Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: He went to the cross, bore our sin, and gave us something called forgiveness, taking away your sin completely, removing it from you. You know what? It cost him his life. Something that is that valuable and that precious, you ought to cherish that. You and I had better cherish the costly gift of forgiveness.

Steve Drewry: Welcome to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez. I'm your host, Steve Drewry. Have you ever noticed the Old Testament way of dealing with sin? To our modern way of thinking, the method seems foreign, confusing, and severe. Finding forgiveness required the sacrifice of animals. Maybe you've read about this Old Testament practice and thought, "Why?"

Well, today Pastor Mike helps us answer that important question. Now, if you're a first-time listener, be sure to request your free copy of Pastor Mike's booklet, The New Covenant Age. Just go to focalpointradio.org. Now, here is Pastor Mike.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: What about these animal sacrifices? Why? What's the point? Why is God doing that? Is he some kind of cruelty to animals captain? Is he not a member of PETA? What's wrong with him? Why are we killing animals all the time in the Bible? Let's try and answer that question. Why the animal sacrifices? Here is one reason: to show the wages of sin.

There had to be in the mind of the Old Testament person, as there should be in our minds—and we have the advantage of looking back on history, including the history of Christ's life, death, and resurrection—but there ought to be a sense that sin is a real issue. It is not something that God can just nicely say, "Well, I'm not going to care about people doing the wrong thing." If he is a just God, there has to be a punishment. He says the wages of sin is death. He says when you sin against me, you will die, relationally and eventually biologically.

He says when you come to me in worship, just know you have a tremendous need. So they would bring animals and they would come with this graphic reminder, with the spilling of blood in a worship service, to have them graphically reminded that the real issue between you and God is the need for reconciliation because we are sinful people. When there was a ceremonial death of an animal in a worship service, the worshiper would lay his hand on the head of that animal, which was the best they could find in their flock, and that animal would be accepted on their behalf.

When I went to worship in the Old Covenant, I would go home alive biologically, and Fluffy would not come home at all. Fluffy's dead. As a matter of fact, the reality of it is that there is a need for my sin to be atoned for, and the animal will be a picture of that atonement so that he will suffer and I won't have to. Jot this down: letter B, it is to experience the concept of substitution. It reminds me of the sin, and then I want desperately the solution, and the solution is in a payment of the debt. So symbolically, this animal is taking my place. I get to live, but the animal dies.

Now, the reality of it was it was just a symbol of the substitution, but it was a substitution that allowed them to remember that God wants me to live. He wants to provide life and grace to those even who have sinned. He wants to give them that sense of hope. But to do that, he wanted them to remember it is their life for yours. A lot of people looking at the Old Covenant say, "Well, we see all these dead animals and see all this sacrifice and substitution. That must have been the way that God brought them into a relationship with himself. Those animals somehow provided for their salvation."

Number two on your outline, let's at least ask this question because it is an easy place for a mistake, theologically: did animal sacrifices save them? Let's just answer that just straight up in Hebrews chapter 10, verse three. The sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. Verse four: because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. So does it save them? Does it take away their sin? No. But chapter nine, look at verse 13. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean—now you can underline this word—sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean.

God does something, right? It doesn't save them, but it does make them obedient. It does make them obedient. If you want a parallel to that in the New Covenant, you can write this down on your notes: baptism. Baptism in the New Covenant does not save us, but it symbolizes something that does. Same thing in the Old Covenant. Sacrificing a lamb on the Passover doesn't save me, but it symbolizes something that does: the substitution and payment for sin, which they didn't have clarity on.

They knew God was somehow going to prepare that and solve that problem for them. So it didn't save them, but it did make them obedient. God, I suppose, could have chosen any number of things. He could have said, "Pat your head and rub your belly, and that'll make you ceremonially clean." But instead, he wanted to enrich this picture with a sobriety about sin and an anticipation of substitution. God is using this as a symbol. There is no intrinsic desire, need, or interest in the death of animals. It was a symbol, just like he is not interested in you swimming or being in water. It is all a symbol of something very important that was central to the whole redemptive plan.

Did animals save them? No, but it did make them obedient. For that, it was important. But obedience is not just the act; it is the heart in sync with the act. It is the mind in keeping with the delivery of an animal at worship to the Levites. Well then, how were they saved? Back to Hebrews chapter nine, verse 15. For this reason, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

Sins committed when? Under the Old Covenant. How are they set free from the sins and the penalty of their sins? Well, the death of Christ. He died as a payment for that. When he died as a payment for that debt of sin, these people were set free from the consequences. So animal sacrifices didn't save them, but here's the thing when it comes to salvation: it is Christ that saves them. You have got to have your sin debt taken care of. Who is going to pay that? An animal can't pay it, but a human—a perfect human who does everything they're supposed to do—can have that righteousness applied to you and your sin applied to him in this great transaction called substitution. They are saved by Christ, just like we are.

They weren't saved by animal sacrifices; they were saved by Christ via letter C, repentance and faith. Same thing you are saved by. Saved through the mechanism of repentance and faith. The merit comes from Christ's life, death, and resurrection. How do I respond? How do I get this? I repent of my sins and I put my trust in God's provision. Same way in the Old Covenant as the new. Let me prove it to you. Go to the book of Isaiah, chapter 55. What a great text here that any person from the new or old covenant should feel like this is just old stuff. This is how God has always responded to us and calling us to what he is calling us to.

Verse six: Seek Yahweh while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked—circle this word—forsake—to desert it, to leave it, to reject—his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him—this is a great key theological term in the Old Covenant—let him turn. The Hebrew word shuv is used over a thousand times in the Old Covenant. It means to go back, to repent, to turn away from. Turn away from sin and turn to what? Turn to the Lord. Turn to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on that person. Turn to our God, and he will freely pardon.

If I am convicted with the guilt of my sin and I see it and I feel it and I know it, how do I get that problem fixed? You throw yourself on God. You call out to God. You reach out to him to solve the problem. Same thing, Old Covenant, New Covenant. You could preach that passage to somebody now, or you could preach it to them 3,000 years ago. Well, what about the faith part? Here is a great text: Isaiah 30, same concern of the prophet. Get this sin problem fixed. Look at this, as though it were ripped right out of the book of Acts.

Isaiah chapter 30, verse 15: This is what the Sovereign Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel says: In repentance and rest—you know what that is? That's trust. That's relaxing. That's knowing God solves the problem—in repentance and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength. The problem with those people in that day was they wouldn't have any of it. "Don't talk to me about repentance, don't talk to me about trust. I'm fine, I'm okay, you're okay." What they needed was repentance and faith.

Animal sacrifices didn't save them. It did make them obedient, and God responded to that obedience. They are saved by Christ, same way you are. They were saved on credit, not debit. They were saved the same exact way when they are broken by God in his conviction. All they had to do was cry out to God in repentance and faith. Faith in what? Well, faith in God's provision. What if they didn't know his name? It didn't matter. The faith in the provision that God would someday supply through the coming of the real Lamb of God that John looked up at and said, "There he is, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

They didn't have a clear picture of that. We do. The focal point of our faith gets really clear: Jesus Christ. But for them, it was a hope in God's provision. All right, so what about us? This whole text is not about animal sacrifices; it is about leaving them behind. It is about trusting in the fact, if you look back at Hebrews 9, that someone has come in not with the blood of animals, but with his own blood and taken our place. He solved the sin problem through substitution. That is the whole point of the passage.

As a matter of fact, verse 14 says, "How much more, the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we can serve the living God." Let's put it down this way: number three on your outline. How should we respond to the Lamb of God, the Son of God who gave his blood for us? How should we respond to that? Here it is, tucked away right here in verse number 14. We want to cleanse ourselves and our consciences from acts that lead to death. That's called sin.

We want to serve the living God, and to do that on a day-to-day basis means you and I become very sensitized to this thing called sin. We need to hate the sin that took his life. We've got to hate it. We've got to say this is a big deal now. If I am recognizing that this Old Testament ceremony was a graphic picture of the wages of sin and now I look back, not through a bloody sacrifice on a Sunday morning to feed the Levitical families, but I look back now on the bloodied and beaten body of Christ hanging on a cross, what should my response to that be?

Assuming I've repented of my sins and put my trust in Christ, my response should be I should hate the thing that nailed him there. The thing that put him there was my sin, and I ought to hate that. If you think that is unbiblical, here is a great passage for you right out of the Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 8, verse 13: To fear the Lord is to hate evil. Right there. You are not just allowed to hate what is evil; you are commanded to hate it. You ought to hate it. If you think, "Well, that's just those crinkled-browed Old Testament codgers that were mad about everything," then jot this one down: Romans chapter 12, verse number nine.

The New Testament of love, here is what it says: Hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Why should we hate it? One of the reasons is it slaughtered the Lamb of God. It cost him his life. It cost him that pain from the Father and that relational death where he quotes Psalm 22 hanging on the tree saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" What is that called? Relational death. Why should the perfect and holy one incur that? Why should he have the punishment and wrath of God poured upon him? Only because of the sins that we have done. Only because of our guilt.

As Luther used to say, our sins have assailed him on the cross, and we ought to say, "Man, that's a big deal." We declare war on sin and we hate it in our life. Do you hate sin that much? Or like so many who like to sweep the tough parts of the Bible under the carpet, we say, "Well, God, he's just so forgiving, he's just so gracious, it doesn't matter. Just ask the Lord to forgive." No big deal. It is a big deal. Jesus said it is such a big deal that if your eye is the avenue through which sin comes, you should wear sunglasses.

What should you do? Shield it a little bit. Cover it, cap it. No, gouge it out. The Greek word to gouge to take it and just get it out and toss it from you. If your hand is the avenue through which sin comes in your life, cut it off. I understand this is hyperbolic and dramatic language, but the point is you'd better be dealing severely with sin in your life. Why? Because it is the thing that cost the Lamb of God his life. It is the thing that made him cry out on a cross, "I am suffering relational death and biological death all at once because of the sin of my life and your life." We should hate it.

I think of people, and I've experienced this, had a loved one die of cancer. How about you? It's terrible. I had a dear friend die before his time in a hospital. I was there praying with him for months as he deteriorated and became half the guy he was. I was there Sunday after church right by his bedside as he expired and breathed his last. You know, I walked out of there with a hatred for cancer cells. I came out of there thinking those little rebellious cells, they got involved in this rebellion in his body and grew and grew and grew and took over his body.

If someone can point to something that causes cancer, it's something that immediately, particularly in the dramatic time of losing my friend's life, it immediately provoked feelings of anger. If smoking causes that, I hate smoking. That almost sounds biblical, doesn't it? Jude 23 says you ought to hate even the garment that is stained by the corruption of the flesh. If you've watched a friend die of lung cancer, you ought to hate the smell of tobacco on somebody's jacket. You ought to hate it.

The bottom line is your compromise and my compromise, your sin and my sin, your rebellion and my rebellion cost Jesus, the perfect one, his life. We ought to declare war on it; we ought to hate it. You ought to hate sin more than you do. I ought to hate sin more than I do. Hate the sins that cost him his life.

Hebrews 9, verse 28 says he was sacrificed once and for all to take away the sins of many people. If you've repented of your sins and put your trust in Christ, you are a part of that group of people, and he has by that one sacrifice taken away your sin. He is going to come back for us, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. That's a tremendous thing. You come back, and everybody else who hasn't put their trust in Christ and repented of their sins, they see him as the enemy, and he will be.

He will come with a sword, but for us, he'll be our savior. Why? Because he went to the cross, bore our sin, and gave us something called forgiveness, taking away your sin completely, removing it from you. You know what? It cost him his life. Something that is that valuable and that precious, you ought to cherish that. Letter B under number three: You and I had better cherish the costly gift of forgiveness.

You couldn't earn it. There was nothing you could do to get it but trust Christ and throw yourself on his mercy, repenting and turning from your sin. But if you've done that, what you walk away with is a clean slate. You get completely forgiven. Now, some people have given me some pretty cool gifts for my birthday and for Christmas. I've even had some people blow me away with gigantic, incredibly generous gifts. But outside of my relationship with Christ, no one has said, "I will go and suffer and die for you so that you can live."

That's an amazing costly gift, and you ought to hold that close to your heart and you ought to cherish that. You ought to recognize how important that is and relive the wonderful forgiveness that comes with that kind of sacrifice on your behalf. It ought to be the most important thing for you. I don't know what your prized possession is, but you ought to scratch that out and put this at the top of the list: I am forgiven by the death of Christ. That's the most important thing in the world. That's the most valuable thing you have.

Everything else can go away, but if you have that, you've got all you need. That's big. "Greater love has no one than this," Jesus said, that he lay down his life for his friends. No one loves you more than Christ, and he proved it by taking your place.

Book of Hebrews comes off this picture and off this picture of faith in chapter 11. In chapters 12 and 13, the upshot of it all is given, and it is a wonderful directive for us when we contemplate the richness of our forgiveness, the costliness of our redemption. Look at chapter 12, if you're not already there, Hebrews 12. Drop down to verse number 28. If God, not because of our meritorious works or our good deeds, but if God has taken our sins away and granted us eternal life because sin was dealt with on the cross, then we've got one response to that.

Not only should we value it, we should do something expressive. Verse 28: Therefore, since we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken—this relationship with God, it's perfect, it's coming, we'll live in that state when he brings this salvation to us not in reference to sin; he's coming back but in reference to salvation and forgiveness—then we ought to be thankful. Underline that. Let us be thankful and so worship God, which is the essence of worship, by the way: being thankful.

Worship God acceptably, and if you really know the gravity of forgiveness, you'll do it with reverence and awe, knowing that this isn't just a flippant, "Won't your life be enhanced and you'll have an invisible friend named Jesus?" You've had your sins nailed to the cross. A holy God that should be your enemy has now become your friend. He is now for you, not against you because he put everything that was against you and laid it on Christ and was against him.

That substitution has allowed us to stand back with complete immunity from God's punishment. There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, Romans 8:1. It is an amazing truth. If you don't say "thanks" for that every day, you don't understand the depth of it. Say "thanks" every day. Say "thanks" every day. To say "thanks" every day, you will have to sacrifice some things. All you need to sacrifice is a little time and a little effort, a little mental energy.

Chapter 13, look across the page. Hebrews 13, look at verse 14 and 15. Here we don't have an enduring city. The world, you know where that's heading. But we're looking for the city that is to come. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice—not of animals but of praise. And that's the fruit of my lips that confess his name, confess the greatness of his name, confess my gratitude for what he's done.

The sacrifice God wants from you is a little time on your way to work in the car tomorrow morning to turn the radio off and to say, "I want to be thankful for the redemption that is mine in Christ." It is a little time in the morning when you want to hit the snooze alarm and you say, "No, I'm not going. I'm going to get out of bed this morning and offer my sacrifice," which is not an animal. It's a little bit of time, energy, and mental work directed toward God saying, "Thank you for the substitutionary atonement of Christ."

It's coming home when you're tired at night and instead of just sitting brain-dead in front of the TV, taking some time maybe around the kitchen table, maybe before a meal, saying, "Let's just stop and be thankful for the fact that all of my sin that should cast me into the lake of fire instead has been laid on Christ. He bore the penalty for me and I'm completely forgiven. Thank you, thank you, thank you, God."

The offering that God wants from you is not an animal. What he wants from you is gratitude. The only way you're going to be fueled to do that is if we step aside from the sterile presentation of the biblical message and, like Bonhoeffer, we start to hate any mitigation of the message and stop being, like he said, like birds around the carcass of cheap grace where we've drunk the poison that has killed our passion to follow Christ. Our passion to follow Christ to praise him is to recognize the value of grace. It's amazing, it's immense. Let's be grateful for it this week. Pray with me, please.

God, please help us to be more grateful. Please God, help us to look more intently at what our sin cost and the great and incredible love that took our sin and, through an unspeakable act of sacrifice, gave us instead of punishment, gave us forgiveness. God, help us each day. I just pray if nothing else is taken from this message today, there would be the reminder that we ought to be grateful every day for the forgiveness we have in Jesus Christ. God, we thank you so much. We love you. Help us to hate sin. Help us to cherish forgiveness. Help us to be grateful. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Steve Drewry: There's no longer a need for us to sacrifice. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. That's the theme of today's study on Focal Point. You're listening to Mike Fabarez in one part of a series titled "Christ Changed Everything." To revisit or share this message, just go online to focalpointradio.org.

Now, today is the last day to request your copy of a book that goes right along with what Pastor Mike has been exploring. It's called The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament by Edmund Clowney. Long before the manger or the cross, God was weaving his redemption plan through his people, patterns, and promises. Clowney brings that story to the surface with clarity that makes the whole Bible feel like one cohesive account, written with a single destination in mind. Get your copy of The Unfolding Mystery when you make a donation to Focal Point today. Call us at 888-320-5885 or donate online at focalpointradio.org, or send your donation by mail by writing to us at Focal Point, Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. Now, Pastor Mike has a special announcement.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Thanks, Steve. I'd like to invite you to join me September 19th through the 26th, 2026, on a Christian cruise through New England and Canada. We'll sail Holland America's Zuiderdam, known for its elegance and exceptional hospitality, to historic cities like Boston, Halifax, and Quebec City. We'll gather for devotional times in God's Word followed by thought-provoking Bible teaching throughout our journey. Grammy-winning musicians Keith and Kristyn Getty will lead us in worship. You'll enjoy the stunning autumn landscapes as we explore charming coastal villages, all while building friendships with like-minded believers. It's a unique opportunity to deepen your faith and see some of the most beautiful scenery on the eastern seaboard. Space is limited, so don't wait to sign up. Secure your cabin today at focalpointradio.org.

Steve Drewry: The Bible says we're created in God's image, but what exactly does that mean? And what's the difference between your soul and your spirit? Well, Pastor Mike Fabarez provides the answers in a special edition of Ask Pastor Mike. I'm Steve Drewry, inviting you to join us Friday here on Focal Point.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Pastor Mike here. Ever wish you could corner your pastor and challenge him with your toughest questions about the Bible, about faith? Well, now you can. Send me your questions. Head on over to focalpointradio.org and click on Ask Pastor Mike, or send me a note on facebook.com/pastormike or twitter.com/pastormike. I can't wait to hear from you.