Northside Church - Sydney
Back to Basics - Why did Jesus die? - Sam Haddon
Here's another inspiring message from Northside Community Church, Sydney. Let me begin this morning by asking you a question. It's a question that you might have been hesitant to ask if you're a Christian, or it might be a question that you had the courage to ask because it potentially undermined your faith, and it's this. Why did Jesus have to die? I mean, you forgive people without requiring them to die for you. Does it seem reasonable then that why can't the Christian God just forgive and forget? Why can't he just get over it? And more importantly, most people think, "Well, I'm a good person. I've done some pretty good things in life. Don't the good people go to heaven?" The problem is that good is often not good enough. You see this historically, like historically, good's not good enough. What was good historically is not good now. It was good back in the day to smoke 15 packets of cigarettes, but science says otherwise. If that's your thing, that's fine. It's not a judgement this morning. But that's just the reality. We know things in history that we thought were good for us and not good for us now. Culturally, we know that good is not good enough. Culturally, we know right now that there are things, there are practices in other parts of the world that they deem good that are not good at all by our standards. More importantly, we do things also that other cultures would say are not good. So good's not good enough historically. It's not good enough culturally. But more importantly to us, and let's get to the reality here, often good is not good enough personally. And you know and you sense this. You already know this well, that when someone has wronged you and when someone has hurt you, when someone has done something to you, it's almost as if right church that a debt has occurred. It may be economic, it may be literally economic debt. It's certainly an emotional debt. But there's a sense in which when someone wrongs you, a debt has been created. And making good in that moment often is not good enough. Here's the reason why. We don't live in a control Z world. Wouldn't you love to live in a control Z world? We could just undo. That would be great, wouldn't it? We're so used to just control Z or don't send that email. You can even un-send emails now these days. I've got a three minute buffer zone on my emails. Did you know that in the email? You can do that now. There's a three minute buffer zone so I can undo my emails if I think twice after I send something emotionally. So, here's a question for you. Have you ever done something dumb that can't be undone? Can I put your hand up too quickly? Don't leave me hanging here. I'll go with mine first, shall I? I'll just share first. I'll share first. When I was a kid, my cousin and I decided that we were going to go and play out in the backyard of my auntie's holiday home up in Portonquarie. We were going to play a game of badminton out the back. We were going to listen to the soundtrack of Guns and Roses get in the ring, which if you're a heavy metal fan here, and I can see there are lots of them, get in the ring had more expletives per sentence than after the more expletives per sentence than what an excited footballer says at the end of a state of origin game. So, we decided to play get in the ring for basically half a day at about 105 decibels right next to a retirement village that happened to be the retirement village that my auntie manages. So, needless to say, when she came home after leaving my cousin and I at the holiday house to play badminton to Guns and Roses for half a day, there was something like 85 different voicemails on the machine. It was on the machine back then, like your phone. We didn't have mobiles. It's back in the 80s, 90s. There was 85 different messages in all of that. And basically the final message said that the next door neighbour to the retirement village left her a message to say that they were moving out. And at the end of all of that, my auntie came to my cousin and I and we awaited the punishment and she said, "Well, that's it. You guys are going to your room for the entire next day." It's big. I know. Shocking. There was a sense in which sitting in that room for the entire day, even I as an eight or a nine year old kid, whatever age I was, even I sensed back then that that was a debt that I couldn't pay back. That there was a sense in which someone had to pay for what was going on. Have you ever done something dumb that can't be undone? There was a sense in which I couldn't do anything in that moment. And maybe you've been there with that dumb thing that can't be undone. You've tried to pay them back. You've tried to unsay what's being said. You've tried to fix what can't be fixed. And you and I are stuck, which is why a great philosopher throughout history put it down into words when she said, "If I could turn back time, if I could find a way to take back those words that hurt you and you'd stay, if I could reach the stars and give them all to you, then you'd love me, love me, love me like you used to do if I could turn back time." Yeah, sure. Is it sure or sure? Sure. Oh, okay. Well, potato, potato. Sure, sure. When we love to turn back time. And we sense that in these things that can't be undone, that good is simply not good enough. That you and I sense that you and I eventually realize, even share, right church I've learnt now, even share realizes that in these situations, I don't need to do good, I need forgiveness. Wouldn't you agree? Good is not good enough. Now, if this is true of me and my auntie, if this is true of share and turning back time, if this is true of the dumb thing that can't be undone in your life, then could it be possible that this is true of our relationship with God? See, turning back time on the mistakes that we've made in life is one thing. But how do you undo the sense that we don't quite live our lives as we should, that we live lives kind of the way that one of the writers in the Bible, Paul said that there is no one righteous, not even one, and all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, to which some of you would say to me this morning, you don't seriously still believe that, do you? This is 2024, we're modern people now. But then as the non-Christian singer Hosea puts it, he writes in one of his songs, "In the madness and the soil of that sad earthly scene, only then I am human, only then I am clean." Oh, amen, amen, amen. Here's another one, if you're a little bit older. "I know a place where we can go and wash away our sin," says Bruce Hornsby. Now why, why would non-religious people and why would non-believers talk so religiously? I think part of the reason is, can I suggest to you that wherever you come from in the faith spectrum, and especially if you're not yet a believer, all of us have a sense in life that there are things that we've done that can't be undone and that I owe somebody or I owe some one. And the way that your heart will betray this is even if you're not a believer or a religious type, ever felt guilt or shame? Think about it for a second, why would we feel that? If there are no moral absolutes, if there's no standard of human behavior in terms of how we're supposed to live, if there is no God, if we're just a bunch of atoms that manage to congeal together whilst we float around the sun and just bang against each other, why do we feel the ickiness? And I would suggest to you it's because at the deepest level, we understand that we have, as Paul said, fallen short of a standard, the glory of God. And so as a result then, outside of what we're going to talk about today, people then go down, all sorts of paths are not healthy, guilt and shame takes you down these paths, you've seen it in people, right? They're constantly either withdrawing, they're constantly trying to make it up to someone else or they're constantly beating themselves up as if the self-flagellation is somehow going to undo the undoable situation. And here's what they're doing and here's what I do from time to time and here's what many people do from time to time. Here's what they're doing. They're trying to pay for a sin that has already been paid for. That is the essence, that is the essential of what we're going to talk about today as we walk through the fifth one of our essentials in this series of coming back to basics. The essential we've been asking, what's essential? What's peripheral? What must one do in order to be a follower of Jesus Christ? And in order to be a follower of Jesus Christ is to come to understand that Jesus died to pay any debt that you owe so that you don't have to. That's the guts of the gospel. Here's my version of it. 2 Corinthians 5 Paul says what I preached was of first importance. That means it's an essential. That Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day and he appeared to Peter, that was Cephas and then to the 12. And then Paul then goes on to say he appears to 500 other people. This is something that happened in time and history. This is not a Christian story to make this stuff up. But this is the essence of the gospel. Christ died for our sins and some of you might go, hang on, but that's that type of gospel that I can't stand in churches where you're a filthy rotten sinner and Jesus died for you. Aren't you about that gospel that says, you know, Christianity is the only religion where you've got to work out what you're going to do when you don't have to do anything at all? Yes, this is the foundation of that gospel and we're going to get to that in a second. This is what undergirds all of this. Jesus died for your sin to which some of you say, what have I ever done? It was a great scene in the movie Kenny. Anyone ever seen Kenny? Shane Jacobson. He was a guy that cleaned out public toilets and lavatories. He was a new guy and he's driving there and he's driving along and his son says to him, my dad, mum says you're going to hell. And he says, well, that's great, son. If Jesus thinks I'm going to hell then Jesus can come down here and tell me in bloody self. I just don't have time to deal with it at the moment. I think how that's how the average person thinks, oh, man, I'm trying. Give us a great God. I think that's the reason because most people are mistaken like Kenny. It's the Kenny approach. Most people are mistaken that rightness with God is about minimizing our mistakes. That rightness with God is like, oh, well, thank goodness. I didn't murder anyone this week and I didn't steal and I only told one lie. That's good enough, isn't it? To get me into heaven, to be right with God. We miss this and I don't want you to miss this. This is the thing. Jesus didn't teach that good people went to heaven. Jesus didn't teach that good people are right with God. In fact, if you actually look at the way that Jesus teaches, Jesus implies that it's actually the bad people that get to heaven and right with God and it's the people that thought they were good that don't get there. Anyone seen this in your Bible right here? Because what was so amazing about the way that Jesus taught when people ask how good is good enough, Jesus raised the standard of good so high that everybody fell short. The standard Jesus says, as we heard the other week, was just love God with all of the intensity and with all the might and with all the self-interest as you would love yourself and love your neighbor with all of the intensity and resource and self-interest as you would love yourself. That's all you've got to do, to which you and I understand that that's something that we just don't do. Now we're getting to the reality of this. If we define two weeks ago that sin is not good deeds versus bad deeds, instead that sin is anything that harms you or others, if we define sin as, hey, there is a God and I love my people and that anyone who mistreats my people mistreats me and that is sin, then anyone here willing to admit that they're a sinner, doesn't mean you're a bad person. I've done, I've just done some dumb things that can't be undone. I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm trying to make you feel guilty. If you're still not willing to jump in the pool with us, let me just simply ask you this question and the leveling question, the question that Jesus says in love, God, love others, have you ever mistreated anyone in your life? I'll give you 30 seconds. I'll give you 15. See, if sin is to mistreat people because God loves people, then we've mistreated him. Does it mean you're horrible? Does it mean you're unworthy of love? Does it mean that you're filthy and rotten? It just means we sense that we've fallen short of this standard to love people perfectly the way that God loves us. And side note Christians, shouldn't we celebrate that definition of sin? Shouldn't it rile us when people don't treat other people well? Shouldn't it rile us even more when Christians don't treat other Christians? Well, I like this definition. But it says there is something fundamentally in between us and God and Jesus came to die and to reconcile us, to bring us back together with Him. Come back to the dumb thing that can't be undone in your life, sorry to bring it up again, or I'll use mine again. So I go to the room and I stay there for the day and someone moves out next door, which I don't know, what's that going to cost her? 50 grand's worth of rent in a given year? The debt that I can't possibly pay back, what has got to happen in that moment in order for her and I to sit at the dinner table and things not be weird. Ultimately, whatever happened in that moment, she said, I'm sorry, Madam, I know he's eight or nine. Yes, I know it was a terrible song. Yes, I know it had the F word in it. I'm terribly sorry. Yes, it was 105. I'm sorry, ma'am. You're moving out? Yes, I know. Okay, I'll refund you the rest of the year's rent in advance to you. That's fine. I understand. And from the work from there back to tell me that I'm going to the room, she had to make a decision to say in order for things to be right with Sam again. I'll pay. He hasn't got 50 grand. He's not working this out. He's going to his room, but it's not going to come close to what it's going to cost me. And so here's what Paul appeals to. If it's true of my relationship with Arnie, Arnie Michelle, could it be true of our relationship with God? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, we beg you on behalf of Christ. And the implication of this is that it's God's desire to want to sit at the dinner table with you. And for things to be right, he wants to be with you. Be reconciled to God. But how? What we're going to do better or try better or do gooder or try harder? No, it says God made him Jesus who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become. Hear that. Underline that word. Not do. Not try. We might become. It's a change of status. It's a change of paradigm. It's a change of rightness before him. It's a change of trust. It's a change of mindset. It's a change of relationship that we might become. And then he says the righteousness of God in him. All of the goodness of Jesus is transferred to us in that moment. All of his life and his goodness and the way he lives is transferred to us in that moment. And the theological word for it is that you write this down because that way you can go home this week and say that you learn a big theological word or if you're that type in church that needs to kind of have a big word. So you kind of really feel like you've got something media out of him and I've got this for you. Are you ready for it? It's called substitutionary atonement. So you want to say that back out? Say substitutionary atonement. There we go. Hey, you're all theologians now. That's the theological word. This is deep. We're getting deep this morning. It literally means substitutionary. So we swap places and that word atonement is literally the way that it's written. Substitutionary atonement. That act of Jesus Christ on the cross. Here's why Jesus had to die because God says I'll pay. There's a debt. And you can keep sending yourself to the room if you want. And don't we do this Christians? Don't we see people doing this in their life? We kind of think, well, you know, I know I've done wrong. I'll take myself off to the room. And how many people have you seen throughout your life or maybe this has been your life where you just go and you constantly beat yourself up? I was chatting to a guy a couple of months back that had been with us and he'd blown up his marriage. And I could just sense and see it on him each time that we caught up. There was a sense in which it's almost becoming hyper-religious if I just attend enough and pray hard enough. And if I just get good with God enough and if I serve hard enough and if I just do all of these things then somehow it will make things better. And yet the degree to which you get this message that Jesus paid the debt so you don't have to is the degree to which you begin to move into a life of freedom. That's what I said to him. I said, "You've got to understand. You're trying to pay for sins that Jesus has already paid for." And by the way, that doesn't mean that there's still not consequences of our sin. He understood all that too well. The relationship would never come back again. The house had to be sold. They had to move. There's an aspect in which I said two weeks ago, "Since expensive, right?" Someone has to pay. Either you pay, they pay. But what we've heard this morning from 2 Corinthians 5 is that ultimately God pays. And he says, "I'll pay. I'll pay." And if you get this and the degree to which you get this is the degree to which guilt and shame will have no place in your life any longer. And so it leads me just to one application point today as we finish. It's the end of the financial year. Thanks, Asha. I know I see that. Amen. He's like, "Come on, buddy. Let's get on with this." End of financial year, so I thought 60% off. One point, a three-point sermon. Here it is. There's one application point for you to take on this morning. If you are forgiven then, could that mean then that you can look at your past mistakes, not as monuments to your failure, but memorials of God's mercy and his grace. If you receive that you are forgiven, then you can look at your past no longer as monuments to your mistakes, but as memorials to God's mercy and grace in your life. It doesn't mean the sins gone away. It doesn't mean that it's been undone. It doesn't mean that there aren't consequences of that that you won't live with for the rest of your life, but there's one thing when you walk through that town or you see that person or whatever that trigger moment is for you, it takes you off into a pathway where it's not a monument to your mistakes, but in fact it's a memorial to God's goodness in your life and you say, "Thank you, God." If you don't believe me, I took down the testimony of someone who had lived this. Listen to what they said, they said, "I'm so grateful to Christ Jesus for making me adequate to do this work." He went out on a limb, you know, entrusting me with this ministry. The only credentials I bought to what were abuse and witch hunts and arrogance, but I was treated mercifully because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know who I was doing it against. I think that's the truth. Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and the into me and it was all because of Jesus. And here's a word that you can take to your heart and depend on. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and I am proof, public sinner number one, of someone who could never have made it apart from sheer mercy. And now he shows me off evidence of his endless patience to those who are right on the edge of trusting him forever. Paul, it's the apostle Paul, the great Paul. Even Paul was able to look back at his past and didn't see his monuments to his mistakes, but memorials to God's mercy in his life. And so could that dynamic be true for you today? I know, you know, we know we've all done things that can't be undone. And so I just want to ask you this morning, where are you still trying to pay for sins that Jesus has already paid for? And you might not like the statement and the question isn't, do you completely understand it or like it? I'm not asking that question. The question I'm asking in this morning is, have you received it? Because can we just be real with each other? This is not just a Christian thing. This is the thing thing. This is a human thing. And you and I have people in our lives that have done, done things and they will beat themselves up forever. And what is on offer to you and to them this morning is the freedom of not having to continue to pay for things that you have done. If only we could hit controls here, but we can't. And so it means there's two ways for you to go this morning. You like share can go reach for the stars. If I could reach for the stars, I'd give them all to you. In other words, if I could just continue to do the things that would make good again, and I hope that you would see this morning, that good is rarely good enough. And in fact, reaching for the stars is what we call religion. Religious people reach for the stars. Religious people don't care what we heard this morning and they think if I just do better, then maybe I'll be right with God. And then share says, well, if I could find a way, many people wonder, is there a way to get rid of this sense of guilt and shame that I have in my life? And there is a way. And it's to receive the essential that we talked about this morning. Jesus Christ paid for your sins, so you don't have to. And the degree to which we take that into the center of our hearts, I don't know about you. I'm with Bruce. I'm with Bruce Hornsby. I know a place where we can go and wash away with this sin. It's at the cross that's here in this moment now as we take communion. Let's do that as we pray. Father, for each of us, we know all too well regardless of where we sit in the faith of that thing, those things. And I pray that in the quietness of this moment, that for many of us, including ourselves, we so rarely stop and pause long enough to comprehend the power of what we have received from you, Lord Jesus. And so I'm praying that as we head into these final moments with you, God, that there would be courageous hearts, a willingness to be able to declare that there are standards to which I don't live up to and that I've fallen short of. But at that junction point, I pray Holy Spirit that in whatever thought process is going to follow next for us in these moments, that you would meet us there, Holy Spirit, and you would speak life and love and liberation and the gospel into our hearts. And so I do pray over anyone here who is harboring and carrying any unnecessary guilt and shame. I particularly pray for any of those in this moment who are harboring that because they haven't heard the message of the gospel. And if that is you this morning, then I'm going to pray a prayer that is not meant in any manipulative sort of way. You don't have to pray it. You can tune out for the next 30 seconds if it's not for you. But it's available to you in this moment. And that prayer goes like this. Will you join me and say, hey, Lord God, I know within myself that I have fallen short of standards that I sense even without the Bible are just universal and perfect. And in so doing, I'm a sinner. And I don't need to undo my mistakes. I need a Savior. And I need you to have paid them for me, Lord Jesus. And so when this moment I receive that truth from you and I trust in that, I don't need big faith. I just need enough faith to trust in that truth. And in so doing, Lord God, would you lead me into freedom and liberation? Freedom from my guilt? Freedom from my shame? In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thanks for tuning in. If you'd like to find out more about Northside, visit northsidechurch.org or northsidechurch.org.au [BLANK_AUDIO]