I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on August 1, 2010. The sermon text is Matthew 1:1-16.
Image made by http://www.wordle.net
Tag Archives: Gospel
Son of Abraham
The Flavor of the Savior
I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on July 4, 2010. The sermon text is Colossians 4:2-6.
Image made by http://www.wordle.net
Double Crushed
Disobedience to God’s Law carries two different penalties. There is the human penalty applied for crimes with physical repercussions: theft, murder, adultery, etc.; but then there is also a divine penalty applied for sins of the heart: covetousness, faithlessness, dishonesty, and others.
Justice absolutely demands this duality. A government charged with enforcing the law cannot make decisions about what goes on inside a person. Human law enforcement must concern itself only with outward expressions of disobedience. So, the person who secretly worships a god other than Yahweh should feel no wrath from the magistrate, but if the same person openly offers a sacrifice to a false god, then such a person is to be put to death (Deuteronomy 17:2-5).
So, one side of this coin is that human government is to punish outward disobedience to the Law, and the sentence may only be carried out on the basis of witnesses (Numbers 35:30), further cementing the fact that heart sins may not be punished by the human magistrate, since there are no witnesses. The other side of the coin, however, is that God looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). That is the purview of His justice, and we certainly ought not to think that the retribution He has in store for transgression of His Law in the inner man is inferior to that which the human magistrate can dish out.
The greatest of all commandments in the Law is actually a heart command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4, cf. Matthew 22:37). A human court cannot measure this love within a person, and so has no jurisdiction, but God can and does, and He will pour out eternal punishment on those who disobey (Matthew 25:41-46).
This duality of punitive justice – civil and divine – is the reason why Jesus died on a cross and not some other way. He was guilty of neither an outward disobedience to the Law nor an inner one, yet He suffered the consequence of both. He was put to death by the magistrate – the highest form of human punishment for crime – and He was cursed by God. The truth of the latter part of that statement is made clear to us from the Law itself:
And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)
The hanged man is cursed by God! So by being crucified, Jesus bore the wrath of a criminal against man and a criminal against God when He was neither. This is the essence of penal substitutionary atonement. Christ did not suffer the wrath of both forms of justice for His own sins, because He had none, but instead He did so for those who trust in Him (Isaiah, 53:4-6, Romans 3:21-26, Galatians 3:13).
This is the great truth of the Gospel: the sacrifice of the sinless for the sinful. Accept no substitutes.
The Hope of the Gospel
I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on March 14, 2010. The sermon text is Colossians 1:21-23.
Image made by http://www.wordle.net
Joyful Strength
I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on February 28, 2010. The sermon text is Colossians 1:11-14.
Image made by http://www.wordle.net
Changing Places
If I were to get pulled over for speeding, I could not get away by telling the police officer to give my ticket to someone else. As the one who deserves the penalty, I am in no way authorized to suggest a transference of that penalty. Likewise, in a human court of law, the judge cannot sentence an innocent person for the crime of the guilty party. That is not within his domain of authority. The state has authorized him to try cases and mete out appropriate punishments, but since he is neither the offended party or the one who makes the laws that he enforces (I guess we’re not talking about Supreme Court justices here), he cannot simply reassign just penalties wherever he likes.
The situation is a lot different when I’m the offended party. If someone harms me or my property, I have a right to either press charges or not, but I still don’t have the right to shift who I press the charges against. If one person steals my television, I can’t insist that someone else take the blame. That is because I have not been wronged by the other person, and so it would not be just to swap the penalty. Also, I’m not the one who has made the law, so I can’t change how the penalties are carried out. I’m under someone else’s authority on this matter.
God does not operate under these considerations, however. That is simply because He is the One who has both crafted all of the laws and the One who has been offended by the breaking of those laws. All of the authority to decide what ought to be done at that point belongs to Him. As the Owner and King of everything, He can do whatever He wants with His property.
I was reminded of this as I read Numbers chapter 3 this morning. When God freed the people of Israel from their slavery to the Egyptians, He told them that all of their firstborn males would be devoted to Him. This was because God had killed all of the firstborn of Egypt, but spared the Hebrews. So, instead of killing the Hebrew children, He demanded that they be devoted to Him and then redeemed by a sacrifice in their stead. As the Lawmaker, He could demand an animal sacrifice in place of a human death. And then in Numbers 3:11-13, He declared that all of the males of the tribe of Levi would be His instead of the firstborn males from the other tribes. He switched out the requirement again, and once again He had every right to do so because He made the requirement in the first place, and all of those who were affected belonged totally to Him since He had “bought” them by saving them in the Exodus.
And of course, this is exactly what happened at the cross in the death of Jesus Christ. Since God is the One who made the laws that were broken by sinful humanity, He, as the offended party, has the both the right to dictate the terms of the punishment and the right to call for a substitute to receive the penalty if He so desires. The only other consideration is that since God is perfectly just, the penalty that is meted out must not be lessened or redundant with some other penalty. All just penalties must be fully endured for the sake of justice. In other words, He couldn’t just double up the penalty on one who is already guilty in order to redeem somebody else. You can’t set one murderer free by killing another murderer twice. Justice would not be done.
So the penalty must fall on One who does not deserve a penalty on His own. But if there was such a person outside of God Himself, then God would be unjust in transferring the sins of disobedient humanity to that one. No, the only solution is for the Judge Himself, the offended party and the Maker of the laws, to accept on Himself the punishments for the disobedience of His own rules. If He has to be just and He wants to redeem the guilty, then this is the only choice. And so Christ, the eternal Image of God – His manifestation – took on mortal flesh to be able to receive the blow from God’s wrath that we deserved. It is simultaneously the infinitely perfect display of love, justice, mercy, wrath, righteousness, and grace. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Unburnable Bush
The bush that burns without being consumed (Exodus 3) is a puzzle. It’s just as puzzling to readers today as it was to Moses thousands of years ago. We want to stop and examine this phenomenon just as much as he did.
Why is the bush not burned?
Clearly this meeting is full of revelation from God. This is where He revealed His eternal Name to His servant Moses. The signs of the staff-tuned-snake-turned-staff and the hand-made-leprous-made-clean also revealed something about God’s power and character. The instruction for Moses to remove His sandals because the ground was holy further revealed God’s character. But what was the fire in the bush saying?
Moses gives us an indication that the significance of this theophany (a display of God’s presence) is radically different than we might at first think in Deuteronomy 4:24: “For Yahweh your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” How does the man who first meets God in the symbol of a bush not being consumed with fire end up declaring that this same God is a consuming fire?
What we find here at the bush is nothing less than the wonder and mystery of the gospel. The fire of God speaks everywhere of His judgment. It was fire from God that consumed Nadab and Abihu for not worshiping in the commanded way (Leviticus 10:1-2). He is the jealous God that consumes all who will not worship Him in eternal flames (Deuteronomy 4:24, Revelation 14:11). This fire is holy fire from a God that is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13). And yet here, in this dry bush in the desert – a plant that should be consumed almost instantly – the fire dwells but does not consume. And standing before the bush is a murderer (Exodus 2:12).
From the expulsion from Eden to this point in God’s revelation of Himself to man there has only been one sin enumerated that carries with it the death penalty, and that’s murder (Genesis 9:6). So now here, standing before the presence of the Judge of the universe is one who has no right to appeal the sentence he deserves, and yet God appears as a flame that does not consume. Herein is the essence of the gospel: the God who made us is a holy and just God who must punish sin, and yet He is also merciful and gracious, giving life where death is due.
How can He do this? This is the wonder of Christ and His substitutionary atonement. Sin must be consumed by God’s holy wrath, it cannot simply be forgotten. To simply forget sin would mean that God has no concern for justice. But in Christ, God is shown to be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26). This is because Jesus stood in Moses’ place and took the wrath of God that Moses deserved onto Himself. He became a curse for him so that he would not be cursed (Galatians 3:13). The fire did not consume the dry kindling because the heat of its flame had been redirected to a Substitute.
We will all meet this flame at one point, if we haven’t already. He is always a consuming fire, but for those whose faith is firmly in Christ, the fire is a beauty and a wonder, for the heat of the blaze has been spent on another. Many, however, will meet this fire on different circumstances and it will be torment, for it will consume them in their sin, and they will wish more than anything that those that they love who are still alive could know the Savior (Luke 16:19-31).
Don’t wait until it gets to that point. This fire now burns all through the highly flammable pages of a book we call the Bible, and yet it is not consumed. It reveals all we need to know of this great and awesome God. It speaks of His Law, His justice, and His grace through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. You can meet God on the same terms that Moses did, and find the same Savior that he did (Hebrews 11:23-26). Don’t miss the wonder.
The Gospel in Names
Names are important. That’s an idea that is somewhat lost on many people in today’s culture. Parents nowadays choose names for their children that merely sound pretty or are unique. Seemingly gone is the art of naming a child for his or her intended destiny.
The Bible, however, is full of the rich use of naming for conveying meaning for a life. Jacob, for instance, begins his life with a name that means ‘Deceiver’; and it was one that was very appropriate for the boy who tricked both his father and his brother. Later on, he is given the name Israel, which means ‘Wrestles with God’. This was perfectly illustrative of his own encounter with God as well as the combined experience of all those tribes who would later bear his name. And four times we read that God has given him the name Jeshurun – ‘Upright’ – speaking of the fact that God has justified him.
In the 62nd chapter of Isaiah, this naming of God’s people gets thrown into high-gear with no less than ten different names being given for the people of God.
In verse 1, God begins speaking to Zion and Jerusalem – that mountain and city that were the symbol for God’s presence with His people. Then in verse 2, He tells them that He will give them a new name. He says in verse 4 that they shall no more be called Azubah and Shemamah: “Forsaken” and “Desolate”. The fact that they were called these things shows God’s judgment against their sin and their absolute inability to do anything about it. All of the good names that God is about to bestow on His people come purely from His grace to completely undeserving sinners.
Verse 4 contines by saying, “but you shall be called Hephzibah (‘My Delight Is in Her’) and your land Beulah (‘Married’).” God will take delight in and marry His people not because they are beautiful – quite the opposite; they were Forsaken and Desolate! Rather, He will make them beautiful by His own electing grace, deciding that He will bless them rather than curse them (as they deserve). By His grace and for His glory He will take a hopeless and bankrupt people and make them His own.
Another four names are fired off in quick succession at the end of the chapter: “The Holy People”, “The Redeemed of the Lord”, “Sought Out”, and “A City Not Forsaken” (verse 12). The final two are a complete reversal of the names “Forsaken” and “Desolate”, but the first two give the glorious reason for the change os destiny. The people (and this whole passage refers to God’s work in Christ’s Church) have been made a Holy People precisely because they have been “Redeemed by the Lord”.
Here’s the truth behind the names: God takes people who are forsaken and desolate – absolutely and completely without recourse to save themselves – and He makes them to be holy so that He can delight in the them. And He does this through the redemption that was purchased on the cross when Christ drank the cup of God’s wrath that was poured for us. And if we trust in this glorious Christ and His redemption, then it is at that cross where God takes away our name, “Sinner”, and names us His “Saints”.
