Atonement Announced

A welcome to all of you from across the country and around the world that are joining us live on the internet this morning, through radio, television, however you're joining us. We invite you to sing along. Hymn 167, "alleluia! Sing to Jesus!" If you have a favorite Christmas song that you would like to sing with us on a coming Sabbath during the holiday season, I invite you to go to our website at www.saccentral.org. And there you can go and click on the "contact us" link. And you can request one of your favorite Christmas songs.

There are more than "silent night." And we would love to sing that with you on a coming Sabbath. Our next hymn this morning is hymn number 198 And Can It Be? And this comes as a request from John in australia, carlota, lyndon and norma in the bahamas, sheldine in barbados, joan in the cayman islands, Francesca in granada, Danielle and deania in jamaica, jamule in the Philippians, colleen in trinidad and tobago, lynn and tumpale in england, alex in Alaska, alice in Arizona, marva in Connecticut, gene in Nebraska, beatrice in New Jersey, Esther and John in New York, and our own jennifer right here from Sacramento, California. And Can It Be-- it's my favorite. It's her favorite, she says. Hymn 198, verses 1, 2 and 4.

.. Oh Lord, we are amazed this morning at your love for us. We are humbled and we are honored that you, the King of the universe, gave up everything to save each one of us. We ask you to now join us as we open Your Word and we learn more about you and your unfailing love for us. Please help us to be ambassadors and disciples for you around this planet, that we can continue and finish up your work so that you can come soon and we can live with you forever.

I ask you to please be with pastor white this morning as he brings us Your Word. Please, Lord, just touch each one of us that we can go forward from this place with a renewed spirit and a greater appreciation and love for you. We pray these things in your name, Jesus. Amen. Our study this morning will be brought to us by pastor harold white, the administrative pastor here at Sacramento central.

Thank you, jolyne and singers and musicians. And welcome to each and every one of you. Good morning. Enjoying the fall weather, right? Yeah. Welcome to all of you who are joining us from wherever you are, and your weather, I don't know how that is this morning, but I hope it's good.

It's good to have you joining us by radio, live streaming, satellite, whatever it is. We are glad you're with us. Many of you I have conversed with through email or over the telephone. And we are certainly happy that you join us week by week. We have a wonderful lesson this week, "atonement announced.

" It's just a wonderful lesson actually. There is a free offer, number , "God drew the plans." Go to www.amazingfacts.org or -788-3966. Alright, let's jump into our lesson this morning and read our memory text together. If you'd join me, it's from the niv, Isaiah 53:5, "but he was pierced for our transgression, he was crushed for our inequities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." The greatest, most profound messianic prophesy in all of the old testament is found in Isaiah 53. So much so you've heard stories as I have that some of our Jewish friends actually do not like to read this particular chapter because it does pinpoint the life and death and sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, so amazingly particular.

Now we are concentrating our thoughts today. This week's lesson's on how the plan of salvation had been announced for thousands of years before it actually took place, before actually Jesus came, precisely about 4,000 years before Jesus came. His coming was not to be a surprise, although it was not even on the radar for most people in the world at that time. And even God's people had let it slip off their radar to the point that they were not prepared for his coming. We cannot lay the blame at God's doorstep for that failure, as we cannot lay any failure at God's doorstep because he certainly warns us, doesn't he? He shares with us the total truth and nothing but the truth.

So let's get started. Somebody has the text this morning to read for us, Genesis 3:14-15. "So the Lord God said to the serpent: 'because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.'" Okay, thank you very much. Of course we understand that to be the very first promise of the Messiah that would come.

And what transpired before this? We all understand that it was the fall of adam and eve as they fell into sin. And we ask ourselves, "why, why, why?" And of course it was because the devil was able to deceive them into thinking that what God had told them wasn't all for their best good. They somehow had been deceived by the enemy to believe that they were missing out on something. And isn't that what all sin is? The devil gets you to thinking that you're missing out on some kind of pleasure in this world. And that's what he did, of course, to the first pair there in the garden.

Somebody says, "well, that isn't fair. If you tell somebody not to look at the pink elephant in the tree, their curiosity is going to get the best of them. And that's all that's going to consume their thinking. They're going to be wanting to look at that pink elephant in the tree. But I'm here to share with you this morning, that's not a fair comparison, because this tree was a very normal tree.

There was nothing abnormal about this tree whatsoever. It was just a normal fruit tree amidst all the luscious fruit trees and vines that they had, producing the most luxurious fruit, all these fruits laden--all these trees and so forth laden with fruit. An elephant in a tree, especially a pink elephant would be so out of harmony with its environment that yes, it would raise someone's curiosity, would be overwhelming. But they had everything their heart's desire could ever want. They simply let their guard down.

Let me share an inspirational quote taken from the Bible echo July 24, 1899. It says this: "the mildest test was given them that could be given. For there was no need of their eating of the forbidden tree. Everything that their wants required had been provided." So the warning was if they ate, they would die. Why didn't they die right there and then on the spot? Well, of course they did begin dying, didn't they? Cells in their body began dying due to sin, just like cells in your body and my body are dying every day.

As somebody says we are new creatures of just about every years, because all the old cells are dead and we have been replaced by new cells. And what happens over time is from this layman's perspective is that some of the cells don't get quite replaced good enough or they die out too much and organs begin to fail and you eventually die, just like adam and eve eventually did die. And it took them about, not quite 1,000 years, because they had tremendous physical bodies, didn't they? Fresh from the creator's hand. And so it took them nearly ,000 years. And if they had totally died right there on the spot as some people in the Bible have, ananias and sapphira.

And the old testament, the two that touched the ark; they fell over dead. If they had died right there on the spot, God would not have been able to play out the plan of salvation that he has laid down from the foundations of the world. Isn't that what the Bible says? The Bible was very clear about that. In fact, there's another statement, April 23, "review and herald," 1901, "why was not the earth not--why was not the death penalty at once enforced in his case? Because the ransom was found. God's only begotten son volunteered to take the sin of man upon himself and to make an atonement for the fallen race.

There could have been no pardon for sin had this atonement not been made. Had God pardoned adam's sin without an atonement, sin would have been immortalized and would have been perpetuated with a boldness that would have been without restraint." Now I don't know if you've ever noticed it, but as you read through the Bible, you will notice that God never told eve not to eat of the forbidden fruit. God didn't specifically tell eve in the Bible's rendition of the record, in chapter 2, you know, adam is created and he tells adam not to eat. And then he creates eve. And so in this patriarchal hierarchy I guess, as man is subject to God and woman is subject to man in some senses, no, in some sense, adam had the responsibility to share this news, these truths that God had given to him.

And he shared it with eve and he must have did a good job, because by the time you get to chapter 3, she knew the details in every particular. When the devil came to tempt her, she was able to tell exactly what God had told adam earlier. So, that's an interesting thing. So something happened. And I know you've heard this a thousand times, but eve wandered away from adam's side.

And that was the beginning of the end, wasn't it? Now, when married couples-- and I often say this when I have weddings--when married couples begin to wander from each other, mentally, spiritually, socially, physiologically, they begin to have a devil of a time, just like eve had a time with the devil. If you as married partners begin to wander from each other, the devil's gonna have a hay day with your relationship eventually. Now I have a couple principles when it comes to that concept. And it's actually wrapped around washing dishes. I actually like to wash dishes.

I don't do it three times a day every day, so maybe that would change if I had to do it that way. But I do not like dishwashers, automatic dishwashers. I'd rather do it the old fashioned way. I don't even know how to run one. I don't even want to learn how to run one.

I like to do it the old fashioned way. And here's my principles when it comes to this concept. That is married couples who do dishes together stay in sync. Isn't that right? S-y-n-c, s-y-n-c, s-i-n-k. And the other principle is this.

I tell my wife, if you do dishes in the dark, you can get 'em done twice as fast. You might not like the outcome, because you're not very particular about it, 'cause you can't see what you're doing. But that's exactly what happened with eve, she wandered away from the light of God's Word. And each step as she wandered away from God's Word took her to darkness and a dirty, sinful outcome, right? And we have been paying the price ever since. But now the promise of Genesis 3:15.

Who is God addressing this statement to? First of all to satan and who is listening? Adam and eve and the angels, perhaps inhabitants of other unfallen worlds. Imagine for a moment, adam and eve's feelings as they had realized that they had sinned and they stood guilty there before God. They knew feelings all of a sudden that they had never even thought of before, let alone experienced. Their bodies changed. They all of a sudden now felt the coldness.

And they felt things like sadness and fear and anger. They had not known of these things at all. And they were fearful because they knew what the verdict was as soon as you did this. And they realized the guilt of what they had done. They were to die, so they were sitting on death row.

It's almost like if you were sitting on death row and you had been strapped--you're strapped into the electric chair. The hand of the man is gonna throw the switch is on the switch. The mouth of the one giving the command begins to open. The tongue moves, but as that happens, just before the voice comes out, God speaks. And he gives a different message.

Genesis 3:15. And of course, you have to read the rest of the chapter to realize how adam and eve would continue--what they would continue to hear, they would know that they would live on, that they weren't going to die immediately, that there was gonna be a chance to them to be saved, because God was going to provide this Messiah. He tells adam he will work, but the fruit of his labors will be thwarted with thorns and thistles. And eve, of course, will conceive and in pain bring forth children. God unfolded the plan of salvation to them fully.

And I believe they thoroughly understood that the "he" of Genesis 3:15 was Jesus, the one that they had communed with in the garden, that he was the one that was going to come and crush the serpent's head. Now, to crush a person's heel is very seldom nigh unto death. But to crush somebody's head almost always is unto death if the crushing is severe enough. And we have been privileged to know because the Bible, in inspired writing, that the crushing of the head will be so thorough that it would be as if the enemy never existed. Won't that be a glad day in the entire universe? Amen.

That's what that verse is all about. So there is some symbolism and imagery going on here, for we know that satan is not now confined to being a snake. But because he used a snake as a medium, that that snake would have to crawl on his belly all the rest of its days, that we would know every time we see a snake that the devil is not some fictitious character dressed in red with a pitchfork in his hand. So adam and eve go from the highest intensity of fear to the most wonderful sense of hope. And you have been there I bet in your life where you have had tremendous fear but then you give it all over to God and you sense that wonderful hope.

Isn't it wonderful? All of us before we came to Christ, we should have been living in fear and eventually we probably did, because we were on our way to complete deaths, never to live again. But the promised one of Genesis 3:15 comes into our life and you have at-one-ment, atonement with the God of the universe. That should just blow our minds away, the promised one of Genesis 3:15. We need to read that text probably every day. Now try to imagine adam and eve's life after this.

Children would come. Grandchildren would come. Great-great-great-great-great- great-great-- they lived a long time. They had a lot of great-great-great grandchildren, didn't they? And by word of mouth, they would tell the story over and over again. They would tell how wonderful it was in the garden and the great communion they had with God and oh, how beautiful it was.

But then they had to get to the part of the fall. Oh, that must have been awful, agonizing for them to tell their children and their grandchildren about the fall. But they would be so happy to get to Genesis 3:15, the promise. Oh, that's where we should be. We are confronted with the misery and woe of sin in this world.

And it confronts us every day, doesn't it? And sometimes the woe gets so painful we can hardly stand it. That's all we can think about, but we need to be so trained to focus on the promise, the promises of God instead of the woe, because woe begets woe, pain begets pain. And I wondered in my own mind how many times adam and eve said, "I'm so sorry. We're so sorry," as they told this story to their children and grandchildren. "Oh, we're so sorry.

" I wonder how many people they told that to, probably hundreds and thousands of times. How do you relate to parents who caused all the woe and all the misery in the world? At least they got the ball rolling for it. Think how easy it would have been for their kids to place the blame on their parents. That would have been easy, wouldn't it? But eventually all kids have to own up to their own responsibility that some of the woe and misery I'm bringing upon myself is because of my own problem. Can you imagine adam and eve talking to cain after he brings this lame offering of vegetables, gets into an argument with his brother and kills him, and adam and eve talked to cain after that? "How could you do such a thing? How could you kill your brother? And how could you be so disrespectful to bring such an offering to God in the first place?" And can't you hear him say, "listen, who's talking? Listen to who's talking.

You are the ones who in the first place were disrespectful to God." And of course, every child can say things like that to their parents. But no one put the gun to cain's head to bring this lame offering. No one put the gun to his head to go and kill your brother. He chose to do all that within himself. And if you were adam and eve talking to him, wouldn't you have tried to encourage him to accept the Messiah of Genesis 3:15? Wouldn't you have pleaded with him to ask him--to ask God to forgive him and accept salvation because of the Messiah that would come? I suspect they probably did.

But did the promise do any good for cain? Nope. And that's the point, isn't it? The promise is real. It's true. It will accomplish exactly what it's meant to accomplish, but only for those who put their trust in it. In keeping with the theme of our lesson this week, that promise was there from the beginning, day one, from the mouth of God to adam and eve.

It was there for cain. It was there all through the old testament. And it's there for us today. It's been reiterated and stated in many different ways, actually ratified in the actual person of Jesus Christ. But just because it's there, it doesn't--and because it is real, doesn't mean anything if you haven't committed yourself to it.

I've often used the most simple illustration as I share Bible studies, especially with young people. On the plan of salvation I say, "if I had a thousand dollars in my hand and I wanted to give it to you as a gift," and you would say, "well, there's gotta be a catch." And finally I got you to believe that I was really gonna give this thousand dollars to you. And so you all of a sudden begin thinking, "man, I can do a lot with that thousand dollars." But after a certain amount of time I wonder why you're not happy with my gift of a thousand dollars. And the reason I wonder that is because you never reached out and took it from me. I wonder why it's still sitting there.

And that's what so many people in the world are doing with salvation. It's been provided. It's there. But so many people are not receiving it. And there's a catch to that because they don't want to accept all the responsibility I guess that goes with it.

Worse than that though is some who have reached out and accepted the gift but turned it back to God or used the gift foolishly and misspent the gift foolishly. We've actually had people right here in Sacramento central church that have done that. When we've studied with people, sometimes we go through the teachings of His Words two, three and four times with them. And we appeal to them. And they're anxious, you know, "I want to be baptized.

" And then we say, "are you sure you want to be baptized? Are you sure you're ready for this commitment? This is the biggest commitment of your life. This is a commitment that you should never ever think about turning your back on. When you go down in that watery grave and commit your life to Jesus, you must never think about turning your back on that." "Oh yes, pastor white, I want to go in that watery grave and be baptized with Jesus." And there's a great amount of joy. But there have been a few, praise God not a lot, but there are a few that have accepted that gift, rejoiced in it for a while, but then turned their back on it and walked away. Isn't that sad? I mean that's tragic.

But the point is keeping with our lesson, because people do that, because they give back the gift or they waste it foolishly does not make the promise of none effect. As I said it was there on day one. It's still there ,000 years later. Now let's take a look at something else that shows us how real this promise must have been for adam and eve. Someone has the text Genesis 4:1.

"And adam knew eve his wife, and she conceived and bear cain and said, 'I have gotten a man from the Lord.'" Okay, thank you very much. As I understand the original language of that verse, it says this: "I have gotten a man, the Lord." Evidence from the actual text of that verse was that they believed that the first child ever born was the child of promise of Genesis 3:15. That's how much they believed in this promise. That the first child ever born became the first murderer tells us the atrocity of sin and how terrible it is. We can almost get flippant about sin and salvation.

What a simple thing it is. And there is a tremendous simplicity to the Gospel. But we must realize that the chasm between sin and salvation is huge. Listen to a quotation from that wonderful book, "Patriarchs and Prophets." It says, "before the flood, the first leaf," from a tree, "the first leaf which fell and was discovered upon the ground caused those who feared God great sorrow. They mourned over it as we mourn over the loss of a dead friend.

In the decaying leaf, they could see an evidence of the curse and of the decay of nature." That's really awesome when you think they realized how intense, such intensity they realized what they had done and the misery they had caused. And I don't think we can begin to measure the powerful influence then Genesis 3:15 had on our first parents. But we must move on to Monday's lesson. It said, "Abraham saw my day," on Monday. Who said these words? Of course, Jesus did.

And it made the Jewish leaders very mad that he would say such a thing, 'cause they knew what he was saying. He was claiming to have existed from all times. Anyway, would someone read for us? I think somebody has the passage Genesis 22:10-12. I think it's right over here with richard. "And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, 'Abraham, Abraham!' And he said, 'here am i.' And he said, 'I lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou has not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.'" What am amazing story in the Bible when Abraham was told by God to take his son, who he waited for so long, to take and sacrifice him. And we say, "wow," or "why?" And the lesson says Genesis 22 does not inform us why the test was necessary. But there's a couple sentences again in that beautiful book, "Patriarchs and Prophets." It says, "it was to impress Abraham's mind with the reality of the Gospel. As well as to test his faith, that God commanded him to slay his son. The agony which he endured during the dark days of that fearful trial was permitted, that he might understand from his own experience something of the greatness of the sacrifice made by the infinite God for man's redemption.

" So there was a why. There was a reason. Bringing down on the level of mankind, this story has captured the plan of salvation for hundreds and thousands of peoples for many, many years. That would be an example of how the Heavenly Father would send his only begotten son to a world. And there would be no angel to come and stay the hand of crucifixion.

There would be no jehovah-jireh, "God will provide," because--a substitute--because Jesus was the sacrifice. "For most of his adult life, Abraham had been told that he would be The Father of a great nation. And then finally he has his son. And as he reaches adulthood, Abraham receives this message of horror." Some of the greatest trials--he was about 120 years old at that time and that was quite old even back then--some of your greatest trials for people in this world come in the twilight years of their lives. I've seen that many times.

Something else about the plan of salvation surfaces in this story. And that is that the suffering is just as keen for The Father as it is for The Son. And all of that was a demonstration of what it would be like for Jesus and his father. "The day Abraham awakened Isaac and began that trip, we're told that that was the longest day of his life." And as his servants and Isaac lay down to rest that first night of the trip, Abraham stayed awake all night long and prayed that God would send a messenger to say that the trial has ended. This trial has been sufficient and that messenger never came.

The next day they traveled on. The next night was the same thing. The servant slept, Isaac slept, and Abraham stayed awake all night pleading to God, "send a messenger please saying that the trial is sufficient." But no messenger came. And so The Son, Isaac, is told about the vision and God's instructions. And you can only begin to imagine, you can't even begin to really imagine how a young man just reaching adulthood gets a message from his father that God told him--God told your dad that you should--that the dad should kill his son.

It's almost incomprehendible. But The Son puts up no resistance, just as Jesus put up no resistance. In fact, we're told that Isaac tried to comfort his father. What a person he must have been. He tried to comfort his father.

If this is what God said, this is what we must do. That is astounding. Jesus suffered much pain in every way. There are some comparisons between Jesus and Isaac, but there are some comparisons that don't match. Isaac didn't suffer that pain.

He probably had some mental anguish for a little bit. But Isaac knew his father loved him. He knew his mother loved him. He knew all of his friends and family and servants loved him. But Jesus suffered alone, didn't he? In fact, the ones he came to save, his brothers and sisters hated him.

That was tremendous. We get in this story though the picture of both father and son suffering together. And it's often helpful to bring it down on a purely human level. And this little story I read does that. There's sitting majestic atop the highest hill in toledo, spain is the alcazar, a 16th-century fortress.

And in the civil war of the 1930s, the alcazar became a battleground when the loyalists tried to oust the nationalist who held the fortress. During one dramatic episode of the war, the nationalist leader received a phone call. And on the other end of the line was his son. It was his son who had been captured by the loyalists. And so The Father was placed with the ultimatum.

The Father had to face this ultimatum that if he didn't surrender the alcazar to them, they would kill his son. And so The Father on the end of the line weighed that for a few moments. And then with a tremendous heavy heart he said to his son, "then die like a man." That's an amazing thing telling your son, "die like a man," when you could do maybe something to save him. God could have saved Jesus, right? He could have said, "put an end to this. I don't want to see my son go through this.

" But he didn't. He didn't because he loves us so much. I believe there was one point from this story of Abraham that probably is the biggest point in the plan of salvation. Many have attempted to disassociate God with the final destruction whatsoever, that they only want to focus upon God's mercy and not his justice. Now I can understand why they would want to do that.

But who was it that raised a knife against his own son? Wasn't it Abraham? Now we have to be careful. We have to be cautious. There's a statement that says, "God does not stand toward the sinners as an executioner of the sentence against transgression. But he leaves the rejecters of his mercy to themselves to reap that which they have sown." You put that little quotation with another one taken from "Great Controversy." It says, "like Israel of old, the wicked destroy themselves. They fall by their iniquity.

By a life of sin they have placed themselves out of harmony with God, that the manifestation of his glory is to them a consuming fire." So what is it that destroys the wicked? It is the manifestation of the glory of God that they are consumed by. So God does not disassociate himself totally from this process. In fact, he will see that it will be carried out. And the thing is we have to realize when Jesus was on the cross, that he became sin. He took all of our sin.

He became sin, and God hates sin. So what happened when Jesus was on the cross was not just a separation of The Father from his son, it was Jesus believing in his humanity that his father hated him, because he had become sin; God hates sin and Jesus was experiencing that wrath. It's called the wrath of God came down upon Jesus. That is such a staggering point on the plan of salvation that it should just make us tremble in our shoes every time we want to think about sinning. It's an amazing concept.

Well, there's another important lesson I believe had to take place. This had to take place. It comes from another paragraph in "Patriarchs and Prophets." It says, "the patriarch was dwelling at beersheba, surrounded by prosperity and honor. He was very rich and was honored as a mighty prince by the rulers of the land. Thousands of sheep and cattle cover the plains and spread out before his encampment.

On every side were the tents of his retainers, the home of hundreds of faithful servants, The Son of promise had grown up to manhood by his side. Heaven seemed to have crowned with its blessing of life of sacrifice and patience and endurance of hope deferred." With life being so good and prosperous, it's easy to lose sight of any need of the plan of salvation. It's easy for God's people to begin thinking we are rich, increased with goods and have need of nothing. Ever heard that terminology before? Sure. Abraham had been blessed by God.

He had been a faithful servant for the most part, but the plan of salvation is not just for the here and now. In fact, it's barely for the here and now in comparison to eternity. The plan of salvation does not create an eden for us here now. It creates us a readiness for the eden that God is preparing for us. And also in keeping with the lesson, we focus our, we keep our focus in how God at times throughout history showed at what cost the plan of salvation was going to be brought about by, so that we continue to remember how dreadful sin is.

Have you ever noticed that about healthful living? You get to feeling real good. You know, you've really been working at this living healthfully. You're exercising. You're eating just the right things, not eating between meals. You're doing everything right.

You get to feeling so good that pretty soon you say, "oh, I'm gonna indulge myself a little bit. I deserve it." Pretty soon you get to feeling bad again. You say, "ah, man, I need to get back with the program." We can get too comfortable with the plan of salvation, don't you think? Get too comfortable, "well, we got it made. We're pretty good people." Anyway, let's move on to Tuesday's lesson, "Moses and the Revelation of salvation." Perhaps nobody in the whole Bible should have known the plan of salvation as Moses did. First of all, he had the sanctuary.

He was given the instructions to build the sanctuary. And every little detail in the sanctuary pointed to the sacrifice of Jesus, pointed to Jesus. And what does the Bible say about Christ talking to the two disciples on the road to emmaus? "Beginning at Moses, he expounded unto them the things concerning himself." So yes, Moses certainly should have understood the plan of salvation quite well. Well, the lesson takes it a step further to solidify the concept, the plan of salvation. And Moses becomes a type of Christ, a mediator for the people or they would have perished.

Somebody has for us Exodus 32:30-32. Who has that? Right back here. "Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, 'you have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.' Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, 'oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a God of gold! Yet now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, I pray, blot me out of your book which you have written.'" Isn't that an amazing text? That's tremendous. This passage gives us powerful proof for a subject.

It says, in verse 33 says, "the Lord said to Moses, 'whoever has sinned against me, I will blot him out of the book.'" There's not such a thing as "once saved, always saved." You can have your name in the book and it can be blotted out. It even says that twice in the book of Revelation. There are just so many things. And it also is proof about the divinity of Christ in this passage because Moses could not have paid the price. Moses couldn't have been the--because he was a created being.

It took divinity to pay the price. And so we must always keep that in mind. Because Moses spent so much time, had so many concepts about the plan of salvation, he was continuously awestruck by the reality of the plan of salvation. I think it was einstein who said, "he who can no longer pause and wonder is as good as dead." I think that's very true when it comes to the plan of salvation. Well, we gotta move on.

Time's flying. Wednesday's lesson, "the servant of the Lord." Of course the servant is referring to Jesus and the section there says--a statement in that section says, "this section establishes without explicitly stating it the limits of ineffectiveness of the Israelite sacrificial system as a means of expiation." And then it says--it describes what that means-- "the removal of the barrier between humanity and God." Now I think we need to be very clear that the sacrificial system in itself was not to be the expiation. It was the point everything forward to Christ who was the expiation. And it should have worked. In fact, it did work for many people.

It worked for many people who put their trust in the coming Messiah. They will be saved. It worked for Abraham, talks about his faith that we should emulate in Hebrews 11. So it did work for many people. Often times we piously hear people talk about how ineffective the sacrificial system was and how much better we have it today.

Well, it's no better for us if it doesn't cause us to make a full 100% commitment than it was for them. If they didn't, they will be lost. If we don't, we will be lost. We look back; they look forward. Faith in Christ either way saves or we are lost without it.

There is a simplicity in the Gospel as we said earlier. We are sinners. We can't save ourselves. Jesus died to save us from all sin. Race car driver bill vukovich, he won the famous Indianapolis race 2 years in a row back in the 1950s.

And he was asked his success in the Indianapolis. And his reply was, "there's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and steer left." There's simplicity in that answer, isn't there? And there's simplicity in the answer to the Gospel. We should study into the depths of the Gospel, but never lose the simplicity that we are all sinners. And we are all in need of the Savior.

If we are a minister who has preached the Word of God for years, and we're on our deathbed, we need to understand on our deathbed that we're just as miserable of a sinner as that person, that drug addict in the street in need of a Savior. Isn't that true? If you lose sight of that, you better be careful and take note about your own salvation. You can be in the church a long time, you know, and you say, "we're getting pretty good. I'm getting pretty good. I'm feeling pretty good.

I'm better than those people out there." No sir. If you sinned once this week, you're no better than any of 'em out there. And because you've sinned in the past, you're no better than any of those out there. We all need a Savior 'til the day we die on this earth or the day he comes back to retrieve us. The plan of salvation today isn't belief without commitment and also it isn't works without commitment.

It's belief that leads to commitment that leads to works. Does that make sense? I think so. Well, we have to hurry on, just skipping so much here because we want to get--oh, there's one point I wanted to make about people who put their trust in the sacrificial system in the old days. They began to put their trust in the routines and the ceremonies rather than Christ who it pointed towards. It's kind of like the days of Noah.

If people thought they could save themselves by attaching a strap to the ark and they would ride the flood out. That wouldn't have worked, would it? If you want to try to attach yourself to Christ with a rope somehow and still stay in the world, you can't do it. You can never secure salvation by anything you try to do of yourself. Well, we must move on to Thursday, talking about one of the Bible's purest characters. His name is Daniel.

It's one of those individuals in the Bible you don't read anything bad about. He was a jewel. I have a hunch. It's not something I can prove, so don't try to pin me to it. But when Jesus was raised from his grave on the third day, and many other people were raised with him, I have a hunch Daniel was one of them.

I have that hunch because you know even when Daniel was given the prophecies he was given, that he didn't understand them all. He even got so sick he fainted. And it would be just so grand to think of Daniel being in heaven and watching all the prophesies that had come to him from God through him to the people of God, and watching them all be fulfilled. Wouldn't it be something to think about that? Anyway, that's my theory. Somebody has for us Daniel 9:7-11.

Does somebody--right over here. Thank you. "O Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us shame of face, as it is this day: to the men of judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and those far off in all the countries to which you have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against you. O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our Kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him.

We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. Yes, all Israel has transgressed your law, and has departed so as not to obey your voice; therefore the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against him." Thank you so very much. As the lesson brings out, the first step in the plan of salvation of course is to accept the fact that we are all sinners in need of a Savior. And what was so great about Daniel was, in his prayer, you just heard it, many times he would say, "we." He didn't say, "those people of God, those people of yours, Lord, have sinned and fallen so terribly short." He kept saying, "we" and "we." He included himself in that concept. And as I said, it's fairly easy at the beginning of our Christian walk to admit to the fact that we are sinners in need of a Savior, but you know, the longer you're in the church, the devil works on you this way.

He gets to thinking you're pretty good, that debasing yourself and humiliating yourself becomes distasteful. You know? You ever noticed that? And you do look around and you see people, maybe so much worse than you, and you think you're doing pretty good. But never do we get good enough to ask God to do something grand for us just because of our goodness. Have you ever prayed that before, prayed like that? "Well, God, I'm really asking this. You know how I'm serving you.

You know how that I'm turned my life around. You know how i, how i, how i--" there's a flaw in that kind of prayer. You know that don't you? Because it's never "i" or "we." We are all sinful as Daniel prayed. It's a flaw in praying things like that. What does the Bible say? We all fall short.

It's like the man who went to see a psychiatrist and complained about an inferiority complex. And so the psychiatrist doctor listened to him and listened to him. And after awhile he says, "well, I got good news, bad news for you." He says, "the good news is that you don't have a complex. But the bad news is you are inferior." There's no complexity to it; we are inferior, aren't we? We are sinful. We have sinned and fallen so short of the model and the model is none other, nobody else ever, nobody else but Jesus Christ.

And in comparison to him we fall extremely short. If we tend to forget that, do you know what happens? Think about it. If we tend to forget that, what happens to people? They become pharisaical, become very judgmental, critical, and things like that, right? If you forget that fact. Well, in keeping with the theme of the lesson, the topic lesson points out that not only was the plan of salvation spelled out in how and even why, but now finally the when. Think about it.

For so many thousands and hundreds of years they knew a Messiah was coming, but they had no idea when. They probably just gave up. Many of them did of course. Maybe they're never gonna come. Maybe I'm just a false promise way back then.

But now they know the when, but the bad news is it's still 500 years almost into the future. Well, the good news, we know when, but it's still years off. Well, that's not as bad as ,500 years that have already gone by. So there's a little bit of hope in that. But you know if you had a terrible kind of cancer, some kind of new cancer they didn't know what to do about, and they tell you you got 2 years to live, and then next week they come, "oh, we got good news for ya! We have a cure for your cancer, but it won't be ready for about years.

" That's not gonna do you any good. But Jesus did come eventually, about 500 years after this prophecy. And you put yourself back in their shoes and you must have been encouraged. But you also must have been a little bit stressed in knowing that it's gonna be a far way off yet. But, we don't have to be stressed.

Do you believe it's close? Yeah. The coming of Jesus is close. Even if it's 100 years from now, that's extremely close when you think about eternity, and extremely close only when you think about the 6,000 years that we've been around. So yes, Jesus is coming soon and we can praise God about that. This whole lesson was about how many times, and how many different ways, and through how many different people, God shared the plan of salvation that was going to be ratified, played out in all reality in the life of Jesus Christ.

Now I need to remind you that there is a free offer, number , "God drew the plans." And this is what we talked about with Moses. This is--if you never studied this lesson, you really need to get it, because it shares in detail about the plans of the sanctuary that God gave to Moses, detailing very clear, in all clarity the plan of salvation that the Messiah would come. Thank you everyone who have joined us this morning from wherever you are. May God bless you today and may God bless you with a tremendous week. If you've missed any of our Amazing Facts programs, visit our website at amazingfacts.org. There you'll find an archive of all our television and radio programs, including "Amazing Facts presents." One location: so many possibilities, amazingfacts.org.