I have never been able to entirely shake this story out of my head. There once was a man who worked in a small town as the operator of a drawbridge on a river. A train track ran across the bridge, and the operator’s job was to keep the bridge up when no train was coming so that the boats could pass underneath. When a train approached, he was to blow the whistle and let down the bridge. One sunny Saturday morning, the man brought his seven-year-old son along to work with him. The boy could frolic along the river, skip rocks on the water, chase butterflies, or even try to catch a fish.
Shortly before noon, a passenger train was due to come through the area. The man began to make preparations to let the bridge down so the train could pass safely across the river. As he examined the bridge, he noticed that someone—a small child—had somehow climbed over the guardrail next to the bridge, and was playing at the very spot where the bridge would come down. As he looked closer, he realized with horror that the child was his son. In desperation, he yelled out his son’s name, but the sound of the approaching train drowned out his screams. He knew he had to make a quick decision. If he lowered the bridge now his son would die. But if he didn’t, all the people on the train would die as the train plunged into the river. He barely had time to think. As he screamed in agony, the man thrust forward the lever to lower the bridge just as the train arrived. His son died instantly. And as the train passed by, the people just smiled and waved as they passed by the man in the control booth, with his head bowed low, oblivious to what had just taken place. (Adapted with permission from “To Sacrifice a Son” by Dennis Hensley.)
My mind longs to finish this story with another ending. Couldn’t the operator have signaled the train? Couldn’t he have thrown something at his son to gain his attention? Couldn’t he have yelled louder or blown a whistle? Did his son have to die to save the anonymous people on the train? Was another option possible? Why did he care more about the passing strangers than his son? What would you have done if you were in his shoes?
Have you ever wondered why Jesus had to die? You might be able to give a Sunday school answer like; “Jesus died for our sins” or because that was God’s will, but do you really understand exactly what that means? And how does his death affect you and me?
This is my second message in the “foundations” series and today I want to ask figure out if Jesus really had to die and if he did, why?
In order to avoid sounding like a college textbook I am making two general assumptions this morning. The first is that the Bible gives an accurate account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus is God’s Son, part of the eternal trinity. He is Holy and perfect and true. In Him there is no fault or wrong or evil and I believe that.
The Bible says:
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48 NIV
The second general assumption is that human beings are not perfect. Some of you may think that you are perfect, but let’s be honest, you’re not. If you have doubts ask a friend or family member what they think.
The Bible says:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
This makes for a difficult paradox. On one hand you have God who is perfect in every way and on the other hand you have a world full of imperfect people. This thing called free will has seemingly ruined a perfect world. And since we are in the world we have been soiled by the world and its’ utterly impossible for us imperfect people to magically become perfect on our own.
If God is perfect and wants us to be perfect but we cannot become perfect on our own, how can we as the imperfect be in the presence of a perfect God? The perfect and the imperfect cannot live together, it’s impossible. The sinful and the sinless cannot share the same space. It’s like light and dark. If you turn the light on in a dark room the room no longer is dark. It has been transformed into a room full of light.
So the question is, how can a perfect God be reunited with his perfect creation that has been soiled by sin resulting in its imperfection? And to make matters worse, not all of God’s creation wants to be reunited with Him.
In God’s perfection he concluded that if sinful humanity wanted to commune with a perfect God there must be a mediator that would unit Him with them. Since sinful humanity is fully incapable of reconciliation in and of itself, this meant that if God wanted to commune with his creation he would have to atone for sin himself to appease his perfect nature. He alone would be the only one who could lead his creation into the light.
In high school my car meant the world to me. It was a 1978 Old Cutlass and it was bad to the bone. I loved that car. I worked hard to make enough money to buy it and I paid for all the gas and maintenance on the car. I personalized it with mag wheels, loud exhaust pipes, a custom stereo, and all kinds of little knick knacks that added to the cars coolness factor. It was my ride and I was proud of it.
On night me and two friends drove up to Southtown to see the movie Die Hard. I parked in the back of the lot so nobody would door ding me, locked the doors, and went into the movie theatre. A couple of hours later we left the theatre and walked out to get back in my car to head home. To my horror my car was gone. I immediately went into a panic and ran around the lot thinking I just forgot where I parked. After a quick frantic search it became apparent that my car had been forcefully taken.
I went over to the pay phone and called the police to report the theft. In about a half hour the cops showed up and had me fill out a complete report. There wasn’t much to say other than I parked the car in this spot and now it’s gone. After lamenting the loss for a while someone came and picked us up and gave us a ride home.
I felt terrible. The car that I loved so much had been stolen from me. I paid for it, I worked on it, I modified it, and I drove it. It was titled in my name and I was its rightful owner. But apparently that didn’t matter too much to the thief.
For two days I agonized over the loss of my car. Then the phone rang. It was the police and they were informing me that they had found my car. Apparently the thieves drove it to downtown Minneapolis and then down onto the riverbank. There they had there way with it. They stole everything of value. The wheels and tires, the stereo, the amps, the cassettes, everything in the glove box, the door lock knobs, the fuzzy dice, the hood ornament, the radar detector, everything. It was all gone. They had no idea who stole it but followed procedure and had it towed to the impound lot where it would await its fate.
I asked them what I needed to do and they told me to get in touch with my insurance company first, then work it out with them. So I called my insurance company and they told me that the car would sit there until they had it towed to the auction or sent to the scrap yard.
I was abhorred that they had even though of sending my precious car to the scrap yard or so insensitive to send it to some generic auction. So I asked if I could get the car back myself. The insurance agent informed me that they had no problem with me buying back my own car, but it was going to cost me. I had to come up with the money to pay for the towing charges, the impound fees, and a whole bunch of other fees that some guy sitting behind a desk just made up. It all added up to a lot of money to pay for a car that was already mine. It had no wheels, no tires, a marginal motor, and was basically ruined. To the average person it would have been a waste of time to redeem the car from the impound lot but it was my car and I wanted it. I didn’t just see what it looked like sitting there on blocks, I saw what it once was and what it could be. The state would have never released my car back to me unless I paid the state their fees. Nobody else was willing to pay the price and since I was the rightful owner I was the only one who could redeem the car. So with my hard earned money I paid a debt I did not owe for a car that was already rightfully mine. I redeemed the car with my own money to satisfy the debt the car had involuntarily acquired. I did not have to redeem my car, I consciously chose to.
Humans are kind of like my decrepit car at the impound lot; we are desperately in need of redemption from the effects of sin because without redemption we are all destined for the eternal scrap yard called hell.
Why does God redeem me? Because He is in love with me.
So why would God redeem us? Because he is absolutely in love with you and me. We are his creation and he longs for his creation to make the choice to love him back. He loves us much today as the day we rolled of the assembly line.
The Bible says:
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:10 NIV
How does God redeem me? Through the God-man Jesus Christ.
How does God redeem us? Through the God-man Jesus Christ. God himself set aside many of his deistic characteristics and became human. A perfect God entered our imperfect world to reveal himself to you and me and atone for our sins so you and I would not have to atone or pay for them on our own because that would be impossible. It is impossible for a sinful person to atone for their own sin so God himself came and atoned for us. Just like my car could not redeem itself from the impound lot you and I cannot redeem ourselves from our sinful state. Jesus paid for you with his life.
This was God’s plan. Long before Jesus ever stepped foot on this earth the Bible gives us the details of God’s plan of redemption. Listen to the words that the prophet Isaiah wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
2 “He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”
Isaiah 53:1-6 NIV
And in the NT we read:
“He (Jesus) is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2 NIV
How did he “atone” for my sins? By paying for my sins with his life.
He atoned for our sins by shedding his blood on our behalf. The word “atone” means “reconciled” or “satisfied.” In other words, Jesus death satisfied God’s judgment of sin. He took one for you. The long theological term is “substitutionary atonement” which means Jesus died for sin so we don’t have too. His substitutionary atonement satisfies the judgment of sin and reconciles us back to God. Jesus literally takes our sin away so that we can stand sinless before our Holy creator and enjoy spending all eternity in His wonderful presence.
The Bible says:
“Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” Hebrews 9:26-28 NIV
Why did Jesus have to die? Because God wants to redeem you and me from our sins and the only way to do that was to satisfy his own detest for sin himself. Jesus came to atone for our sins and the effects of a sin filled world so that we don’t have to die from them. Through substitutionary atonement Jesus paid your sin bill and redeemed you.
Let me make this very real and very practical. Because sin exists in this world and you and I are a part of this world we have been separated from our creator. How sin originated will forever be a mystery but the effects of it are obvious. Broken lives, addictions, illness, anxiety, eating disorders, loneliness, sexual perversions, fear, death, and much, much more are effects of the sin that is so prelevant today. But Jesus came to combat sin and give us a new start. He came as a substitutionary sacrifice on your behalf so that sin does not have to plague your life.
Although sin darkness, Jesus redemption light. And whenever the light shines brightly, the darkness goes away. I want you to see what substitutionary atonement means. I want you to see what Jesus came to do.
DRAMA
So here’s the question: Have you accepted God’s substitutionary atonement for you? Are you willing to move out of the impound lot and into a life with God? God will never force you to receive what he has done for you. You can stay in darkness for as long as you want but the light has come into the world in Jesus.
The Bible says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 NIV
Are you ready to admit that Jesus came for you? It doesn’t matter what you have done. It doesn’t matter how bad you have been or how far from God you have felt. It doesn’t even matter that you don’t know everything there is to know about God. You didn’t know everything about your spouse when you married them did you? You don’t know everything about your kids but you still love them? What matters is that you make the choice to believe that Jesus Christ did for you, that you repent of your sins and give them to God, and that you ask Jesus Christ to be the driving force, the LORD of your life.
The Bible says: “That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Romans 10:9-10 NIV
You can be set free just like everyone else up here. God loves you so much that he sent his son for you and atoned for your sins with his life. Don’t let pride stop you from accepting God’s love. Don’t let questions stop you from accepting God’s love. Don’t let anything get in the way of you making the decision to believe and accept the fact that God paid a dept that you could not pay.
If you want to be redeemed this is what you need to do. You need to ask Jesus into your heart like the Bible tells us to. Bow your heads and close your eyes. If you want to ask Jesus Christ to step into your life right now and redeem you from sin raise your hand right now and silently pray this with me: Dear Jesus, right now I accept the fact that you died for my sins. You love me and have redeemed me and I believe that what you did is true. Right now I invite you to come into my heart and be the LORD of my life. In Jesus name, AMEN.
If you prayed that prayer I want you to mark “new believer” on your guest card and I want to talk with you up front right after the service to personally pray for you and give you something to read to reaffirm the decision that you have just made.
