Renewing Your Vision • Romans 5:6-11 • Good Friday

1:07:53 Teaching begins

Notes

You’ve heard of fish living in pools of water in caves that after many generations eventually lose their eyes. Eyes are useless in a dark cave.

Those of us who have received Jesus are not blind anymore. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. God has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

But we still live in a dark world. One of the effects of living in a dark world is that you can start to lose your vision.

Asaph in Psalm 73 lost sight of God for a bit. He looked at the wicked, and he lost perspective on God. He thought, they get away with murder and here I’m being plagued and chastened every day. But when he came into the sanctuary of God he began to see again with God’s perspective, and he said God is the strength of my life and my portion forever. One reason why you want to keep coming to church is it continually renews your vision for God. When you lose sight of Jesus, things go black.

While we’re here in the sanctuary of God we’re going to look at Good Friday, to renew our vision of Jesus on the cross.

I’m reading in Romans 5, from verse 6-11.

1. On the cross we see a person. We learn four things about Him here.

A. His name is Jesus. That’s the Greek way to say that name, Iesous. That was a very common name, first used by Moses’ assistant. His parents named him Hoshea, that means “salvation” but Moses called him Yeshua, which means “YHWH is salvation.” This is literally true with Jesus.

B. The second name for Him is the Christ.

1. That’s actually not a name, it’s a title. In Hebrew it’s Mashiach, Messiah. The Anointed One of God.

2. He is the Servant of the Lord God spoke about in the Law, Prophets, and the Psalms. Isaiah wrote (Isaiah 49:5-6) And now says the LORD, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him (For I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and My God is My strength), He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

C. He is the Son of God, v. 10. That means He is equal with the Father. Eternal, all-powerful, the exact character of the Father. He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”

D. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord means He is the ruler of all that He has made. Every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. He is worthy to be worshipped as God.

2. In this passage we see ourselves as we really are, that is, how God the Father sees us, as Jesus sees us.

A. Without strength, says New King James version. Helpless, says the New American Standard translation.

1. We do have physical strength, we’re not helpless to do things. We have abilities and intelligence.

2. This means we have no moral power to do what is right. We can see the doing of the good, but we can’t do it. The more you try, the more you will convince yourself that your tendency is to selfishness and to evil, you avoid what is good. This is what makes you forget about looking to God for help, and instead depend on your natural goodness. That only goes so far, and then you do what is evil, what you don’t want to do, but you do it anyway.

3. That means no power to love God, no strength to do the very thing we see Jesus doing, lay down His life for others. We think about making others lay down their lives for us.

B. We’re ungodly. The word means that we have no fear of God, no sense of what is holy, pure, sacred. Whatever God says keep pure and holy, we corrupt and use it for our own purpose.

1. Keep the Sabbath holy; have one day in seven where you don’t do work but you use the time to seek the Lord, to worship and serve Him. Thanks to God we have a day off, in fact, two days off. One is the Jewish Sabbath, Friday evening to Saturday evening, the other is Sunday, the Christian day when Jesus rose from the dead. But people use the weekend to do their own thing, not seek the Lord.

2. What people find sacred are the very things that God says don’t do. Things that corrupt and destroy a nation. One sacred thing is misuse and overemphasis of sex, gender confusion, LGBTQ. The thing about the sexual confusion is that it is essentially self-centred, not others-centred. It’s not what builds a nation, it’s what tears it down. The nation that does these things cannot survive. When the whole world does these things, the end is in sight. If I say anything critical of LGBTQ or gender fluidity someone will have a problem with that. I’m touching someone sacred, something that may not be touched. That’s sacred. That’s the way God ought to be treated, and yet He is despised and condemned. The wrong things are holy and untouchable to a person without the fear of God.

C. The third thing said of people is that they are sinners.

1. The word means to miss the mark. You’re aiming at a target and you miss it. That is, whatever you aim for you don’t hit. That might seem to be untrue. People achieve what they are aiming for all the time. They want to get rich, they want to have as much of something as they want. They get it. So how can they be missing the mark?

2. To miss also means to fail to understand. You think that aiming for what you want is the way to go, but it’s not the way to go. It’s actually the path that leads away from life, not to life. What do people miss? What do they fail to understand as they go after the things they want?

3. When you don’t understand that life is temporary and after that comes judgment, you waste your time and effort obtaining what you can’t keep. With death comes poverty: you lose what you went after. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his own soul? To miss means fail to obtain. When you lose your own soul you have failed to obtain life.

D. The fourth thing is that everyone is a sinner.

1. Paul says, “Us, we,” in verse 8. Paul was a fabulous religious person with a flawless family history, devoutly religious. He was blameless as far as obeying the law as he knew it.

2. He includes himself with those people who are without strength, ungodly, and sinners. There’s no sense of, “We’re cultured and highly religious and we’re not like you scum who don’t have any kind of religion at all.” Everyone is under the condemnation of God. Everyone is failing to obtain life.

3. Then we see this perfect, divine, exalted Lord Jesus Christ dying.

A. He is dying a cruel death. Nine hours nailed to a cross.

B. It’s a shameful death. Jesus died being mocked and ridiculed.

C. It’s an undeserved death.

1. The Jewish leaders who wanted to find a legal reason to condemn Jesus could not even make up evidence enough make a charge stick.

2. When they brought Jesus to the Roman governor Pilate, three times he declared Jesus had committed no crime.

3. The Jewish ruler Herod also examined Jesus and found nothing to condemn in Him.

4. Even the thief on the cross said, “We deserve our punishment, but this Man has done nothing wrong.”

D. Jesus is righteous. He doesn’t have to die. He is not dying for Himself, but in the place of those without strength, the ungodly, sinners. He is taking upon Himself all the wrath of God against sin. He hung there and said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Isaiah says, Isaiah 53:5-6 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”

E. When Jesus died for us, He reconciled us to God. He brought us back into relationship where the Father isn’t angry anymore with us. We are saved from the wrath of God, v. 9.

4. If you’ve seen clearly so far, then you get to see clearly God’s love for you.

A. In v. 8 Paul says that God demonstrates His own love for us. That means makes it clear. Jesus dying on the cross makes visible God’s love for you.

B. Paul goes into this comparison where he says we wouldn’t die for anyone. Maybe for a great guy. But mostly we would say, “That’s real hard, but I’m not going to give my life for this guy.”

C. The Father and His Son are not like us.

1. The Father so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. The Son is dying for whoever—without strength, helpless, ungodly, sinners. People who don’t deserve Jesus dying for them.

2. The Son gave His life in obedience to the Father. John 14: 31 “but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.” He said, John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” He makes helpless sinners His friends.

3. When we look at Jesus on the cross we see the Father loving us, and we see Jesus loving us.

5. You now get to see relationship with God and joy.

A. Jesus said all we have to do is look to Him and we will be saved. Just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness. God didn’t take away the snakes. He said when you are bitten go and look at the bronze serpent and you will live. We look to Jesus on the cross and we are saved.

B. We are reconciled to God, no longer at war with Him, He is no longer at war with us. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Romans 8:1.

C. We exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We get to be happy because we are no longer under God’s condemnation. We get to live with Him. We get to know and believe the love that God has for us.

6. So what?

A. Our view of God gets dim and out of focus. Our relationship can seem far away. Our joy becomes stale. We get weak, we lose heart. It’s easy to feel like we don’t do enough, that God doesn’t approve of us because we could be doing a lot more than we’re doing and we’re aware of how much we’re not doing. It’s easy to wonder why do I do this church thing?

B. What can we do? Look to Jesus dying on the cross. It’s not morbid, it’s not gruesome. It’s the only way to work through these issues and come to the realization that Jesus is suffering because He loves me; there is no greater love. The Father loves me and values me because He gave His only Son to die for me. My value in His eyes goes off the scale. I am valuable beyond price. He is not going to lose me because I am in Christ.

C. If you have never seen Jesus like this before, receive Him. He is shining His great light on you to save you out of the shadow of death. How do you turn away from such great love? Don’t leave here without receiving Jesus as your Saviour and your Lord.

Let’s pray and look to Jesus.