Out of curiosity, if I can get a quick show of hands, has anybody here ever gone to the store to buy something and then realized you didn’t have enough money?
Maybe it was the grocery store, maybe you were going to buy a new TV, or new game system, or something, and either it cost more than you thought it cost, or you had less money than you thought you had.
Anybody ever experienced some version of that?
There are very few situations that are more upsetting, more nauseating, more humiliating than finding out you don’t have the money you need to pay for the thing you need.
Because not only does it mean that you can’t have this thing, but it’s also just embarrassing, right?
There’s just no situation that is more humiliating, more excruciating than having a bill you can’t pay, or having a debt you can’t pay.
A Debt I Couldn’t Pay
I remember one time, not long before Elyse moved to North Carolina—because I moved here about a year before she did—and I was working three jobs while I was in seminary.
I was teaching ESL to a bunch of Chinese kids.
And I was tutoring at the Sylvan Learning Center in Wake Forest.
And I was doing data entry for a furniture company.
And between all three of those jobs, I was making maybe $20,000 a year.
Which gave me basically exactly how much I needed to pay rent and cover school bills and other things like that, with just a tiny bit left over for food and stuff like that.
And so I calculated it out where I could feed myself every single week for exactly $17.
I was super proud of that. I’m still super proud of that.
What I did was, I found one meal that covered all my nutritional needs, and I ate that meal three times a day, seven days a week.
From what I remember, it was grilled chicken, some carrots, some salad, two eggs, and four cookies. There was this 89 cent package of cookies, and if I had four cookies with each meal it would last me the entire week.
And I ate that meal for breakfast at four in the morning, for lunch around noon, and for dinner around 7pm, like clockwork.
And as long as I stayed within that pattern, I could feed myself for $17 every week.
But that $17 would always empty out my account. That was it. That was all I had.
Now this was back in 2017, which was right about the time the costs of living here in North Carolina started to significantly inch upward.
And so what do you think happened?
I’ll tell you what happened.
One day, after months and months and months of going through that $17 21 identical meals routine, I got to the store, I grabbed my cart, I headed through the aisles, I grabbed all the exact same things I got every single week, but since it was so familiar and it was basically muscle memory, I didn’t even look at the price tags.
Which was a problem, because the price tags had changed.
And so when I finished up my shopping and I got in line, I stood there waiting, not a care in the world, and when my turn came up, I put all my stuff on the conveyor belt, I walked up to the register, I swiped my card without even looking at the total price.
I started putting my things into my grocery basket, I started walking away, and the cashier said, “Sir, wait, stop!”
I turned back around. He said, “Your card didn’t go through.”
So I thought, “Oh, you know that magnetic strip gets worn down so this happens sometimes.”
So I went, and I swiped again, but the cashier said, “It says insufficient funds.”
And I said, “That’s not possible. I just checked this morning, and I’ve got $18.50 in my account,” as if that was something to brag about.
But he said, “Well, your total is $32.63.”
I said, “Oh no.”
Without me even noticing, the prices on most of the things in my shopping cart had nearly doubled.
So I quickly pulled my wallet out to see if maybe I had some spare money that I’d just forgotten about. And I didn’t.
So I went through my pockets to see if maybe I had $15 in spare change jingling around in there. But I didn’t.
No. I was hopelessly short on cash.
But I didn’t want to make a scene, because the only thing I hate more than mayonnaise is being the center of attention.
And so I said, “Okay, well, I’ll just take a couple of things out of the basket.”
So I started removing things to try to get myself down to the $18.50 that I did have, but no matter how many things I took out, nothing seemed to quite do it.
I took out my cookies. I said, “No dessert this week, that’s no big deal.”
But even with the price hike the cookies were only about a buck fifty, so that didn’t get me anywhere near where I needed.
So I took out the eggs. I said, “You know what? I’ve got protein. I’ve got the fully grown dead chicken, I don’t need the unhatched chicken.”
But the eggs were only 92 cents, so that still didn’t even get me anywhere close.
And so I kept pulling more things and more things out, but the only way I could get back down to $18.50 was to get rid of everything that actually had nutritional value.
And so I said, “I guess I’m just gonna muscle my way through this week. I guess I’m just going to be a little hungry this week.”
But right in that moment, suddenly somebody came up behind me and said, “Hey, card declined? I’ve been there before. When this happened to me, somebody came up and helped me pay for my groceries. So let me do the same thing for you now.”
And he swiped his own card paid, for all $32 worth of the groceries, and sent me home with everything I needed for the week.
I was sitting there, living through my own absolute nightmare situation, experiencing the humiliation of having a bill I couldn’t pay, but this Good Samaritan came in and paid the bill for me.
An Echo of the Gospel
And the reason that we’re starting off this sermon with a story about a crisis at the grocery store is because we are picking it back up in our “What is the Gospel?” series this morning—and there’s a sense in which what that guy did for me is an echo of the gospel.
I think this “What Is The Gospel?” series is the most important series we have ever done together during my time here at Mount Zion Baptist Church, because the gospel message is the heart and soul of the Christian faith, and it is the beating heart of who we are and why we’re here as the church.
We have spent this past few weeks zeroing in on the Gospel story with a laser focus, because there is absolutely nothing more important than wrapping our heads and our hearts around this gospel message.
Up to this point, we’ve talked about the way that in the beginning a good God created a good world full of good things for His good purpose.
But that one day humanity rebelled against that good God and broke his good world.
And how our rebellion against God created a wall between us and God.
That’s called the Fall.
God’s word tell us that once upon a time, we committed this cosmic mutiny against the God who created us, and as a result we brought eternal condemnation on ourselves.
We were separated from God, and we were destined for an eternity in hell because of our sin, because of the ways that we participate in this great rebellion that broke the world.
That’s the bad news of the Fall.
And in the 3 weeks leading up to this, we have been setting the stage for the gospel by walking through the story of God’s good creation and our bad rebellion that led to the Fall.
But this morning, we are finally coming up on the good news of the gospel.
Because the gospel is the story of how that same God we rebelled against in the beginning has come down to earth in Jesus Christ to save us.
That same God that we have stirred up to rightly condemn us for our sin came down to earth in Jesus Christ to redeem us.
He saw the condemnation hanging over us, and he said, “No.”
He said, “I’m not going to give them what they deserve. I’m not going to destroy them because of their sin. I’m not going to send them to hell for all of eternity because of their rebellion. I’m going to forgive their rebellion. I’m going to wipe away their sin. I am going to wash them clean, and bring them back into my family, back into my kingdom, back into my covenant. I’m going to save them—no matter what it costs.”
And because all of this is true, He went to the cross.
And we are gonna dive deep into what the cross is, and what the cross means, and why the cross matters, this morning.
And so let’s dive right in.
The Incarnation of Jesus
But before we can talk about the cross, we need to talk about the man on the cross.
Before we can talk about the crucifixion of Jesus, we need to talk about the incarnation of Jesus.
That’s a vocab word. I apologize for giving you a vocab word.
But for 2000 years, the term that Christians have been using to describe the earthly life of Jesus is incarnation.
The Gospel begins with the incarnation of Jesus.
And even though that is a big and intimidating word, all it means is Jesus became human.
In the incarnation, the author of existence steps into the story of existence.
The God of the universe steps into the universe and walks among us.
That’s what John is talking about when he says:
“The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
—John 1:14, WEB
He’s saying that in Jesus Christ, God takes on human flesh.
He takes on human nature.
He doesn’t just disguise himself as a human, he actually becomes a human.
So for all of human history leading up to Jesus, there were exactly two kinds of people: Humans, and God.
There was God, and there was humanity.
But on that day, God took on humanity.
God became a human like us.
Now, He didn’t stop being God.
He didn’t turn his Godhood off.
But he took on human flesh and human nature, and He walked among us.
He was entering the story of existence, and he was entering the story of redemption.
The God of the universe stepped into His own creation.
He stepped into our Fallen world that we broke through our sin.
Jesus Lived Without Sin
But unlike every other human who has ever lived, He never sinned.
As an incarnate human, Jesus lived a perfect life without sin.
I love the way the book of Hebrews puts this, it says:
“For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.”
—Hebrews 4:15, WEB
Listen to that.
He was tempted in all the same ways we are, but he never gave in to sin.
He was tempted in all the same ways all of God’s people had been before him, but he never gave in and rebelled.
Jesus lived his life in perfect obedience and submission to God’s will and God’s commands.
He lived a perfect life without sin, and so unlike every other human on planet earth, the righteous wrath of God was not on Him.
There was nothing for Jesus to be punished for.
There was nothing for Jesus to be condemned for.
There was nothing for Jesus to be cast out for.
As a human, Jesus lived a perfect life without sin, which means He earned God’s blessing, God’s fellowship, God’s presence, God’s reward.
Jesus lived a life worthy of an eternity with God.
Jesus Took the Condemnation We Deserved
But Jesus didn’t come to earth to be rewarded.
He came to be crucified.
Instead of the blessing and reward that Jesus deserved, what he got was punishment.
What he got was condemnation.
What he got was wrath.
Jesus came to earth as a human, He lived a perfect life of perfect obedience without sin, and then he went to the cross.
And on the cross, He took the condemnation we deserved.
He took the punishment we deserved.
He took the wrath of God that we deserved, and he took it on to his own shoulders instead so that we wouldn’t have to.
The way I like to put it is this: Jesus took the condemnation we deserved so that we could have the reward He deserved.
Real quick, I wanna say this together so it sears itself into our heads and our hearts. Ready?
Jesus took the condemnation we deserved so that we could have the reward He deserved.
He took the punishment we deserved so that we could have the reward He deserved.
He took the wrath we deserved so that we could have the reward He deserved.
I love the way that Paul puts this in his letter to the Corinthians. He says:
“For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
—2 Corinthians 5:21, WEB
Listen to that.
Let’s break that down for a sec.
Because there are two parties involved here.
There was Jesus who never sinned.
And there was all of us who sinned.
But the sinless Jesus is sacrificed, so that the sinful us can be saved.
The cross is the place where Jesus took our condemnation so he could give us his reward.
His blessing.
His acceptance.
Jesus took the condemnation we deserved so that we could have the reward He deserved.
Jesus Is Our Sacrificial Lamb
And there’s a handful of metaphors that God’s word uses to describe this, but we’re just going to talk about a few of them.
First things first: God’s Word says that Jesus is our sacrificial lamb.
Ever heard this one before?
What Jesus is doing on the cross is like what the sacrificial lamb was doing in the Old Testament.
That’s what John the Baptist is talking about in John chapter 1. It says:
“The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’”
—John 1:29, WEB
John the Baptist is talking about the sacrificial lamb from something called the Day of Atonement.
The Day of Atonement was one of the ancient Israelite festivals that God had given them.
On the Day of Atonement, God had the Israelites bring a lamb to the altar, and He would have the priest place his hands on the lamb.
And when he placed his hands on the lamb, he was symbolically putting the sins of the Israelites onto that lamb’s shoulders.
And then they would sacrifice the lamb.
The sacrificial lamb was a symbol for God’s forgiveness.
The sacrificial lamb is slain for our sins.
The sacrificial lamb is slain instead of us.
And in the same way, Jesus is the sacrificial lamb who is slain in our place, for our sins.
Jesus was slain instead of us.
Jesus is our sacrificial lamb.
Jesus Is a Ransom for Us
That’s the first metaphor the scriptures use to explain the cross.
But there’s another one I find really powerful.
Because at the same time, God’s word refers to Jesus as a ransom for us.
Jesus is a ransom for us.
He says in Mark 10:45:
“For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
—Mark 10:45, WEB
Now, to understand what Jesus is talking about here, you have to understand something about the ancient world that Jesus lived in.
You have to understand that a ransom was the sum of money you had to pay to redeem someone from slavery.
If you were a slave and you wanted to buy your freedom, the money you had to pay for your freedom was called a ransom.
So if you fell in love with a slave girl and you wanted to marry her, you had to go pay a ransom to set her free.
Problem was, slaves were so expensive that often the only way to be able to afford someone’s ransom price was to sell something of equal or greater value.
And the only thing that can be of equal or greater value to a slave is a better slave.
So 99% of the time, if you wanted to ransom someone out of slavery, you had to sell yourself into slavery to pay for it.
You had to sell yourself into slavery in their place.
That’s how the ransom system worked.
And Jesus says, “I have come to give my life as a ransom for you.”
Jesus sold himself to set us free.
He’s giving himself in our place.
The God of the universe ransoms himself to set us free through the cross.
Jesus is a ransom for us.
Because of the Cross, We Are Justified Before God
That’s just a couple of the metaphors that God’s word uses to help us understand what Jesus did for us on the cross.
But there are at least two things that become true because of the cross.
First things first: Because of the cross, we are justified before God.
This is another vocabulary word. I apologize.
But because of the cross, we are justified before God.
Justification is a complicated sounding word but it has a very simple definition.
Back in the olden days, they used to teach kids about justification by saying that it’s “Just as if you’d never sinned.”
Anybody grow up hearing that one?
Justification means that we are no longer condemned by God.
Because of the cross we are no longer criminals before God.
We are no longer headed for hell.
Justification means that God doesn’t treat us like sinners anymore.
I’m gonna say that again: God doesn’t treat us like sinners anymore.
No. Because of the cross, we are treated like we’re righteous.
God treats you like your righteous.
God treats you like you are perfectly good.
God treats you like you are perfectly obedient.
Perfectly just.
Because Jesus took away your sin on the cross, God treats you like there is no flaw or blemish in you.
It’s just as if you’ve never sinned.
I love the way the great hymn Before the Throne of God Above puts this.
I don’t know about you but that is one of my favorite hymns.
And, actually, it may be just one of my favorite songs.
But there’s a line in that song that says:
“God the just was satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.”
—Before the Throne of God Above
Because of the cross, we are justified before God.
Because of the Cross, We Are Reconciled to God
And at the same time: Because of the cross, we are reconciled to God.
Reconciliation is a much more term in our modern vocabularies, but it is just as beautiful of a concept.
And I love the way Peter explains it in one of his letters. He says:
“Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.”
—1 Peter 3:18, WEB
Listen to that.
He’s saying that the cross doesn’t just take away our sins, it also brings us to God.
He’s saying that God doesn’t just forgive us and then leave us at a distance.
He doesn’t just forgive us but say, “Okay, well, I’m not going to burn you, but we’re not going to be friends either.”
He doesn’t just forgive us and then say, “Okay now obey my commands and stay out of my way.”
No. He says your relationship has been restored through the cross.
He says that God is eager to know you.
He’s eager to spend time with you.
He’s eager to be with you.
He’s eager to have a relationship with you.
God is eager to be a Father to you.
He’s eager to hear your prayers.
He’s eager to listen to your needs.
He’s here to restore you with his nourishing and sustaining presence.
Because of the cross, that wall that used to stand between you is gone.
And God quite literally wants to be your closest friend.
I don’t actually have words that are strong enough to really communicate what I’m trying to communicate, so I’m just gonna say that again: God literally wants to be your closest friend.
God literally wants to be your closest confidant.
God literally wants to be constantly in your presence, constantly communing with you, constantly enjoying each other’s friendship.
You have been truly reconciled to God, and there is absolutely nothing standing between you.
I’m not just talking about one day when you go to heaven, or one day when Christ comes back, I’m talking about right now.
You have not only been justified, you have not only been forgiven, you’ve been reconciled.
And now the rest of your life is about enjoying the life-giving fellowship that God wants to have with you.
Because of the cross, we are reconciled to God.
There Is No Going Back to Condemnation
And because all of this is true, there is no going back to your old life of condemnation.
Know what I’m talking about?
There is no going back to your old like of separation from God.
There’s no going back.
You can’t go back.
You’re not able to go back.
I’m not telling you not to go back, I’m telling you that you don’t have the power to go back.
You’ve been redeemed by the Lord, and you cannot un-redeem yourself.
You’ve been justified by the Lord, and you cannot un-justify yourself.
You’ve been reconciled to the Lord, and you cannot un-reconcile yourself.
You can try to break fellowship with him, but he’s just going to chase you down and say, “I’m still here.”
You can try to fall away, but he’s just going to follow you and say, “I’m still with you, come back home.”
God is like the father from the prodigal son story, who doesn’t wait for you to return, he leaves his home, and he comes down the road, and he finds you and embraces you.
Because of Christ’s redeeming work for us on the cross, nothing can ever condemn us again.
Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love
And we see this truth more clearly than anywhere one of, I think, the most beautiful stretches of Scripture ever written, in Romans chapter eight. Paul says:
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. . . .
“What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things? Who could bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes rather, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . .
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
—Romans 8:1, 31–35, 37–39, WEB
Listen to that.
I want this to sink down deep into our heads and our hearts.
I don’t ever want there to be a moment in your life again where you have to doubt whether the Lord is still with you.
Whether the Lord is still walking with you.
Whether the Lord is still on your side.
Whether the Lord still loves you.
I don’t ever want you to experience another moment in your life where you think, “I’ve gone one step too far, and now the Lord must be done with me. I’ve sinned one too many times, and now the Lord cannot possibly still love me. I’ve done something too big, too bad, and so the Lord is going to walk away from me now, I just know it.”
I don’t even want to give you the opportunity to think that ever again in your life, because there is no room for that idea in light of the cross.
No. Because of the cross, nothing can ever separate you again.
Nothing.
And so, real quick, before we move on, I want to read this again together.
I’m not trying to drag this out, but I want to read this again together—because I want you to hear these words from scripture coming out of your own mouth.
And I want you to learn to believe them.
So are you ready?
Let’s read:
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. . . .
“What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things? Who could bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes rather, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . .
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
—Romans 8:1, 31–35, 37–39, WEB
Those words you just said are true because of the cross.
Not because you’ve been good enough.
Not because your good outweighs your bad.
Not because you’ve done enough good things to make up for the bad things you’ve done.
No.
Those words are true because God himself came down from heaven and took your punishment on Himself.
And so there is no punishment left for you.
There is no condemnation left for you.
There is no wrath left for you.
All of it was satisfied by Jesus on the cross.
So you are fully forgiven.
You are freely forgiven.
You are forever forgiven, because Jesus paid your debt for you.
That is the gloriously good news of the gospel.
Rest in the Gloriously Good News
And so, I don’t even have an application for you today, because this is not something you need to do.
This is something that’s been done for you.
And so, what I want you to do is remind yourself again and again and again, today and tomorrow, and next week, and next month, that the gospel is not something we do for God, the Gospel is something God has done for us, and rest in that gloriously good news.
Let’s join together in prayer.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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