The Word of Substitution – Part 1

SPEAKER 02 : 0:02

Thanks for joining us here today on Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope, the audio broadcast ministry of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we continue in a series called The Seven Greatest Words of Love. There are seven words in particular that Jesus spoke during his final hours on the cross. that hold the keys for finding fulfillment in your life, relationships, and even your career. Right now, here’s Pastor Rick with part one of a message called The Word of Substitution.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:34

Now, one of the things that the Daniel Plan has taught me is to pay attention to food labels. I never paid attention to food labels before the Daniel Plan, because I didn’t really care what I put in my mouth, whether it was healthy or not. But there’s one word that I’ve noticed as I started paying attention to labels, and it’s the word substitute. Substitute. Have you ever seen this on a product label of food? The word substitute. Sometimes it’ll say substitute chocolate. Friends, carob is not chocolate. It never has been in no universe will it ever taste like chocolate. Or it’ll say substitute sugar, which means that’s not gonna be any good. Sometimes, if you ever see anything that says substitute beef, run. Okay, there is no such thing as a garden burger. It does not exist. It is a myth of marketers. Burgers are only made of hamburger. Hamburgers are only made of ham and burger. Substitutes always get you in trouble. Now when I say the word substitute, what do you normally think of? Yeah, teacher, right, exactly. Substitute teachers are the Rodney Dangerfields of education. They can’t get any respect. You know that if you’re, some of you have been substitute teachers. Now, to principals of schools, principals, substitute teachers are heroes. Because they have saved the bacon of many a principal because when a teacher gets sick, somebody’s got to care for the kids. And so in a principal’s book, in an educator’s book, substitute teachers are like, they’re up there right next to angels. because they’re so helpful. But, you know, a lot of times the kids don’t give the substitute teacher any respect, because the truth is, most of the time, if we get a substitute, we’re disappointed. I mean, like, if you went to a concert, and the guy got up and said, I’m sorry, you two can’t be here tonight, we’ve got you three. You’re going, huh? Substitutes just don’t work. You want the real thing. But sometimes, you know what I’ve discovered? Sometimes substitutes are better than the original. Sometimes a substitute teacher could actually be more engaging, more interesting, less boring than the one you had every week. Now, this weekend I want us to look at this concept of substitution. We’re gonna look at the word of substitution. We’re in this series, the seven greatest words of love, which are the seven statements Jesus said on the cross. And Jesus was on the cross, the Bible tells us, for six hours, from 9 a.m. in the morning to 3 p.m. in the afternoon. And in the first three hours, when Jesus is hanging on the cross, he says the first three statements, or the first three words. We’ve already covered those. First, we covered the word of forgiveness, where he says, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. And then we covered two weeks ago the word of assurance. When he says to the thief on the cross who said, Lord, remember me, he said, today you’ll be with me in paradise. If you did not hear that message, you need to go listen to it online. I want you to be absolutely certain for sure that you’re going to heaven when you die. You need to listen to that message and settle it in the issue, the word of assurance, that you are assured of your salvation. Last week we looked at the word of love, which is really about relationships. We talked about family, what Jesus said to his mother Mary and to his best friend John. Now, that’s in the first three hours, 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock. At noon, things change. Jesus is on the cross for six hours. At noon, everything goes dark. Now, you know as well as I do that from noon to three are usually the brightest parts of the day. It’s usually the hottest part of the day, from noon to three. But when Jesus is hanging on the cross after three hours, it goes dark at noon. We don’t know what God did. Maybe he just brought a cloud cover in. Maybe a storm. We don’t know. All we know is that it turned dark. Matthew chapter 27 says this, verse 45 and 46. At noon, darkness fell over the whole land until three o’clock. So this three hours was really, it was like night during the middle of the day. And as I said, it may have just been clouds. It doesn’t have to be something supernatural. God just made it dark. And about three o’clock, Jesus cried out in a loud voice. He’s been hanging there in the dark for three hours. Ile, ile, lama sabachthani. which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is the fourth word of love that Jesus says from the cross. Now God makes it dark in the middle of the day. The word there in Greek, skatos, literally means obscurity. He’s obscuring what’s going on the cross. The darkness is like a curtain falling over this scene in the final torture of Jesus Christ. In one way, God is saying, this is so bad, this is so evil, this is so terrible to watch, I’m just gonna darken it so it’s not as clear. Jesus is sacrificing himself for the sins of the world. And nobody, it’s such an ugly, horrible sight that Jesus cries out, And he cries out this fourth word. And literally, anabao in Greek literally means he screamed it. And the fourth thing that Jesus says from the cross is this. Ile, ile, lama sabachthani. Which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now this is the most shocking word of all the things Jesus says on the cross. We can understand, Father, forgive them. We can understand, today you’ll be with paradise. But when now he says to God the Father, why have you forsaken me? And he’s saying, the word there literally means you’ve rejected me. You’ve forsaken me. You’ve abandoned me. Father, God, you have deserted me. Now some of you know the pain and the sting of abandonment. Nothing hurts more than being rejected by somebody. If you’ve ever felt the sting of rejection, you know how bad that hurts. Some of you growing up were rejected, abandoned by a parent. Some of you as an adult have been rejected or abandoned by a spouse or maybe a boyfriend. And this happens. I remember reading one time about, it was actually on video on the internet, where a man put a child in a cart, pushes that child into a cart, into a Walmart, and turns around and walks off. Left that child abandoned, rejected, forsaken. And you go, what kind of person would do that? What kind of person would walk out like that? In Jesus’ crucifixion, in the last days, he’s progressively abandoned by everybody. First, he’s abandoned by Judas, one of the 12 disciples. And then he’s abandoned by the other disciples. They all leave. They’re afraid they’re gonna get arrested and killed. And now on the cross, he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That’s interesting. Every time Jesus refers to God in the Bible, he always calls him Father. This is the only time in the Bible where Jesus does not call God the Father, Father. He just calls him, my God, my God, because at this point, the relationship had been broken between the Father and the Son because of the sin that Jesus is carrying on the cross. I want you to understand the price that Jesus Christ paid for you to be able to go to heaven. Your salvation is free, but it certainly was not inexpensive. And it broke the relationship between God the Father and God the Son at this very moment. Jesus had never known what it meant to be out of fellowship with God. He had never known what it meant. We know what it’s like. We know what it’s like to feel like God’s a million miles away. A coldness, to feel like your prayers aren’t being heard, to feel like you’re estranged from God. Jesus had never known that. He had always lived his life in complete fellowship with God. And yet in this moment, when he takes the sin of the world on his life, God has to look away and he says, my God, my God, even you, you have forsaken me in this moment. What is going on in this fourth word? I want you to write this down in your outline. Jesus became my substitute. Write that down. At that point, Jesus became your substitute. He took the punishment that you deserved and he took it on himself. He became the substitute. He said, I’ll take your punishment. He took the punishment for everything you’ve ever done wrong and everything you ever do wrong. Jesus on the cross paid for the sins you haven’t even committed yet. He became the substitute by taking your punishment on himself. He paid the penalty for your sins and he assumed your place. He was the substitute. Somebody has to pay for your sins. Either you or somebody else. And God in his infinite love said, I will do it. I will substitute myself and pay the way. Here’s what the Bible says, 1 John 2.2. He, Jesus, is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. not only for ours, but also the sins of the whole world. You know, there is a group of Christians, they’re called Calvinists, and they’re believers, they’re dear friends. I have many friends who are Calvinists. And they don’t believe that Jesus died for everybody. They believe he only died for those who were gonna be believers. They believe he only died for those who were gonna be a part of the church. But there are many verses such as this one that says, Jesus died not just for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world. If somebody dies and goes to hell, they go to hell with their sins already paid for by Jesus. He’s already paid for everybody’s sins. They just reject it. They reject the grace of God. He’s already paid for everybody’s sins. It’s not like he’s waiting for them to believe. He’s already paid. He paid for everybody’s sin. Now I want you to circle the word atoning. It says Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sin. What is an atonement? Well, that’s a word we don’t use a whole lot anymore. To atone for what I’ve done wrong, to atone for my sins. The word atonement literally means payment for damage done. You bust up somebody’s car, you have to pay for the damage done. That’s called atoning. Atonement means payment for the damage done. Payment for an injury. It means compensation for an offense. You break it, you pay for it. That’s atonement. It means compensation for a wrong, for an injury. And what atonement does is it satisfies justice. Would you want to live in a world where nobody is held accountable for their crime? that Hitler just gets away scot-free for killing six million Jews. No, that would be hell on earth. Justice demands that when crimes, when sins are committed, somebody has to pay for it. And it says he, Jesus, became the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He satisfied the law, he satisfied justice, he did what justice demands. Look at the next verse. Second Corinthians chapter five says this, verse 21. God took the sinless Christ, Jesus had never done anything wrong, and he poured into him all our sins. That means all the things I’ve done wrong. Every lie I’ve told, every lust I’ve had, every cheating, everything I’ve ever done wrong, he poured all that into Jesus. Everything you’ve ever done wrong, God poured all that into Jesus. He is the atoning sacrifice. God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, this is the best deal you’re ever gonna get, he poured God’s goodness into us. This is what it means, that Jesus is your substitute. If Jesus isn’t your substitute, then you will pay for your own sins. Either you’re gonna pay for them, or Jesus is gonna pay for them. God says, I don’t want you to have to pay for them. Now, what does this word teach us? The word of substitution, where God pours all the sin on Jesus. And Jesus says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What does this mean? What does this word teach us? Well, it shows us the holiness of God, it shows us the seriousness of sin, and it shows us the expensiveness of grace, that it costs a lot. Let me show this to you first, write this down. The first thing we learn from the fourth word is this, that God is holy. God is holy. The Bible tells us, you know, we talk about the holy Bible. We talk about, we sing holy, holy, holy. In fact, look at this verse there on your outline. Revelation 4.8 says, holy, holy, holy. That’s, he’s saying, get the message. I’m gonna say it three times. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was, Existed in the past, is, exists right now, and is to come, exists in the future. The first thing we learn from this word is that God is holy. Now let me explain what I’m talking about. You know, in Greek mythology and in Roman mythology, they had all these gods, you know, Zeus and Jupiter and Apollo and Mars and Venus and all of the Roman gods, the pantheon of Greek gods and Roman gods. The one thing about those gods is they all had human frailties. Every one of them. They got angry. They lusted. They were impetuous. Sometimes the Greek gods, the Roman gods got impatient. They’d zap people with lightning bolts. They got jealous of each other. They were fickle. They were moody. They were unreliable. All of the fake gods, the phony gods, the false gods, the mythical gods of history are inconsistent, unreliable, and imperfect. They have human frailties. But the real god… The real God, the God who created the universe is 100% pure, is 100% just, is 100% unpolluted. The real God is 100% perfect. That’s called holy. God is holy. He’s perfect. He’s never done anything wrong. He’s never done anything imperfect. He’s never done anything impure. He’s never done anything polluted. God is holy. He is perfect. Now, an imperfect God is no God at all. An imperfect God is just another human being and is certainly not worthy of worship. Now, because God is 100% perfect and 100% pure and 100% righteous and 100% holy, he cannot stand to be around imperfection, evil, and sin. He can’t stand to be around it. Now that means we got a real problem, right? because I’m not perfect and neither are you. In fact, the Bible has so much to say about God’s perfection. Let me just show you one verse. The Bible says Habakkuk 1.13, your eyes, talking about God, are too pure to look on evil. You cannot tolerate wrong. That’s why, by the way, there’s no sin in heaven. There’s no evil in heaven, there’s no sin in heaven, there’s no badness in heaven, why? Because God is holy and he couldn’t allow it in his place. He can’t allow it to exist in a place of perfection to allow imperfection to exist. So here’s what’s happening on the cross. God is perfect and Jesus is perfect. But all of a sudden, God in his infinite love says, I’m gonna take all the sins of all mankind every rape ever committed, every child abuse ever committed, every murder ever committed, every adultery ever committed. I’m going to take all of that, and I’m going to pour all of that on my son, Jesus Christ, who has volunteered to do this. That’s why he came to earth, to take away the sin of the world. And at that moment on the cross, when the world goes dark and Jesus is taking, he’s not just suffering physically. You know how bad you feel when you feel guilty over one sin? How would you like to have the guilt over every murder ever committed? How would you like to have the guilt of every rape ever committed coming on you? That is mental, physical, emotional, spiritual torture. And when Jesus is willingly taking the sin of the world on himself, that’s why he’s called your savior, God, who is holy, cannot even stand to look at his son. And he looks away because he is perfect. And Jesus Christ cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And I imagine God in heaven saying, because I’ve said in Exodus, I will no means clear the guilty, not even you. Somebody’s got to take that punishment. And at that moment in history, Jesus Christ is separated from intimacy with the Father. In all of eternity, in all of eternity past, and in all of eternity in the future, after this event, Jesus and God are one, are in harmony, in unity, in love, in perfect harmony. But in this moment, when he’s taken Rick Warren’s sin, and when he’s taken your sin on the cross, God has to look away. And he rejects his own son. That’s what he was doing. It was costing Jesus his own fellowship with the Father. And he says, why have you forsaken me? The relationship was broken. Why? Because God is holy. He’s not just loving. He is loving. You wouldn’t have any love of your life if it weren’t for God. And this act is a loving act to save your skin and to save your soul and to save your life. It’s an act of love, but God is holy.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:39

We’ve got some great news to share with you. Very generous friends have given a $10,000 matching grant to this ministry. That means every dollar you give right now to help Daily Hope share the transforming love of Jesus with people around the world will be matched up to $10,000. Here’s Rick to tell you more.

SPEAKER 01 : 22:01

Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for listening today. You know, my hope is that God uses this broadcast to help deepen your relationship with Jesus. Now, these Daily Hope messages are distributed on radio stations and digital platforms all across the globe, and listeners are writing and letting us know that their lives are being changed. They’re telling us that they’re walking with Jesus and that guilt and fear has been chased from their lives by God’s love. You know, relationships are being restored and marriages are being healed. And many people are saying that they found their life purpose. I want to say thank you to you because we’re only able to carry the hope of Jesus to these people all around the world because of gifts from generous listeners like you. I just wanted to say I am so grateful for your prayers and your financial support. Now I understand in times like these, many of you are unable to give financial support. Hear it from me, that’s okay. Because I never want anybody to give unless God leads them to give. That’s between you and God, not between you and me, but between you and God. And your prayers are a continual and incredible contribution to this Daily Hope ministry. Now, if you do want to give a financial gift, I’ve got some really great news to share with you. There’s a generous friend of Daily Hope Broadcast who is offering to match the amount of your gift. In other words, if you give $20, then that person has combined it with a grant to make your gift $40. Now, if you’ve never given a gift to Daily Hope, I want you to pray about partnering with us so that together we can continue to share the hope of Jesus throughout the whole world. I love you so much.

SPEAKER 02 : 24:01

Just go to PastorRick.com or text the word HOPE to 70309 and have your gift matched up to $10,000. Act now as we only have a few days to meet this match. That’s PastorRick.com or text the word HOPE to 70309. Be sure to join us next time as we look into God’s Word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope and your generous financial support.