A Divine Lifeline

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After the Second World War was over and the scourge of Nazism had been defeated, had been wiped from the face of the earth, the nation of Germany, you may remember, was divided among the war’s victorious powers. So the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union all had a part of the country. Berlin was located in the Soviet zone.

It was in the communist part of Germany, but the city of Berlin was also divided into four parts among the four powers. And there was kind of an uneasy peace that held between these wartime allies for a few years until they started to realize that the differences between the communist east, the Soviets, and the capitalist west, the differences were just too great for the alliance to be able to hold. And so the Soviets came up with a plan that they were going to force the Westerners out of Berlin, get rid of the Americans and the British and the French and just have Berlin all to themselves so they could rule Berlin all together and subject the entire city to the disaster of communist rule.

If you haven’t picked up on it by now, I have no use of communism. In spite of the treaties that granted the Americans and the British and the French transit rights, where they could go from West Germany through East Germany and into East Berlin, In spite of those treaties, the Soviets decided that in June of 1948, they were going to shut down all the land routes into West Berlin. They were going to shut down the highways.

They were going to shut down the railroads. And they were going to make the Western Allies retreat and starve the West Berliners into submission, so they would just give up their half of the city. And after all, Germany had been ravaged by the war.

It had been absolutely devastated. The West Berliners would have been powerless to try to protect themselves from the Soviet Red Army. And even though they were powerless to protect themselves, the thought of being under Joseph Stalin’s heel was absolutely horrifying to them.

I would imagine it would be for any of us. And so they found themselves in an absolutely hopeless situation, surrounded by the Red Army, no supplies, no reinforcements, and the threat that they could fall to Communism at any given day, it was a hopeless situation. And folks, when we are in a hopeless situation, there’s no sweeter word in the entire world than the word rescue.

For somebody to step in and rescue us from our hopeless situation, when we have no hope of being able to fix the mess we find ourselves in, when we have no hope of being able to fix that mess on our own, our only hope is that somebody who has the strength that we lack would step in and pull us out of that situation. And that’s just what the people of West Berlin received. The Western allies had transit rights, as I said before, and the Soviets said we can shut down the railroads, we can shut down the highways, but they couldn’t shoot down Western planes without starting World War III.

They didn’t want to do that, because we had the atom bomb and they didn’t at that point. They couldn’t shoot down our planes without starting World War III, so the Americans and the British and some others, like the Canadians and the Australians and the South Africans, decided that they would load up cargo planes and they would send them into Berlin where they couldn’t use the highways or the railroads. And over the next year, over the next 11 months really, they sent over 300,000 flights into the city of Berlin to equip the city with nearly 2.

5 million tons of supplies. On some of the busiest days, there were planes taking off or landing in Berlin at a rate of about 1 every 30 seconds. And so when it became apparent that this massive lifeline that the Westerners had given them had saved West Berlin from the Communists’ attempt to starve them, Joseph Stalin gave up, and in May of 1949, he reopened the land routes into the city.

He said, okay, fine, you can bring your trucks and your trains in here. And we now know this as the Berlin Airlift. It was one of the greatest rescue efforts in human history.

As a matter of fact, when I sat down this week to start thinking of rescue efforts, This was the first one that came to mind. One of the greatest undertakings in human history to rescue somebody. And over those 11 months, this airlift provided the people of Berlin with the things they needed.

It provided food and supplies and reinforcement and protection. But most importantly, it offered them hope. It offered them hope that their situation, that they were not going to succumb to their situation.

but still as great of a rescue as the Berlin airlift was. God brought about an even greater rescue operation at the cross. And I don’t think that’s an exaggeration to say that.

It was a greater rescue operation because the stakes of it were higher. We’re not just talking communism, capitalism. We’re talking heaven or hell.

We’re talking eternal life or eternal damnation. The stakes were higher, and because it came at the ultimate cost, It didn’t just cost some planes and supplies. Jesus, the Son of God, laid down his life.

And it was greater because it provided rescue, not just to the citizens of one city, but it provided rescue to the entire world, to all of man. And God offers rescue to sinners. We can’t save ourselves.

We can’t pull ourselves out of our sinful situation that we’ve been discussing the last few weeks. We can’t pull ourselves out of it, but God can rescue us, and he still does save sinners, and still tells us that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Not might be, not can be, they shall be saved.

Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at this unfolding story of God’s redemptive plan for mankind. And as you’ll recall, the scene began with us in the garden, God creating us to live in a perfect paradise and enjoy an intimate relationship with him, to glorify him.

But the plot of God’s story became complicated by the presence of sin. Sin is disobedience. Anytime we disobey God, he says do this and we don’t do it.

Or he says don’t do this and we do it anyway. That sin, that disobedience, severed our relationship with God. It introduced death into the world as we talked about last week.

It introduced suffering into the world. And it earned us the penalty of an eternity separated from God in the fires of hell because that sin has to be punished. And just like the people of West Berlin, we found ourselves in the horrifying and hopeless situation.

No chance of getting out of it. No chance of rescuing ourselves from it. And just like the West Berliners, we were saved by somebody who stepped in from the outside to rescue it.

When God stepped in to throw us a lifeline. That’s how God’s story works. We sinned.

We cannot save ourselves. We cannot do enough good to save ourselves. God has to step in and throw us a lifeline to rescue us from our sin.

The lifeline was Jesus Christ. The Son of God took on a body, took on a human body, that God created for him in the womb of a virgin, and he came into the world in the most unremarkable setting. I thought at first the most unremarkable way, but no, the virgin birth is still a pretty tough story to beat. But in an unremarkable setting, he was born in a stable.

He wasn’t born in the palace of kings. He was born in a stable. And throughout his life he lived among common people.

Yet somehow he was both fully God and fully man. And in all his years on earth he never sinned. Not even once.

He never sinned. Think about how hard it is to go even five minutes without sinning. It’s pretty hard.

He went his entire life and never sinned once. He lived a perfect life so that he could be a rescuer for those who could not live a perfect life. Anybody in here able to live a perfect life?

Show of hands? No. Me either.

And he lived a perfect life so he could rescue those of us who were incapable of doing that. To rescue those of us who are caught in the grasp of sin and being dragged under, he had to be free of sin’s grasp. You know, I can’t really rescue you if I’m in the same predicament that you are.

He couldn’t be in the same predicament as us in order to rescue us. So he was free of sin’s grasp. he lived a sinless life and all the while that he did it he knew the reason for everything was so that he could take responsibility for our sins so that he could take on himself sins that were not his own so that he would be dying to pay for our sins instead of dying to pay.

The Old Testament prophets told us that he was going to be a sacrifice for sin. Now that includes Isaiah who said he poured out his soul unto death and was numbered with the transgressors and he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. He knew all along what he had come for, and that was to be the sacrifice for sin.

Jesus even explained to his followers in the Gospel of Luke that his mission on earth was to seek and to save that which was lost. That was the whole point that he came to earth for. And so we see in his story that there was a conspiracy of Jewish and Roman leaders who arrested him on trumped up charges, took him through a kangaroo court where really the conviction of his guilt was a foregone conclusion. They knew that they were going to find him guilty.

And they accused him of blasphemy. They tried to accuse him of all sorts of evil deeds, but they had no proof of him. They even tried to find people to lie and say, well, he did this or he said that, but they had trouble even finding people to lie for him.

In the end, they railroaded him through court, and they found him guilty without any evidence, and they sentenced him to death. They took him outside, and they used a leather whip that had small pieces of broken glass or pottery or bone or metal embedded in its ends. And they whipped him.

They bloodied him. They beat him to within an inch of his life. Then they made him carry his cross, the instrument of his own death.

They made him carry it up the hill to the place where they were going to crucify him. They stripped him naked. They spit on him.

They mocked him. just to add more insult to injury they clothed him in purple robes pretending that he was pretending they were recognizing him as a king they put a sign above him claiming that he was the king of the Jews they took a crown that they fashioned out of thorns and I don’t mean little rose thorns I mean big prickly spikes they drove it down on his head they kneeled before him pretending that they were again pretending that they were recognizing him as king all the while they were making fun of him and when they’d had all the fun they could stand, they laid him down on a Roman cross, and they took the long iron spikes, and they drove them through his wrists and his ankles so that they could attach him to the cross. They raised up that cross to put him on display, and then they continued to mock him while he hung up there and died.

Folks, as he hung there for six hours, and he drew every breath that he took in excruciating agony. I talked about this when I talked about the evidence for the resurrection. Every breath, every breath that he took was torture.

I mean, even to breathe, took a lot of effort. He hung up there and he took responsibility for my sins and for you. And when he felt the full weight of our sins, when he felt that sin really put on him, the weight of that sin was such that he cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Father, why have you turned your back on me? And, you know, after years of studying this, I still don’t understand how all this works, that God was separated from God. But I know it’s what the Bible teaches.

I know it’s what the Bible says happened. And I know sin is just that big of a deal to God. And when all that suffering was complete, he cried out and said, It is finished.

It is finished. And the Bible says after that, he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. Folks, when he said it is finished, the words in that language were an accounting term and it meant that a debt had been paid in full. If he were saying this to us in our language today, he might have said your bill’s been paid.

Every lash of the Roman whip was meant for you. And for you. That’s what I deserve.

That’s what we deserve. Every scornful look, every mocking cry that he had to endure was meant for you and me. the nails were meant for you and me.

Every drop of blood should have been yours or mine. Every moment he spent on the cross was something that I deserved or you deserved and we deserved even more than that. And the life that was snuffed out there that day should have been ours.

He took our place and he paid a debt that he didn’t owe. He paid a debt that we owed because of our sin. We owed that debt and couldn’t pay it because of our sin.

He took the penalty that we deserved and he bore the full weight of God’s judgment on sin. Now, guys, anybody can claim that they’re going to die for your sin. Anybody could say that.

Anybody could make that claim, but not anybody could actually do it. Any one of us could say, I’m going to die on a cross today and I’m going to do it for your sins. But in reality, we would just die and it wouldn’t make any difference for anybody.

I know I don’t have the power to die for your sins or to save you. and you, you know yourself, you know you don’t have the power to pay for my sins or anybody else’s. It took a sinless sacrifice.

It took the Son of God dying for us for our sins to be paid for to really pay for those sins and that’s why three days later he backed it up. He proved with the resurrection. He came back to life.

He rose up out of the grave and he proved that he had been an acceptable sacrifice for sin. He proved that he really was the Son of God. He proved that he really did have the power to forgive the sins he claimed to.

He proved all of that by rising again from the dead, just like he said, just like he promised. And folks, because of what he did on the cross, and because of what he proved at the empty tomb, our sins are forgiven. This morning, your sins can be forgiven.

If you haven’t already, turn there with me. Turn with me to Romans chapter 5. The Apostle Paul explains to us what Jesus accomplished, and what it means in this overall story of God’s redemption.

verse 1 says therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ one thing we’ve got to understand about our relationship to God is that it doesn’t start out very well a lot of people say well everybody’s a child of God and and my answer really the Bible’s answer to them on that is no no we’re not not everybody is a child of God everybody is a creation of God. Everybody’s a creation of God who through rebellion, through disobedience, through sin has forfeited his right to be a child of God. In fact, we read through verse 1 and we see that we as people have made ourselves the enemies of God.

Now when I say we’re enemies of God, don’t blame God for that. We made ourselves the enemies of God. I know that because it says that it’s only through Jesus Christ that we are able to have peace with God.

We don’t have peace with God apart from Jesus. It’s a harsh word, but it’s the word enemy, but it’s no different from anybody who rebelled against the king and tried to overthrow him. And through that rebellion, through sin, we’ve made ourselves traitors and enemies to God.

We’ve made ourselves traitors and enemies to the king of the universe. But in spite of this, we are able to have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ did. Verse 2 says, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

It is only through Jesus that we have access to the Father or to the Father’s grace. Now Jesus said that too. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man, no man comes unto the Father but by me.

I don’t have access to God the Father because I was good, because I did the right things, because I went to church, because I deserved it. I have access to the Father because and only because Jesus Christ died to pay for my sins. We can ask God the Father all day to forgive our sins.

Please forgive me. Please forgive me. We could be really sorry and ask him to forgive us.

But unless Jesus Christ paid for those sins, there’s no reason that God could or would forgive us. Verse 3 says, and not only so, But we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience. And patience experience, and experience hope.

And hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Folks, there’s absolutely nothing for us to boast or brag about in salvation.

The fact that I’m saved, or forgiven, or that I have a relationship with the Father, or that I’m going to heaven is nothing for me to brag about. It’s nothing for me to look at the rest of the world and say, ha ha, I’m a better person than you are. It’s none of that because I didn’t do anything.

We didn’t do a single thing to earn it. The Bible says that we were ungodly. In other words, we were wicked, and all of this came about while we were without strength, while we didn’t have the strength to do anything to change our spiritual condition.

We were wicked, and we were sinking deeper and deeper into our wickedness, wickedness and we were powerless to try to do anything to pull ourselves out of it, to try to rescue ourselves from our sin. And yet at just the right time, not a moment too soon and not a moment too late, Jesus Christ stepped in and he died to rescue those of us who had no hope. He died at just the right time to rescue.

Verse 7 says, saying, blessed are they, I’m sorry, wrong chapter. Verse 7, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even to die, but God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Now what Paul’s telling us in verse 7 is that it’s hard enough to really find people who are willing to lay down their lives for a good man.

We can see, you know, we see rescuers on the news all the time, but you see somebody who’s really good and decent and they’re in danger, somebody might step in and rescue them, but You don’t see people lined up around the block to lay down their lives and say, oh, put my life at risk. I’ll rescue him. There’s not usually a fist fight over who gets to risk their lives.

And that’s for a good man. Now, try finding somebody who’s willing to put their life on the line to rescue a real jerk. Probably not going to find a lot of takers on that deal, are we?

Are you going to do it? You see somebody who’s just absolutely a nasty human being, and they’re in danger. You might.

I mean, you might be a good enough person to think about that, but most people are going to say, no, I’m going to pass on that one. And the Bible says we were ungodly. When God showed, folks, God showed his great, abundant, unbelievable love toward us by this one act, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

God didn’t wait for us to get our lives cleaned up and show how remarkable we were and we could live a better life and we could do great. He didn’t die for us because we were lovely or because we were wonderful or because we deserved it. He looked at us and he saw us for the sinners that we were.

And where we’d look at us and go, God looked at us and said, I choose to love them anyway and I’m going to save them even though they don’t deserve it. While we were still in the very act of rebelling against him. While we were still rejecting him, Jesus Christ went to the cross.

And with that cross, he bridged the canyon that I talked about last week, that sin had created God, that had separated us. Verse 9, much more than being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And here Paul is saying that Jesus’ death on the cross didn’t just show us that God loved us, it made it possible for God to forgive us. It did both of those things. The cross demonstrated God’s love, but it also made it possible for God to forgive us.

It made a way that we could escape from the punishment that really we deserved. In verse 10, he summarized all the changes that are taking place, that we started out as God’s enemies, and that we can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and through his death, And that this reconciliation means that we’re saved by him and we’re brought into a life of joy and blessing with God the Father. Which is what he created us for.

And all this is true because Jesus provided atonement. Because he provided the sacrifice that paid for our sins. We go from being enemies of God to being reconciled.

And not just reconciled and the slate is wiped clean and we get a fresh start. but God actually chooses to save us and take us and bless us and do all these wonderful things. So the passages that we looked at last week showed us how much our sin had destroyed and how hopelessly incapable we were of doing anything to fix our situation, of doing anything to get ourselves forgiven.

Our only hope was a rescuer. Our only hope was that God would provide a rescuer, and that rescuer came when Jesus Christ went to the cross for our sins. This passage we’ve just looked at today takes everything that we looked at last week, all the things that sin ruined, and shows how Jesus fixed those things.

How Jesus corrected everything that we had messed up with our sin. The first thing that he did is that Jesus’ death wipes our slate clean. It wipes our slate clean.

Sin comes in and it destroys everything. Even one instance of disobedience is enough to condemn us because God’s standard is absolute perfection. If everything is wonderful and there’s one flaw, it’s not perfection anymore.

God’s standard is so high because God himself is so holy. And God’s standard is so high that just doing good enough to balance everything out, well, my good might outweigh my bad, it doesn’t erase the fact that we’ve done wrong. there’s no amount of good that we can do to erase the wrong that we’ve done before God.

So we’re left with this big black mark on our permanent record, so to speak, with no way to clear it off. Our record before God has a big black mark of the sin that we’ve committed, and there’s no way for us to clear it off. And that’s why it’s so important to understand what the Bible means when it uses the word justification in this passage.

In biblical terms, justification, it doesn’t mean that we’re perfect, but it means that God has determined to look at us as though we are. He’s decided to declare that we are righteous, that we are sinless. It means that whatever sin we’ve committed, the penalty has been paid, the debt has been paid, and legally it’s like it never happened.

You know, in legal terms, they would say expungement. They’re going to clear the record like it never happened. That’s what the Bible’s talking about with justification.

God’s not confused. He knows what sin we committed, but he’s decided to clear it from the record. That’s what justification.

And he says, when he says twice in this passage that we are justified, it means God has wiped that slate clean. It means God has gone in with his big old eraser, and he’s erased the big black mark out of our permanent record. It’s gone.

It’s gone. And verse 9 says we’re justified by his blood. Verse 1 says we’re justified by faith.

That’s not a contradiction. Now the Bible overall teaches that through his blood and his death, Jesus provided for our justification. Through his blood and through his death, he made it possible for us to be justified.

He made it possible for our slate to be wiped clean. And that God applies that justification to anybody who comes to him by faith. Meaning that because Jesus died for your sins, God is able to wipe the slate clean.

And if you come trusting Jesus Christ as your Savior and as the only one who can save you, that God can and will and does wipe that slate clean. For you, legally, it’s like it never happened. And when we do that, when we get to that point of believing Jesus Christ died for me, he was my lifeline and my only lifeline, then God says in the book of Jeremiah, I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.

He chooses not to remember our sin anymore. God doesn’t get confused and forget. He chooses anymore because he’s made it like it never.

Second of all, Jesus’ death opens the door for us to have a relationship with God the Father. That’s something that got incredibly messed up through sin. The only relationship we have with God apart from Jesus Christ is being rebellious subjects or creations that have sort of run amok.

But God created us and he loved us. And we were the ones who fired the opening shots in this little war of rebellion. But verse 1 here says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ we can have peace with God.

And verse 10 says, it reminds us, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. so Jesus died to make peace between us. Somebody had to die for our treason.

We can have peace with God. We can have peace with the Father through the Son. Ephesians 2 16 tells us that he died that he might reconcile both meaning in this context the Jews and the Gentiles unto God in one body by the cross having slain the enmity thereby so treason was committed somebody had to pay the price Jesus Christ paid the price for us and now the king welcomes us back with open arms. Not just as subjects.

Guys, not just as his subjects. Not even just as his servants, but as his children. He chooses to adopt us as his children.

I believe it’s John who talks about unto as many as received him gave he the power to become. In this regard, we’re really not unlike the prodigal son. You remember the story.

He treated his dad very badly. He rejected him. He walked away.

he took his inheritance and he blew it on wicked living, a wildlife. And then when he hit rock bottom, he said, he’s eating out of the pig trough of the pigs he slops and says, wait a minute, even my father’s servants eat better than this. He says, I have no right to go back and ask my father to take me back, but maybe he’ll have mercy on me and maybe I can be his servant.

We’re sort of in that same position with God. We have no right to ask him to be his children, but maybe he’ll, Maybe he’ll forgive us and make us his servants. If you remember that story, the father, who is a picture of God the father, the father sees his son afar off, and before the son even has a chance to get back to him and ask, can I come back and maybe be a servant?

The father has already run to him, has already grabbed him, is already kissing him on the neck and saying, my son who was dead is alive again. Bring me a ring, bring me a robe, bring me a cow. we’re going to have a barbecue.

He’s excited and he says, you’re my son. God looks at us the same way. Yes, we forfeited the right to be his children.

Maybe he’ll forgive us and accept us back as servants. But folks, he doesn’t just look at us as subjects. He doesn’t just look at us as servants.

He brings us into the fold as his children. He chooses to love us. He looks at us the same way.

We have no right to be as servants or even as subjects, but because Jesus Christ has, as Ephesians said slain the enmity between us and God. He chooses to welcome us back with open arms as his beloved children. By his death, Jesus made it possible for us to have a relationship with the Father that we were created for in the first place.

And third of all this morning, Jesus’ death saves us from eternal punishment. We deserve to be punished for our sin. That’s just the hard, cold truth.

We deserved help. Even the things that we like to think of as little sins, they spring from a heart that is in rebellion against God. They spring from a heart that says, I don’t have to recognize God’s authority.

I don’t have to acknowledge Him as God. I can be God of my own life and I can do whatever I want. God cannot, even with little sins, because it comes from that heart of rebellion, God cannot allow that rebellion to go unpunished.

That’s why we saw last week that our sin brings us condemnation. It brings us judgment. It brings us hell.

It brings us into an eternity separated from Him. But Jesus, by his death, he offers us rescue from this punishment. Verse 2 says that it’s by him that we have access by faith into this grace.

And the grace of God means that he gives us gifts solely out of his kindness. Not because we deserve it. Not because we’ve earned it.

Not because of anything good that we can do. But because God is gracious. Because God is kind.

Because God desires to give us those gifts. says that he’s delivered us out of the power of darkness. He’s translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

So for us to be plucked up out of the darkness of our own sin and given the gift of eternal life in the presence of God, folks, that is not something that we deserve. It’s not something you deserve. It’s not something I deserve.

And yet God offers us that gift just out of his own grace, just because he is kind enough to offer it. I want to reiterate, we don’t deserve it. There’s no amount of good we can do to ever deserve it.

God gives it just because He’s kind enough to offer it. Because Jesus paid the price for it. Because Jesus died, that grace, that forgiveness, that eternal life with God is available to all who will trust in Him.

And verse 9 says that because of that we’ll be saved from wrath. That means we’ll be spared from the punishment that we deserve for disobeying and rejecting God. It means that we’re going to be protected when God’s judgment is finally poured out on unrepentant sin.

And make no mistake, one day God will pour out His judgment and will pour out His wrath on the sin in this world. And we better hope we’ve got an umbrella. Folks, that umbrella is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and the fact that that sin’s already been paid for is all that protects us.

And it says that we can be saved from wrath through Him. Jesus’ death on the cross, it means that if we put our faith in Him, Meaning, we don’t just believe in Him. We don’t just believe that He existed.

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