Introduction:
1 Peter 2:24 - He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
Deuteronomy 21:22-23 - And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.
I Live Dead to Sin (1 Pet 2:24):
- Because I recognize how Disgusting sin is.
- Because that's not who I am Anymore .
- Because I'm absorbed with another Passion .
Luke 9:23-24 - And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."
1 Peter 2:24 - He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin...
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You know, I heard in the news this past week that somebody had said, "Because of the coronavirus, we're not going to be able to celebrate Easter this year." And that's not true.
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We are going to celebrate the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and everything that means.
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So I want you to join us, Harvest family.
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Even though we are separated physically for a season, we are still the body of Christ spiritually.
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So join us in worship, and let's get ready to turn to God's Word together.
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Open up your Bibles with me please to 1 Peter 2.
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And while you're turning there, you know in my line of work, I'm around a lot of death.
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And I've been to more funerals than most people that I know.
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And you know I was thinking about that a lot this past week, because we never forget the first.
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Do you remember the first person that was close to you that passed away?
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For me it was my grandmother, my mother's mother.
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And I was about 10 years old and I had spent so much time with her.
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She was my BFF.
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And I just remember so vividly the day that she passed away.
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Do you remember who it was for you?
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You know, death isn't something that we're comfortable talking about.
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But we turn to God's Word for this message that we have to wrestle with, and the message is, "Jesus Christ died." And the message goes on to say, "Therefore, because Jesus Christ died, Therefore I have died, and you have died, and we need to live dead.
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1 Peter 2, are you there?
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Just to give you a little bit of context, you start in verse 11, Peter talks about living for Christ in this world, being submissive to the authorities and suffering in a way that glorifies God.
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And Peter tells us that Christ suffered for us.
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As an example, yes, but so much more than that, Christ suffered for us as an empowerer.
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In other words, Jesus Christ's death has a direct bearing and impact on the way that we live.
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2 Peter 2.24, this Easter season, we're just going to be looking at this one verse.
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Peter says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
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By his wounds you have been healed." So let's get the theology down.
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That's the first part of this verse.
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We're just going to break it down nice and easy.
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First of all, it says, "He Himself." And in the Greek language, that is very emphatic.
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It's like Peter saying, "He Himself bore our sins." In other words, Peter is saying, "God did this.
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God in the flesh came and was willing to die.
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God in the flesh volunteered to suffer.
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He Himself.
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You know, we hire people to do the hard and the dirty jobs, right?
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We tell our leaders to empower and equip people to do work.
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all that delegating. And this job that Jesus Christ came to accomplish, this job could not be delegated. He had to do this himself. It says, "He himself bore." That word "bore" means to carry a heavy weight. And this concept of bearing sin or bore sin, it's all through the Old Testament, places like Numbers 14.33, Ezekiel 18.20, so many more passages in the Old Testament.
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Every single time it refers to punishment.
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In other words, Jesus Christ took the punishment that we deserve on Himself.
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It wasn't just physical punishment, it was the spiritual punishment.
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That's why on the cross Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus felt separation from God so that we wouldn't have to.
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He himself bore our sins.
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There's many different words for sin in the Greek.
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This word is "hambartia," which is literally "missing the mark." It means that instead of us aiming to do God's will, we intentionally redirect our aim, we miss the mark, we aim to do our own will. It's flagrant rebellion. "He himself bore our sins in his body." This last phrase is kind of weird. It says, "on the tree." Why does he say, "on the tree?" Well, literally in the Greek, the word "tree" is the word "wood." Literally, it says, "He bore our sins in his body on the wood." But what does that What does it mean, "tree"? Why was it translated "tree"?
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Well, you understand that the Jews did not crucify criminals.
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Jews stoned criminals.
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But, under Old Testament law, if a criminal was especially evil, they would take his body and hang it on a tree as a sign of shame.
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Listen to these verses from Deuteronomy 21, verses 22 and 23.
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It says, again this is Old Testament law, "If a man has committed a crime, punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain at night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day." Listen to this last phrase, "For a hanged man is cursed by God." He brings up this concept in Galatians 3.13.
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Under Old Testament law, a man publicly shamed, hanged on a tree, was considered cursed by God.
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So understand the connection.
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While Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross, while He was nailed to the wood, nailed to the tree, so to speak, He was on display for our sin.
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Telling everyone that He was cursed by God.
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took the curse that we deserve on Himself.
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You know, this idea of Jesus dying, Peter was presented with this back in Matthew 16.
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We're not going to turn there, but if you go and look at that passage, about verse 21, Jesus tells the disciples, "I'm going to be crucified, and I'm going to resurrect." The Bible says Peter actually rebuked Jesus. He pulled him aside.
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He's like, "Hey, you're not going to talk like that because that's never going to happen to you." Peter completely balked at the idea that Jesus would suffer and die, but when we get to the resurrection and we get to when Peter was writing this letter, we see that he got it. He eventually got it.
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you? The truth is God is holy and He must punish sin. But God is also at the same time loving and He wants to save you. And to us that looks like an impasse. That God is in some sort of an impossible situation. How can He maintain His holiness and demonstrate his love at the same time, and his solution is substitution.
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And understand that this wasn't a new idea with Jesus.
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This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
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After Adam and Eve sinned, the Bible says that God covered them with animal skins.
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After their attempts to cover themselves with leaves, it was ineffectual.
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So God provided a substitute that required bloodshed and death to make a covering for Adam and Eve's sin.
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Then you get to the Old Testament law through Moses.
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God prescribed a whole system of sacrifice with the temple and the priests and the very foundation of this system was having an animal sacrifice, an animal substitute, again bloodshed and death that was going to pay the price for sin, and that was just temporarily until we studied this last year, didn't we? John 1.29, Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is our substitute. You see, with no substitute, I am still a condemned sinner.
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If my sin was not transferred to Jesus Christ, and if He didn't take it, my sin remains on me.
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You see, either Jesus Christ took my penalty, or I have to take my penalty.
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It's either Him or me.
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Jesus Christ was willing to be my substitute.
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But these next two phrases in 1 Peter 2.24 explain why Jesus did this.
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Why did Jesus bear our sin in His body on the tree?
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Why did He do that?
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Is it to get us to heaven?
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Yeah, but that's not what Peter's talking about here.
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Is it to bring us peace?
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Yes, it is, but that's not what Peter's talking about here.
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Peter very clearly points out to us that the reason Jesus was our substitute, He took our sin, He was cursed by God for our sin, the reason He did this was to change us.
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Now we talk about Him changing us, we don't just mean a judicial change or a forensic change or some sort of a metaphorical change.
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It's a real change, that when you believe in Jesus Christ, you can't be the same.
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You're like, "Well, what do you mean by that?" I mean this, when you believe in Jesus Christ, you died a real death with Christ on the cross.
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Now, you are dead to sin.
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The penalty's paid.
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Sin has no claim on us.
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You are dead to sin.
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But you know, church, we sure don't act like it sometimes.
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Right?
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Dead to sin?
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let's be honest, sometimes we act like sin is an ex, like an ex-boyfriend or an ex-girlfriend. Like, I know it's over, but sometimes I miss her, and sometimes I go see her, even though I know I shouldn't. Sometimes that's how people treat their sin. Like, yeah, I'm done with it, but I still miss it once in a Why would I want to visit?
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Sometimes we act like sin is a cigarette.
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Like, I know, I know I quit.
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I quit smoking.
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But you know, sometimes I just get-- I get so stressed, I just got to have a cigarette.
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And that's how some people treat sin.
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Like, I know I shouldn't, but I've had a really hard week.
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And I deserve this just this once.
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Sometimes we treat sin like it's a donut.
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Right?
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Come on.
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An occasional donut's OK, right?
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I mean, I wouldn't recommend to anyone that you have a steady diet of donuts-- breakfast, lunch, supper.
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That's all you eat is donuts.
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I would not recommend that.
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But if you have a donut every once in a while, That's how some people treat sin.
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Like, "Why don't I sin all the time?" "Why don't I sin once in a while?" And...
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But Peter says very clearly here that we might die to sin.
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You are dead to sin.
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Dead.
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And do you know what kind of a reaction you get from something or someone that is dead?
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Do you know what kind of reaction you get?
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If you don't believe me, I want you to take this test.
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Next time you're driving down the road and you see a buck hit by a car laying dead on the side of the road, I want you to get up and try to convince that buck to get up and run.
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Say, "Hey, you know, I really like to hunt.
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"So why don't you get going?
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"I'm gonna give you a head start." Or maybe if I give you some food or a salt lick or whatever it is bucks are into these days.
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You can stand there all day and talk to that dead thing.
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What kind of a reaction are you gonna get?
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None.
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You're not going to get any reaction from that dead animal.
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And you see, that's the same way our relationship is to manifest with sin.
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Sin should not get a reaction from us.
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I am dead to that.
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Right now somebody is saying, "I hear what you're saying, Pastor Jeff.
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I see what Peter's saying here very clearly in this passage, Pastor Jeff.
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But I'm just going to be honest with you, I don't feel dead to sin." Well, when Peter says that we might die to sin, that word "die" isn't the normal word used in the New Testament for "die." actually the only time it's used is right here.
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And the word literally means "depart" or "away from." And it is carrying this idea that death is separation.
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We get that, right?
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When we go to a funeral and that body is in the casket, there is a separation.
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Their spirit is separated from their body.
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Death means separation.
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So how does that play in our relationship with sin?
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Well, I want you to think about it this way.
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Imagine you jack up your car so that the wheels that are run by the motor are actually off of the road.
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Okay, so you have this car jacked up and you hit the accelerator and that wheel is spinning, spinning, spinning.
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Where's your car going? Your car's not going anywhere.
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Why? I mean, it's running. The car seems very much alive.
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So, if the car is alive, why isn't it going anywhere?
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The reason it's not going anywhere is because of the separation.
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You see, the wheel is separated from the ground.
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And because of the separation, there's no actual power taking place, It's making that car move.
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And that's how we are in Christ.
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Our old nature is part of the flesh that I still live in, but we are like that car.
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Separated from the power of the old nature.
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I am separated from the very thing that used to have a stranglehold on me.
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The flesh doesn't have power over me anymore.
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Because of Jesus Christ, I'm dead to sin.
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I can choose to obey God.
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Peter is saying that Jesus conquered sin and it's condemning power, and that dying to sin is a way of life for Christians.
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So, the next time that you are tempted to commit your favorite sin, I just want you to stop.
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I'm going to give you three things you can say to yourself when you're tempted.
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Are you ready?
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Jot these down.
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I live dead to sin.
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Number one, because I recognize how disgusting sin is.
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Next time you're tempted to sin, stop.
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Say it.
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I live dead to sin because I recognize how disgusting sin is.
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My sin killed my Savior.
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Think about your favorite sin.
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The next time you're tempted, you need to say, "Jesus died for that.
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It's destructive.
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It's never gotten me anywhere good.
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It's never going to get me anywhere good.
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It's disgusting.
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Jesus suffered and died for that.
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Why in the world would I want to play in the dumpster?
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Why would I enjoy the very thing that killed my Savior?
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How can I enjoy that?
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I live dead to sin because I recognize how disgusting sin is.
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Number two, I live dead to sin because that's not who I am anymore.
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That's not who I am anymore.
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If you go over to 1 Peter 4, just turn over one page, look at verse 3.
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Peter says, "The time that has passed suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry." Peter says the time has passed.
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Yeah, maybe you used to live like that, but we don't live like that anymore.
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You know, all the time that I spent doing that, it's over.
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It's done.
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That is history because I'm armed with a different attitude.
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My life is no longer dominated by sin.
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I am dead to sin.
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I live dead to sin because that's just not who I am anymore.
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I was a drunk.
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I was an addict.
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I was an adulterer.
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I was hateful and a liar and a gossip.
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But God no longer regards me as that.
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He regards me as his child.
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So?
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So do I.
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I am dead to that former way of living.
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That's just not who I am anymore.
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I live dead to sin number three.
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Say this when you're tempted.
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I live dead to sin because I'm absorbed with another passion.
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I'm absorbed in another passion.
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I don't have eyes or ears for anything except Jesus Christ." You know, at the beginning of this message, I said I've been to more funerals than most people because it's part of the job.
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But I've also been to more weddings than most people.
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Have you ever been to a wedding?
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I get the best seat in the house at a wedding because I get to stand front and center, right Right in front of where all the action is happening.
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And I love to look into the eyes of the groom and the bride as they stand up there.
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And sometimes, I'll be honest with you, I just pause.
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I don't say anything.
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I just let people sort of take in the moment.
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Because what I'm doing is I'm looking at the bride and groom's eyes.
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Why?
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in that moment, they aren't thinking about that "X" that we talked about earlier in the sermon.
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They're not thinking about past failed relationships.
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They're not thinking about anything else.
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They are in that moment 100% absorbed in that person.
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Church, the more you are absorbed in knowing Jesus Christ, in His Word, in communion with Him and with His people, when you're walking with Him and daily learning what it means to trust Him with every single step that you take.
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The more absorbed you are in Christ, the more death to sin seems more like a reality than It's just a concept on a page.
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The more you're absorbed with Christ, the more sin is just crowded out of your focus.
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I want to flash back to something that Jesus said as we're talking about death and the cross.
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Back in Luke 9, in verse 23-24, Jesus said to everyone who was listening, Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
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For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." And you know, in our day we've reduced Jesus' words to simply a metaphor about suffering.
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We say, "Well, we all have a cross to bear, you know.
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I got allergies, that's my cross to bear.
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My husband is a grump, that's my cross to bear.
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My job stinks, that's my cross to bear.
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We sort of use it as this metaphor, but in Jesus' day, the people that Jesus was talking to here, these people actually saw people walking down the street carrying a cross on their back and surrounded by guards.
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You see, Jesus' audience here, they knew this wasn't some metaphor.
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This was, "When I see somebody walking down the street carrying their cross, I know what that means.
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That means he's on his way to die." Jesus said to this crowd, "You will know. You will discover." The path to life kicks off with a death.
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Jesus was saying, "I will die for your sin, so that you might die to your sin." He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin.
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Will you pray with me, please?
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Father in Heaven, as we take some time to talk about the cross and the death of Christ, Father, we very clearly see the connection in Your Word.
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We died with Christ.
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Father, the cross isn't just some kind of a ticket to heaven.
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The cross changes who we are.
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And part of that change is considering ourselves dead to sin.
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Father, grant us repentance.
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Show us the areas in our lives where we need to start acting like dead people.
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not responding to the temptations that are pulling us.
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Father, keep our eyes on Jesus Christ and the cross.
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Let us use the resources that You provided, Father, so that we might live dead to sin.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.