone might ask, “Why doesn’t God just lower his standards?”
-Unlike us, God is 100% true to his own nature.
-We change our standards all the time to match the situations or circumstances we find ourselves in.
-We lower our standards because we find them inconvenient.
-But God never does. In all of his ways, all of his motives, his thoughts…he is holy.
-Who God is, what God does, how God thinks…perfectly Holy.
-He is perfect and cannot accept anything less than perfection.
-And that brings us back to his perfect sinless Son Jesus:
2 Cor 5:21 “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”
-Jesus was able to offer himself as a sacrifice for our sins…only because he is holy.
-God knows that we have souls dented with sin.
-He sees through our facades and see all the chips, dings and scratches in our character.
-And knowing that we could never get it right on our own.
-God sent the one who never sinned, to be an offering for our sin.
-And by the sacrifice of Jesus…we are made right with God.
-I love the way 1 Peter 2:21-25 breaks it down.
1 Peter 2:21-25 “For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone.
-Jesus wasn’t just another religious leader.
-He wasn’t trying to trick anyone or lead people astray.
-He wasn’t in it for money, fame, or popularity.
-He was in it for you.
-Jesus came to save you and set you free from your sins.
-Jesus died to give you a better life on earth and an eternal life with God in heaven.
23 He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly.
-When people persecuted, mocked & ridiculed him…he didn’t sin.
-He never lost his cool; he never lashed out or retaliated.
-He forgave the people who crucified him while they were crucifying him!
-He never sinned but vs 24 says…
24 He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.
-The most amazing part about Jesus is that he paid the price for sins he never committed.
-The one who never sinned, gave his life as a ransom payment for all who were held hostage by their sins.
-And the Bible says we are healed by his wounds.
-Jesus took the punishment we deserved.
-By his death we have new life and eternal life.
25 Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls.
-“Sinless Jesus did what sinners could not do for themselves.”
-Jesus came to save. Jesus never sinned. Next week we are going to be talking about how Jesus died on the cross and what it means
-The band is going to make their way back on stage, and while they do let’s go over the message one more time.
WHAT ARE THE BASIC POINTS OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE?
• Jesus came to save.
• Jesus never sinned.
• Jesus died on the cross.
• Jesus rose from the grave.
• Jesus is coming back.
• Admit my sin.
• Trust in Jesus.
• Turn away from sin.
• Be baptized.
• Follow Jesus.
