Bethany Bullet Sermon Message - Week of February 18, 2018

The Lenten season kicks off with a text from 1 Peter 1:15-25 and thus the Lenten season begins with an honest recognition of our situation: We needed redemption for the debt we owed is one we could never have paid. 

Now admittedly, if sinning where an Olympic sport more than likely you’d not be able to make the podium; and probably not even the team. First to cross the line of pride and envy continually; landing the combo of glutton and greed consistently; assigning 10, 7 and 2 to all you walk past you because when it comes to lust you’re one of the best; perfected the fly-off-the-handle with anger that is ever at the surface? Maybe some of that sounds like you some of the time. But can you claim to be the best at such? It’s part and parcel of the human condition to seek to find comfort in such. The universal strategy of impunity seeks to ignore faults of our own if we can identify worse ones in a neighbor. Yet, God’s standard is not our neighbor, rather it is Himself.  “Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, as I the Lord am holy.’”  

Only God Himself can measure up to His standard, only He can fulfill His holiness requirement and thus only He can cover the debt we’ve incurred.  God knew what it would cost to keep His creation His!  He knew the standard that would need be kept and the price that would have to be paid before He laid the foundation of the world.  See vs. 19 & 20.

The death of Christ was not some haphazard event. Popular opinion had turned against Jesus that is true, the majority consented to His death indeed, the power brokers on hand, handed Him over to those who had authority to crucify, but that was not the reason Jesus died. You are. I am.  Our redemption is why He died. 

He paid the ransom price, for He had met the standard. His offering is acceptable to God for He is holy and pure; and thus His substitutionary sacrificial death can pay our debt.  Not gold or silver, all that around the neck of each Olympic champion throughout history, not that which is in every vault on earth, could redeem us; only the holy and precious blood of a lamb without blemish or defect could redeem us, and in Christ Jesus it has.

 -Pastor Kevin Kritzer