in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 20. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. As I contemplated the opportunity to preach the last message in this year, the opportunity has come several times. Our brother Scott likes to take this time off, and so he will for the next couple of weeks. And I thought of several things that would be of interest, I think, and a help and couldn't settle on any one, but I thought I would just mention them. Not necessarily goals or anything that the elders have talked about, but I think that it would be good if we would pray concerning our corporate prayer life and being in an intercessory partnership with those who go out from amongst us into the uttermost parts for their constant protection and power and provision and that there might be lasting fruit. And also that we as a church might be consistently pro-life. This is not, again, part of the message, It would be good if the Lord would give us someone who would head up an emphasis concerning being pro-life and maybe a website with information emphasizing prayer and perhaps meeting for sidewalk counseling at some of these places. I know that there are a number of those who are interested. And also that we would continue to plant churches and send out missionaries We always pray at this time of the year that we might lead the church to give beyond their abilities and trust God and often to read the Bible through this year. And these all seem like good things. I really couldn't say that this is necessarily God's will in any of these areas. I'll just tell you one thing, church, is that you need to read the Bible. And it would be good for you to have that goal. Maybe you could start. Many have been blessed through a number of different plans that we have and that we've suggested throughout the years. Mainly that you would be in the Word. If you just don't have a desire, if you don't want to read the Bible, you're probably not converted. And so I just encourage you not to ignore this, not to excuse this. that you have no desire for the Word and then one day end up in hell? If you have no desire to pray and seek the Lord, you probably have a vain hope. And so, as I examine all these, how can I encourage the church to move out more? I believe that I was assured from this text that this is, more than anything else, what we need. It's the Gospel. What is the Gospel? Well, I could say Jesus and we could all just go home. Paul said, we preach Christ crucified, the power of God and the wisdom of God. So the gospel is not about man, nor how God feels about man. It's all about Jesus from start to finish. Jesus is the gospel. John Calvin said the whole gospel is contained in Christ. And so, what our text that I've read from in 2 Corinthians is telling us is that this is God's desire and ought to be our desire as believers that the lost would be reconciled to God. And what a beautiful thing that that we as God's people could continue to desire to hear the Gospel. That we would continue to be encouraged by what Christ has done and by understanding more and more about what He has done. Let me encourage you also, if you've never heard me preach, don't mistake my passion for anger I'll never forget one of the little boys in our church one time went home and said, Mommy, God was sure mad today, wasn't he? And I don't remember who it was, but I don't want to give that impression. Not that there haven't been times when I've been angry, but certainly I'm not angry about the gospel. It thrills me more today to just read about these things. Just to find out, you know, what does this say? What is the gospel? It says, for our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. We're reading the gospel in this passage. He made Him to be sin for us. Him who knew no sin. that we might be made the righteousness of God. So, first of all, He made Him. The Bible says, unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory forever and ever. Over in Hebrews chapter 2, in verse 17, it says, therefore He had to be made like His brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people." Here we have the Bible teaching us that salvation is God saving us from God. In Hebrews chapter 1, It says that God has spoken to us in these last days by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. And after making purification for sins, He sat down. And then in chapter 2, in verse number 10, it says, for it was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, that He should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering." So this is saying the same thing. He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God. This shows, first of all, the sovereignty of God. He God, we could say God the Father, made Christ. Who else could ordain that sin would be laid on Christ? It was the will of God that determined that this should be a substitutionary atonement for the sins of those who would believe. made Christ to be sin for us. It shows the sovereignty of God and it shows the justice of God. Church, our sins cannot be merely forgiven. God doesn't wink at sin. He is not merely merciful. He is kind, but He's also holy. Every transgression has its just recompense of reward. God must punish sin. And the pardon for our sin is grounded in the atonement that satisfied all of the requirements of the law. God is a sovereign God who determined before the foundations of the world that he would cause his son to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God. You see the grace of God in that. In verse 19 it says, that is In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against Him, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Here is the grace of God, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. God was purchasing the church with His own blood. That's who this is. God has made God to be sin for us. The Father. God the Father made the Son to be sin for us. What grace is there? Unmerited. Undeserved. We had nothing to do with it. But God determined to favor a people and in order that He might be merciful to them, He sent His own Son, that His own Son might become sin, that they might become the righteousness of God. It's amazing. God made Him to be sin. Now this shows us the value of Christ. If you'll recollect from Isaiah, we had read in there a couple of times during this season, but let me just read just a couple of verses beginning in Isaiah chapter 52. Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, His appearance was so marred beyond human semblance, and His form beyond that of the children of mankind. So shall He sprinkle many nations, kings shall shut their mouths because of Him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. Who has believed what He has heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a young plant, Like a root out of dry ground, he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hid their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to His own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Here's the Son of God who knew no sin, spotless, innocent, Pure. Perfect. Paul said in Romans that God, by sending His own sin in the likeness of sinful flesh, enforced sin, condemned sin in the flesh. How could He do that? Our sin is an infinite offense to a holy God. Well, if you turn to Revelation just for a moment, I hope that we can see just a little bit. And if you'll bear with me as I read, beginning in Revelation 4, chapter 4, verse 1, After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. And once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of Jasper and Carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning and rumbles and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God. And before the throne there was, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. The first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. The four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within. And day and night they never cease to say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who is seated on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created. Then I saw in the right hand of Him who is seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaim with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals? And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, Weave no more. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. And between the throne and the four living creatures, and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. When He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp and a golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God, from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth. Then I looked and I heard around the throne of the living creatures of the elders the voice of many angels numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying, to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, Amen, and the elders fell down and worshipped." This is the one. This is the one who was made sin for us. the spotless, holy, innocent, pure Lamb of God who knew no sin. He is infinitely worthy. I mean, just a moment with this One is worth more than all that the world can offer. This sinless One, where this glorious scene is painted for us and these millions of angels who are sinless, who never sinned, ascribing holiness to this being, to the Son of God, this One who is incomprehensibly perfect and spotless and lovely and pure. the pre-existent Son of God, whoever did enjoy sweet fellowship from eternity with the Father, this was that One. He made Him the Holy Son of God to be sinned for us. What does this mean? He is not just a man that we tell stories about. He is and he was the God-man who is altogether holy. Holy means separate. When the angels are ascribing holiness to God, they're talking about a being who is utterly separate and different from all other beings. And He's precious. He's precious to us and we treasure Him. God made Him to be sin for us. And that is holy to us. I'll try to picture it this way. Not long before my father went to be with the Lord, he showed me a little box in his closet that had tape around it and rubber bands. And he said, Bob, if I ever die, I want you to get this box. And boy, I was all excited. I thought maybe Dad's got a million dollars in there for me. I kind of in my heart knew better. And so when he died, It didn't occur right away, but before long, somebody reminded me about that box, and so I went and got the box, and I cut it open, and the first thing I thought as I looked inside and I saw a cassette tape, I was really let down. I thought, ah. But then as we turned it on and began to listen to what he had left us and the heritage he left us, on that tape and some of the things that he said to me personally that he just never, he never said. Things that I needed as a young man. He was very absent. He was a bartender and very distant as far as our upbringing. But he said some powerful things on that tape to me and to my other siblings as a young man. And as my ears heard them, And we were done. I took that tape out and I cradled it. And to this day, it's precious. Sometimes I just long to hear those words from my father again. And it's different than anything else that I had. There's meaning there. There's a reality there. There's something that my father, my earthly father said to me. And that's kind of a picture of how the gospel is holy to the child of God. It's precious to us because we understand that God made the Lord Jesus Christ, the spotless Lamb of God, The One whom He said, this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. He made Him to be sin. It says, God made Him who knew no sin. Again, it was His nature to be holy. When all of Jerusalem was challenged to witness against Him, none could be found. No one could bring on against Him. No sin of commission. No sin of omission. He was the epitome of virtue. He was absolutely perfect and unblemished in every aspect of His character and behavior. He never made a misstep. He never spoke a wrong word. He never had an evil thought. He never did anything wrong. He was the perfect, spotless, unblemished, innocent, holy Lamb of God. And God made Him to be sin. God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree. It's like the song, ever since by faith I saw the string, His flowing wound supply, redeeming love has been my thing and shall be till I die. Christ was not guilty, but He was treated as if He were because He willed to stand in our place being treated not just as a sinner, but as sin. The Son of God, whom the angels worship, treated as sin on our behalf. I mean, he felt the weight of it in the Garden of Gethsemane. He sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. The Bible says that there he was numbered with the transgressors. They mocked him. They scorned him. They spit in his face. This lovely, perfect Lamb of God, they spit in His face. How incomprehensible. His sufferings were immeasurable. When He cried out, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me? I can't imagine surely in heaven there was either wailing or utter silence. It was so unbelievable that the Lamb of God should become sin. But this is what he was willing to endure to the justice of God so that he could be vindicated of his law by making a clear and a full and an efficacious atonement instead of the damnation of every one of us. He took our place. He didn't suffer just what was equal. He suffered infinitely more. The value of the Son of God causes us to see that we can trust that God has completely taken our sins. He made Him to be sin for us. The Son of God drank the full cup of the wrath of God. A propitiation. A satisfaction making it just. for God to forgive us. We have a weak gospel nowadays where we tell people that all they need to do is to say a prayer and God will forgive them. And it has nothing to do with the true gospel. The gospel is that the Son of God so loved us that He took the wrath of His Father as He bore our sin and became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. that we might become the righteousness of God. He loved us and became sin for us that we might be made righteous. Now, I don't understand this. I know what the theologians say. I'm trying to get a grasp on it. The word means to become. And I can't fully explain it, but I know that we now, because of what Christ has done, we walk in the robes of the righteousness of Jesus Christ Himself. We confess that we're sinners, yet He has made us righteous. So that the fact is that God does not merely look at you through rose-colored glasses. The blood of Christ was shed and sinners were justified. We have become righteous before God. I know the difference between imputation and imparting. His righteousness has been imputed to us. And that's all that we need to know because we have a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in Christ. And we are safe now from God. If you've not yet believed that Christ took your sin and bore the wrath, do you, and have trusted Him as your Lord and Savior? Friend, you are not safe from God. You are at enmity with God. God is angry with you. You are under the wrath of God. You will be tormented, separated from God for eternity. It doesn't matter how much you convince yourself that you're safe. You are not safe. You are not safe from God if you have not repented and have trusted in Christ as your Savior from God and from sin and from hell. If you've not been miraculously changed into a saint. That's someone who is set apart to God. And your life is all about God. It doesn't mean that you're sinlessly perfect, but your desires and your wishes and your wants are from more of God and more of His Word and more of a relationship with Him. You just can't get enough of the Son of God, you can't get enough of fellowship with God. You want more of fellowship with God. If it is that you have enough and that you're just here for some other reason and you just wish that I would just shut up and get on with it because you've got other things better that you can do and you're not interested in a daily devotional life with Christ or proclaiming anything because you don't have this real joy, then just maybe you've never met the Lamb of God that this Bible talks about. Don't delude yourself. Don't be deceived with religious nonsense and think that just because you do a bunch of things and don't do a bunch of other things that you're a child of God. That's not the gospel. That's why we don't have you come down an aisle and say a prayer. Salvation is the work of God. Salvation is something that God has done. The gospel is what God has decreed and determined from eternity that He would do for His people. And He accomplished it through His Son. And then He opens the eyes of those who believe and they repent and trust in Christ and they belong to Christ. And they live separated lives altogether different from the world. They're changed. They're new creatures. They have different loves and different desires and different aspirations from the world. And so the apostle says, we implore you, we implore you on the behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. All that come to Him, He will in no way cast out. Before that, he had said that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against Him, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Oh, there's so much there. We are ambassadors for Christ. God is making His appeal through us because we've experienced the reality of it and we have compassion on those that have not been reconciled to God because they are under the wrath of God and we are imploring them on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. And so, I'm imploring you to be reconciled. I'm not saying to reconcile yourself. There's nothing that you can do to reconcile yourself, so don't try to get better or hope that one day you're going to start living right. You are an undone, worthless, dead sinner bound for hell. And yet, I implore you to come to Christ. but you won't have it and you'll put it off and you'll excuse yourself and you'll deny it. Again, we beseech you, we beg you, we pray you, we implore you. Be reconciled to God. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. This is serious business. Look what God has done to save sinners. If your heart beats its last beat and you've not been reconciled to God, the vengeance and the wrath of God will be fully vented on you for eternity. Jesus said, come unto me all you that labor in a heavy laden. How can you think so little of the death of the Son of God? The angels wonder. Look what the Son has done. The Son of God, look what He's done. They aspire to look into it. And yet you count it as a little thing. You won't consider it. You have your life to live. You're going to go on in your way. You're still young and you want to live the way you want to live. You want to have your life. You think lightly upon this sacrifice, the lovely Lamb of God, the Son of God became sin. I don't have the language to express all that happened there. But I know this, God Himself prepared a propitiation or a satisfaction so that you might be reconciled to God. He's done everything. Yield yourself to Him. Submit yourself to Him. Trust Him. Don't be ashamed. If you have no desire for the Lord Jesus Christ, if you don't treasure Him above all, if you treasure Him above all, then your life is all about Him. and all these things that I thought I should encourage the church, why should we have to pump up the church to read the Bible and to pray? Well, we have a responsibility to exhort them. But don't you think that it would be natural that the children of God would want to read the Bible, would want to pray, would want to proclaim to others, would want to send out missionaries, and would want to live radical, sacrificial lives instead of hoarding everything around themselves and coming to church on Sunday. And again, I'm not talking down to you. I'm saying that the church is in a mess because of the false gospel that's being preached. We are trying to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that Paul spelled out here that God has made God to be sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. I implore you, be reconciled. Be reconciled to God. Let's go ahead and bow our heads and pray. for our Father. We can't begin to express as the elders did around your throne as John pictured when they gave glory and honor and thanks. We can't express the full gratitude of our hearts that you became sin More than just each of our sins, our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Certainly all of them and so much more. But this thing that Paul has said, that you became sin for us. We can't imagine how horrible, how awful, but this is the price that you were willing to pay because you so loved us. Lord, I pray that there are any who are, although in church, who are yet enemies of God, who have some delight in religion and fellowship of God's people, but live no holy life, have no real aspirations for intimacy with You. Lord, help them. save them father cause cause them to be reconciled cause them to be made one with you to be redeemed you've paid the price you've done everything thank you lord jesus christ for this unbelievable act then the fact that you victoriously rose from the dead and You've called us to call people to beg them, to implore them to be reconciled. Would You give us grace and would You help us, Lord? We desire that our lives are victorious, joyful lives because of You and all that You've done. In Jesus' name, Amen.