Hebrews 126 May 15, 2008
NKJ Psalm 119:105 Your word is
a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
Now one of the purposes of that
little exercise we did is to help us understand that when you take children and
you put them in school and they’re exposed to a secular-Marxist-Darwinian
education that sets their minds to look at reality a certain way, then it
becomes very difficult later in life to knock that perspective out of their
thinking because it gets set. Of course that’s not impossible with God or the
Holy Spirit or the Word of God, but that’s the only thing that often can do
that.
We’re continuing our study in
Hebrews 9. We’re actually taking a side trip through Leviticus tonight because we’re studying
the backdrop (the background) to Hebrews 9 which is the Tabernacle and the
various features of the Tabernacle (the furniture in the Tabernacle and what
went on in the Tabernacle in terms of day-to-day rituals, monthly rituals,
various things that are described in the book of Leviticus.)
One of the things that I have wanted
to do for many, many years and have never had the opportunity is to teach the
book of Hebrews in conjunction with Leviticus. If you don’t really understand
about half of Exodus and most of Leviticus, then you get lost in Hebrews and
you don’t understand what the writer of Hebrews is talking about. There are
some tremendous and very interesting things going on. So we’ll be going back
and forth between Hebrews and Leviticus.
Now last time we started off with
the Tabernacle and we explained how it was laid out, that you have an outer
court that is surrounded by these outer hangings. The dimension of the outer
walls was 100 cubits by 50 cubits and it is approximately 150 feet by 75 feet.
This is laid out. There is only one entry way (only one way to God.) Inside the
outer courtyard there were two pieces of furniture that we looked at the last
time. We looked at the brazen altar and that’s it. We’re stopped there.
We talked about the color that we
find in all of the fabrics and the clothing of the priests. The colors are very
important because they were designed to direct the attention of the worshipper
to heaven. So the dominant colors that we find are blue, a bluish-purple which
speaks of heaven, a reddish-purple that spoke of royalty, two different colors
of red - one that was usually translated scarlet and is a red with a hint of
orange. Then you had another word that is usually translated crimson. Both of
these pictures…the red is to picture the stain of sin. Red was a very difficult
color to deal with. The dye was almost impossible to get out of any fabric, any
wool that it was absorbed in. So it is a great picture of the stain of sin.
Both of these words as I pointed out are found in Isaiah 1:18.
NKJ Isaiah 1:18 " Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD,
"Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though
they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.
Only the grace of God can deliver us
from the stain of sin. Sin is permeated in everything in creation. It is a
constitutional defect that everybody has.
It’s amazing I think. I get shocked
every time I talk about or hear about somebody who doesn’t believe that people
are basically bad. I know that academically that there are people out there who
don’t think people sin or people aren’t basically bad or evil and it truly does
permeate our society. That is one of the differences between conservatives and
liberals. That was pointed out in a book called Conflict of Vision by Thomas Sowell.
That’s the foundational view, how people just view reality going back to that
little exercise we did. Some
people just can’t get it in their head that men are basically evil. Their
inclination is always to do evil. The Bible says:
NKJ Jeremiah 17:9 " The heart is deceitful above all things, And
desperately wicked; Who can know it?
I was talking to my good friend
Tommy Ice last week and he said, “You know, I’ve have a student this year that
came out of the ghetto. He does not believe people are basically sinful and
evil. I’ve had him a whole semester and he still isn’t convinced.”
Fortunately he has a friend that’s
in the class who is making some headway.
I thought, “Man! That is just
amazing. Here is somebody coming out of that kind of a background that doesn’t
understand basic evil.”
If you don’t understand that man is
basically sinful and evil, it’s going to distort your understanding (if you’re
consistent) of the gospel, your understanding of grace, your understanding of
everything in the Bible because you’re going to start off without a dead, evil,
fallen, corrupt sinner. You are going to start off with somebody who at worst
has probably just got the sniffles spiritually and otherwise they’re in perfectly
good health. We’ll run into some examples of that.
So we get into our study of the
outer courtyard. We looked at the brazen altar the last time and I put the
model up here on the pulpit so people can see that a little easier. The brazen
altar had dimensions of about 5 cubits by 5 cubits which
is roughly 7 ½ feet by 7 ½ feet. It might have been a little bit larger: about
4 ½ feet high. Solomon’s altar of course was much, much larger. It was a hallow
box. It was a box made out of first of all acacia wood which is a wood that’s
hard, incorruptible, indestructible, most enduring, least vulnerable to
rotting. The acacia wood is a picture of the incorruptible perfection of the
humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then it was covered in bronze. The
reason it’s covered with bronze is bronze resists the heat. It is able to
withstand the heat of judgment. The altar here pictures the pouring out of
judgment upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
We looked at the various instruments
that were associated with this for moving the coals, for handling the blood,
for handling the fire and that these were also made of bronze because they
handled the heat (figuratively speaking) from divine judgment.
We looked at the fact that the horns
on the altar speak of power. When there was a sacrifice the blood would be
splattered against the four horns of the altar and against the sides of the
altar.
We looked at the words for altar: mizbeah
which is used over 400 times in the Old Testament and it’s based on a noun
formed on the verb zabach to slaughter or to sacrifice.
This is the generic word meaning to offer or to kill an animal as an offering
to a deity. This is the function of the brazen altar. We looked at sacrifices
briefly and traced the fact that sacrifices were part of worship ever since
Adam fell. We went back to look at Genesis 3 that after the fall God clothed
Adam and Eve with animal skins. That’s just a very quick, simple statement. But
if you stop and think about everything that’s involved in clothing someone with
animal skins: the selection of the animal, the killing of the animal, the
skinning of the animal, the treating of the hide, all of that; there’s more
going on there than is indicated in that verse. It’s just an abbreviated
statement, but if you think about it we realize that it is occasioned by sin
and so God would have used that opportunity to teach them about the necessity
of a blood sacrifice as a picture of expiation and the satisfaction (the
substitutionary aspect) the payment of a price of death for sin.
We traced it through Cain and Abel
(Cain’s refusal to come to God on the basis of what God had provided already).
I pointed out that there are many theologians who argue that the difference
between Cain’s sacrifice and Abel’s sacrifice was simply their intention, not
what they offered. I countered that by saying that it’s not because (I will
point out that.) it’s called a minkah offering and you don’t
have that word used anywhere else in Genesis. It’s not used again until you get
into the offerings later on related to the Mosaic Law. It’s often used in
relationship to the grain offerings. That’s the second offering in Leviticus.
The point is there is no other offering; there is no other sacrifice other than
an animal sacrifice until you get to the Mosaic Law. So there’s no basis for
anything other than a blood offering (a blood sacrifice) prior to the Mosaic
Law. Furthermore there are many scholars who believe that minkah
was a word that was associated even with the burnt offering, but it was a word
that was dropped out. So that’s not a determinative argument at all. So we see
a failure there.
Three points I summarized and
presented as a summary last time.
So to understand these things we’re
going to get into Leviticus. Leviticus is a book about priests and it’s about
feasts and offerings. That pretty much describes Leviticus. So if you just get
a handle on Leviticus that’s what it’s all about. People can get caught up in
all the details of all the different laws and all the different things that can
make you clean or unclean, all the different sacrifices. Just remember this:
Leviticus is about feasts and offerings. The focal point is on the service of
the Levitical priesthood.
So what I want to do tonight is go
through a bit of an overview, an introduction, to Leviticus and why Leviticus
is important. It is a book that I doubt that any of us…I don’t recall any
preacher, any pastor, any teacher ever going through a verse-by-verse study of
Leviticus and I’m not going to begin that tonight; but we need to survey it,
summarize it, understand it because it is the framework for understanding what
the writer of Hebrews is saying to these former Levitical priests. He is going
to be basing his challenges, his exhortations, his application on an
understanding of what is pictured, what is conveyed in the offerings and
sacrifices in Leviticus. So we start off with some basic points on an
introduction to Leviticus.
I have about 6 main points here some
of them with sub-points.
I have had people say, “Well you
know the Mosaic Law was really a system of tyranny.”
Now Phariseeism in the New Testament
had become a system of tyranny because of how they distorted the Mosaic Law.
But the Mosaic Law can’t be a system of tyranny because #1 it comes from God.
He’s the one who originated it. He’s not putting man under a tyrant and under
bondage and #2 because Paul says in Romans 7 that the Law was holy, righteous
and good. It is inherently virtuous because it comes from God. So it’s direct
revelation from God.
4. The key idea throughout
Leviticus is the idea of holiness. Holiness means to be set apart to the
service of God. So the idea in the book is that you have to be clean, ritually cleansed
from sin in order to be able to serve God. So that relates to both our
positional sanctification which is what happens the instant you’re saved and
set apart positionally in Christ and it relates to ongoing service that in
order to serve God we have to have the ongoing sin in our lives dealt with and
be continuously cleansed.
5. A crucial issue for the
Church Age is to determine the purpose of the Law. This is something that has
been a problem with Christians ever since the early church. In the early church
there was tremendous discussion among the apostles initially as to “Okay, once
these Gentiles get saved what do they have to do in relation to the law? Do
they need to get circumcised? Do they need to be involved in all the ritual?
How do these new followers of Jesus relate to the Law? What do we do?” They
held the Jerusalem Council which is was held in
Jerusalem and described in Acts 15 where they worked this out. At the end their
conclusion was that it seemed right to them that the Gentiles were to abstain
from idolatry, abstain from eating meat offered to idols, abstain from
fornication and live their lives before God in righteousness. They weren’t
going to require them to come in under the Law. They were beginning to grapple
with the issue of grace versus Law.
Then we come to the verse in Galatians 3:24 which is central to
understand this. Paul said;
NKJ Galatians 3:24 Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be
justified by faith.
He’s thinking in terms of a very broad picture like a young child making
the early history of mankind analogous to that of a young child. Once Christ
comes, he is more mature because there is more knowledge. You have the Holy
Spirit, things like that. So in mankind’s infancy the law was a tutor. It was a
pedagogue (a Greek word). The pedagogue was a slave who was put over (given
authority over) the training of a child in the household. The child virtually
becomes a slave to the Law. The Law is the boss; but the Law is designed to teach
things, to prepare the child for maturity. So the Law then points to Jesus
Christ. Within the law there are numerous things, numerous symbols various
principles taught through sacrifices and offerings that are there so that by
the time Jesus came they would understand these concepts of atonement and
justification and purification and consecration and reconciliation all of these
concepts would be understandable to them when Jesus came.
Now I had a question this week that
relates to this. It was a very good question related to the sacrifices on the
brazen altar. Were Gentiles allowed in the court? They were. If they weren’t
allowed to go any further, how did the so Gentiles get cleansed from sin? Well,
Gentiles weren’t under the Mosaic Law, so Gentiles still got cleansed from sin
the same way they did before the Mosaic Law and before Abraham - just through
the general law of offerings (of a burnt offering) just like they did before Abraham
was called out and separated. But remember the offerings even though a
sacrifice like the oath offering and the trespass offering as those offerings
picture something related to cleansing from sin those offerings picture an
already accomplished reality. It is not when they bring the sacrifice, the sin
offering or the trespass offering that they are forgiven. When they sin and
they confess it, then they’re forgiven and then they go because they’re
forgiven and offer the guilt or the trespass as a sign, as an outer sign of an
inner reality. That’s the same terminology that we use to describe baptism.
It’s an external sign of an eternal already existing reality. So the Jews did
not to present a sacrifice at the Tabernacle or Temple to gain forgiveness. They
gained forgiveness through the confession of sin. The offering is simply the
result of that. Okay. So the Law only applies to Jews. It doesn’t apply to
Gentiles. Gentiles were not part of it.
The Law was never given to the Gentile nations. It’s given only to
Israel. Deuteronomy 4:8, Romans 2:12-14. The Mosaic
Law is part of the contract between God and Israel. It doesn’t apply to anybody
else. There stands a unique relationship.
1)
The first limitation, the law
could never justify. You can’t get justified by obeying the Law; that wasn’t
its purpose. The law could never justify. Justification in the Old Testament just
as in the New Testament came by faith in the promise of a Messiah. This is
Paul’s whole argument in Romans 4. Abraham is justified by believing God’s
promise. That’s in Genesis 15:6. That’s referring back to something that had
already happened. Well, Abraham gets justification by faith in approximately
2100 BC. The Law doesn’t come along until about 1400 BC. You’ve got 700 years.
Before the law you have justification. So justification wasn’t the purpose for
the Law. It pictured certain things related to it, but it doesn’t justify.
2)
The law could never give eternal life.
Galatians 3:21. The Law was simply ritual. You had to believe in the promise of
Messiah and only on that basis did you have eternal life. So the law could
never give eternal life.
3)
The third
limitation of the law is the law could never provide the Holy Spirit. This is
one reason as we studied not to long ago in our study
of Hebrews that God promised a New Covenant. In the New Covenant God would put
a new heart and new Spirit (His Spirit) inside of the Jews as part of the New Covenant which is enacted when Jesus Christ returns and
establishes His kingdom. So the Law could never provide the Holy Spirit. The
law can’t justify. The Law couldn’t give eternal life. The Law couldn’t provide
the Holy Spirit.
4)
The Law could never produce miracles,
Galatians 3:5. There is a limitation there.
5)
The law could
not resolve the problem of the indwelling sin nature because it’s not defeated
other than by the Holy Spirit. This is where Paul goes in Galatians 5 that the
Spirit wars against the flesh. So the Law could never resolve the problem of
the indwelling sin nature. Romans
8:3-7 and compare that with Galatians 5:16-17.
So those are the limitations of the
Law. What we have to remember here is that salvation in the Old Testament was
based on faith alone in Christ alone. But, it’s based in the promise of a
Messiah not in the fulfillment, the already accomplished fulfillment of a
Messiah. It’s anticipating, not looking back. So in the Old Testament they
believed in a future provision of a Messiah who would provide salvation. In the
Church Age we look back to its having been completed that Jesus Christ was our
spiritual substitute who paid the penalty for our sins.
Now going on to the next point. This
is the third point under point 6, the introduction to the Law of Moses. .
1)
The Law
according to Romans 10:4 Christ is the end of the Law for believers. The Law’s
purpose was to point to Christ. Once Christ came He fulfilled the Law and it no
longer provided a purpose for the Church Age. It was null and void.
2)
The second
point related to the church and Law, the church is specifically not under the
law. The Law is not the Christian way of life. Does that mean that we have no law, no rules, no principles?
No, we’re not antinomian. If you’re free grace, that’s what you’ll be called by
the lordship crowd and especially if you get over into the more reformed camp
the theonomists (that means God’s Law) that basically
want to establish a theocracy because they’re post millennial. You have got to
bring in the kingdom. They will accuse us of being antinomian because we
believe in grace. But grace doesn’t wink at sin, which is what Paul argues in
Romans 6. It just provides a solution for sin so we don’t have to be under the
Law. The second point is the church is specifically not under the Law.
3)
Believers in
the Church Age are under a higher law; the law of
Christ which is the law of love, but its no a subjective concept of love. It is
a concept of love related to the integrity of God. This is found in Romans
8:2-4, I Corinthians 13:1-6, Galatians 5:18, 22,23. (Christ is the end of the
Law. The church is not under the Law. Believers in the Church Age are under a
higher law.)
4)
The only one of the Ten Commandments
that’s not repeated in the New Testament is in the relation to the Sabbath
observance. Now that’s really important because one of the things that
distinguishes a dispensationalist from a covenant theologian is that in
covenant theology they think that unless Jesus specifically ended something,
whatever was practiced in the Old Testament continues. So they would say that
He ended sacrifice, but everything else continues. Dispensationalists would say
unless it is said to continue, it ended. Hear the difference? See covenant
theology will say unless Jesus stopped it, it continues. Dispensations would
say unless the New Testament says it continues, it stopped. That makes a huge
difference in how they each look at various aspects of the Scripture. So we
would say that everything related to the Ten Commandments except the Sabbath
observance is repeated somewhere in the New Testament. So the Mosaic Law didn’t
establish that murder was wrong. It didn’t establish that idolatry was wrong.
It didn’t establish that adultery was wrong or false witness was wrong or
dishonoring your parents was wrong. Those were wrong and sinful from the time
of Adam’s fall. They were always sin. But, they’re still sin in the New
Testament. But the sign of the Mosaic Covenant was the Sabbath so it does not
continue.
1)
To provide a
civil, criminal, and ceremonial law code for the nation of Israel (not for any
other nation). It has civil law. It has ceremonial law. It has criminal law and
what the punishment should be. And, it’s given in terms of case law so that by
studying these cases you can extrapolate the principles and apply them to other
areas. See that’s the freedom that God gives man under the first divine
institution of individual responsibility. We look at one case and we say,
“Okay, on the basis of that we can think of other similar situations so God
gives us the pattern for one now let’s apply it in these other circumstances.”
2)
The Mosaic Law
was to teach people how a redeemed nation would live that was set apart to the
service of God. God said, “You will serve Me and all
the nations will come to you. This is how you live in a way that will attract
their attention.” So it’s teaching the people how a redeemed people are to live
set apart to the service of God.
3)
To demonstrate
that no one could consistently keep the Law (all 613 commandments.) Nobody can
do it. Therefore if you can’t keep 613 commandments, how do you think you can
measure up to God’s absolute righteousness and save yourself? You can’t. So the
purpose of the Law is to show that man can’t do it on his own. It is impossible
for man to live in such a way that pleases God.
4)
The fourth part
of the purpose of the law a fourth reason is to communicate God’s grace. Man
can’t do it on his own, but God provides a solution.
That’s the purpose that we see in the sacrifices is God is the one who provides
a substitute that can bear the penalty provisionally and teach them about His
grace until the perfect solution comes in Jesus Christ.
5)
To provide a
law code that would promote freedom and prosperity for the nation. They weren’t
enslaved to their leaders. They only became that way under the tyranny of
taxation as the leaders violated the law. (I’ll avoid the temptation to make
comments.)
6)
The Law was to
serve as a tutor to lead us to Christ, to point to the various aspects of the
person and work of Jesus Christ.
That should take us down through a
good bit of our introduction. So Leviticus is based on the divine purpose that
God chose Israel to be a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. They were chosen
to be a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. This is going to describe the
code of conduct for people who are set apart to the service of God in that
dispensation.
So let’s look at some other aspects,
some random principles related to Leviticus. First of all we can’t separate
Leviticus from its historical setting and context in the Pentateuch.
You can’t go in and say, “Okay, I’m
going to have my morning devotions in Leviticus 11 and see how that applies to
my life today.”
There are principles there, but if
you don’t really understand how Leviticus 11 fits within the structure of
Leviticus and you don’t see how Leviticus fits within the structure of these 5
books of the Pentateuch and how that at the beginning of the Scripture lays the
foundation pointing to Christ; then you’re probably going to get lost in the
weeds which is where a lot of Christians have ended up with the Mosaic Law. So
we have to understand historical setting, the context, and where this fits in
the flow of God’s revelation.
The second thing we have to
recognize in Leviticus is it assumes the reality of the Exodus event. For those
of you who recognize that probably the third or fourth most attacked historical
event in the Scripture is the Exodus event. (Creation is attacked. Noah’s flood
is attacked. The resurrection is attacked and the Exodus is attacked: “That
really didn’t happen. The Jews were just a bunch of wandering tribes and they
made the whole story up to sort of bolster their self image”).
You have many Jewish scholars who
argued for that position. That’s because they deny revelation at the very
outset. So it is reduces the Bible to a bunch of legends and stories and
doesn’t really tell us anything. But if you treat the Bible as an integrated
whole, then everything fits together.
Leviticus also presupposes the
giving of the Mosaic Law from God. Moses didn’t sit down and write this. It
didn’t originate…what I mean is it doesn’t originate from within Moses’ soul.
He doesn’t go up and meditate and contemplate his naval for 40 days and nights
up on Mt. Sinai and then come up with a law code all by himself. God is the one
who dictates it to him.
“Thus saith the Lord. Thus saith the
Lord.” is said more in Leviticus than any other book.
Leviticus is given to teach us about
what it takes to have fellowship, an ongoing relationship with God. So there is
teaching about uncleanness. We have to distinguish between being ritually
unclean and sinning because many of the things that made you ritually unclean
(touching a dead body, a woman giving birth)…many of these kinds of things
weren’t sinful. But they were related to things that were part of the curse. So
God is using them (sin) as pictures of the fact that sin permeates everything.
That’s why there is this emphasis on leaven because leaven as a picture for sin
is used because it permeates everything.
So sin permeates everything so there has to be something to deal with
that and to provide cleansing. Often when the person is unclean, it’s not that
they sacrifice the animal, collect the blood and splatter it on the person. Did
you ever think about that? Where do they splatter the blood? They splatter the
blood on the altar and on the furniture of the tabernacle because the Holy God
is living in the midst of corrupt sinful people and sin has an affect. The
Temple itself needs to constantly be cleansed from the corruption of mankind.
So the blood is put on things related to God because that’s what also needs to
be also cleansed. We’ll see passages related to that. Again emphasizing this
facet of ritual cleanness is not the same as being in fellowship; but it’s a
picture of being in fellowship. If you sin you’re out of fellowship. You
confess your sin you’re back in fellowship. Then you go and give the guilt
offering, the trespass offering as a sign of your humility before God and your
gratefulness to God.
That brings us to the basic theme of
Leviticus. Everything relates to this idea that to worship God, God demands
worshippers be set apart to Him in order for them to serve Him. God demands
that worshippers be set apart to Him (be cleansed) in order to serve Him. That
is your main focus.
We have about 5 minutes left to
start getting into the first part of Leviticus 1. So open your Bibles with me
to Leviticus 1 and we will look at the first of the 5 main sacrifices that are
described here. I could probably spend the entire summer just going through
these and I’m not going to do that because I think for the most part we can
understand them in a little more of a survey fashion.
In Leviticus 1:1 we read:
NKJ Leviticus 1:1 Now the LORD called to Moses, and spoke to him from the tabernacle of
meeting, saying,
Notice, God is the one
speaking.
NKJ Leviticus 1:2 "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'When any one of
you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of the
livestock -- of the herd and of the flock.
In the first chapter we will get
instructions on the basic foundational offering which is the burnt offering.
Now the focus here is when anyone wants to come near, this is a word that
speaks of fellowship. When you come near to God (when any of you wish to come
near to Me), then there has to be an offering to the Lord.
NKJ Leviticus 1:3 ' If his offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without
blemish; he shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle
of meeting before the LORD.
What we’ll see here is three
different sacrifices that can be brought. The first is a male bull, male of the
cattle. Second is going to be from the flock, also a male. The third is a dove
or a pigeon. Now why the difference? Well, because the wealthy could afford to
bring a bull. Those who were less wealthy but still fairly affluent could bring
a sheep or a lamb, a ram. Those who were poor who didn’t have the resources
could bring a bird. So there’s provision for everyone so that economic
circumstance didn’t keep them from being able to have a relationship with God.
Even the poorest could bring a pigeon or a dove as a sacrifice. So if you read
the chapter what you see is a lot of repetition because it’s says almost the
same thing about each one. But they all picture the same basic thing related
the burnt offering (the olah) which is sometimes referred to a holocaust
offering because everything goes up to the Lord. Everything is consumed in the
fire. While it’s not always the first sacrifice given when people come, it is
the foundational sacrifice.
In Leviticus 1:4 we read that when
someone brings the offering the person bringing the offering comes into the
door of the Tabernacle of Meeting. As they enter in they are at the entryway as
they approach the brazen altar they will sacrifice the male from the herd. It
is to be a male that’s without blemish.
In verse 3, he must offer it of his
own freewill. It’s a volitional thing.
NKJ Leviticus 1:4 'Then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it
will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.
This is a key word to understand
– holy, atonement, cleansing. These are major concepts that permeate the
rest of the Old Testament and into the New Testament. So it sets. Our
understanding gets set here in these sacrifices.
The English word atonement means
at-one-ment. It’s a word that’s coined in the early
Middle Ages as a picture of reconciliation that two people are brought
together. Man is brought to God at-one-ment. That’s
where that word comes from. It was used to translate this basic word that we
find in the Hebrew that’s pronounced kaphar or kippur
like Yom
Kippur. That’s the root word.
For many, many years in the study of
Hebrew it was thought that both of these words were identical. What we actually
have now is a recognition that these are homonyms.
They’re spelled the same, but they are two completely different words. One word
which is the first one I have listed there means to
cover. That’s a word that’s
used of Noah covering the Ark with pitch. What you probably heard and what I
heard most of my life is that what atonement does is provide
a covering for sin. You have a nice image there of the
Mercy Seat and the blood being put there and it covers sin. That’s not what the
word means. The word means to
expiate, to satisfy, to propitiate. This is the concept of KPR. In many places
when the Jewish rabbis translated kaphar in Leviticus and in Exodus and
translated it into the Greek of the Septuagint they used the Greek noun related
to katharizo
which is the word for cleansing. The same word which
we have in I John 1:9 - that God cleanses us. So cleansing and either
positional cleansing or ongoing cleansing is also a major idea in the word kaphar. So we
understand atonement here as this idea of providing some sort of sacrifice.
That’s what’s pictured here – a substitutionary sacrifice.
In the history of Christianity we’ve
had some different views here. The first view that was clearly articulated was
that of Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm lives in the 11th century and
he was the first to clearly articulate a substitutionary atonement. They
believed that before, but it wasn’t clearly articulated. He emphasized that
God’s honor was violated. We would say God’s righteousness was violated so
there had to be a satisfactory sacrifice. So Anselm is the first to understand
and clearly articulate rather that Christ died for us.
But, just about the same time that
he’s living they had a guy named Abelard. Abelard is the theological liberal. Abilard didn’t believe Christ died as a substitute; he’s
just a moral encouragement: that you look at Jesus and you see God’s love and
you are motivated to live for Him. It’s about love. It’s not righteousness or
holiness or the payment for sin. So that’s the Abelardian
view, and that was viewed by the Roman Catholic Church as
heresy. But it permeated people’s thinking down through the years in
certain heretical groups.
After the Reformation you had a
brilliant sea lawyer by the name of Hugo Grotius who came along developed a
slightly different view.
He said, “What Jesus is doing on the
cross is not paying the penalty for your sins. What Jesus is doing is showing
that God really doesn’t like sin and He’s going to punish it.”
So the purpose of the atonement is
to motivate you to not sin because you are basically good. So it’s motivational.
Here is a picture of Hugo Grotius. He was a leading jurist and he was a member
of the Arminian group and present at the Senate of Dordt. Later he separated
from them to some degree. Most Arminians did not go
along with him. In his view the character of God is diminished and the
atonement is unnecessary, but it demonstrates that God doesn’t like sin.
He’s not as Calvin Coolidge once
said when he came home…You know he is called silent
Cal. He had gone to church and somebody asked him when he came back, “What was
the sermon about?”
He said “Sin.”
“What did they say about it?”
“God doesn’t like it.”
Well, Grotius has that view of the
atonement that it’s simply to demonstrate that God doesn’t like sin. So it
demonstrates the righteousness of God’s judgment.
Now this is really important to
understand how this affects history. When you get into the early 19th
century, there was a second great awakening in American history. A lot of bad
things came out of the Second Great Awakening – Mormonism, Jehovah
Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists to name a few
transindentalists, utopians all kinds of other people. There is a major shift
in the way people thought about God and the Bible and man as a result of
that.
One of the leading evangelists who
is considered the Father of Revivalism was a man by the name of Charles
Grandison Finney. Finney had the same view that Grotius did on the atonement.
He didn’t believe that man was born a sinner. Adam became a sinner, but every
human being after him is totally free of Adam’s sin. Every human being is born
like Adam was created - completely free of sin. That goes back to what is
called Pelagianism which was a heresy at the time of
Augustine that man is born free of sin and he is basically good. If man is
basically good, he just needs to be motivated. Sermons need to be motivational
to encourage man to live to please God. You don’t need to talk about God
punishing sin. That’s just a bad concept. You can see how this has impacted
things down through the ages.
Well if individual people are
improvable and perfectible, then society is improvable and perfectible. So the
purpose of the church is to improve and perfect society and bring in the
kingdom. So there’s post-millennialism there. But there’s no true biblical understanding
of sin, righteousness, justice or substitutionary atonement.
Tonight is just the night for tests.
I have another little test. This comes out of a current publication. One other
note is Finney is the founder of Oberlin College and Seminary – Oberlin
School of Music where Louis Sperry Chafer went. He wasn’t influenced…he hated Finneyism. Finney was the first to invent walk-the-aisle
invitation thing. A lot of things came out of that period that man is going to
perfect society. So you have the clean up social ills. That’s the purpose for
the church. You clean up social ills. This kind of mentality will lead to
Marxist theology, liberation theology. It’s going to produce the radical
suffrage movement. The Now Gang of the 19th century was just as bad as
the Now Gang of the 20th century.
But I just want to focus on one
final little test here of discernment related to atonement. You have Brian
McLaren who is a leader in the Emergent Church Movement. He recently spoke to a
group of people related to the church growth crowd up at Willow Creek Church.
In an article about that I have a summary of McLaren’s views. This is what
influences the modern Emergent Church Movement. I want you to tell me from this
quote what his view of the atonement is.
He wrote in his 2007 book:
Everything must change.
That’s the name of his book. Doesn’t
that sound familiar? Hmm. I wonder who he wants for
president.
…that the doctrine of hell needs radical
rethinking. He argues that people who believe in hell may be inclined to dominate and take advantage of other people rather than to
help them. The orthodox understanding that Jesus will return at a future date
and forcefully conquer all of His enemies also needs rethinking according to
McLaren. The book of Revelation does not actually teach that there will be a
New Heavens and New Earth (he wrote) but that a new way of living is possible
within this universe if humans will follow Jesus’ example.
Right there you’re thinking wrong.
You just said “I know. It’s an Abelardian
view. He believes in the example theory.” Keep reading.
By going to the cross (McLaren argued in his book), Jesus committed an
act similar to the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in the late 1980’s. He placed Himself in harms way to
demonstrate the injustice of a society that would harm a peaceful and godly
man.
The key word is injustice. Jesus is
demonstrating God’s justice on the cross. That’s the Grotian
view. He’s an out-and-out heretic. He’s right in line with Finney and with
Grotius and there’s no understanding of sin as sin with these people. This is
pure heresy. People don’t have any biblical or theological discernment so this
is why we have to understand concepts like these sacrifices and offerings to
see that substitution is the key to having a relationship with God and always
has been. So it builds into some discernment.
So that gives us a little
introduction to burnt offering. We will come back and talk about it more next
time. Let’s bow our heads in prayer.