Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 3, 2021 | Church Words - Atonement

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October 3, 2021 | Church Words - Atonement · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Connor.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if you see um lights that are on right now, we need to give a hand to our tech team uh because their power went out across the campus last night and they got all of their steps in this morning before church even started, going back and forth and making sure that anything was on.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: They are like the brakes on our car.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We don't appreciate them until um something stops working, and so just thankful to the tech team who got stuff going.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Also, Sam is on vacation, our tech director, and we think he sabotaged it.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I haven't found evidence otherwise.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um we are in our second week in a series called Church Words, and uh I'm really excited about this morning because uh I, in many ways, I am a nerd, um, but I like being a nerd about the Bible.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're you're gonna get a dose of that this morning because uh the word that we're talking about this morning, just going into it, is atonement.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And atonement traditionally uh means to make reparations for a wrong that was done to someone, right?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when I think of atonement, my mind goes back to when I was in first grade and uh we we I was sitting next to this um girl and we each got a piece of candy, and when we went off to it was time to read, the teacher's gonna read to us, I stole her piece of candy, and it wasn't, gosh, that was I felt like a lot of judgment there.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that wasn't good, but it wasn't even a good piece of candy either.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I felt terrible about it, for all of those of you who are frustrated at me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I felt terrible about it, and so I went back the next day and I brought a bunch of my good Halloween candy, and I just put it into her desk, like five or six pieces with no explanation.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say anything about what I had done.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so she goes into her desk and she's like, Why is there all this candy in my desk?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, man, that's weird.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Man, whoever did that, man, whoo, just be glad you've got candy.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was just, it wasn't really atonement, it was just me making a situation worse than it had been before.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we talk about true atonement, we mean that we are truly making right the wrong that had been done.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And especially when we are talking about our faith in God, um, we have to understand who it is that we have offended.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, that um going against, like we talked about last week, being a rebel of the king of the universe uh is a really significant thing.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Transgressing him faces severe consequences.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we talk about the word atonement, we see, we know these things from the Bible that God dearly loves his people and yet they have sinned, and those two things like oil and water, they don't mix.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: God can't have a relationship with the profane because he is holy.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so then God, we we see him trying to answer this question: how can a holy God have a relationship with a creation that continuously and purposefully tries to be unholy?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the Old Testament, God introduces the sacrificial system.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, to us today, um, if you read the Old Testament and you see the sacrifices that God required, you might think it's a little odd.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it was important for the Israelites, who were in a covenant relationship with God, to understand that the sins that they were doing continuously, they had a penalty.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: A price had to be paid for what they were doing.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't guiltless.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so God created this system of sacrifice, that year after year they were going to be reminded of their sins so that they kept this correct posture before the Lord.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: But there was still this big problem, which was how can a holy God have a relationship with an unholy people?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in this system in the Old Testament, God also created certain festivals and rituals that the Israelites were supposed to carry out in order that they could come together and be with God.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so the one that relates to atonement is namely the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually about two weeks ago in the Jewish calendar.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Day of Atonement was this really significant day.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was the most holy day in the Jewish calendar, and it came about after Aaron's sons, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got Moses and his brother Aaron.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron was the priest, and Aaron's sons weren't the best priests, weren't the best priests, and they offered um unholy fire before the Lord in his temple.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're not entirely sure what that was, um, but regardless, it was profane, it disrespected the Lord, and they were ultimately killed for their disobedience.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, you've got Aaron, who has just seen his sons abuse the holiness of the Lord, and then God comes in and gives instructions to Moses about what the Day of Atonement is supposed to look like.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so God gives these instructions to Moses, and it's going to be different than anything that they've done before.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is how God is temporarily bridging this gap that has been created by the Israelites' sin.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you remember, the the tabernacle, it's not a temple yet.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're still wandering in the desert.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle was sort of this meeting place where God could be with his people.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if it you picture it kind of like a Venn diagram, what was happening at the tabernacle was sort of a meeting of two realms, uh two worlds that had been overlapping each other in the Garden of Eden, but since that point in time had been divided almost entirely.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the tabernacle was a way that they could connect, that especially in the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was at, God's presence truly dwelt there.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is the Day of Atonement?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, like I said, it was special.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was unlike any other day that had happened in the calendar.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the priest, in this case Aaron, and later on the other priests, was supposed to wear a special outfit.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't his normal uh priestly garb with the stones and the hat and this kind of thing.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was a simple white tunic.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: We see the uh the instructions for the Day of Atonement in Leviticus.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: The tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atonement.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: You are to hold a sacred assembly and practice self-denial.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: You are to present a food offering to the Lord.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: On this particular day, you are not to do any work, for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement for yourselves before the Lord your God.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is focused on making right the wrongs that the nation of Israel had done in the past year.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so the priest dresses differently, recognizing his humility before the Lord, and then there are a couple sacrifices.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: The first one was a bull, and the bull was to cover the sins of the priest himself, just so Aaron could enter into the holy place and commune with God.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But after that, there were two goats.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Two goats, and these goats, very interesting, okay?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: These two goats had two separate and distinct purposes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: The first goat, he atoned for the sins of the tabernacle.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so what would happen is Aaron, after having sacrificed the bull, would bring this first goat and would sacrifice it, and uh the blood of that goat would then be sprinkled on the different elements of the tabernacle, namely the most holy place, the tent of meeting, which is just sort of the enclosure, and then the altar itself.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why that had to happen was because the Bible tells us that in some way, just the sins of the Israelite camp that was around the tabernacle, right, because they surrounded this.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: The tent of meeting was in the middle, that the sins of Israel was physically tainting the temple here.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: That because of what they were doing wrong, that God couldn't even enter into this space or accept their sacrifices because it was physically impure, setting aside the spiritual, the moral condition.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And why this is so interesting is because later, I'm gonna talk about it more in a second, but when you've read Leviticus and you've seen all these different laws and rules for, you know, how many cubits long this needs to be, and how many tassels, and how many, all those things, and you're like, okay, one, two, skip a few, and we go past that part, it's because the tabernacle on earth was a physical representation of the tabernacle in heaven and God's dwelling place.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was a connection that had to be made here.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this first goat, it was a physical purification of the space.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the second goat, the second goat was quite a bit different.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: What would happen is the second goat would come up, and Aaron would place his head on the goat, and symbolically, all of Israel's sin was placed on this goat.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of their sins for the last year.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was placed on this goat, and then they had like a goat guy.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: This dude, his job was to take this goat and to go out to a desolate place, which is not hard to find when you're in the middle of the desert.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: But they were to go out to a desolate place, far away from the camp, and then release the goat.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Release the goat?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this whole thing was sad.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to release the goat and just let it go free so far away that it couldn't return to camp.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it was supposed to be a representation of what God was doing with the sin of Israel through all of these practices.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: That the sin that was the Israel's sin that had been placed on this goat, it was going just as far away as the goat had.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when they came back, um they were able to move forward, understanding this connection that their God had forgiven them and having faith in this ritual.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, uh, William Tyndale, when he translated the first English Bible from the Hebrew and the Greek in the 16th century, he used the word escapegoat to describe this second goat, and through time, that is actually how we get the word scapegoat, is from William Tyndale in his Bible talking about the Day of Atonement.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got this system, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: This Day of Atonement, and it means something really significant.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is also symbolic, though.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do we know that it was symbolic?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, scapegoat, here we go.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I didn't move on.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Give you guys a second to read my slide here.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Hebrews 10, 3 through 4, and verse 10.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It says, But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year after year.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this day of atonement, like so many things in the Old Testament, was prefiguring, it was a type, it was foreshadowing what was coming in the future.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was part of God's plan.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a bad part of God's plan.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was good.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: The law was good, but it served a purpose that later Jesus fulfilled.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so the book of Hebrews, which is in the New Testament, tells us that these sacrifices that they were doing, they served a purpose, but the purpose was to be that physical reminder that year after year after year, until the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the Israelites practiced this ritual, constantly being reminded that they did not measure up to God and that they could not have the relationship with him because of their sin.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's really significant.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus then takes that and turns it on its head.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, think for a second, you're uh like many parents here, your toddlers when they're eating, and they make a constant mess every single time they eat.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: They have to, you have to constantly pick up after them, clean them, wipe them, and then as soon as they eat the next time, you're doing the process all over again.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the sacrificial system here.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Israelite continued to make messes, and God continually, willingly, happily wiped their faces clean.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: But for us today, what Jesus is doing is like if because of Christ's sacrifice, we never make a mess again.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not actually true.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: We know that we sin constantly, but in the way that God views us, we are clean because of Christ's sacrifice.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But like I mentioned, Jesus was in Yom Kippur, this day of atonement, this making right the wrongs.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was ultimately fulfilled in Christ.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 9, 11 through 12 says, but Christ has appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: In the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is not of this creation.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Stop there.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about here is the heavenly tabernacle where God is dwelling.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, the reason why there are all those instructions about how many inches long every part of the temple needs to be is because it is a reflection of what's in heaven.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of places in the Bible that say this.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus died as a sacrifice.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you're seeing these wonderful connections here.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus died as a sacrifice, just like in that old system, but instead of Aaron sprinkling the altar, Jesus goes into the better place that is in heaven and sprinkles his own blood.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: He entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: That is the final plan.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the final plan.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: He is the final sacrifice.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: That there is no longer a need to do this year after year, because Jesus died once and for all.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was perfect, he was sinless, blameless, he walked an upright life, he did not deserve the punishment that he received, and critically, he did it voluntarily.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: He did it for us.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um you might be asking the question, or somebody might be asking the question.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: If Jesus died for my sins, which he did, I understand that that means that I'm now clean before God.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that I get to have a relationship with him.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: But why?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And moreover, how?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we start to get into the weeds, and this is the stuff that really makes me kind of come alive, um, because we get to talk about some atonement theories, alright?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't hear any cheers or applause, but don't worry, you're gonna get there, alright?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So here we're looking at this question about why was Jesus' death um complete?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why was it perfect?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because over history there have been some different attempts to explain why the cross still works today.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are a couple of them that we're just gonna give like a 20,000-foot view on so that you can understand, and then finally I'll explain to you the one that TBC holds to.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the first one is called the Moral Atonement Theory.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was held most popularly by Saint Augustine, and so uh this theory says that Jesus' death on the cross impacted us morally, that when we see him, sort of as we look back at his death and resurrection, our lives are changed because of his sacrifice.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And morally, we feel like through the power of the Holy Spirit, we should be honoring God with our lives because of the example that he set.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus' death was mostly a moral benefit to us.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the criticism of this theory is that it does not deal really with why it was effective, simply just sort of the outpouring, the byproduct of that.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that one was sort of neglected and set aside um fairly early on in the church's history.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then came the ransom theory.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: This one was held by Origen.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the ransom theory says that Jesus' death was paying a ransom or a debt.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the most popular version of the ransom theory says that it was to the devil himself, that basically he was owed something uh because of sin in the world, and that by kind of like um the old uh uh what am I trying to say, vending machines, and you put your quarter in with a string on it, right?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you yank it out, that that was basically what happened to the devil.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: That Jesus paid this ransom, um, but then actually he was like, I'm not dead.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: See uh was resurrected three days later, the devil didn't get to hold on to him, right?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the ransom theory, generally speaking.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with that is that um we we probably shouldn't be saying that we are paying any sort of debt to Satan.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't need anything, he doesn't deserve anything, he is God's enemy.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that to be fair, that's kind of an oversimplification, but when you get down to it, that's that's where we sort of land.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: The last one is called Christus Victor.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Christus Victor is Latin for Christ the Conqueror.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what this one says, and it sounds really good, and frankly, there are a lot of people who hold to part of Christus Victor today, um, but Christus Victor says that Jesus, his death, primarily defeated evil.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Defeated death and the effects of evil, and through his death and resurrection, there was no more evil in the world.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, again, while there's a portion of that that's true, we would probably say that really when Jesus returns once again in his second coming, that is when evil is fully stomped out.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: That though he did defeat death, which is part of the penalty of sin, primarily what was happening was he was a substitute for us.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: He took the punishment that we deserved.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Christus Victor places the law, the Old Testament part, in a bit of a precarious position because it says that Jesus had to die and was forced to die because of an evil law.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And like we have already said, the law was not evil, it was necessary so that the Israelites could understand their sin.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, all of that, atonement theories.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: The one that we hold to, though, and the one that is most accepted today, is called substitutionary atonement.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's a church word for you, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Substitutionary atonement, also known as the penal substitution theory or vicarious atonement.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard this one before.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Substitutionary atonement.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus pushed you out of the way so he could get hit by the bus.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus took the punishment that we deserved as a complete and full substitute on the cross, right?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Took the punishment that we deserved from God's righteous and holy judgment.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that more next week.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: He took the punishment that we deserved.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Substitutionary atonement just says that Jesus was your substitute on the cross.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: This one uh was popularized by um Martin Luther and John Calvin.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: They took Anselm's theory of satisfaction, which is fairly similar to this in the 12th century, ramped it, changed a few things, crossed out a few uh words, and became substitutionary atonement.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: This has been the prevailing theory um of the reform or since the Reformation.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's the one that is most held today.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this atonement conversation I think is beautiful, and I think it's important because your theology is important and it is beautiful too.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the deeper that we dive into these things, even if some of that was not as important to you, uh the more that you understand about why Jesus' death was necessary, it helps us walk forward having a deeper relationship with Christ Himself.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: We can appreciate what he has done because we understand it moreover.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now this is the point where we are going to, oh, that's right.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I had this in here because I wanted us to see just instead of me talking what the Bible says about this relationship between us and Christ and his substitution.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 53, such a beautiful um chapter in the in Isaiah about the suffering servant.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's prefiguring Christ, it's talking about Jesus without saying his name.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: But he was pierced because of our rebellion.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Crushed because of our iniquities, punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: We all went astray like sheep, we all have turned to our own way, and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: That tells us everything we need to know right there.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: That God diverted his wrath and poured it out on Jesus, even though it was meant for us.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it needed to happen because God is holy, and so he had to judge the evil in the world, but he put himself in the way of it so that he could take the brunt of that.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: J.I.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Packer, one of my favorite authors, says this.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit of an inception quote, because he's quoting Martin Luther here.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: But he says the presentation of the death of Christ as the substitute exhibits the love of the cross more richly, fully, gloriously, and glowingly than any other account of it.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Luther saw this and gloried in it.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: He once wrote to a friend, learn to know Christ and Him crucified.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Learn to sing to Him and say, Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: You became what you were not, so that I might become what I was not.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: What a great and wonderful exchange.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Was there ever such love?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're throwing around all these church words, it's important to remind what's undergirding every single one of these decisions is God's love for us.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's no church word for substitutionary atonement if God doesn't dearly love you.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he's doing it because he wants to have a relationship with you.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was true about the sacrifices in the Old Testament.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I want to be with my people, but I can't because I am holy, and so we're going to do this thing so that I can have a better relationship with them.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing is happening with Jesus, except it is once and for all.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the part of the message where we go to an intermission, right?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are about to head into our most controversial topic of this morning, uh, the one that has the most debate about the atonement.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just thought we could look at a puppy for a second and just um we're heading into uh, like I said, the most controversial topic.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the question we're trying to answer.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did Jesus die only for those who were later going to accept him as their savior?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or did Jesus die for everyone in the entire world?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: One more time.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did Jesus die only for those who are going to accept him in the future as their savior, or did Jesus die for everyone in the world?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you believe that Jesus only died for those who would accept him in the future through some kind of God's foreknowledge, then you would hold to something called limited atonement.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we are talking about the extent of who was covered by the blood of Christ at his death.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are um there are two main arguments for limited atonement.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that in like Isaiah 53 and some places in John, you could make the argument that the way that Jesus is talking is only in reference to those who are already God's people, or that God knew would be his people.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah 53, it says that the servant is going to die for his people.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: In John, Jesus says that he lays down his life for his sheep as the good shepherd.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You could take those verses to mean, like sheep in the New Testament, is typically a reference to those who are Christians.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so that would be one of the arguments for limited atonement, that in a few select passages, that the way that Jesus is speaking or that Isaiah is speaking, that it might be construed as Jesus only dying for the elect.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: The other reason would be that some people would say that substitutionary atonement, right, the thing that we believe, that Jesus died in your place, is only truly effective in honoring to the Lord if everyone who Jesus died for is also saved.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: That there should not be a case, in other words, where somebody is Jesus has died for someone and they reject him as their savior, that that would not be a true uh substitute and that would be an offense to God.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be the argument for limited atonement.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't agree with that.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I have three really good reasons I think that we should all believe in something called unlimited atonement.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to a caveat to this, unlimited atonement is not universalism, meaning that like everybody in the entire world is going to be saved no matter what.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Unlimited atonement just says that Jesus died so that all have the opportunity to come to him, and some will choose not to.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Unlimited atonement, there are three, I think, really good arguments for this.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: First, there are a lot more references in the Bible to how God's intention for Christ's sacrifice is for the whole world.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Namely, the one that we all know, John 3.16.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh two things in that one, right?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the world, God so loved the world, that word in Greek is cosmos, which means the inhabitants of the entire world.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: What's in view there is that God so loved the entire world, he loved everybody in it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: He loved those who had died, were living, and were going to come.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that who whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most popular verse, but there are quite a few more of them.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are a lot more references to the world and even just the spirit of Jesus' ministry and the way he talks about like why he's here on earth is to like and to seek the lost, right?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like to seek out those who don't know him really gives you the impression that Jesus wanted everybody to have the opportunity to come to him.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Even when he is on the cross and being crucified, he tells those who are crucifying him that they can believe in him and be saved.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: He asks God to forgive them.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: People who have no idea who he is, don't even really care about this guy that they are crucifying until they do later believe.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So there are more references to the world.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: The second is the universal Passover Lamb.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, all the stuff that we've been talking about in the Old Testament this morning.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about the Passover Lamb, you talk about the Day of Atonement, both of them, they're six uh months apart in the Jewish calendar, the two most important days.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them, the way that God worked was He said, This is the ritual, this is the sacrifice, it applies to every single person, but you've got to have faith that this applies to you for it to work.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: That was the way the Day of Atonement worked with the goat.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the goat, uh, Aaron put the sins of the entire nation on it.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: It left, it went away, it was the scapegoat, but you had to believe that what was happening there was a forgiveness of sin.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with the Passover lamb.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody received the instruction about putting the blood on the doorpost in Egypt, but you had to do it and you had to believe in it for it to be effective.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are other examples too.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: The prevailing example of the way that God saves his people in the Bible is through this unlimited manner.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, we've got some early church support.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a tertiary thing, it's not the most important, but um limited atonement is the L and Tulip for people who support Calvinism.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the most um uh extreme view, I think, that Calvinists would hold to.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh even, ironically, John Calvin himself did not support it.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is what he's saying, this is his commentary, right?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the church reformers back in the 1500s.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is his commentary on John 3.16, for God so loved the world.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is a remarkable commendation of faith that it frees us from everlasting destruction, and he has employed the universal tomb whosoever, both to invite all indiscriminately to partake of life and to cut off every excuse from unbelievers.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Such is also the import of the term world.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: He shows himself to be reconciled to the whole world when he invites all men, without exception, to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Calvin was in support of unlimited atonement.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we've covered a lot of church words this morning.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of church words.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you've probably asked the question here: okay, theology is nice, and it is nice, but what about me and how does this apply to my life?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a portion of what we've talked about that we just directly connect and attach to ourselves, that we grow in our understanding of who Jesus is, why he died, and God's plan for the world.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's important in and of itself.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a sort of a secondary marker here too, which is that the whole reason all of this stuff was happening is because God wants to have a relationship with you.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: All of these sacrifices, all of the talk about atonement, was him taking the responsibility of our mistakes, right?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to talk for a moment as we head towards the end this morning and then into the Lord's Supper, um, what we are supposed to take away from the atonement.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got, like last week, a statement and a question that I think applies to both those who don't know Jesus and those who have known him for a while.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: The final sacrifice has been given.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: How will you respond?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: The final sacrifice is Christ.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have uh yearly um re-sacrificial uh rituals.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus died 2,000 years ago, he rose again, his eternal spirit is um what we rely on today.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: He is at the right hand of the Father covering for us and all of our sins today.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: His blood is still good.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: What he did 2,000 years ago is still good today.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: We aren't gonna get another sacrifice.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: This was the end game, basically.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: We are in the end game of God's plan.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: We are just waiting for Jesus to return.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is the final sacrifice.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: How will you respond?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: To those who don't know Christ, I just want to say this.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: By hearing the gospel, you have to respond.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can't not respond to the gospel.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can walk away saying that, you know, you you just believe something different, that you believe in a higher power, but maybe not all of this stuff.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get behind Jesus.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that, but you see that there's a binary choice.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: That accepting the gospel in its totality is what is asked of us by our Creator.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: He did all of this work and he says, simply, will you will you just believe that what I did was true?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: That like all of this work that I did so I could have a relationship with you, will you just like accept that and understand it?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Know that you are clean, you don't have to do anything for it, that like by grace you have been saved through faith.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Will you just accept that, please?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's one option.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the other option is anything else.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is a rejection of that.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is saying that we don't believe in who God is and what Jesus has done.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And to come full circle, if that is the case, if we reject God, if we say that we don't believe these things, then we are right back at square one where God said, How can I have a relationship with this person, with these people who choose to hate me so often and act like they don't care for who I am?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: How can I have a relationship with them if they choose to do that?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have a relationship with God without Jesus.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have a relationship with God without accepting that he's your Savior.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself says in John 14, 6, I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to accept that.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And anything else is a rejection of the Lord.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: The second part though is for those who have accepted Jesus, who know what it means to be saved by the Creator, who hopefully, right, appreciate his love and why he did all of this, how will we respond?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: One final verse for you.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Never mind, it's not on there.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um the verse that I was uh gonna show you, it's in Hebrews.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this verse says that because of the blood of Christ, because of all of the things that we recognize, all the stuff that I've been talking about this morning, every single bit of it, because of all of those things and this discussion about how we get to the point where we are now, there are two things that the writer of Hebrews wanted us to remember about how our life should change because of the atonement.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that we would have a conscience that was clear of dead works.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what he meant by that was that we are no longer Old Testament people, right?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: We read the Old Testament, it still applies to our life, but we are not under that system.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came and fulfilled it.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are no longer beholden to the dead works of the law that were there for a time for a purpose, but now are no longer needed.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that, part of clearing our conscience is that like last week where we talked about depravity and our own sinful condition, right?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And some of us felt like really guilty understanding how much we had done against this holy God, how we had been rebels our entire life.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the clear conscience and the purpose of the atonement is that you would let that um sort of go.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: That you would no longer hold shame over yourself, that you would just use it as a motivation to draw deeper into your relationship with God, and that you wouldn't allow it to be a burden on yourself any longer.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: You are new covenant people.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you trust in Christ, you are um you are provided for under the new covenant of Christ.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that means that you can have a clear conscience, a genuinely clear conscience, knowing that you have been forgiven.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: You are like Aaron walking up the steps to go and sacrifice, you have a white uh linen on.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is perfectly clean, and that is how God sees you.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the second thing that the writer of Hebrews said was that if that is the case for us, which it is, how much more motivation should we have then to serve the living God?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: If all of this has been done and we had no role to play in it, other than accepting it, what a debt has been paid on our behalf.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you because it I struggle sometimes, just myself personally, with this internal wrestling about still trying to believe that I am saved by the good things that I do, even though I know in my head that that's not true.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, we are pulled into this relationship with Christ where he says, You are still supposed to fulfill the original role that you had in the garden, which is to honor God, have a relationship with him, and serve and fulfill his commands in this world.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Living a life that goes against God while being under the cover of Christ's blood is the opposite of saying thank you to the Lord.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if some people today, their lives aren't really a testament that says thank you to Jesus, but rather, yeah, I was expecting that.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now what else can you give me?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: The atonement should be this, man, um kind of almost like a sucker punch, helping us realize the depth that we were in last week and now how Jesus has raised us up.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, it should inspire a change within our hearts.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: It should inspire a change in our lives.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: We should want to serve God.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: We should be thankful for Him.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: So as we move into a time where we celebrate the Lord's communion here, um, I just want to give you an opportunity to think about all of these things, right?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord's Supper, communion, his body and his blood, that's what we're talking about.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are thankful.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: A couple weeks ago or two months ago, we talked about the meaning behind communion.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was his body that had been broken for us and his blood which cleanses us.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was our substitute, he is our savior.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah is going to um uh just play some music here for a moment, and I just want to give you a little bit of time to reflect, and then I'll come back on stage and we will have the um the bread and the juice together.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, This is my body which is for you.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way also he took the cup after supper and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord, that you atoned for our sins, something we couldn't have done on our own.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: Every day we seem to walk further away from you, and God, you just pull us right back.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Through your love, you have made a way for us so that we can have this eternal relationship with you.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I thank you for that.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I ask that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would help us to walk forward, those who know Christ with a clear conscience, not being burdened by the sin of their past.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, but walking forward, knowing that they are seen by you as clean, as pure.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, also that you would help us to serve you, to live a life that in some small way says, thank you for what you've done for us, and um helping us to see those opportunities in our life where we might be able to grow in that relationship with you better.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your body and your blood as we celebrate the Lord's Supper and as we reflect on it.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great Sunday.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: God bless you.