Justification by faith alone is the central doctrine upon which the Christian church stands or falls, as taught by Martin Luther and John Calvin. This doctrine holds that a person is declared righteous before God not through their own works or merit, but solely through faith in Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is imputed to them. The Roman Catholic view teaches that justification requires faith plus works, with grace infused through sacraments and maintained through ongoing cooperation, whereas the Reformation view teaches that faith alone is sufficient for instant justification, with Christ's righteousness being the sole ground of our acceptance before God.
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The One Theological Question That Stops Christian Anxiety Dead in Its Tracks | R.C. Sproul MessageAdded:
Mark asked me if I would speak on the subject of the importance of preaching on justification. Made it clear it wasn't going to be a sermon but more of an address.
And uh he said, "Can you do that?"
And I said, "Mark, I can speak on justification by faith alone in my sleep."
And so he assigned me the first uh slot after lunch.
I said, "Mark, I didn't say I wanted to preach on that subject while the congregation was sleeping." But as far as my tendency to nod, God has in his providence provided a guarantee that that won't happen because he's anointed my friend CJ.
Keep me awake.
And if you start to to drows off, you just watch him. Forget about me and that'll keep you on your toes.
>> But it's a really a wonderful delight to be here because nothing thrills me more than to have an opportunity to encourage pastors.
>> Excellent. Excellent.
>> Because that's that's the front line.
>> Yes. Excellent.
>> It's not our soldiers who alone are in harm's way.
It is the ministers of the gospel every day.
>> Yes.
>> Who are in harm's way. And so I'm delighted to speak on this subject of the importance of preaching on justification. And I'll do that as soon as I open with prayer. Let's pray.
Our father and our God with the reformer at the diet of warmth prayed in his cell.
So we pray now today for your presence and your help for the cause of the gospel is thine and we are thine.
So grant to us the grace to be bold and accurate in the presentation of that gospel no matter how much it costs.
For we ask it in Jesus name.
Amen.
>> Amen.
The first thing I'd like to do before I give some kind of exposition of the central points of the doctrine of solid or justification by faith alone is to remind you his historically of the importance with which this doctrine has been regarded.
You're all aware of Luther's assessment that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is that article upon which the church stands or falls.
And further on, dear friends, it's the article upon which you stand or fall and the article upon which I stand or fall.
Calvin added his assessment that solopeday was the hinge upon which everything turns.
And one of the most descriptive metaphors was offered in early packer when he wrote the introduction to the English translation of Athanasius dean Carnitionus in which he used the metaphor of atlas holding the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Dr. Packer said that soliday is the atlas upon which the whole of Christianity rests. And if atlas would shrug, the entire structure of the Christian faith would fall to the ground and be shattered.
But that's not commonly the assessment that we have in our times.
of the importance of this doctrine of justification by faith alone. In the last few years, I've heard solid described by those in the evangelical community, leaders, pastors, theologians as the small print of the gospel.
I've heard the reformation debate be largely a misunderstanding.
Another theologian calls the debate over solopida a tempest in a teapot.
A well-known and respected British theologian says that in the 16th century, the issue over justification was a major issue, but it is no longer a matter of serious debate today.
Most recently, we've heard from one respected church historian that indeed the reformation is over.
Because in the ensuing centuries since Vorce and Trent that Protestantism and Catholicism have mended their offences and now stand together and with the rise of the new perspective, we've had the further assignment that pox on both houses from Rome and the reformers because both sides es completely misunderstood Paul's true teaching on justification which has recently been discovered in terms of what Paul really taught.
Uh it should not be surprising to us that we see this minimalist attitude being expressed widely in our day of the lessening significance of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
I remember that towards the end of his life. I remember because I was there, Martin Luther.
I've been accused of that. Stop me if I'm lying.
Martin Luther warned the church saying that in every generation the gospel will have to be reaffirmed because if you ever preach the doctrine of justification by faith alone boldly and accurately, it will produce conflict And we are those who when faced with the option of fight or flight prefer to flee from such conflict.
Not that you're being threatened with being burned at the stake in this day and age in most places, just burned at your payroll in your local church. if you insist on fidelity to the gospel.
But with this increasing assessment of the lessening significance of solid, I've seen a widespread eclipse of the understanding of the doctrine. As I said, when people tell me that the Reformation is over, I can only guess that either they don't understand Roman Catholic theology or they don't understand Reformation theology. And I'm frankly think it's probable that there's a lack of understanding of both of those uh positions. So I'd like to take just a few moments to have a brief reconnaissance over history and over the Roman Catholic understanding of the doctrine of justification because I have found in my years of teaching in the seminary that one of the best ways to get the students to grasp the distinctives of reformation theology is to understand them against the backdrop top of the Roman view which provoked the crisis in the first place.
Let me begin this brief reconnaissance over historic Roman Catholicism by saying that essentially Rome did teach and continues to teach that justification is fundamentally a sacraidal matter.
That is to say that the grace of justification is administered by and through the church by the priesthood through the sacraments. And justification begins with the sacrament of baptism which as you know is said to function as opera oper by the working of the works virtually automatically though Rome doesn't like the word automatic nevertheless the concept is there and in baptism the grace of justification is infused into the recipient of the sacrament and that is to say poured into their soul. And this grace of justification is sometimes called the righteousness of Christ that is poured into the soul which does not exopera oper justify the recipient because it still remains for the receiver of the grace of baptism to cooperate with and ascent to the Latin In the consiliator statement is cooperare at acentare.
To cooperate with this grace and ascend to that grace to such a degree that you actually become righteous.
And if you are righteous, then you will be justified and be in a state of grace as long as you keep yourself from mortal sin.
Mortal sin is defined as mortal sin and distinguished from venial sin in this regard. That sin that is mortal is called mortal because it kills the justifying grace that has been infused into the soul. So that a person who commits mortal sin loses their justifying grace. Now let me just make this little parenthetic statement. The sixth session of the Council of Trent makes it abundantly clear that when mortal sin occurs and justifying grace is lost that that can and often does happen while authentic genuine faith remains.
So according to Trent, it is very clear that a person can have real faith and not have justification.
I'll come back to that a little later, God willing.
But once mortal sin has been committed and the grace of justification is lost and demolished, the church has a remedy for that. Again in the succession of Trent, we are told that the another sacrament comes into play at this point, namely the sacrament of penance, which is defined by the church as the second plank of justification for those who have made shipwreck of their souls. So that if you've lost your justification through mortal sin, you don't get it back through another baptism. Because even though you've lost the grace infused at baptism, you have not demolish the character indelibus that is the indelible mark that is placed upon your soul at baptism. So you need a second sacrament and that sacrament is the sacrament of penance.
And penance has several parts to it.
confession, priestly absolution, and uh so on. And so often Protestants misunderstand what that's all about because they say, "Well, I don't have to go to confession and confess my sins to a priest. Who does that priest think he is by saying t absolvo I absolve you? He doesn't have the authority to do that."
That wasn't the issue.
In fact, Luther even retained the confessional.
And we do too in most of our churches when we have corporate prayers of of uh repentance the minister will give some kind of assurance of pardon to the people. We do that in the name of Christ. And the Roman Catholic Church never believed that the priest inherently intrinsically had the power to forgive that it was tacitly understood that when the priest said thabsolvo he was doing that as a representative of Jesus who had said to his apostles those sins that you remit on earth will be remitted in heaven and so on. That wasn't the eye of the tornado in the 16th century. It was the final part of the sacrament of penance. The works of satisfaction.
Which works of satisfaction uh achieve for the penitent sinner what the church defines as congruous merit.
Meritim day congruo. that congruous merit is clearly distinguished from condine merit. Merit from day condo. Now what's the difference? Condine merit is merit that is so worthy, so righteous that God would be unjust not to reward it because it is merit that requires or makes due a reward from God.
Nor is condine merit as high as superogatory merit which only a few saints have been able to achieve where they have merit so manifold that it spills out and over because it gives them more merit than they need to enter into heaven. And that excess merit is deposited then in the treasury of merits which is then at the disposal of the church who has the power of the keys.
the transfer to draw from the treasury and apply it particularly to those in purgatory who lack enough merit to make it into heaven. So that the merit of Mary and Joseph and St. Francis and others is all deposited into the treasury of merit which I remind you was rein and affirmed as recently as the publication of the recent uh Catholic catechism. But in any case, the congruous merit gained from uh the sacrament of penance is defined as merit that is not so meritorious as condine or is far below superogatory merit. But it is merit that is real merit, but congruous merit. Meaning what? that if you do these works of satisfaction, it would make it congruous or fitting for God to restore you once again to a state of grace and give you a new infusion of the righteousness that you need. Am I going too fast?
That was what was lurking behind the whole indulgence controversy of the 16th century. Because one of the ways a person could gain works of satisfaction was through the giving of alms.
And that was one of the works by which you could be restored to a state of justification.
Now when we look at this issue of justification by faith alone, what time am I supposed to be done?
>> Help. 3:30. Huh? Double help.
Well, for my second point, so often Protestants slander the Roman Catholic Church by giving a false uh uh dis division or separation between what we believe and what they believe. And usually you'll hear it this way. We say Protestants will say, "Well, we believe that justification is by faith. Rome believes it's by works. We believe it's by grace. They believe it's by merit. We believe it's by Christ. They believe it's through their own efforts.
That's slander against Rome because Rome has never taught that. Rome teaches that in order to be justified, a person has to have faith.
And at the council of Trent again in the 16th century and in the succession before the cannon or the cannons of anathema and so on it set forth this that faith has three functions to perform in justification.
They define it precisely as providing what they call the enitium the fundamentum and the rodex.
That is to say that faith is the initiation of justification.
It's the foundation of justification and it's the root of justification.
So they certainly maintain the importance of faith. Let me put it this way. Faith is a necessary condition for justification but not a sufficient condition. Well, what's the difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition? Quickly, you want to have a fire, you got to have oxygen.
Oxygen's a necessary condition in most cases for fire, right? Without the oxygen, you can't have the fire. But the praise be to God, it's not a sufficient condition. Because if it were a sufficient condition, the very presence of oxygen would cause you to go up in flames so that every time you took a breath of air, you would get set on fire.
The Protestant view is that faith is a sufficient condition.
So that anytime you have faith, the presence of that faith, if anything works exoperado, it is the presence of genuine faith that links you to Jesus and his righteousness and becomes the instrument by which you are justified. Now that in itself is enough of a distinction to create a reformation.
So the difference here is not between faith and works but by faith and faith alone. Rome has faith plus works equal justification. We have faith if it's truly present yields instant justification.
with the doctrine of penance they have.
You can't even the fact that there is a sacrament of penance is a sacrament that gives you the grace again of justification.
You have to do works of satisfaction to get that grace. You have to merit the grace if you will. But at least grace is necessary. So Rome believes that it's grace plus merit.
And you can't be justified apart from Christ.
But neither can be justified apart from your own righteousness that is carefully distinguished from the righteousness of Jesus. Now let me say that again.
You need Christ to become righteous.
But the righteousness that becomes the ground of your justification is not that righteousness by which Christ himself obeyed the things of God.
But it is a righteousness that inheres within you. The Latin there at Trent was inherent.
And unless or until true righteousness inheres within you, God will not declare you to be just.
So again, it's grace plus merit. It's Christ plus your righteousness in order to be redeemed.
Now one of the great debates of the 16th century was the issue over the instrumental cause of justification. Now this may be a little bit foreign to you when we talk about instrumental causality.
But the church through the ages from centuries past beginning as early as Augustine made use of the philosopher Aristotle's distinctions among different types of causes.
You maybe learned this in college where he would use the metaphor of the sculpture.
What is it that turns a block of stone into a beautiful statue?
Well, Aristotle said there are several things at work here. There is the material cause, the block of stone.
The sculptor doesn't just call a statue into being. He has to have some medium to work on out of which the statue is made. That's the material cause.
There has to be a formal cause, a blueprint or a plan that the sculptor has before he starts. He doesn't just uh chaotically begin chipping away at the stone. He has an idea. Michelangelo used to say what he was trying to do was not to create a statue, but to release that statue that he envisioned already entrapped and imprisoned in the stone.
Wake him up.
Come on now. You promised me.
>> I'm here for you.
>> I mean, he tells me he's not going to let anybody go to sleep and lets the guy sitting right next to him go to sleep.
Like, you got a problem with you. I'm sorry.
Forgot about that.
Okay. Tabolvo.
Then you have the final cause. The purpose for which the statue is made.
Maybe because one of the popes hired you to make a statue to beautify his garden or a mausoleum for his burial.
Those are the different causes that he made. The most important was the efficient cause. The efficient cause that turns that block of stone into the statue is the sculptor.
Well, what's the instrumental cause?
The instrumental cause are the tools that the sculptor uses to shape the statue.
That would include the chisel and so forth. The artist uses his brushes. And so when Rome talks about justification, she says the instrumental cause, the means by which, the tool that brings about the desired result of justification is in the first place the sacrament of baptism. In the second place, the sacrament of penance.
Now again, they recognize that the efficient cause of justification is the declaration of God. No one's justified until or unless God declares them just. But the instrumental cause, baptism or penance. The Reformation said, "No, the instrumental cause is not found in the sacraments.
The only instrumental cause that so links us to Christ by which God will declare us just is faith.
Faith is the alone instrument of our justification. Now, that's important because it doesn't mean that faith is a work or that faith carries its own merit or that God declares you just because since you have faith, he says, "Oh, you've done the right thing. You're a good man. I will declare you righteous because now you are righteous." No.
Here's where Luther so strongly articulated his famous idea that's in the phrase simol eustus at pakatur that a Christian is one who siml at the same time is eustustice that is just or righteous at you all know what that means it's the past tense of to eat.
According to my grandmother, she used to say, "Have you at your dinner yet?"
Now you know it from Julius Caesar, the dying words at to brute and you two Brutus simustness at the same time just and peakur sinner. We get the word impeccable, pecadillo, so on from par.
Now Luther says the person who's justified is at the same time righteous and sinner.
Oh, that gave the Catholic Church apoplelex.
They said this is illegal fiction, a monstrous lie. God would never say that a person is righteous when under his scrutiny he discovers that in fact they are not righteous.
Luther says this is exactly what the gospel is.
That God as he did to Abraham in Genesis 15 when Abraham believed God, God counted him as righteous. He reckoned him as righteous. How?
By virtue of the single most important word in the whole debate, imputation.
And it's amazing to me how much of today's discussion and controversy focuses on this single idea of imputation that the meritorious cause according to Luther Calvin the magister of reformers according to the Bible the only meritorious cause that you have to be justified the only ground of your justification is the imputation of the righteousness of God to you to all who believe and we thank John Piper for writing that labor of love on imputation and it's central importance not just central it's essential to the new New Testament gospel gentlemen I beg you in this day and age don't ever negotiate the concept of the imputed righteousness of Christ. And I'll tell you why. Not just for theological purity, but it is the imputation of Christ and his righteousness.
It's the article upon which I stand and fall.
Because without his righteousness, all I have to offer God is filthy rags.
>> And we go right back to the beginning.
If the Lord would mark iniquities, who would stand?
>> My only hope in life and death is the righteousness of Christ.
>> Exactly.
>> This this is no Thank you, M. This is no abstract theological doctrine.
>> This is all of it. And and again, if I can appeal to John here, it's not important for us just to believe the doctrine of justification by faith alone. We have to be prepared to defend the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And what else, John? Not enough to believe and defend, but we have to contend with our all for this doctrine. You let goods and kindred go. Your mortal life also. We've already heard today about how the righteousness by which we are justified is a ustitium alienum, an alien righteousness, a foreign righteousness. And if you didn't get it in the Latin, Luther has another Latin word for you. If if alien righteousness doesn't communicate, Luther says it is a righteousness that is extra a righteousness that is outside of us.
A righteousness that is apart from us.
The only righteousness that'll justify me is the righteousness of Christ. I am naked without the cloak of his righteousness. I am helpless without the covering of his righteousness. I am foul in the sight of God until I have his righteousness that is imputed to me.
Now let me conclude.
That gives me another 10 minutes. you said right tricks of the trade. Of course, you guys all know that every minister has the uh sovereign right to say in conclusion five times before he actually conclude.
One of the things I have to point out here is that we're not justified by the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
You can believe the doctrine of justification by faith alone. You can give your intellectual ascent to the truth of that idea.
You may contend with your all for the truth of justification by faith alone without having the faith that alone will justify you.
Again, your justification is not accomplished by a profession of faith.
And if anything the evangelical world needs to learn that it has never learned is that nobody's justified by a simple profession of faith.
Professions of faith are good things and those who believe are supposed to profess what they believe. But it's the possession of faith, not the possession of it that translates a person from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. That's why we have to be very very careful how we preach the gospel and not give people a false sense of security by saying if you raise your hand, if you come to the altar, if you sign the card that therefore you're going to get into the kingdom of God. That's why we have to construct all kinds of wacky theologies to account for the false professions.
It's not the doctrine that saves anybody.
The doctrine simply describes what it is that does bring us into a state of justification.
When I became a Christian, September the 13th, 1957, 11:00 at night, I had never in my life heard the word justification. Didn't know what it was.
Never read the Bible. Well, I'd heard about Jesus.
The guy sat me down at a table and told me about Christ and quoted to me from the book of Ecclesiastes where the preacher says, "A tree falls in the forest and where it falls there it lies and rots."
And when that scripture verse was given to me through the illumination of the Holy Ghost, I saw myself as that fallen tree in the middle of the forest lying there rotting away. I believe I'm the only person in the history of the church that was converted by that verse.
But I went to my room overwhelmed with a sense of the conviction of sin, overwhelmed with the conviction that my only hope in life and death was the atoning work of my savior.
>> Yes. And I went beside my bed and I fell on my knees and I didn't recite the catechism.
I just said, "Oh God, forgive me for my sins."
I got up from my knees justified.
>> So that the first time Thanks. You applaud the gospel and I'll let you go ahead all day. God's fine with me. But I'll you know, I lived existentially that night. I'd never read the New Testament. And the first time I read when Jesus told the story of the Pharisee and the publican, I got it the first time where the Pharisee says, "I thank you, God grace. I understand I'm saved by grace. Thank you, Lord. Not works alone here, not merit alone. I thank you, Lord.
thanking you that I'm righteous, that I'm not like that miserable tax collector over there who's a quizzling who traitor to our nation collects these extraordinary taxes.
So I thank you God that I'm not like other men there but for your grace go I what about the publican couldn't even lift his eyes up to heaven all he could do was cry out have mercy on me a sinner.
You know, most of the parables of Jesus are are really difficult to understand.
But this one, he ends with a rhetorical question. You know, really anybody could see. Which one went to his home?
Justified.
the one who by faith was covered by the righteousness of Christ.
Finally, the gospel is good news.
And I love my Catholic friends.
And I weep for their gospel, which is no gospel.
It's a bad gospel.
It's bad news.
And as Paul said to the Galatians, if anybody preaches any other gospel to you than that which you've received, let him be on. Let him be anathema. And again, I say to you, if anybody teaches any other god, even an angel from heaven, you take that angel by the seat of his ethereal pants and you throw him out the door.
If anybody preaches, but there is no other gospel. He says, "Do we please men here or God?" If I were to please men, he said, "On this issue, I cannot please God."
So, let me just summarize quickly. The Roman view starts with baptism, gets recovered after I commit mortal sin by penance and that lasts until I commit another mortal sin. If I commit another mortal sin, then I lose my justification. I have to get justified again. I got to go back and go through the whole process of penance once more.
And if I make it to the end of my life and die not in a state of mortal sin but die with any impurities on my soul.
Quoting the most recent catechism.
If I die with any impur any impurities.
If you die tonight, how many impurities would you take with you to the grave? If you have any impurities on your soul when you die, you go to purgatory. Maybe for a week if you're next to being a canonized saint.
More likely for several hundreds years or up to 2 million, 3 million, 4 million years until in that purging place you are so cleansed from your impurities that finally when God looks at you, he sees an inherent righteousness.
Is that good news?
That's the worst possible news I would could ever hear. If you told me that the only way I can get into the he into the kingdom of heaven and be adopted into the family of God is when I got rid of all impurities on my soul. I would despair tonight.
But let me tell you what the good news is.
>> So tell us >> what another world has heard from. It's the first time he said a thing to me.
Jonathan, he told me he was anointed.
This is anointing in the sovereign grace community.
Come on, CJ. You're supposed to say, "Preach it."
But here's the good news.
I despair of my righteousness.
I acknowledge my sin.
I put my trust in Christ and in Christ alone.
And the good news is is that the very instant I do that, all that he is >> and all that he has is mine.
And for the rest of my days, he's got me covered >> that the father looks at me >> and beyond the impurities and everything, he sees the cloak of the righteousness of Jesus.
>> And now I am justified. Not for today, >> not for this week, >> not till I commit another sin, >> but for eternity. Yes.
>> Is there any better news than that in the whole world?
>> Well, beloved, explaining the doctrine of justification by faith alone is really a simple matter. It's not hard. It's not rocket science. It was always the easiest course I had teaching seminary students.
They would get it. But I would tell them, be careful.
It's one thing to get it in your head.
It's another thing to get it in your bloodstream.
That's why we need to have the doctrine of justification by faith alone preached over and over and over and over because at the front door of the church, the enemy lies in weight to whisper into our ears as we walk across that threshold.
Now, you have to mix your your own merit in there, >> right? It's got to be inherent.
You're going to lose it the next time you break the law.
When I hear that, I say to Satan, sticks and stones, Satan, who shall lay any charge to God's elect.
>> Huh? It's God who justifies and who redeems the ungodly.
Don't move from that no matter what.
Let's pray.
>> Amen. Excellent.
>> Father, we thank you that when you examine us, when you place us under your scrutiny, when you analyze our condition, you see something more than what could be found in us.
But you see that which has been imputed to us, perfect obedience, righteousness and merit of your only begotten son.
And by him we are adopted, our sins are remitted, and we enter into your kingdom.
Oh father, bring the light of the gospel to bear again on a darkened church and a darkened world that the historians of the future will not describe our age by saying post Luke's tenebras.
Amen.
On the way over here this morning, somebody buttonhold me and said that they've learned something of Ken Jones biography and and how uh Bob Godfreyy's mom called him Bobby. And he said, this lady said, "Can you tell us what Sinclair Ferguson's mother called him?"
I said, "Actually, I don't know for sure, but I can tell you one thing that she never called him." She said, 'What's that? I said, "Precious."
Actually, what she did call him was precious.
He was almost named Sam, but his father said, "Does that mean we have to have 149 more children?
There are 150 ps in the Bible.
I hate it when I have to explain these.
Uh, oh mercy.
When RC Jr.
was a little boy, his mother really did call him Precious.
In fact, that's his family name. But he was not named by his mother. He got that name from his sister growing up because she would complain to her mother saying, "Precious never does anything wrong."
Well, when when our precious uh went to Sunday school as a little boy, the teacher asked the class, "Who wrote the Bible?"
And Junior raised his hand and teacher called on him and she said, "Who do you think wrote the Bible?" And he said, "My dad.
And I asked him, I said, "Where in the world did you get that idea that I wrote the Bible?" And he said, "Well, when all these people come around here and ask you to sign your books, they ask you to sign the Bible, too."
So, I figured you must have written the Bible.
Well, I don't know how it ever began in the Christian world to ask speakers to sign people's Bibles.
You know, after all, we really uh did not write the Bible.
And we have more than one charismatic here in the getting carried away here. And uh and there's another tradition, and I have no idea where this came from, but now people not only want you to sign their Bible, but when you do, they ask for your life verse.
The first time somebody asked me that, I said, "What's that?" And they said, "Well, you know, everybody's supposed to have a life verse. Somehow when I read through the Bible, I I never learned that routine. So I have to think quickly on the spot and come up with an important verse and I use different ones just to confuse people.
But recently at the seminary at Knox Seminary where I teach, I uh I had one of my students come up and ask me to sign his Bible and he wanted my life verse. So I signed my name and I wrote Genesis 15:17.
And I explained to him that uh I've often said that if I were in prison and could only have one book at my disposal, the book that I would want would be the Bible. And if I could only have one book of the Bible, the book of the Bible that I would choose would be the book of Hebrews because it is so rich in including information from both testaments. And I said, but if I were in uh solitary confinement and only had one verse of the Bible, and some of you who saw the account of Monristo saw the statement about justice that he had on his prison wall.
If I only had one verse of scripture with me in such dire circumstances, the verse I would want would be Genesis 15:17.
So I said all of this to the student and he thanked me and went away and the next day he came up to me and he said, "Dr. Spr what's that?" He says, "I don't get it."
I said, "You don't get what?" And he said, "Genesis 15:17. Did did I can't did I make a mistake in reading your writing here? This I read the 15th chapter of Genesis and I read the 17th verse of Genesis and I thought this surely can't be your life's verse. I said well maybe I didn't remember the right verse. Let me look.
I said that's really the one that I meant.
And he looked at me like I had lost my mind. So let me begin this morning by reading to you my life verse.
Genesis 15:17 the verse I would want with me in prison and it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark that behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
And I I can scarcely take it in. Every time I read that verse or hear that verse, literally I get chills up and down my spine.
And I said that to this student and he thought even more that I had lost my mind until I said to him, we have to look at a text like this and ask the simple question, what is going on here?
Why is that verse so vital?
So I think to get the answer to that we have to go back to the beginning of chapter 15 of Genesis where we read this.
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision sayingo not be afraid Abram.
I am your shield your exceedingly great reward.
I'm your shield and your exceedingly great reward.
Notice that Abram, the father of the faithful, gave a somewhat strange response to this announcement that God said, "Don't be afraid, Abram, because I'm your shield. And not only am I your shield, the one who protects you, but I am your exceedingly great reward."
Abram's puzzled and he said, 'Lord God, what will you give me seeing that I go childless and the heir of my house is Ilazar of Damascus?
Abraham said, "Look, you've given me no offspring. Indeed, one born in my house is my heir, my servant."
Elazer of Damascus.
I mean, I have all the cattle a man would ever need. I have all the possessions that this world can offer.
And you tell me a great reward. And when I have no son, what could you possibly give me that could make up for that deficiency?
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, "This one shall not be your heir, but the one who will come from your own body shall be your heir."
Then he took Abram outside and he said, "Look now toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to number them."
And he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." I was standing here the other day and thinking about our early days in Ligonier because in in Ligonier in in in our uh uh study center that we had in the mountains of western Pennsylvania outside the village of Ligonier, we had this uh great big room where the lectures took place. And the lady who built this facility for us installed in the ceiling what she described as what's it lights.
I said what's it lights? She said yeah people come in and look at it say what's it what's that? And she said so I call them what's it lights. They were little lights put in the ceiling that look like the stars at night. And I was brought right back to that when I came up here the other day because look at the ceiling.
They have what's it lights here?
Maybe whoever designed this sanctuary had Genesis 15 in mind when God took Abram outside on a starry night and he said, "Look here, Abram. Look at the stars up there. Look at the Pleaides.
Look at the Milky Way, which appears to the naked eye as a dense cloud in the sky. when in fact it's made up of billions and billions of individual stars.
Try to count them because that's how many your descendants will be.
You just think that you're childless.
Verse six is one of the most important verses in Genesis.
And we read, "And he, that is Abram, believed God, and he counted it to him for righteousness."
Beloved, there's the gospel.
This is the text that the apostle Paul calls our attention to when he writes the letter to the Romans and unfolds the gospel and the doctrine of justification by faith alone. When he wants to demonstrate the truth of justification by faith alone, he brings as his star witness as exhibit A, Abraham.
And he calls attention to this text because before Abraham had done anything, before he had done any of the works that God had commanded him to do, when Abraham believed God, God counted him righteous.
And the only basis that God ever counts anybody righteous according to the apostle is on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.
And the moment that Abraham believed the promise of God, God transferred all of the righteousness of his son to his account.
And then God said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of the Calaldanss to give you this land to inherit it. We know from the research even in the 20th century from the mid 20th century from a scholar from Michigan University of Michigan by the name of George Mendenhal who wrote a uh a monograph on the law and the covenant in the ancient near east where archaeological discoveries had unearthed what he called suzarin treaties. Treaties that were made between kings and their vassels.
And the analysis of these ancient treaties of the from the near east showed a repeated format or structure that occurs over and over and over again that includes within it a uh a historical prologue and the element of of preamble followed then by the stipulations of the covenant and the sanctions and so on. And we see this so often in the structure of biblical covenants where the sovereign one, the susarin introduces the terms of the treaty by first of all giving a preamble in which he identifies himself.
So many times in the Old Testament, we'll read this phrase, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. or I am the God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
And so the terms of the covenant, the terms of the treaty begin where the sovereign partner identifies himself.
But notice when God speaks to Abraham here, he doesn't say, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Because a Isaac hasn't been around yet, nor has been has Jacob been born.
But he does give the historical prologue where the sovereign reminds the people what he has done in their behalf. So in the ancient near east and the in the Hittite kings, somebody would say, "My name is Yahabi. I am the one who fills your graineries with wheat. I am the one who defends your borders from enemy invasions. I am the one who did this. I am the one who did that." And you see that throughout the Old Testament. And here after God promises something to Abraham who's still Abram he identifies himself and he said I am Yahweh. I am the Lord who brought you out of the Caldas to give you this land to inherit it. Remember in the New Testament the Cesaria Philippi confession when the disciples are asked who do men say that I am and after that answer was given he turned to his own disciples he said well what do you think who do you say that I the son of man am and it's Peter who gives the great confession thou art the Christ the son of the living God which Jesus respond with his benediction upon Simon, saying, "And blessed are you, Simon Barjonah, flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you, but my father is in in who is in heaven, and thou art Petros, thou art the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church." And we see that the church is established on the confession of faith of the person of Christ as the Messiah, God's promised one.
And here is Simon Peter being heroic in his confession of faith. And five minutes later, Jesus tells the disciples that he has to now go back to Jerusalem and suffer and die.
And what does Simon Peter say? We've already heard the ultimate oxymoron.
No, Lord.
No, Lord.
No, Lord.
You know, not do Lord, it's no Lord. And Jesus now turns to the rock and he says, "I have another name for you. Get thee behind me, Satan."
That's how strong we are in our faith.
Here's Abraham, the father of the faithful, just five minutes earlier, believing the the Lord, and it's counted to him for righteousness.
And now he says when God announces that he will give him the land to inherit it, he says, "But Lord God, how can I know that I will inherit it?"
Look, I've come a long way from of the Caldes and I've I've gone to a place of city where I didn't know I where I was going. I left my family. I did all these things. I keep believing you. I keep trusting you. Now you tell me I'm going to have all these children and I'm going to have this land. I believe you, Lord, but can you help my unbelief a little bit?
How can I know for sure?
Have you ever lived there?
Have you ever been there?
Do you think you might be there if you were thrown into solitary confinement in a prison?
Do you think Joseph struggled without question when he was isolated and abandoned from his own family, sold as a slave and imprisoned?
You think there were times when he was on his knees trembling before God, saying, "Lord, I'm trying to trust you, but how can I know for sure?
How can faith move to full assurance and certainty?"
That's Abraham's question to God.
And listen to God's answer.
Bring me a three-year-old heer, three-year-old female goat, three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Let me see if I have that right. Abraham says, "You want a a heer has to be three years old, right?
And you want a goat, but you have it has to be female. Has to be three years old, right?
You want a ram, three years old. a turtle dove and a young pigeon.
All I asked was, "How can I know for sure that you're going to keep your promise? And you've given me a grocery list of livestock."
But Abraham brought all these things to God and he cut them in two down the middle and placed each piece opposite the other. But he didn't cut the birds in two.
And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
The heer, the goat, the ram.
Abraham cuts them in half and then carefully places their bodies in a path like a gauntlet.
one half of the body on one side of the path, the other half of the animal on the other side of the path. And he makes this arrangement. He doesn't cleave the the birds in half.
But no sooner does he lay out these slain animals in this particular fashion. But here come the vultures, the buzzards coming down to take advantage of the carry on.
And Abraham's busy shoeing away the vultures.
And in verse 12, we read this.
Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and behold, horror.
A deep sleep comes upon Abraham, and behold, horror, and a great darkness fell upon him. You talk about the saints experience of despair which is called the dark night of the soul when the light of God seems to be extinguished from our presence and we are plunged into this seemingly bottomless pit or abyss of darkness which brings horror to us.
Ladies and gentlemen, go through the pages of sacred scripture and see what the characteristic response of human beings is always virtually the same when God comes near.
They're terrified.
And in this night vision, Abraham knows at first only darkness and terror.
And God began to speak to him.
Listen to what God says to Abram.
Know with certainty that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will serve them and they will afflict them 400 years. And also the nation whom they serve, I will judge. And afterwards they shall come out with great possessions.
But as for you, you will go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they will return here because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Boom. Now comes my name's not John Madden.
But now comes now comes verse 17.
Here it comes.
I've given you the context for verse 17.
And it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark that behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. In his horror, in his stupified state, in the night vision, Abraham beholds. He sees this path of slain bodies.
And he looks and here comes a smoking oven, a flaming torch hovering and moving down the aisle, down the pathway, down the gauntlet between the these pieces of animals.
Ladies and gentlemen, when God makes a covenant with his people, he doesn't just make a covenant, he cuts a covenant.
And characteristically, when God makes a covenant, on most occasions that he does it, it is a bloody covenant.
And when he makes the covenant with Abraham later on he tells Abraham cut off the foreskin of your flesh and of that of your descendants because in this cutting right you are swearing your feely your allegiance to me and you are saying to me oh God if I don't keep my part of this treaty if I don't keep my part of the promise if I do not respond to you in faith may I be cut off from your presence, cut off from your blessings, cut off from your benefits, just as I have cut off the foreskin of my flesh.
And I have in my own flesh the reminder of my promise to you.
And the other side of that coin is God has consecrated, cut out a fallen humanity, a people for himself.
And so the sign of circumcision also represents God's grace and blessing.
Blessing and curse are both incorporated in the Old Testament sign of the covenant.
That's Abraham's part.
But in the midnight vision, what is the smoking oven?
What is the flaming torch? And really, I should say not what is the oven or what is the torch, but who is the oven? Who is the torch?
Abraham in this moment of dread and horror comes this close to the theophony and the ba a theophony is an outward visible manifestation of the invisible God. That's what a theophony is.
It was a theophonyist manifestation of himself that God gave to Moses in the Midianite wilderness when he spoke to him out of a bush that was blazing with fire.
It was theophony by which God manifests himself in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of smoke in the wilderness.
It is because the standard theophony of God is linked to fire in the scriptures that the New Testament writer says our God is a consuming what?
Fire. Thank you. Say, I've learned something from John MacArthur. This is, you know, you turn the sermon into a dialogue. Fill in the blanks. Our God is a consuming fire.
You see, the torch is God.
And this text is understood by the author of Hebrews centuries later when he reminds the people of the trustworthiness of the promises of God, of the trustworthiness of the word of God, where the author of Hebrews says, you know, there's two things that God can't do.
We say that with God all things are possible. But that's hyperbole because there are some things that even God can't do.
He can't die and he can't lie.
Satan can't do anything but lie.
God doesn't know how to lie.
He's incapable of lying because for him to lie would be to violate his own nature.
And so the author of Hebrews says, "When God swore his promise to Abraham, because he could swear by nothing greater, he swore by himself."
When Abraham said, "Lord, how can I know for sure?" God didn't say,"Abraham, I swear by the earth, which is my foottool, or I swear by the heavens." God didn't say to Abraham, "Abraham, trust me.
Cross my heart. Hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye."
Nor did he swear upon his mother's grave.
He didn't even put his hand on the Bible and say, "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Now, the promises of God that he makes in this covenant with Abraham are sworn by himself.
What is God doing here? He's saying Abraham.
He's graphically, dramatically, visually showing the truthfulness of his word when he allows that torch to go between the peaches pieces and he's saying,"Abraham, if I don't keep my promise, if you can't trust my word, then may I be like these animals that you've cut in half.
May I, the immutable, eternal creator God, suffer a mutation.
May the eternal be reduced to the temporal, the infinite, destroyed by the infinite or by the finite. What God is saying is, may I be cut in half just like you've cut these animals in half if I fail to keep my word. I'm promising you by my deity.
This is my word and I back it up with my own person.
There's nothing higher, Abram that I can swear by.
So I'm swearing by myself and every time my faith is weak and I struggle with doubts and I vacasillate with respect to the immutable trustworthiness of the word of God.
I read Genesis 15:17 that it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark that behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between the bases.
For on that same day, verse 18 says, Yahweh made a covenant with Abraham. Fast forward through the pages of history.
come to a peasant girl in a little village who is terrified, horror stricken by the visitation of an archangel coming out of nowhere who tells this girl that she has been selected by God to be the mother of the Messiah. She said, "How can this be? I don't even know a man.
With God, all things are possible."
Gabriel says, "And it shall be that after the Holy Ghost shall come upon you and overshadow you, that you will conceived and the one in your womb will be called Jesus, for he will save his people from his sins."
And as she contemplates this and as the spirit of the Lord comes upon her, what does she sing?
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
My spirit doth rejoice in God my savior. Behold, he has noticed the low estate of his handmaidaden, and from henceforth all generations will call me blessed." And then she goes on in this prayer, and what does she say?
God has remembered Genesis 15:17.
God has remembered the promise that he made to our father Abraham. Throughout the pages of the Old Testament, this covenant that God makes with Abraham is renewed, expanded.
More and more of it is revealed as God extends it through Isaac. And then Jacob who then brings his children down to the land of Gan where they become enslaved in Egypt when the pharaoh dies who and the new one comes along who doesn't remember Joseph and these people who are the children of this promise are now in bondage and God says says, "I heard their cries."
You see, God remembers his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and Jacob. And he comes and he speaks to Moses, and he said, "Moses, you go and you tell that Pharaoh, let my people go." Why? Simply that we can remove them from this human bondage?
No. so that they can come out to this mountain and worship me.
And then God forms a nation.
And the terms of the covenant are spelled out in even greater detail. And added to the promises in the old covenant are the ceremonies.
And it seems like in our day, we can't wait to say fast enough how the ceremonial law of the Old Testament has been abolished.
We want to flee from the Judaizing heresy. We don't tell people anymore that they must be circumcised as a religious right because what we've done is cut ourselves off from the whole history of redemption.
We've disconnected the New Testament from the Old.
And so we don't even bother to read Leviticus or Numbers or other arcane pieces of information that we wonder why they're still in print.
But if we go through the Old Testament and look at the pattern of those ceremonies and how in a very real sense, as we've already heard here, every aspect of them was driving driving Christ.
God redeems his people out of bondage, rescues them from the avenger, from the angel of death.
How does he know who his people are?
Through the blood of the lamb that is placed upon the lentil over the door.
And God said, "Here's what I want you to do.
Every year, on the anniversary of this, I want you to sit down as families, and I want you to take a lamb without blemish, and I want you to remember it. I want you to eat this meal just like they did, ready to go with their staff and their shoes and the unleavened bread and all the rest. I want you to keep the Passover and say when you celebrate the Passover, this we do to remember when God redeemed us from our afflictions.
Not this we do to remember what God did for generations of Jews a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago.
But in a magnificent covenant way, the Passover feast celebrates the redemption of every believer in the old covenant as as if to say we were there too.
This was our exodus.
This was our rescue from bondage.
And that was carried on year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year until the night in which our savior was betrayed.
He sat down with his disciples because he said that he yearned, that he longed one more time to celebrate the Passover with them.
And in the middle of the Passover liturgy, Jesus dares to presume to change the ancient liturgy when he takes the bread and he said, "This is now my body which is broken for you."
What?
The most important celebration of the old covenant is now going to be changed.
And he takes the cup.
And he said, "This is now the cup of a new covenant which is in my blood.
A new bloody covenant. Not by a lamb that is butchered so that you can rub the blood on the on the door. Not by the carcass of a three-year-old heer or of a ram or a shegoat.
My blood is going to be sacrificed.
Now when Jesus sucked with his disciples, that was not the hour of his sacrifice.
The eating of his body and the drinking of his blood in the upper room was not a sacrifice, bloody or unbloody.
The sacrifice would happen on the tomorrow which would be made once and for all in the upper room. And in the following time that the disciples celebrated this event, they never offered Christ again to God because he was offered once and for all.
The celebration of the Eucharist in the early church was never a sacrifice.
But let me tell you what it was.
It was a sacrificial meal.
And where does that come from?
Turn for a moment to the book of Leviticus.
Chapter 7 11.
This is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings. Here God requires the people of Israel to have sin offerings, trespass offerings. And now he comes to the matter of peace offerings.
This is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings which he shall offer to the Lord. If he offers it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mixed with oil, unleavened wafers anointed with oil, or cakes of blended flour mixed with oil.
This is really exciting stuff, folks.
And it really is.
And beside the cakes as his offering he shall offer leaven bread with with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offering. And for many he shall offer one cake. From each offering as a heave offering to the Lord of shall belong to the priest who sprinkles the blood of the priest offering and so on. Verse 15.
The flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offering for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day it is offered. And he will not leave any of it until the morning.
But if the sacrifice of his offering is a vow, it shall be eaten the same day that he offers the sacrifice. and on the next day the remainder remainder of it also may be eaten. And we get all these instructions.
Verse 18, if any of the flesh of the sacrifice of the peace offering is eaten at all on the third day, it shall not be accepted, nor shall be an imputed to him. It shall be an abomination to him who offers it, and the person who eats of it shall bear guilt.
The person who touches any unclean thing or who eats the flesh of the sacrifice after touching an unclean thing or is unclean, that person shall be cut off from his people. Does that sound familiar?
Does that sound anything like what the theologians call the mandukio indignorum?
The they have a name for everything.
The eating and drinking unworthily where one fails to discern the Lord's body.
Every time the people of God come together at the Lord's table, they don't just remember something.
This is not just a mental exercise.
They come to the feast of the lamb, to the sacrificial feast where they are called to eat of the flesh of the sacrifice that has been offered once for all.
All of which is foreshadowed in the peace offering of the old covenant where literally, excuse me, bon in the census literalis in the plain sense, what happened was that after the people offered the fat and the liver and the entrils that were commanded in the peace offering, after the priests offered that to God, then the flesh that was left was to be enjoyed by the people who made the offering.
They participated in the feast and participated participated in the flesh of the victim that was sacrificed.
And our Lord said, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not come into my kingdom." Now, I don't have time this morning. I don't have time for the next 10 years to explore all of the issues theological and ecclesiological that focus on the Lord's Supper.
But whatever else the Lord's Supper is, it is a sign and seal of the new covenant that Christ has made with us in his body and in his blood.
And it is the law of my church never to celebrate the Lord's supper to have the sacrament without having the preaching of the word.
Yet we think nothing of having the preaching of the word without its confirmation, without its sign, without its seal that Christ himself institutes. In the first century church, the disciples came together on the Lord's day to do what?
to study the doctrine of the apostles, to pray together, and for the breaking of bread because they understood that when God makes a promise in his word, the verbal word, he confirms confirms that with the sacrament.
You see, we're not only losing the word in our church today, but we're losing the sacraments as well.
The war against the word in our time has become the war against the sacraments in our time.
Which sacraments are God's sign?
They're his vows.
They're his oaths.
Just as the ancient king when he would issue a decree and the decree would be announced in the marketplace, what the people look for was what? That waxed indentation, that waxed impression that bore the mark of the signant ring of the king that indicated that this edict comes from the from the authority of the monarch.
And so God seals his word with the sacraments which must be distinguished, my friends, but never separated.
For on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham.
Let us pray.
Father, how we thank you that your word cannot be broken and that you have attached to that word the signs and the seals that have come to us from Christ himself who has offered himself as the perfect sacrifice once for Oh, therefore, our Father, let us keep the feast of your word and of your sacraments.
For we ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
The last thing to be asked me before he went and sat down was, "Please bring the book."
I have the book. And I'd like to read from that book from Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 3, beginning at verse 10 and reading through verse 14. Galatians 3 10 to 14.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.
For it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them.
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law.
For the righteous shall live by faith.
But the law is not of faith.
Rather, the one who does them shall live by them.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
For it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree."
So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.
Can we pray please?
Our Father and our God, your curse reaches throughout the earth and is heaped upon everyone in it who is not covered by the righteousness of Jesus.
Oh Lord, even now we tremble at the very thought of being under your curse.
And we can't possibly imagine what it would mean to have the fullness of that curse poured out upon us.
And so as we contemplate the manner in which it was poured out upon Jesus, we beg you in your spirit to condescend to the frailty of our understanding, the weakness of our minds.
to give us illumination of this text that your word would pierce our souls for our sake and for the sake of Jesus.
Amen.
It has now been over 50 years, over a half of a century that I have contemplated and studied and read a host of toms written about the meaning of the cross of Christ.
And yet I still believe that I have not been able to do anything more than to touch the surface of the depths and the riches that are contained in that moment of redemptive history.
I suspect that when my eyes open in heaven, in the first five minutes of my beginning of eternity there, I will be absolutely staggered by the sudden increase of understanding that will come to me.
When I behold the Lamb who was slain and hear angels and archangels singing in my ears, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive honor and glory, riches, dominion, and to see the Apostle Paul and to say thank you for knowing nothing but Christ and him crucified.
Beloved, when we go to the New Testament and we read not only the narrative event of the cross, but the many didactic expressions that explain to us its meaning and significance.
I think we are soon aware that there is no one image or one dimension that can comprehensively explain the cross.
Rather, we find many images, many metaphors that would indicate that the cross is a multi-faceted event. It is by no means onedimensional.
It is as a magnificent tapestry that is woven by several distinct, brightly hued threads that when it is brought together gives us this magnificent finished work of art.
When the New Testament speaks of the atonement of Jesus, it does so in terms of substitution, it calls attention to a death that in some way was vicarious.
We see that it speaks of the satisfaction of the justice and of the wrath of God.
We see the metaphor of the kinsman redeemer who pays the bridal price to purchase his bride with his own blood, releasing her from bondage.
We see the motif that is used in the New Testament that speaks of ransom that is paid.
There is the motif of victory over Satan and the powers of darkness when the serpent's head is crushed under the bruised heel of the redeemer.
But there is one image, one aspect of the atonement that has receded our day in our day almost into total obscurity.
We heard earlier of those attempts to preach a more gentle and kind gospel.
And in our efforts to communicate the work of Christ more kindly, we flee from any mention of a curse inflicted by God upon his own son.
We shrink in horror from the words of the prophet Isaiah in the 53rd chapter of his book describing the ministry of the ephed Yahweh, the suffering servant of Israel that tells us among other things that it pleased the Lord to bruise him.
Can you take that in that somehow the father took pleasure in in bruising the son when he set before him that awful cup of divine wrath?
How in heaven could the father be pleased?
By bruising his son were it not for his eternal purpose through that bruising of him to restore us as his own children.
But there's this curse motif that seems utterly foreign to us, particularly in this time in history.
When we speak of the idea of curse today, what do we think of? We think perhaps of a voodoo witch doctor who places pins in a replicable doll of his enemy.
We think of an occultist who's involved in witchcraft, putting spells and hexes upon people. The very word curse in our culture suggests some kind of superstition.
But in biblical categories, dear friends, there is nothing superstitious about it.
And the idea of the curse is deeply rooted in biblical history. We need only go to the opening chapters of Genesis to the record of the fall of man that provokes from God his anathema on the serpent who's cursed to go on his belly.
And the curse that is then given to the earth itself that would bring forth thorns and briars, making it difficult for Adam to live by the toil of his brow.
And it brings the excruciating, and I choose that word carefully, pain given to the woman who would bear a child.
But not only do we find this idea of the term or of curse there early in Genesis, but if we fast forward to the giving of the law under Moses, we understand that with the covenant God makes with his people at Sinai that he attaches to that covenant to the stipulations of that law do all sanctions.
a positive sanction and a negative sanction.
The positive sanction is articulated there in terms of the concept of blessedness.
Let me quickly jump back to Deuteronomy chapter 28 that we read this litany of blessings.
And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. Listen to this.
And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city.
Blessed shall you be in the field.
Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds, and the young of your flock.
Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. Do you hear what what God is saying to Israel if you keep my words?
Then I'm going to bless you in the city.
I'll bless you in the country. I'll bless you when you rise up. I'll bless you when you lie down. I'll bless you in the kitchen. I'll bless you in the bedroom. I'll bless you in the living room. I'll bless your fields. I'll bless your goats. I'll bless your sheep. I'll bless your cows. I'm going to bless you all over the place. That your life will be nothing but an experience in divine benediction and blessedness.
But God goes on to say that if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon on you and overtake you.
Cursed shall you be in the city.
Cursed shall you be in the country.
Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bull. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds, the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom, in the garage.
Curses.
You know, one of the things I love about Christmas is the singing of carols.
And one of my favorites is Joy to the World.
And there's one line in there that I love. It always gets my attention. I'm sure you can guess which one it is.
>> What is it, Lian?
>> Comes to make his blessings.
>> He comes to make his blessings flow where?
>> As far as the curse is found.
How far do we find that curse?
The apostle Paul says that the whole creation groans together in travail waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.
We live in a planet, dear friends, that is under the curse of God.
Well, what does that mean? And I'd like to take some time with you this afternoon to explore the meaning and the significance of this idea of God's divine curse.
And I want to look at it in a couple of different ways. First of all, when the prophets of the Old Testament spoke not their own opinions, but the word that God had placed in their mouth, so that they could preface their announcements by these words, "Thus saith the Lord."
that the favorite method the prophets used to express the word of God was the method that was called the oracle.
It seems that sometimes the only place we hear of the idea of the oracle is in Greek mythology when we hear of the oracle of deli where people would go and consult the oracle to ask how the future was going to turn out. Will we be victorious? Will we be defeated in battle? Will I marry Susan, Betty, or Jane? And they were looking to these self-appointed prophets there at Deli to give a divine pronouncement.
Well, there were oracles before there was an oracle at Deli.
There was one called Isaiah, one called Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Ezekiel, Daniel.
And they would use this oracular form to communicate the word of God. And there were basically two kinds of oracles known to the prophets.
There was the oracle of wheel which was an oracle of good news, an announcement of prosperity coming from the hand of God. And then there was also the oracle of woe, which oracle would be an announcement of doom brought from the hand of God.
And the normal way in which the oracle of wheel would be uttered was by the use of the term blessed by the pronouncement of a divine benediction.
As David begins the Psalms, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in that law, he meditates day and night. He'll be like a tree planted by rivers of water, bringing forth his fruit in his season. But the ungodly are not so.
They're like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
How often did our Lord exercise the function of the prophet and make oracular pronouncements such as he did on the sermon on the mount when he looked to his disciples and he said to them, "Blessed are the poor.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake. And so on giving us that section of the sermon that we call the biatitudes where Jesus pronounces the blessing of God upon certain people.
But the oracle of doom in contrast was normally prefaced by the word woe.
As you recall Amos pronouncing the judgments of God on the nations. Woe for two transgressions and three. Woe unto you Assyrians. Woe unto you Damascus.
Woe unto you Israel.
The incredible moment when Isaiah beheld the unveiled holiness of God.
He pronounced an oracle of doom upon himself.
He understood who God was and for the first time in his life he understood who Isaiah was. And he cursed not God, but he cursed Isaiah. Woe is me.
I'm coming apart. I'm undone. I'm ruined because I have a filthy mouth.
And I'm not alone.
Not only am I exposed to the woe, but I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips who are equally exposed to the judgment of God.
And so we see these statements in the Bible, these statements of blessing and curse, wheel and woe.
And yet somehow we love to hear the story of blessedness, but we never want to hear the woow. I don't think there's ever been a culture in the history of the world that has experienced more discontinuity at that level.
Everywhere in this country, you see automobiles with bumper stickers that read, "God bless America."
After 911, Pat Robertson, Jerry Fwell suggested that perhaps the events of 911 were God's judgments upon America.
And the outcry and outrage of the press was so severe they had to recant their musings on that point. Because we believe in a God who is infinitely capable of blessing people but is utterly incapable of cursing them.
When I was a young Christian, I heard a sermon from Billy Graham in which he said, "If God does not judge America, he's going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
But the idea of God bringing judgment and wrath and curse upon a nation has been expregated from our Bibles and from our theologies as we do exactly what Mark De warned us about doing earlier today.
But if you really want to understand what it meant to a Jew to be cursed, I think the simplest way is to look at the famous Hebrew benediction in the Old Testament. You all know how it goes.
Those of you who are clergy use it for your final benediction countless times.
May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you his peace.
Now if you notice the structure of that famous benediction that it follows a common Hebrew poetic form known as parallelism.
There are various types of parallelism in Hebrew literature.
There's anothetical parallelism where ideas are set in contrast one to another.
There are those synthetic parallelisms where there's a building crescendo of ideas. A new idea is placed on top of another one and another new idea comes another. But one of the most common forms of parallelism is what is called synonymous parallelism. And as the word suggests, synonymous parallelism states the same thing simply by using different words.
And there is no more clear example of synonymous parallelism anywhere in scripture than in the benediction here where exactly the same thing is said in three different ways. So if you don't understand one line of it then look to the next one and maybe it will reveal to you the meaning.
Now to get things complicated, we see in the benediction three stanzas as it were with two elements in each one.
The Lord bless, keep, make his face to shine upon you, be gracious unto you, lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give you his shalom, his peace.
Now what is so important for us to understand the curse is to understand first of all how the Jew understood blessing.
How did he understand it? May the Lord bless you.
What he meant by that is to be blessed by God is to be bathed in the regent glory that emanates from his face.
May the Lord bless you means may the Lord make his face to shine upon you.
Is this not what Moses begged for on the mountain when he said, "Oh God, I've seen what few mortals have ever seen. I saw the plagues that you brought to Egypt. I saw the river turned to blood.
I was there between Mdall and the sea when you dried up the sea. And let us walk through But now let me have the big one.
Please let me see your face.
You know what happened.
I said, Moses, you don't know what you're asking. Haven't you read the book you wrote that no man can see me and live?
Moses, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll carve out a niche in the rock over here and I'll place you there in the clif of the rock and I will allow my backward parts to pass by and I'll give you an instantaneous glance of my backward parts but my face shall not be seen.
And when Moses had that brief glance of the backside of God, his face shown for an extended extended period of time.
But what the Jew longed for was, "Oh God, just let me once, just once see your face."
You see, his ultimate hope is the same hope that is given to us in the New Testament.
The final escatological hope of the beatotific vision.
Behold, what manner of love is this?
John says that we should be called the children of God.
We don't know yet what we will be but this much we know that we will be like him for we shall see him as he is.
Don't you want to see it? The hardest thing about being a Christian is serving a God you've never seen.
And so the Jew asks for that benediction. Oh God, bless us to the degree that you would make your face shine upon you.
Last week, Charlton H died.
Moses, Ben her. How many of you ever saw Ben her? Let me see. Almost everybody. Good.
Wait a minute. I'm going to try that the next time I do an invitation.
If I can get that many hands up in the air.
I don't do an invitation at the weddings and graduations, things like that. Uh you remember that scene in Ben her where he's been reduced to slavery and he is being dragged behind his captive and they finally come to this well in the midst of the desert and he comes there and he's in the sand and his lips are parched and he's overcome with thirst. Then all of a sudden you see the shadow of a human being. You never see this person's face.
But whoever it is who meets Ben her stoops over and gives to him a cup of cold water.
And the point of view of the camera is from the gaze of Benh her who looks up into the face of the one who is giving him this drink of water and instantly Benhur's face begins to shine. And you don't have to be told who it was who gave him the drink of water.
Because the Lord Jesus made his face to shine upon this slave.
May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you his peace. Every time I hear that benediction in church, I get chill bumps because it so incorporates my highest dream to see his face.
But my purpose this afternoon is not to explain the blessing of God, but its polar opposite, its antithesis, which again can be seen in vivid contrast to the benediction.
It would be the supreme maladiction that would read something like this.
May the Lord curse you and abandon you.
May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace.
May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever.
In the imagery of atonement on the day of atonement, we know that there are several animals involved in the ritual of that day.
The priest before he can enter into the holy of holies where the high priest and only the high priest and only this one day of the year can go must b first himself make a blood sacrifice and go through an elaborate process of purification.
And then there are two more animals involved.
One who is killed, the other that survives.
The one that is killed yields his blood which the chief for high priest takes into the inner sanctum and sprinkles on the mercy seat, sprinkles on the throne of Yahweh to bring reconciliation.
And yet in this drama, there is no power in that blood other than it's pointing forward to the blood of the lamb.
Even as the blood on the doorposts on the night of Passover pointed beyond itself to Christ our Passover who is sacrificed for us.
We know two things from the day of atonement. One that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. We also learn from the author of Hebrews that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.
But in that half of the drama with the blood sacrifice that is sprinkled on the mercy seat, what is symbolized is an act of propitiation.
which some brilliant translators in the middle of the 20th century decided to take out of the New Testament to their everlasting shame.
Those two words that are so central to the core of the gospel, propitiation, expeation.
What's the difference? They have the same root but different prefix.
I want our people at St. Andrews in Sanford, Florida to always understand propitiation and expeation if they're going to understand the gospel. And I tell them, I said, you know, our church is built in the classical style that's called the crucififor. So that if you looked at it from the air, the shape of our building forms the shape of a cross.
And I say if you come down the center aisle, let it remind you of the vertical piece of the cross.
Let it remind you of propitiation.
Because in propitiation, the son does something to satisfy the justice and the wrath of the father.
It's a vertical transaction.
That is what is prefigured in this sacrifice that is made on the mercy seat.
Let's not forget that other animal that liberal theologians try every which way to erase from the biblical record. As we've already heard, yes, I'm speaking of the goat, the scapegoat who becomes the object of imputation where the priest now lays his hands on the back of that goat symbolically indicating the transfer or the imputation of the guilt of the people to the back of that goat.
So at the end of that ceremony, the priest lays his hands on the goat and says, "May the sins of the people be upon this goat." And then says to the goat, "Thank you very much for standing still during this." And he says to the people, "You are dismissed." No, no, no, no, no.
The significance really reaches its crescendo after the imputation of the sin of the people to the back of the goat when the goat is driven then into the wilderness outside the camp. You remember when God numbered the people according to the tribes and they pitched the tabernacle.
The tribes were in a circle and what was in the middle equidistant to every settlement of every tribe was the tabernacle indicating God is in the midst of his people and to be driven out of the covenant community.
To be driven outside the camp was to be driven to the place where the blessings of God did not reach.
sent into the outer darkness, into the wilderness, into exile, into the curse.
That's experation.
When in the cross, not only is the father's justice satisfied by the atoning work of his son, but in bearing our sins, the lamb of God removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west.
>> How does he do it?
by being cursed.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.
Listen to this. Not simply by being cursed for us, but becoming a curse for us.
He who is the incarnation of the glory of God now becomes the very incarnation of the divine curse.
As it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree.
Many many years ago, I was asked by the Quaker community of Pennsylvania, the Society of Friends, to come to one of their meetings and explain to them the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant.
And there I talked about the day of atonement in Israel and the crucifixion of Christ in the New Testament. And as I spoke of Christ becoming cursed, my message was interrupted by a guy in the back who stood up and shouted out loud, "That's primitive and obscene."
Has that ever happened to you when you're preaching?
I was taken back and just to give myself a chance to think, I said, "What did you say?" As if I didn't hear him, everybody in the room heard him. I said, "What did you say?"
and with great hostility he said I said that's primitive and obscene and I said you're right I love the words that you have chosen to describe this dynamic what could be more primitive than killing animals and sticking their blood over the throne of a god or taking a human being and pouring out his blood as a human sacrifice. That is primitive.
You're right.
You know, one of the things I love about the gospel, sir, is that it wasn't written merely for an anostic elite group of scholars who had to have their PhD in theology in order to understand it.
But the drama of redemption is communicated in terms so simple, so crass, so primitive that a child can understand it. But I really like the second word you used, obscene.
Obscene.
If there ever was an obscenity that violates contemporary community standards, it was Jesus on the cross.
Because after he became the scapegoat and the father imputes to him every sin of every one of his people, we see the most intense dense concentration of evil ever experienced on this planet.
Jesus was the ultimate obscenity.
And so what happened?
The Bible tells us that God is too holy to even look at sin.
And he cannot bear to look at this concentrated monumental condensation of evil.
And his eyes are averted from his son.
The light of his countenance is turned off.
All blessedness is removed from his son whom he loved.
And in its place was the full measure of the divine curse.
All the imagery that portrays the historical event of the cross is the imagery of the curse.
It was necessary for the scriptures to be fulfilled that Jesus not be crucified by Jews, but he has to be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. He has to be executed not by stoning but he has to be killed by Gentiles outside the camp outside Jerusalem at Goltha.
So that the full measure of the curse and the darkness that attends it be visited upon Jesus.
And God adds to these details astronomical perturbations where at midday he turns the lights out on that hill outside of Jerusalem.
So that when his face is moved away, when the light of his countenance is shut down, even the sun won't shine on Calvary.
And bearing the full measure of the curse, Christ screams a lama, MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME? OH, look at how the theologians play with that.
Oh well, Jesus was taking this occasion to identify with the psalmist in Psalm 22, which begins with those words so that he can call attention to the those who are looking upon this spectacle that this is really a fulfillment of prophecy.
I don't think Jesus was in a Bible quoting mood at that time or as Albert Schwitzer appined this was a cry of a disillusioned prophet who believed that God was going to rescue him at the 11th hour.
And he felt forsaken.
He didn't just feel forsaken.
He was forsaken.
For Jesus to become the curse, he has to be utterly, totally, and completely forsaken by the father. I started off by saying to you, I've been thinking about these things for 50 years, and I I can't begin to penetrate that what it meant that the that Jesus was forsaken by God.
But there is none of this to be found in the pseudo gospels of our day.
Dear brothers, every time I hear a preacher on television or live who says to his people, "God loves you unconditionally."
I want to ask that this man be defrocked for such a violation.
of the word of God.
What pagan who hears that announcement that God loves him unconditionally does not hear in that statement that he has no need of repentance.
He can continue in sin without fear knowing that it's all taken care of, that God doesn't hold grudges, that God loves him unconditionally.
There is a profound sense in which God does love people even in their corruption but they are still under his anathema.
I know that almost everybody here is a minister, related to a minister and so on, but you know, just because you're ordained is no guarantee that you're in the kingdom of God. And with this size of professing Christians assembled in one hall, the odds are astronomical that there are many people in this room right now who are still under the curse of God, who have not yet fled to the cross, who are still counting on this nebulous idea of the unconditional love of God to get them through, who are even worse still thinking that they can get into the kingdom of God through their good works, through their service, who don't understand that unless you perfectly obey the law of God, which you have not done for five minutes since you were born, you are under the curse of God.
And here's the reality that we must make clear to our people that they will either bear the curse of God themselves or they will flee to the one who took it for them.
cursed of God.
Father turns his back.
Thomas Aquinus once was asked, "Thomas, do you think that Jesus enjoyed the beatotific vision through his whole life?"
Thomas said, 'I don't know, but I'm sure that our Lord was able to see things that our sin keeps us from seeing.
Remember that the promise of the vision of God in the biatitudes is the promise made to whom? To the pure of heart.
Beloved, the reason why you can't see God with your eyes is not because you have a problem with your optic nerve.
What prevents us from seeing God is our heart, our impurity.
But Jesus had no impurity.
And Thomas said he was pure in heart.
So obviously he had some some experience of the beauty of the father until that moment that my sin was placed upon him and the one who was pure was pure no more than God cursed Man, it was if there was a cry from heaven, excuse my language, but I can be no more accurate than to say it was as if God Jesus heard the words, "God damn you."
because that's what it meant to be cursed, to be damned, to be under the anathema of the father.
As I said, I don't understand that, but I know that it's true.
And I know that every person in this room and every person outside in this hotel and on the street and across the world who has not been covered by the righteousness of Christ right this minute draws every breath under the curse of God.
If you believe that, you will stop adding to the gospel and start preaching it with clarity and with boldness. Because dear friends, it is the only hope we have and it is hope.
Let's pray. Our father, the work, the person of your son is our only hope in life and in death.
And so we hope for our life and for our death in his life and in his death.
Give us the grace to cling to the gospel.
Amen.
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