Let God Break Your Heart pt. 1

Guest (Male): In the great controversy between good and evil in the far reaches of the universe, Christ is in heaven tonight for you. He's saying to you tonight, "My child, forgiveness is yours, grace is yours, mercy is yours." This is HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message: "Let God Break Your Heart, Part One." Enjoy and remember you can always catch up with past messages and stay updated with HopeLives365 and Pastor Mark by going to HopeLives365.com. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.
Mark Finley: The year was 1968. The date, December 17. Barbara Mackle was a student at Emory University there in Atlanta. She had become sick with the flu, so her mother came to pick her up early and was going to take her home. As they were staying in a roadway hotel in Duluth, Georgia, a knock came on the door. As Barbara opened the door, the people on the other end said, "We're the police. One of Barbara's friends has been in a very terrible accident. We need to talk to her immediately." As they entered that small hotel room, they chloroformed Barbara's mother. She passed out instantly and Barbara was taken, kidnapped. As she was kidnapped, in fact, one newspaper put it this way, "A kidnapping with Delta-8 ties gripped the nation 50 years ago." It was actually 50 years after the event happened. Barbara was the 20-year-old daughter of a millionaire real estate developer in Florida. The kidnappers put Barbara in the trunk of the car and they sped her away to a very distant site in the woods of Georgia. Once they were there, they took Barbara, who was from Miami, and they placed her in a pine box that had a battery-powered fan. It had some water with some sedatives in it, and it had a little bit of food. Barbara was buried in the hills of Georgia, and she actually survived 83 hours in that pine box. The kidnappers sent a message to her parents and they said, "If you will send us $500,000, we will then give you a map and let you know where Barbara is hiding." Now, the first attempt to pay off these kidnappers failed, but the authorities found the car and in that car, there was a photo of Barbara with a sign on her that said "Kidnapped." They began to search frantically, and eventually a switchboard operator took a message from those kidnappers. The ransom money was provided, and Barbara was found alive. It was an absolutely amazing journey for her. The ransom was paid, the girl was found, and a glorious reunion took place in the Mackle family that holiday season. Now, here's my question for you. Do you think Barbara woke up one day after her release wondering, "I wonder, does my father love me? I mean, does my father care for me?" Do you think Barbara woke up one morning and was raising that question? Now, let me ask you another question, though. Are you that valuable? Let's suppose somebody kidnapped you and let's suppose a ransom note came. Would somebody pay the equivalent of $3.6 million for you? Are you that valuable? Would they actually pay a ransom price so expensive for you? Somebody said, "No, Pastor Mark, I don't think so. Maybe they might pay five bucks to get me back, maybe $10, maybe $25, but nobody would pay that much money for me." But here's the incredible good news: a costly ransom was paid for you. A ransom of infinite price was paid for you. A ransom that was much, much more than $3.6 million. The ransom of Christ on Calvary is spoken about in 1 Peter chapter one, verses 18 and 19. Can you read it with me, please, from the screen? "Forasmuch as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without spot or blemish." His sacrifice for you was much more than a ransom that was worth $3.6 million. The precious Son of God left the glories and splendor of heaven. He tabernacled in human flesh. He faced the enemy on the enemy's ground. He resisted every temptation of evil. As he overcame, he overcame for you and for me. And with nails driven through his hands and a crown of thorns placed upon his head, and blood dropping from his brow and spurting from his hands and pouring from his feet, the divine Son of God, this Christ worshipped by all the angels, this Christ at whose very word angels sang, "Holy, holy, holy," this Jesus who existed from eternity with the Father, this Christ hung on a cross called Calvary and died on a mount called Golgotha. Our planet was caught in the grip of sin, condemned to eternal death, kidnapped by a devilish invader. But heaven provided the costliest ransom imaginable: the divine Son of God. There was nothing more that heaven could have done. There was nothing more that heaven could have provided. Heaven provided everything for you. Were you worth that ransom? Do you think you were worth what Jesus paid for you? Somebody said, "No, Pastor, I'm not worth it." If you were not worth it, then he got cheated, right? If you were not worth the price he paid, then he got cheated. But Jesus thinks you were worth it. You are worth a lot more than you'll ever recognize. You are worth a lot more than you ever knew. To heaven, there's nothing that heaven would have done that could have been done to save you. You're worth that much. You are that valuable to heaven. Jesus believes that you are worth every drop of blood he shed for you. That's why the price he paid was so high. And that's the message of the sanctuary. The message of the sanctuary is a message of love beyond comprehension. The message of the sanctuary is the message of a Christ who, in miniature and shadow form, reveals to you and me the price and the worth that we have. The plan of salvation as revealed in the sanctuary foreshadows Christ's sacrifice for sin and his high priestly ministry in heaven's sanctuary, which provides both ransom and reunion. The purpose of the ransom is for a reunion. Have you ever put anything on layaway plan? Now, when we were growing up, I remember I was a college student and I learned that my wife needed a winter coat. I wanted to impress her because we were just dating at the time. Now, as a college student, I didn't have the money to buy that winter coat that she needed, but I did have five dollars. So I remember going down to JCPenney. Now you say, you weren't very extravagant to buy a coat in JCPenney. Look, I was a college student. That was all the money I had. So I went down and I was so proud. I went down to JCPenney and I said, "I'm going to put that coat on layaway." I did it about five months ahead of time. I gave them five dollars. Next month took a little bit of savings, had a little more, seven dollars fifty cents. Next month came down with eight dollars. By the end of those five months, I had that coat paid for. Now, let me ask you this: if I paid for the coat, you think I was going to go pick it up? If I paid for that coat, you think I was going to leave it there for somebody else to get? When Christ hung on Calvary, he paid a ransom for you and that's why he's coming back. Because you are too valuable not to take home. Where there is a ransom, there must be a reunion. That's what Jesus' high priestly ministry is all about in heaven's sanctuary. Jesus is the lamb that dies, but Jesus is the priest that lives. Jesus died for us, but Jesus lives for us. Jesus' death and his life is doing everything he can because he wants one thing: he wants to embrace you one day. He wants to say, "Welcome home, my child" one day. He wants to put his arms around you in love one day. And that is the message of the sanctuary. 1 Peter chapter three, verse 18 says, "Christ has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." So there Christ, the sinless one, must take the sinner's place. The righteous one must take the place of the unrighteous. The just must take the place of the unjust. Here, Christ the sinless one takes our place. From the day that man fell, God sought to reveal his wonderful plan. In the sacrificial system, he showed that he would accept a substitute in the sinner's place.
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Mark Finley: The whole purpose of the sanctuary is to show that God accepts a substitute. If you and I had to bear the guilt, if you and I had to bear the shame, if you and I had to bear the condemnation of our sin, there is no price that we could pay to ransom our souls. Absolutely impossible. The price is too high. Because what's the price of sin? The wages of sin is what? Death. So if we had to pay the price, it's eternal death. It's going into the grave and never, ever, ever coming out. So the price is much, much, much too high. But Christ, hanging on Calvary's cross, revealed in the sacrificial system, showed that heaven would accept a substitute in our place. The sanctuary service more fully revealed the significance of the plan of salvation. Now, as lambs were brought to this court, the sinner looked up and saw the tabernacle. Now, the tabernacle had four coverings. Here, we have pulled them back in the graphic. The first covering was badger's skin. The second was ram's skin dyed red. The third was goat's skin, white. The fourth was a purple tapestry. From every aspect of the sanctuary, we see Jesus and Jesus revealed. The outermost covering was very plain, this badger's skin, or some translations say seal skin. It represents Christ, who had no beauty that we should desire him. The darkness represents the Christ that would come and tabernacle in human flesh, the one that would be the root out of dry ground, the one that would bear sin for us. So the outer represents Christ bearing the darkness of our sin and guilt. But what about the ram's skin dyed red? That reminds us of the ram provided as a substitute for Isaac. And you remember Abraham was taking Isaac there on Mount Moriah and the boy says, "Where is the sacrifice?" And Abraham says, "God himself shall provide a lamb." And then there's the ram caught in the thicket. The ram's covering here, dyed in red, represents that sacrifice of Christ provided for us. What about the covering of fine twined linen? It represents these white curtains next and the fine linen and the goat's hair next. That white represents the fact that Jesus Christ would come as our righteousness. He would bring his people, his church together as a body united in his righteousness. So we go from the darkness of sin, the humanity of Christ bearing sin, to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, to create righteousness for us, so that the inmost covering is all glorious. It speaks of the beauty of Christlike character. It speaks of the fact in that purple and the gold twine that we can be sons and daughters of God. Every aspect of the sanctuary takes us from sin to the sacrifice of Christ to righteousness to the royal family of God. God wants to do something in your life that is beyond imaginable, something in your life that is beyond what we can conceive. Now, let's go back here to this altar of burnt offering in the court. There were multiple types of sacrifices. There were bullocks and cows, there were lambs and goats, there was a grain offering, there were turtledoves. Why? Because God is revealing that there is provision for all. There's provision for every man, woman, and child. If you're too poor to bring a lamb, you can bring a pigeon. If you're too poor to bring a pigeon, you can bring a grain offering. And if you're too poor to do that, you go out and catch a wild turtledove. Now, when the sacrifice was slain here, notice Leviticus four, verse three: "He shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering." What does it mean before the sinner confesses his sin that he lays his hand upon the offering? All throughout the Bible, when you lay your hand upon a lamb, when you lay your hand upon the offering, that is a sign of ownership. That's a sign of ownership. It's a sign of the transferring of ownership. So the symbolism here is, the sinner lays his hand upon the lamb. He is transferring the ownership of this animal to the priest. When he confesses his sin, that sin then is transferred to the lamb and the ownership of that sin, the ownership of that guilt, the ownership of that condemnation is no longer on the sinner. He no longer owns it. It now is on the lamb. Here's the incredible good news: when you confess your sin and you confess your guilt and you confess your shame, you don't own it anymore. You don't own it anymore. Did you ever read an interesting story? You may have read it. A young man in Africa, he has just cut down a lot of wood for fire and he's taking it back to his little hut. He has this pack of wood on his back and he's walking with this pack of wood. Some guy comes down the road with a wagon and the guy waves to him and the wagon pulls over and stops. The wagon driver said, "Would you like a ride?" And the man said, "Oh man, if I could only have a ride." He's sweating, he's been walking two miles, three miles, and he has this load on his back. He gets into the wagon and they're going along and the man still has the load on his back and he's sitting there all hunched over with this big load. The wagon driver looks back on him and says, "Why don't you put your load down?" And the man says, "You've been so kind to give me a ride. At least I can do is carry my own load." Some of you are carrying your own load. You've confessed your sin, but yet you feel guilty. You confessed your sin, yet your brain condemns you. It's going around and around and around. Look what you did last week. Look what you did last month. Look what you did six months ago. Look what you did six years ago. When the sinner came to the sanctuary and he put his hands on that lamb, it was transferring the ownership of everything that he confessed to the priest who would bring it into the sanctuary. Isn't it a wonderful thing that when you confess your sins, you don't have to own the guilt anymore? You don't have to own the shame anymore. You don't have to own the sorrow of that anymore. Now, the sinner always, Leviticus 5:5, "He shall confess that he has sinned in that thing." So confession was always, as we pointed out last night, specific. Anger, bitterness, lust. The confession was very specific. If we come to God and say, "Oh God, if I have sinned, forgive me. Oh God, if I did anything wrong yesterday, forgive me," we will continue to carry our guilt and condemnation with us. But when we come and confess the specific sin, and in our mind imagine that the guilt of that sin is being transferred to the lamb and that we no longer own that guilt, we no longer own that sorrow. Now, who slays the sacrifice? The sinner slays the sacrifice. Leviticus 4:33: "And he shall slay it for a sin offering in the place where they killed the burnt offering." So the sinner must slay the sacrifice. I want to spend a little more time meditating on that with you. There is a wonderful statement in a book called *The Great Controversy*, page 418, that says this: "Day by day the repentant sinner brought his offering to the door of the tabernacle and, placing his hand upon the victim's head, confessed his sins, thus in figure transferring them from himself to the innocent sacrifice. The animal was then slain." So the sin is transferred from the sinner to the sacrifice. The animal is then slain. Now, incidentally, maybe not so incidentally, a couple things that are really significant. You see this altar here in the court. Some of the blood from some sacrifices was poured out at the base of this altar. Some was put on the horns of this altar. Some of the blood was taken into the sanctuary and put on the horns of the altar within the sanctuary. Now, through the blood, there was a record of sin in the sanctuary. So the sinner confesses his sin over the head of the lamb, slays the lamb, the priest takes some of the blood into the sanctuary, sprinkles it before the veil because that's where the law of God is, and indicating that the law of God that was broken is atoned for. But there's an interesting little truth here. Some of that blood was put on the four horns of that altar of incense and some put on the four horns of the burnt offering. A record of sin was there. Satan comes to you and Satan says, "Look what you did three weeks ago. Look what you did six months ago." And what do you say to him? "The record of my sin is in the sanctuary, covered with the blood of Christ." The blood placed on the horns of the altar records the sins that are forgiven. Why four horns? From the North, South, East, West. God speaks to all humanity. See, that's why we're not fearful in the judgment. That's why when our names come up in judgment, we don't tremble in fear. Why not? Because in heaven's sanctuary, there is a record of our sins, but that record is a record of sins covered by the blood of Christ, saved by the grace of God. The priest then took the blood from the animal, sprinkled it before the veil in the holy place, indicating that the law of God that had been broken was now atoned for, placing it on the horns of the altar here, so that indeed a record of sin forgiven was made. When the individual sins were transferred to the sanctuary, they were hidden from human view and nobody could see them because they were covered by the blood of Christ. When we confess our sins, they are hidden from human view. They are in the sanctuary, covered by the blood of Christ. Now, there's something else that's really fascinating here. Not only was the blood taken into the sanctuary, what happened to the carcass of the animal? What happened to the body of that animal? Most of the body of the animal, in a few instances, some of it was eaten by the priest and brought in, but most of the time it was burned here. How much of the animal was burned there? All of it. Because when Christ hung on Calvary's cross, he was consumed by sin for us. So all of it was there. What happened when the animal was consumed? There's an interesting word for offering that I just picked up. You know what that word for offering is? The Hebrew word for offering has the idea of ascension, ascending, ascending. So the Christ, the sacrificial lamb for us, the smoke ascends as a sweet perfume to God. And Christ dies on Calvary's cross. He lies in the tomb and on Sunday morning, he's resurrected. He ascends to heaven as our sacrifice. Just like he was consumed in type in the sanctuary, just like in type the smoke ascended, he ascends. Now, here's an amazing truth. Jesus resurrected from the dead. He's getting ready to ascend to heaven. And just as he's there, getting ready to ascend to heaven, Mary comes. She has tears running down her face. She thinks that a gardener has stolen away the body of Christ. And Jesus says, "Mary, touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father." Now, think about this. The most significant event after the cross in the history of the universe is to take place.
Guest (Male): You've been listening to HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you've enjoyed today's message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at HopeLives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to HopeLives365.com/donate. And now, a final thought from Pastor Mark.
Mark Finley: Christ is to ascend to heaven and appear before the universe indicating that his blood settles the controversy between good and evil, that all humanity can be forgiven, that all humanity can enter into the gates of heaven. He has the most significant announcement to make to the universe and he's going to ascend to heaven after his crucifixion. He's been there gone 33 and a half years, but he's ascended to heaven. But look, he stops and does not ascend because one of his children is crying and brokenhearted. He thinks so much of Mary that the whole universe must wait until he comforts her. What a Christ. What a wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord.