So we return to our examination of Pilgrim's Progress, and we turn now, as you see from the table of contents at the front of the booklet, you see that we come to the third chapter. I'm going to call these chapters. Conviction of Sin was chapter one, including Christians' original pilgrimage, evangelists providing direction, and then running into obstinate and pliable. And then the second chapter was five sections on seeking the Savior, in which we saw Christian wind up in the slough of Despond. We saw worldly wise men take him off to Mount Sinai. We saw evangelists come and help. Then Christian winds up at the Wicked Gate. He is allowed in or pulled in by goodwill. And then he goes to the house of the interpreter. So the third chapter then is entitled Salvation. Salvation. And we come to the first section in that chapter called Christian at the cross, Christian at the cross. So it's on page 15 of your booklet. Remind you again that we are using an abridged version of Pilgrim's Progress. The original is much longer and deeper than the one we're using, but I really didn't want to be here for nine years doing this, so we'll use the abridged version instead. Now, let me just, before we start looking at Christian at the cross, let me just point out that Bunyan wrote this as an allegory in an attempt to give to Christians, particularly, some encouragement about what it means to live and walk by faith, what it means to be a believer, what it means to follow Christ. So the details of the allegory don't necessarily fit in line, necessarily, with the experience that we would argue is prevalent in the New Testament in regards to the Ordo Salutis, and what comes first, this or that, right? It's written as an allegory to try to say, these are the kinds of things that should be present in the life of the Christian. And so we would have assumed, right, that if we were looking at this from a purely biblical perspective, this section would be much earlier, where Christian would have encountered the cross and then begun his journey to the Wicked Gate and beyond. But Bunyan doesn't paint it that way. And let me offer one possible suggestion. I didn't get this from a commentator. I'm making this up as I go. If you look at this, it could very well be that Bunyan decided to place this particular part of his story here because what he's trying to say is not that, let's see how to put this such a way that I don't get myself in trouble. He's trying to put this, he puts this here not because he wants to, not because he doesn't want to say that the cross is essential for salvation, he does. So from a, biblical perspective, the cross would be one of the very first things we would encounter on the journey, correct? I mean, one must know what it means to be saved. That would come at the very earliest part of the Christian's journey, our journey as Christians. Coming to understand who this Jesus is, what our sin is, and how it was taken care of at the cross is one of the most fundamental things we teach in the very earliest parts of our evangelism. Agreed? So it's possible that Bunyan included it here because what he's really doing is not suggesting that Christian encounters the cross here for the first time to understand what his salvation is, but rather comes to the cross for the first time to really understand the depth of it. In the sense of it becomes something at the very foundation of his journey, something that he comes to see as so very important. It's not that, okay, so I'm suggesting it's not that Bunyan is painting the idea that Christian was unaware of the cross prior to this, but rather that although he was aware of it, he was not really as fully engaged with what the cross means to the Christian. than at this point. In other words, what Bunyan really is trying to say is there comes a point when we really look at the cross and really begin to see the depth of that in our lives. I was just about to give an illustration to that. I mean, when I first came to faith in 1980, I could say with absolute assurance that as far as theology was concerned, as far as my understanding of the Christian gospel in terms of the doctrines contained therein, what I knew could fill up a thimble at best. I mean, on that first night and even maybe that first couple of years that I was a follower of Christ, I understood very, very little about salvation. I was confident that I had been born again by the Spirit of God. I was confident that that I was saved. And as I read the scriptures, I was confident that yes, I believed in this Christ and believed in the salvation that he offered, but I really couldn't really explain much of it more than that. It took time, if you will, to come to understand the real depth of this. So I think maybe that might be what Bunyan is trying to do here. What he's really trying to do is say, listen, We understand the cross, the most fundamental aspect of the gospel. But we also come to a much, over time, we come to an even greater and greater understanding of that as time goes by, we begin to see more and more and more of its value. And part of the reason I think that is because of how Christian responds to what he sees in this paragraph, in this section. Okay. You could. Okay. Yep. Correct. Neither fears nor seeks God to reprobate does not. Yep. Pliable, obstinate, his wife, children, worldly wise man. Right. Fully. Yeah. Fully. I think that's, I think that the realization of what's what was true that evangelists had undoubtedly shared with him at the beginning, now comes to real fruition in him. And I would argue that that is a part of the sense of sanctification slash maturity that the New Testament speaks about, that sense of really seeing the cross not just as, well, okay, Jesus died for me and therefore I'm saved, but really the immense value of it. So I put that before you by way of introduction because I think it helps to understand why this passage is here, why this section is here, and why it's written as it is. So Christian at the cross then. Now I saw in my dream, so once again the man who is dreaming the dream is being written by Bunyan. Okay, so the man in the dream sees that the highway up which Christian was to go was fenced on either side with a wall. And that wall was called salvation. And the reference, as you can see, is Isaiah 26.1, which says, in that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. He sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. Now I think what Bunyan is clearly pointing to here is Christian running down this path which has guardrails, walls, something to keep him on this path. That's the picture that we even saw in previous sections. But now it's explicit. There's a wall called salvation and that salvation has walled him into this path. Salvation is about, Bunyan is implying, salvation is about walking this path. Not that our salvation is produced by walking the path. The walls themselves are not built by the man walking the path, correct? But they're there to wall in the man that is on the path. I think probably the best theological equivalent of what Bunyan is talking about is simply the doctrine of preservation, the doctrine of God holding fast his own. He puts up walls, he puts up bulwarks. We have a strong city. He sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. So there's the Lord God who knows his own and he keeps them along the path that he has set for them. So Christian is on a path established by the Lord. He is on the path established by the Lord and the Lord is holding him along that path. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty because of the load on his back." Now, that sentence is written, I think, just to introduce what is about to be said. We already know he's carrying a burden. We already know that burden is the guilt and shame of sin that he carries from the beginning, that all men are carrying. He's aware of his. So that sentence, I think, is simply written to introduce us to what is about to come next. So he's on this path. And he ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending, meaning he's going uphill. And upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, down in the valley, a sepulcher, a tomb. Old English word for a tomb is a sepulcher. The church that sits over the supposed burial site of Jesus in the Holy Land is called the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It's a grave. But it's more than just a grave. A sepulcher was typically an ornate grave. I have some pictures from my trip to Greece and Turkey in which I went to several necropolises. Necropolis, necro meaning dead, polis meaning city, city of the dead, necropolis. which were built by the Greeks and the Romans. Better, they were carved out of the sides of mountains with ornate fashionings. And then inner caves were used as burial places inside. That's why it's called a necropolis. It was a city of the dead. But they were ornate and built into the sides of hills. That's kind of the picture that's being painted here. Typically, sepulchers would have ornate burial boxes, ossuaries they're called, in which the deceased would be placed. And then after a while, when the biological portion of his body decayed away, then they would rebury the bones in a smaller box in a different place inside the necropolis. The picture of the sepulcher here, however, is undoubtedly the tomb of the risen Christ. would be the picture. The cross on the hill and the sepulcher, the tomb, down below in the bottom. So you got that picture in your head, right? Come to a place where there's a cross on a hill and there's a tomb down below. The implication also being that the one who was on the cross was placed into the sepulcher down below. That would also be the implication of the phrase, the phraseology. As Christian came up to the cross, his burden fell off his back and began to tumble. So now this burden that he's been carrying is falling off. And the reason that it falls off is because of the fact that he has come to the cross. So the implication being in this phrase that as Christian comes to this cross and perceives this cross, it is the perception, him seeing the cross as he comes to this cross, that this burden falls off his back. Falls off. He doesn't take it off. It falls off. He's not able to remove it himself, as we've seen all along. He doesn't have the ability to remove this package of shame and guilt on his back. Certainly, it didn't come off when he went up to Mount Sinai. It didn't come off when he floundered around in the slough of Despond and helped out. It didn't come off even as he passed through the wicket gate into the path. He had to come to the cross for it to come off. But then when he does come to the cross, then his burden does fall off. And it begins to tumble. Now Bunyan paints an interesting picture here of this. Remember, this is an allegory. So imagine the sin and the shame of the man carrying on his back. And now it falls off and it begins to roll down the hill. That's what it means when it says it tumbles. It rolls down the hill, and it continued to fall until it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, the tomb, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Now, notice, the I saw it no more is the dreamer. Now, the implication, of course, is Christian didn't see it anymore, but the dreamer doesn't see it again. He sees it disappear from the back of the man, and the quote, Here is from Psalm 103.12, which says, well, let me go to 11. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. The work of the cross takes the sin and shame and guilt of the elect away from them permanently and completely. This, by the way, is the reason why we talk about the completed work of Christ, the finished work of Christ. We make it clear in the Gospel that the work of Christ is not a partial work that you finish by what you do. There's far too many people who live on planet Earth who believe that. that believe that Christ did his part, you do your part, and the whole thing becomes one. Now, as you know, I call that synergism, but it's also very much prevalent in Rome, who teaches that, well, Christ went to the cross, but his death was, his actual death on the cross, on Calvary, on that fateful Friday, was not sufficient. You need to continue, he needs to be continued, to be offered on the altar. Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. In fact, day after day, after day, Christ is being re-offered again and again and again on the altar in order to make satisfaction for God's requirements. But the true gospel, the message that's spoken of here in Psalm 103, is that Christ has finished the work of our redemption. He has finished the work necessary for us to be saved. This lines up with a doctrine which I call the doctrine of definite atonement. Some people call it the doctrine of limited atonement, which is a poor choice of word. It's actually definite atonement. We teach that when Christ cried out, it is finished, from the cross, he meant it. It is finished. The work of redemption and all that the father had purposed for him, the son, to do was Complete and done. Satisfaction had been made for sin. The sacrifice was complete. No more sacrifices are needed. The writer of Hebrews tells us that he sat down at the right hand of the Father after offering a sacrifice. Why? Because there were no more sacrifices to offer. The priest doesn't need to go into the temple and offer another sacrifice, and another, and another, and another. That was the Old Testament way that apparently could not take away sin. But Christ has gone to the cross once and has perfectly and completely satisfied everything that God requires. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that? Now be careful how you answer that question. Because one of the greatest temptations that the devil will whisper into your ear is, are you sure you've done enough? That sin that you just committed this afternoon, which you've been promising God that you weren't going to do again. Does that imply that Christ's atonement was not sufficient and that you need to go now and do something in order to satisfy that? Somewhat interesting, I was reading this week that the state of Colorado has now passed a law. No, it's not Colorado. Forget which state it was. Was it Washington? That now says that priests have to divulge any sort of crimes that they hear in the confessional to the state authority. There's always been a seal over the confessional in Catholic thinking that prevented a priest from speaking of anything that he hears in the confessional. And the obvious reason is because, look, if I know that the priest is going to go blab to the authorities about something that I'm confessing, I'm not going to bother to tell him. So I found it interesting some of the responses to that that were made by several. One particular person said that she was afraid of this because it means now that she, a good Catholic, is not going to be able to go and get her forgiveness of sins from the priest because she's not going to be able to speak to him of her sin. And I couldn't help but, as I'm reading this, that story to pop into my head. this is a poor woman that does not know that the cross completed the work of salvation. She thinks that she still has to go to the altar and take communion and go to the sacrament of penance and confess her sins and finish the work that Christ didn't apparently finish. She has to seek her reconciliation on her own. But what Bunyan wants us to notice here that as that pack falls off, that burden falls off his back and tumbles away, falls away, and it is seen no more. And where does it go? It goes into the sepulcher. Now, there's two possible interpretations of that. One is that Bunyan is saying that this burden falls into the sepulcher because when Jesus died and was buried, your sins were buried with him. That's what a sepulcher is about. Certainly a very reasonable illustration, reasonable interpretation I should say, of this. Yes, our burden is taken care of by the death of Christ. All of what I just spent the last five minutes in my soliloquy saying. How about another possibility though? What if along with that, Bunyan could also be implying that the sepulcher, which we know to be empty, is also the means by which our sin is taken away. He has risen and His being alive, His being raised from the dead becomes the exclamation point on the phrase, it is finished. Because if He didn't come out of that tomb, would we know that it was finished? Would we know that God had received that sacrifice? And the answer is probably not. But by Christ rising from the dead, He walks out of the tomb and His risen body testifies to the fact that his father accepted his sacrifice and raised him from the dead and brought him to himself and seated him on the throne of David and gave him the name above every name. In essence, it's a way, the resurrection is a way of saying that everything Jesus claimed in the course of his life was true. I mean, after all, he did say he was going to come up from the grave after three days. And not only that, but it tells us that he is unique in all of human history. So when we read the fullness of scripture and the redemptive story starting in Genesis, not in Matthew, in Genesis, we read the whole thing, we're faced with this reality. Here's what we need. We need someone who will actually accomplish something. And who else but the one who walked out of a grave alive. So our guilt goes away not just because Christ died on the cross, it certainly does, but it also goes away because he rose from the dead and demonstrates new life. He comes to bring new life. No, I think that's what I was saying. I'm saying it's evidence of it, not a means of it. The cross is the means. The resurrection is the exclamation point. Yeah. I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear. Being codified. That would be, I think I would assert that, yes, that the resurrection asserts that the cross was fully acceptable. The Father raises him from the dead to accomplish it. To show, I should say, not to accomplish, that's the word I mistake. To show that what Christ did on the cross was fully sufficient to accomplish our salvation. The imagery that's being painted here, it's interesting, isn't it, that the burden falls into the sepulcher. From my vantage point, I see the sepulcher from two perspectives. I see it, number one, from the perspective where you bury dead people, but I also see it as the place where the Son of God came forth alive, where the stone was rolled away and is now empty. So it falls in, and I saw it no more. Christian is now unburdened from the shame and the guilt that he possesses. He's now free from the original sin that was covered over him, the pollution and guilt which was a part of his very nature by virtue of being born human, of which he added to by his own sin. He carries this with him, but now it is gone. So how does Christian respond to that? was Christian glad and lightsome. Lightsome meaning celebratory or some might say light on his feet, right? He's lightsome, he's filled with this sense of delight. Glad and lightsome and said with a merry heart, he hath given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death. So Christian points clearly to the source of his freedom, and that is what this cross represents. It represents death. It represents sorrow. It represents all of what the cross does to satisfy the purpose and plans of God. And you will notice that Bunyan gives us a whole raft of verses here to look at. Let's just look at a few of them. But you'll see the pattern in all of them. You probably, as you look through them, you can already notice it because some of them are already quite familiar to you, right? Isaiah 53, that great passage on the Messiah. Isaiah 53, verse six, all we like sheep have gone astray and have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. John 3.16 through 18. Starts, of course, with that most famous of verses, and then continues, however, to the point beyond it, which is very often not quoted when this verse is quoted, which is unfortunate. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him, that's probably a better translator, whoever continues to believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he's not believed in the name of the only Son of God." Romans 5, of course, a great passage where Paul swings from justification to sanctification, speaking about the work of Christ in justification in 3 and 4, and then coming to 5 where he swings over to Sanctification, he says, chapter 5, verse 8, but God show, well, let me go back to 7. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. And 6.23, Of course, also that famous verse, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ. So, you'll notice the pattern that he's putting here. The death of Christ, His work accomplishes our freedom. Freedom from sin, but freedom also from the effects of sin, in the sense of the guilt that accompanies it, the shame that accompanies it, the destruction that accompanies it, the judgment that accompanies it, and everything else that accompanies it. Christ has accomplished it. The propitiation of Christ is spoken of in 1 John 4, right? What did he do? He turned away the wrath of God. He turned away the anger of God, the righteous anger, what God should have done. Christ turns that to himself. He propitiates it. He takes upon himself all of what we rightly deserve. He moves it from us, which means that we then are given the freedom of what it is that Christ has given to us. We're given the freedom from guilt and shame. Christians are to be people who are free. free from shame, free from guilt. Now, that doesn't mean we won't have moments of guilt and shame as we continue to sin, but it should not characterize our lives. The burden on Christian's back represents that, doesn't it? It characterized him. Every time we talk about Christian almost, it seems as though we talk about the burden he has on his back, because that's what he is. That's what he is. But now he's something different. He is something different. because the burden has fallen off of him. He has given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death." And he's not just talking about life in some theoretical sense in the future. He's talking about life, living, or what we saw in Colossians 1, the hope of glory, the reality that today I can be confident that one day I will be all that God has purposed for me to be in what he has declared me to be even now. God has declared me by virtue of my trust in Christ to be just, justified, righteous, holy in his sight. That's what he sees me as. It's a legal declaration. But the hope of glory is in knowing that one day I will be that completely. I know I'm not that now, but I will be that completely. And so my life should not be filled with shame and guilt. It should not characterize In other words, my shame and my guilt is not my identity. To put it as we would put it in our modern society, it's not my identity. And one of the most obvious statements that should follow then is, well, anything that is sinful according to God's word should never be your identity. Because the burden, if you are indeed a believer, has fallen off. So he is free. He senses, firstly, as he comes to the cross, the great freedom he has been given. Paul speaks of this freedom frequently in his writings, doesn't he? Free from the curse of the law. Free from that sense in which we have to be constantly trying to satisfy God. I used an illustration one time, I don't remember where it was, I called it the hamster wheel of performance. You ever have a hamster when you were a kid? It had a little wheel in the cage, and the thing would get on and just run like crazy. Just run, run, run, and get nowhere. OK, maybe I should call it the treadmill at Planet Fitness, because that's what it is. It's you get on, and you walk, and you walk, and you walk. You don't get anywhere. Well, that's basically the picture of what so many human beings are doing. walking to try to get somewhere and they're getting nowhere. And that's why they feel this constant shame and guilt. But we have gotten off that. We're no longer justifying ourselves by the law. In fact, you will notice now that Christian has now encountered, he's encountered the law and it could not remove his burden. And now he's come to the cross and it falls off. There's the distinction between the law and the gospel. The law tells you nothing more than you are a sinner deserving of judgment. The gospel tells you you've been set free in Christ. So let's not run back to those things that enslave us again. Let's not go back there. The burden has fallen off. And let's also remember that if this burden has indeed fallen off of us, then God no longer sees it on us. So we shouldn't be constantly worried that he's going to go down to the sepulcher and get it and put it back. Which I think sometimes we do wonder. Where's the assurance in that? Where's the security in that? Oh, we try to go get it ourselves, yes. No, the gospel sets us free. It's extraordinarily difficult, however, to keep that straight, isn't it, in your head, in your heart. The flesh and the devil are always nipping at you, trying to get you to put that guilt back on. Yep. Yes. Yep. That's correct. They were all far into the future. And all of them were nailed to the cross. From our vantage point, however, we often, like you said, walk this road of time and have a tendency to think, oh, that's new. I wonder if God's... But Don's correct. What we need to stop and do is wait a minute. The promise that you have made to us, oh God, is that you have put all of my sins on Christ. And I'm trusting your word on that. I'm trusting your word on that. And that's why Christian was glad and lightsome and was able to say this with a merry heart. Then he stood still a while to look and wonder. Now there's the line that leads me to believe that this is really more of a sense in which Bunyan is trying to paint the idea of really coming to grasp the fullness of what the cross means in the life of the Christian. because he stood there for a while and he looked and wondered for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. Why would it be surprising? And the answer is because it's counterintuitive. It's not what our flesh tells us. Our flesh tells us it's your responsibility to look away from ourselves to a cross an instrument of death is against the nature that we naturally possess. Because what's the heart cry of humanity? What must I do? But to look at a cross, what you realize is, I can do nothing. I can do nothing. So he stands and looks at this cross, stooks and wonders. It was surprising to him that the side of the cross should he's him of his burden because it's like that That is amazing. That is great to comprehend. That's the point. That's, I think, the point that Bunny's trying to make with this particular section. To look at the cross is to look at God's means of satisfying his own wrath. And it's not what we would have picked. It's not how we would have set this up. It's not what we would have designed. And as we're told in the New Testament, the cross is a shame to the world. It's like, you people believe in a bloody cross? I mean, that's just cosmic child abuse, isn't it? Of God beating up his own son to satisfy his, what, longing for blood? That's what the world will tell us. And that's what they truly believe. But when we look at the cross, when Christian looks at the cross, we look at it and go, wait a minute. That is the instrument that God purposed to satisfy everything his righteousness demanded. Because really, underlying the statement that I just told you about what the world says is, they don't believe that there is a righteous standard that needs to be upheld. First of all, if they do believe in a god, if they do believe in a deity, they don't believe that he is ultimately perfect, righteous, holy, and majestic. They don't believe those things. They think of him as a god like us. Which is why, by the way, the Greek pantheon and the Roman pantheons were all humans. Did you notice? They're all men. Because they look like us. But our god is not like us. Our god has purposed a way of his way of thinking to accomplish this, which satisfies all of what His holiness demands. You see that? That's why we look at the cross with such amazement. Because when we look at the cross, it's like that satisfies everything a righteous God requires. The very Son of God Himself shedding His blood, taking the fullness of the wrath of God upon And acting as the priest of a people to go as a mediator before his father is what this cross is all about. You look at it with amazement. We don't shy away from it. We look at it with amazement. We look at it with this sense of awe. He looked therefore and he looked again even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks. He wept over what he saw. He wept over the beauty of this cross. It looks ugly to the world, but to us, it looks beautiful. Zechariah 12, verse 10, and I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, They shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn." The point of the verse is that when Christian looks at the cross, he sees that it took, according to the decree of God, took the death of the Son of God himself. The only human being that has ever walked this planet that did not deserve to die. the only human being that ever walked this planet who did not, in fact, deserve to die. The only one who was morally upright and holy his entire human existence. And so when we look upon the cross, we are forced to face the fact that God had to send his only begotten son into the world to satisfy the debt. And what it should do is humble us completely. That's the point of the verse. Humble us absolutely. What it should do is make us weep. Now I'm not talking about some emotional weeping here. I'm talking about here a spiritual form of weeping in which we fully are grasping the power and intent of what it is that God the Son did on our behalf. It's not just some emotional outburst. It's something deep in the soul that says, this was God loving us enough to send his only begotten son into the world to die on our behalf. God himself taking on human flesh and experiencing death in order that I might be called righteous. See, that's That's something I think takes some time for us to truly grasp, doesn't it? It's not something you just automatically get right away. Oh, you might get some of it. You might get more or less of it, depending on your circumstances. But I think the picture that Bunyan's painting here is the further along that you travel in the scriptures, the further along that you travel on the road of sanctification, the more this should impress you. More and more and more. What exactly is it that satisfied God for me? Certainly not my puny little bucket of good works, but only the Son of God coming into the world and perishing on my behalf. Now, as he stood looking and weeping, behold, three shining ones came to him and saluted Shining ones. Take a guess what we're talking about here. Probably some sort of angelic beings would probably be what's being spoken of here. The first said to him, peace be to thee, thy sins be forgiven thee. And the quote is from Mark 2.5. By the way, somebody pointed out to me last week that my notice that the word acts was misspelled. is wrong, rightly so, because all of the references in this book are three characters. Didn't notice that until he pointed that out. Where am I? Mark 2.5, Marr 2.5. Marr 2.5, when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven. The first angel announces to Christian, as a result of the cross, you have your sins forgiven and you have peace. Peace be to thee. Now, again, I've said this so many times, I shouldn't have to say it, you should be able to repeat it before I even say it. Peace is not a lack of, is not a succession of hostilities. Peace is a change of relationship. Peace is a change in which the two parties are no longer enemies. So when this angelic being announces to Christian that you have peace, your sins are forgiven, that's what he's saying. You are no longer at war with God. Your sins have been forgiven. Your relationship with him has been changed such that you are no longer seen as a sinner, but seen now by God as righteous, at peace with God. So that's the first announcement that comes. I think Bunyan paints this, I forgot to mention this, I think Bunyan paints this sort of like the same picture that you see at the end of the gospel accounts where you have an empty tomb and you have people coming to the tomb and you have angelic beings speaking to the individuals that come. So in this case, Bunyan paints it as a picture of Christian coming to this empty sepulcher and the first angel announcing to him Your sins have been forgiven. You're now at peace. The second stripped him of his rags and clothed him with a change of raiment. Raiment is clothing. Gave to him a new set of clothing. Zechariah 3, 4. Let's see. I'll start in verse 3. Now Joshua was standing before the angel clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, removed the filthy garments from him, and to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments." I will give you new righteous clothing. We have been clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We have been given new raiment. We've been given new clothing. The burden's gone, which means we now wear the robes of righteousness. And we're not wearing robes that you made. You're wearing robes he Robes of righteousness that have been given to him. So now, not only are you, your status is different. You are no longer at odds with God. You are at peace with God. You're no longer hostile to God. Your sins have been forgiven, but you have been robed in righteousness. You have been given the righteousness of Christ on top of that. And then the third is, the third set a mark on his forehead. and gave him a roll with a seal on it. Revelation 22.4 is the reference to the mark on the forehead, but I'll skip to Ephesians 1 to the roll with a seal on it. This is some sort of a scroll. It says roll here, but we would see it as a scroll. Is there a book of Ephesians in my Bible? Yes, there is. Where is it? Ah, there it is. Ephesians 1.13. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit." So it would appear that Bunyan is painting the picture of the role, the scroll that he's given with a seal, as being the spirit of the living God. Would appear to be the case. You have been given a seal. In other words, you have been set apart by status, by clothing, and you possess what gives you the authority, the scroll with a seal on it. And whose seal is it? It's the God's seal. It's the seal of God himself that has been given to you. And this is what gains you access into the divine presence. You've been given these things. Christian possessed none of them before he came to this point, did he? All he had was a burden on his back and a bunch of raggedy clothes. But now he's been refitted the Burden is gone, the clothing has been changed to robes of righteousness, and he possesses the Spirit as a seal. That seal, by the way, is the picture that Paul paints in Romans 6, 7, and 8. The idea that we have been sealed in this justification, such that God has declared it to be so by the presence of the Spirit. The presence of the Spirit being the evidence of that seal in us. I should say the evidence of that justification is the seal. And therefore, when we walk as those who are sanctified, we're walking in that spirit who has sealed us unto the day of redemption. So he possesses this role. And he bade him to look on it as he ran. Why? As a reminder. As a reminder. This is what you have. This is what you've been given. The Spirit of God has been given to you. The seal has been given to you. Every time you are struggling along the way, look at it. Look at it. Remind yourself. We look to the presence of the Spirit in our lives. We look to his work in us, his continuing work in us as the evidence, the seal, the ongoing proof that we have been justified by faith, that the work of Christ has finished our reconciliation with God, which bade him look on as he ran, in which he should give in at the celestial city. When you get there, hand this in. This is what'll get you in. This is your ticket in to the celestial city. So they went on their way. The three went on their way. Then Christian gave three leaps for joy and went on singing. Thus far did I come laden with sin. Nor could aught ease the grief I was in. Nothing in the past is able to have released me from it. Aught, what was. Till I came hither. What a place is this. Must here be the beginning of my bliss. He comes to the cross and he is now, by coming to the cross, now fully understands how He has been saved. What makes him different from all the others, even as Don said earlier, all the others, he now understands it. He sees it. I see it. Fully now. Fully. We should too. Every time you crack open your Bible, it should be a reminder to you of what it is that Christ has done. Every time. Because this entire book is written to that end. Old Testament, New Testament, doesn't matter. It's all written to remind us that God had purposed a salvation and accomplished it in Christ and has applied it to you by his spirit, drawn you to himself. Now walk with that firmly in mind and in heart. Amen.