Voice of the Nazarene 3-9-25

Voice of the Nazarene 3-9-25

Transcript

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Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene a week by week. Venture into the Word of God, sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle, and the voice of the Nazarene.

First Corinthians, 15: 0:17

1, Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scripture: and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the 12: after that, he was seen above 500 brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep or have died. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as one born out of due time. The Bible is the message of good news. And of course, not all is good news that's in the Bible. It's bad news that man is a sinner, bad news that nothing that man can do can save himself, and that man is in dire danger of eternal judgment. But primarily the Bible is the message of good news. Proverbs,

25: 2:09

25 as cold water is to the thirsty soul, even also is good news from a far country. We have a message from a far country called heaven, that salvation has come to man. Now the Apostle Paul sets before us in crystal, unmistakable language, what the good news is all about. And Paul says, I declare unto you the gospel, the gospel, the word Gospel means good news. What does that word gospel mean? Well, Paul in three simple phrases in these verses lays before us the essentials of the good news of the gospel. First of all, there in verse three, Paul says, I received how that Christ died for our sins. According to the Scripture, Christ died for our sins. In other words, Christ paid for my sin. Now, point number one, you need to get that, keep it always in mind, Christ paid for my sins. In other words, Christ died for my sins. That tells us of the person of Christ. He died for my sins. Mother, Mary didn't. No one else did. Christ, He is the person. Now Christianity is not a philosophy, nor is it a set of rules. Christianity is a relationship with a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. So when you're studying through the Bible, you'll find that this was a divine person. When Christ was born it teaches us that God came down to man. You remember when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus? And Nicodemus responded, and he said, Good Master, He said, We know that you're a teacher come from God, but Nicodemus was wrong. You see, Jesus wasn't a good teacher that came from God. Jesus was God who came to teach. So the good news of the gospel is that God came down and there

in John 1: 4:30

18 No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he had declared him. Somebody said that Jesus Christ is God spelling out himself in a language that man can understand. Now, what a wonderful story, is the story of the coming of Jesus down from his glory, everlasting story The Great Creator came at and Jesus was his name. I heard about an atheistic grandfather trying to instill into his little grandson this concept of atheism. And he said, I want you to go over to that board and take some chalk, and I want you to write God is nowhere. So by the time the boy got the chalk and got to the board and he messed up on his letters. Instead of saying, God is nowhere, he moved the w off of where, and it moved over to No. And he wrote, instead of God is nowhere, he wrote, God is now here. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what the gospel is all about Jesus. Christ came to be God walking among men. That means, if you want to know what God is like, you need to look at Jesus, who is unfolding the revelation of God himself. That means that Christ came as a divine person, but the gospel also says that he was a human person. God became man, John 1:14, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. This tells us, of course, that God understands us. He knows when we're hurting, because he put on skin and he hurt. He knows that when we're struggling, he understands our struggles, and sometimes, when we go through the vicissitudes of life, we ask ourselves a question, does Jesus really care? And I'm here to announce to you that Jesus indeed does care, and his heart is touched with our grief. And when the days are dreary and the long nights weary, I know my savior cares. And so you see in Jesus is a blending of the divine and the human. You remember when Jesus was on the boat and as a man, he went to sleep, but as God, when he woke up, he stepped out on the deck and he put the sea to sleep? And when Jesus sat there at Jacob's well, and that Samaritan woman came, as man, he said, Would you give me a drink? But as God, he filled her hungry heart with the living water of life. Christ died for our sins. So we see the person of Christ, and you go on and it says, Christ died. That speaks to the Passion of Christ, he died. Now it's not an unusual thing for a person to die. It happens every day. Fact of the matter, the Bible says It's appointed unto men once to die. If you hang around here long enough, the only way you'll get out of here is you'll have to die. People are dying to get out of this world, aren't they? And so death is not an unusual thing. The young may die, the old must die. Death is a reality to humanity. Every man, sooner or later, is going to have to deal with the reality of death. But the particular word here about Jesus died carries a whole different meaning. It suggests a violent death. Jesus death was not an ordinary death. His death was a different kind of death. It was a unique death. When Jesus died, it was not in the quietness of some room somewhere, surrounded by loving friends. When Jesus died, it was on the outside of ancient walls of an old city called Jerusalem, and out on a lonely Hill and amidst the cruel gaze of hostile men and the cries of the wicked, no one ever died like Jesus. No one ever suffered anywhere near what Jesus did there at Calvary. Remember what the scripture said? It said they spat upon Him, they pulled his beard, they scourged his back. Can you hear the ringing blows of the hammer as he drove nails through his body? Can you hear the heaving of his ribs as they drop that cross into that granite socket? Pain like fire went through every part of his nervous system, and that day, Jesus suffered for six hours with an imminent burden of guilt in a finite period of time. No man ever suffered like Jesus. The mere physical aspect of his suffering is not enough to explain because Jesus also died spiritually. There at the cross in those final moments he whispered out, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? The great theologian Luther was pondering for long moments of meditation on that little phrase. Finally, he looked up and he muttered the words. He said, God, forsaken of God who can understand that? May I just say simply, ladies and gentlemen, neither you nor I can totally understand what Jesus went through on that ancient hill called Golgotha when he died that day. Christ died, Now catch this for our sins. There's the purpose of Christ. Look at that little statement. Christ died for our sins. Our sins. I believe the crux of the whole problem is right there. The problem the world's not a four letter word. The problem the world's a three letter word, sin, S, I, N, and right in the middle of that sin is an I. That's personal, isn't it? You know, some people real deft at seeing sins in the life of everybody else. Have you ever noticed that? But sooner or later, you're going to have to face up to your own sin, not somebody else's sin. The man came walking into the psychiatrist office. He didn't look quite right and quite bright, and he had a hat on his head that looked like two pieces of bacon over his ears and an egg on top of his head. And he said, I'm here to discuss my wife's problems. Well, that take a long while to finish that one, wouldn't it? And you know, we have to come to the recognition to realize that all have sinned, All have sinned and have come short of measuring up to the glory of God, and that Christ at Calvary died for our sins, your sins, my sins, and Christ took on sin and death on its own turf. Fact of the matter, there at Calvary, Satan poured in every worst kind of fear into the ears of Christ poured out at the poisonous cauldron upon his head. But Jesus, in one moment, whispered, It is finished. And when he did, Heaven shouted, hell screamed, and the sin debt was paid for all mankind, and the gospel became applicable for you and for me, and ladies and gentlemen, that's the good news. It's the good news. Christ died for us. But he continues on, he tells us, secondly, the gospel is good news, not only because Christ paid for our sins, but that Christ has put away our sins for he goes on to say that Christ died for our sins and he was buried. Now I was reading this week in the 19th chapter of John, and was quite impressed with the fact that John kept making references over and over to the body of Christ, and by repetition, he's reminding us that Jesus Christ really died and that he really was buried. Now, normally, in those days when somebody died on a cross, they would leave him there to rot away or to be ravished by birds or beasts. Sometimes they'd take the body down and put it in a dump and be consumed with fire. But God's working behind the scenes to protect the body of his own beloved son. In

Isaiah, 53: 14:04

9, he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, and loving hands were allowed to take his body from the cross and to put it in a borrowed tomb. You see, Jesus really did die, and Jesus really was buried. Now it's amazing to me how people sometimes try to describe and, they come up with all kinds of theories about the death of Christ. Reading here last week about the Swoon Theory. And the Swoon Theory is that Jesus never really died on the cross, appeared to, but when they put him into that cold, damp tomb, it revived him, and those poor confused disciples just thought he had died and thought he was resurrected. But think about it for a moment. Here's a man that hung on a cross for six hours, and they put wrappings around him and 100 pounds of spices in the wrappings, put him in a tomb, and suddenly they say that he wakes up and he unloads 100 pounds of spices, rolls away at 2000 pound stone in front of the tomb, and on bloody feet, walked a mile through locked doors, weak and emancipated and he tried to convince the disciples that he had been resurrected. No, Jesus really died and he really was buried. And you have to understand why that's a part of the gospel, that Christ died for our sins, and continues on, why it was a part of the gospel that He was buried, because the burial of Jesus illustrates for us that our sins have been forgiven, and that word forgiven means to put away, and when Christ's body was buried, that is to say to you and I that by faith in Christ, our sins were put away and forgiven, never to be brought up again. Jeremiah, 31 verse 34 is one of my favorites. He said, I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. That means that God will absolutely forget your past sins. God never nags his children. God never brings up our past life, that if it's been confessed, he never brings it up to his children. You say, if God doesn't bring it up, then who does? The devil. Did you just figure that out? The Bible said that he's the accuser the brethren. One guy said to another guy there at work, he said, My wife said, when we get in a fuss, she gets historical. He said, You mean hysterical? No historical. She just brings up all of my past. And that's what the devil does. He'll bring up every mistake. He'll bring up every shortcoming. He will accuse you until you think you'll nearly lose your mind. Then when he gets done, there are people that will bring up your past, and they'll tell things on you. And time they get through exaggerating, it gets worse. And then, if it's not that, we bring up our own past. I've seen some saints of all that are tormented because of memories of their past, but listen, sins that have been confessed are cast into the sea of God's great forgetfulness, and he puts up a sign, no fishing, no fishing. It's good news that Christ paid for our sins, and I believe it's good news that Christ put away our sin. Now, anybody got an actual Bible with them? Everybody's got a cell phone, and we got a screen. Now, I don't know what your Bible, what punctuation mark it puts after the word buried, that Christ died for our sins and was buried. If there's a period there, then, ladies and gentlemen, we don't have good news. If there's a period that's the end of it, not good news if the gospel is that Christ died and was buried period. It's not good news. It means if there's a period, then I wasted my entire life as a preacher of the gospel. My preaching, according to the scripture, is meaningless. Our faith ending, and we're still in our sins. But my Bible says that Christ died and he was buried, comma, and that he rose again the third day. So that has Christ prevailing over our sins in His resurrection, Jesus vindicated his word when he arose again, he said what he would do, and he did exactly what he said he would do. On the third day he rose, and he vindicated his worth. The big question up in heaven is, if the sacrifice of Christ was adequate, does it meet the demands of the law. And so that sacrifice by faith is laid out on the altars of heaven. And the angels come by and they examine the sacrifice, and they said, it's adequate. And all those saints of old as they waited in those chambers for the coming of that Lamb Of God. When they saw him and saw Jesus, they said, it's adequate. We're going to follow Him. And when God, the Holy Father, saw the sacrifice of His Son, He said, It was adequate. And Jesus looked over the earthquake Angel and said, I want you to go down there, and I want you to remove that stone in the front of that grave. That's what Easter is all about. And when he arrived at that tomb, death met him and said, you can't have him, He's mine. Millions I've kept in my prison house, and not a one has ever escaped, because the Bible said the wages of sin is death and the earthquake. Angel said Christ tasted death for every man, let him go free. That old grim monster called death, had to relinquish the keys over death, hell and the grave. That's why the songwriter wrote up from the grave, He arose with a mighty triumph or his foes, he arose the victory from the dark domain, and he lives forever with his saints to reign. Thank God for the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, the resurrection of Jesus is it an undisputable fact. The Living Christ says to the tomb, prevent me. It says to science, explain me. It says to technology, duplicate me. It says to history, repeat me. It says to disbelief, disprove me. But it says to you, and I believe in me. And if you do, if you'll confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus, believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be what? Saved. Do you ever notice over and over in this little passage? And it kept saying, and he was seen, and he was seen, and then he was seen, and then on out there he was seen over and over. It kept repeating that. You see the apostles saw him alive following his resurrection. And 500 or more also saw him that he was alive. Somebody said it was just a hallucination. They just thought they saw him. Well, if one person had said it, I can agree. It may be two people said it, I can go for that. But more than 500 were not having hallucinations. They saw the risen Savior, and he was alive, and even appeared privately to individuals. He was seen by Simon Peter. Anybody remember poor old Simon Peter? What he did? You ever fail? Anybody ever give up and walk away and spend time out in sin and try to get back to God, you realize that he had denied his Lord three times. What a failure. It was said after that, that every time that Peter would walk the streets of old Jerusalem, people would seem come, and they begin to crow like a rooster, and Peter would fall on his knees and weep, and it was made difficult for him. But you would need to remember when our Lord was risen from the dead, and he came to those women, he said, I want you to go tell my disciples and Peter. Peter, who had failed, and when he returned and had the keys to the kingdom there at Pentecost, 50 Some days later, he stared in the faces of a hostile man and said this, Jesus, whom you crucified, whom God hath raised from the dead, changed him. Do you know that Jesus' own family didn't believe in him? Do you know that his own brother, James and the other brothers. None of them believed that he was the divine Son of God. They saw him as just the Son of Man. But if you go down to verse seven, he appeared also to James. James said, I'd seen him, and he was changed forever and became a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then the Apostle Paul said, last of all, he was seen of me also as of one born out of due season. I didn't get that, so I looked it up, and I couldn't believe what I read. It's as though I've been aborted. In other words, when he was lying out there in the Damascus Road, it was like a dead fetus. My religion aborted me. And lying in the dust of conviction on that lonely road, he heard a voice say, Saul, Saul. Why persecutest thou me? He. And he said, whom art thou Lord? And he was shocked to hear, I am Jesus, whom thou persecuted. He said, I saw him. I saw him out of due season. And he thought, The Lord was put to death forever, but the living Lord, was to live forever. The good news of the gospel is that Christ died to pay for our sins, and He was buried to put away our sins, and that he resurrected to prevail over our sins. Now listen very carefully in the opening verses, the first two verses, it said that we're saved by this gospel. We're saved by this gospel unless we believed in vain. And I wondered, how can you believe in vain? There's two ways to believe. You believe with the head, or you believe with the heart, right? Some people's got more religion in their head than they ever got in their heart. Now, it'd be nice to have religion in both places. I've seen some people had a good heart, but they sure had a bad head. Young lawyer, he didn't believe in the resurrection, set out to disprove it, and studied carefully into his amazement, he had to go ahead and say, I believe that Christ did die for our sins and was buried and that he rose again. But he said, my problem, I discovered my problem was not in my head it was in my heart, because after I'd realized that he had actually risen from the dead, I was no more a Christian than I was before, and so he had to put his faith in the Lord Jesus. If thou will, confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Now just imagine this afternoon that a radio station is playing an old gospel song written some 30 - 35, years ago, and the strains of that music begins to echo its way through the car because he lives, I can face tomorrow. And somebody says, I don't believe it and reaches over and switches the station off. You see, he may turn the switch off on the music, but it doesn't stop the music. It only stops the reception to that individual, and whether anybody believes it or not, it's still the good news. Christ died for our sins, was buried, and on the third day he rose again. Right now, about all you'd have to do is turn the switch and the music of the living Christ would come flowing into your heart. Can you hear it? Can you feel it? Most of all, can you believe it? If thou wilt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart, thou shalt be saved. Good news. The gospel is the good news. And there's nothing more I could preach from this pulpit than to tell you that the gospel is the good news. And Paul said, The Gospel that I preach is what it'll take to get you saved, not rules, not a lot of stuff, but the gospel. It's amazing to me how easy it is to get away from the preaching of the actual gospel and to go over here somewhere and hunt up some kind of a verse and make it religion. And it's not the gospel. We want to stick with The Gospel. Christ paid for our sins by his death, by His burial, put away our sins by His resurrection, prevails over sin. Thank God that the spirit was there to raise him from the dead. The same spirit that raised Him will quicken our mortal bodies on that great resurrection morning. Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNC's Pastor Ray LaSalle, for more information regarding BNC, visit bucyrusnazarene.org.