Jesus

Who Is Jesus?

/ davidsschrock

Who is Jesus?

In his commentary, Exodus: Saved For God’s Glory, Philip Graham Ryken gives an excellent answer to this essential question.  Notice how he uses the typology of Exodus with its people, language, events, and descriptions to explain who Christ is.

Jesus is the Moses of our salvation, the mediator who goes for us before God.  Jesus is the Lamb of our Passover, the sacrifice for our sins.  Jesus is our way out of Egypt, the deliverer who baptizes us in the sea of his grace.  Jesus is our bread in the wilderness, the provider who gives us what we need for daily life.  Jesus is our voice form the mountain, declaring his law for our lives. Jesus is the altar of our burning, through whom we offer praise up to God.  Jesus is the light of our lampstand, the source of our life and light.  Jesus is the basin of our cleansing, the sanctifier of our souls.  Jesus is our great High Priest, who prays for us at the altar of incense.  And Jesus is the blood on the mercy seat, the atonement that reconciles us to God.  The great God of the exodus has saved us in Jesus Christ.

This is our Christ  He is understood not in the romantic views of our own making, but rather he is known through the revelation of God’s word.  Moreover, he is known from the descriptions of the Old Testament.  This means that failure to know the Old Testament necessitates an inability to know who Jesus the Christ is.

May we continue to press into the text of the Bible–Old and New Testaments–to see him!

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

What Can Make Me Walk Away From Sin?

/ davidsschrock

[This article was originally featured in our hometown newspaper, The Seymour Tribune].

“What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Encapsulated in these words is the profound truth that the God of heaven and earth has made forgiveness possible through the death and resurrection of his Son.

But this raises a question: “If Jesus’ blood can wash away my sin, what can make me walk away from sin?” On this thanksgiving weekend, I give thanks for my forgiveness, but I wonder out loud, “Is the Christian life only about getting a ticket into heaven? Or does how I live matter?” Let me answer in two ways.

First, those who have had their sins washed away are those who have been born again. And as 1 John says, those who are born again must practice truth, walk in light, confess their sins, strive to obey God’s commandments and turn from sin. In his epistle, John does not teach perfectionism. He simply asserts that those who have been forgiven will lead transformed lives.

Second, when someone’s sins are washed away, the Holy Spirit gives that person a new appetite for Christ. This is what it means to be born again. Whereas before, this person might see Jesus as irrelevant or unattractive, now, in Christ, the same person sees Jesus as the most attractive person in the universe. Obeying God’s commandments is not burdensome because they love God and his Word. In truth, those who are forgiven delight in God, God’s Word and God’s people.

Such an experience is recorded in the Psalms: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” David’s words express the Christian’s heart. Those who know God’s pardon, simultaneously have a passion for his presence. While the blood of Christ washes away our sin, it is his beauty that makes men and women walk away from sin.

What about you? Have you beheld Christ’s beauty? Or have you encountered only the ugliness of some false imitations? Don’t be fooled. Christ is gloriously beautiful, to those who have eyes of faith. Don’t miss him because of a bad experience. For he alone can wash away your sin; he alone can make you whole again; he alone can make loving him an easy duty; because he alone can show you his beauty.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

Moses’ Gospel Logic

/ davidsschrock / 1 Comment

Yesterday, we saw how Abraham wrestled with God’s word in order to believe his promise (Gen 15:6) and to sacrifice his son (Gen 22:1ff).  We called such thinking that gave precedence to God’s revelation over our reasonable (or unreasonable) feelings “Gospel Logic.”  Today, we turn to Exodus 32 to see how Moses engaged in the same kind of thinking.

A Sinful People in Need of Something…

1 Corinthians 10 points to Exodus 32 as a universal example of what not to do. Poised to receive God’s order of service for true worship, Israel gets impatient (Exod 32). They hire Aaron to make new gods, and on one of the forty days that Moses in on the Mount of Sinai, the people of Israel sin against God and break the covenant that had just been ratified in Exodus 24.

On the mountain, Moses receives word from the Lord, “And the LORD said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'” (Exod 32:7-8).

What is Moses to do?

On the way down the mountainside, he hears the drunken sound of pagan worship in the camp (32:18-20).  He gets to the base camp, and he smashes the tablets.  The covenant is broken.  In the scenes that follow, Moses inquires of Aaron (32:22-24) and commissions the sons of Levi to slaughter their own family members in order to avert the wrath of God (32:25-29).  The day is done.  The people are undone.  Night falls.

Exodus 32:30 records a new day.  The day of judgment has passed, but the threat of the plague remains (v. 35).  What will Moses do?  Surely he was thinking the same thing.  The covenant people of Israel have broken their wedding vows, and something must be done.  Not a passive man, Moses sets off to inquire of God telling the people, “You have sinned a great sin.  And I will go up to the Lord, . . . ” (32:30).

What would he do?  What would he say?  The rest of verse tells us, “perhaps I can make atonement for your sins.”

Atonement.  This is what the people needed.  But how would he accomplish this.  The plans for the tabernacle were destroyed.  The sin was so great, and God’s holiness was so much greater what would he do?  How would he plead his case?  Such questions lead us to see how Moses reckoned the matter, and in his offer, we will see how gospel logic at work.

Moses Gospel Logic: From Sinai to Eden and Back Again

To understand fully how Moses might have arrived at his self-sacrificing offer, we need to consider the antecedent theology that Moses would have had, and that he would have drawn upon to plead his case and make his offer.

Atonement, and the need for blood sacrifice, was common throughout the ancient near east.  Accordingly, Israel as they worshiped around the golden altar made sacrifices.  While they needed divine instruction for true sacrifices, they did not need information on how to sacrifice.  While they did not have the book of Exodus, they had ample knowledge of the sacrifices offered In Egypt.

But where did these come from?  From God, where else?  Pagan sacrifices are echoes of the first sacrifice, the one God made in the Garden.  Indeed, sacrifice in general terms was imprinted on human civilization from the Garden of Eden forward. Remember: When Adam and Eve sinned they needed a covering, and so God killed an animal an clothed them.  The seed of substitution was sown in this act, and it was passed from God to Adam to Abel.

(For a biblical exposition of these patriarchal and pagan sacrifices, see William Symington, On the Atonement and Intercession of Jesus Christ [1834], pp. 66-92; likewise, for a helpful explanation of the way pagan worship corresponds to the original pattern passed down from Adam and Noah, see Jeffrey Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology)

As the biblical testimony goes, not all offerings were of equal value.  In Genesis 4, Abel’s offering was based on his faith (Heb 11), but what was his faith in?  Surely, it based on the revelation conveyed to Cain and Abel’s parents, modeled in Genesis 3, that said bloodshed was needed. By contrast, Cain’s offering was faithless, because he refused to believe the need for shed blood.  Instead of substitutionary offering, he brought fruit from the field.  His offering was not according to God’s word, it did not substitute life for life, and thus it was not acceptable to the Lord.

If Moses was indeed retracing the history of God’s atonement and means of provision, he would have next thought of Abraham and Isaac.  In what would become Genesis 22, YHWH commands Abraham to offer his son. This is far more than an animal sacrifice, something Abraham (and Moses) had done plenty of times.  Now, God was upping the ante.  He was testing Abraham (22:1), and he was setting in redemptive history a portrait of a substitution—a divinely provided lamb in place of Abraham’s seed (people of faith).

Like Abel, Abraham had to make this offering in faith–faith in God’s word.  As we saw yesterday, this is exactly what God’s friend did.  Thus, he believed that God could raise his son from the dead.  If indeed Moses was pondering all that God had revealed to him in the law on Sinai, and all that God had done in Israel’s history, it is little wonder that Moses concluded that perhaps his own substitution might become the means by which Israel would be saved.

Putting this gospel logic in dramatic prose, James M. Boyce imagines what the night might have been like,

The night passed, and the morning came when Moses was to reascend the mountain.  He had been thinking.  Sometime during the night a way that might possibly divert the wrath of God against the people had come to him.  He remembered the sacrifices of the Hebrew patriarchs and the newly instituted sacrifice of the Passover.  Certainly God had shown by such sacrifices that he was prepared to accept an innocent substitute in place of the just death of the sinner.  His wrath could sometimes fall on the substitute.  Perhaps God would accept… When morning came, Moses ascended the mountain with great determination. Reaching the top, he began to speak to God (Quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Exodus, 1013).

Concluding Thoughts

Like Abraham, Moses practiced Gospel Logic.  He reflected on the character of God, God’s revealed word, the sin of the people, and like Abraham who reckoned that God could raise the dead, Moses conjectured, maybe, just maybe God might take me in place of my people.  So Moses, with boldness and selfless love for God’s sinful people laid himself on the altar: “No if you would on forgive their sin.  But if not”–and here is where the offer comes–“please me from the book You have written” (Exod 32:32).

In the end, his offer is not accepted (32:33-34), but not because the idea is wrong, but because the substitute is blemished.  Even though Moses was not complicit in the crime, he was a son of Adam and by nature incapable of atoning for the sins of the people.  Relatively speaking, he was innocent, but time would reveal that in his own heart lay a dark distrust for God and a willingness to strike the rock when God said speak (Num 20:10-13).

Moses was not the perfect substitute.  Yet, his intercession foreshadows the one whose self-sacrifice would be accepted.  Moses receives God’s word to continue to lead the people which implies that the story will continue, the hope of the true Messiah remains. This is good news for Moses, Israel, and us.  And Moses example of wrestling with the Lord like Abraham and Jacob should remind us to press into the truths of God’s word and to find solace in the darkest nights.

When God’s wrath was ready to consume Israel, Moses Gospel Logic reckoned that “perhaps” he could intercede.  We must reckon in the same fashion, not that we can intercede for others (although see Paul in Romans 9).  No, we must reckon with greater  confidence that because in Jesus Christ there is no “perhaps,” all that we ask in his name will be accomplished.  This is God’s promise to us in John 14:13-14, and it is based on the inexhaustible merits of Christ.  In his priestly service, Jesus was gladly received by the Father, and as the Father’s beloved Son, all that he does and asks, is answered.  This is our good news.

May such knowledge of our great high priest comfort us today, and beckon us not to lose heart for tomorrow.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

Prayer as a Theological Problem

/ davidsschrock

Moses Prayer: A Problem in the Making

Moses’ prayer not only provides a powerful example of intercession; it also presents a major theological problem: Does Prayer Really Change Things?

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the text makes Moses look like the good guy—the one who is emotionally stable–while God himself, looks like the bad guy.  To our twenty-first century sensitivities the impassible God looks bi-polar. Yet, such a reading misses the point and misunderstands God. Nevertheless, Exodus 32-34 is a hard one for understanding God’s relationship to the world. How should we understand Moses’ prayer and its effect?  Does he really change God’s mind? Let me make a couple observations.

  1. God is Moses’ maker.  He gives him life, breath, and everything else. As Moses learned in Exodus 4:11, God makes man mute or able to speak.  Voicing his prayer depends on God.
  2. YHWH sends Moses to be Israel’s mediator.  Thus, if Moses is advocating for Israel, it is because he is fulfilling God’s will for him. In other words, God’s pronouncement of judgment is matched by his provision of a mediator.
  3. Moses prayer is based on God’s previous promises.  Moses is only doing what God has previously revealed, commanded or promised. He is not opposing God; he is obeying God. His prayer flows from God (and his Word) back to God.

Letting the Whole Counsel of Scripture Speak

These observations are a start, but they don’t get us all away around the track.  We need a more full understanding of how God can both answer prayer and initiate prayer.  Fortunately, the doctrines of salvation and the Trinity give help.

First, Prayers do not shake the heavens, unless God has first saved us.Only those prayers offered by Christians who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ are acceptable to God.  Only those who know God and are known by him can offer effective prayer—can pray according to the will of God. Thus, prayer depends on God, and his saving initiative. This is true for the believer today, and for Moses who was a man called by God and given the Holy Spirit (cf. Num 11:16ff).

Second, prayer that is powerful and effective is Trinitarian.  The Father receives our prayers through the Son.  In Exodus, this is foreshadowed, where Moses himself is a type of Christ, interceding for his people.  In this way, Moses, who is human and not divine, is thrust into an office that is intended for the God-Man Jesus Christ. So, our prayers are powerful as they are lifted to the Father, through the Son.  But what of the Spirit?  Looking for help in all the Scripture, we find that we must pray “in the Spirit.”  We find this stated twice in the New Testament (Eph 6:18; Jude 20) and explained in Romans 8:25-26.  So lets read:

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

If we listen to what Paul is saying, the Spirit is the one who directs and empowers our prayer. Indeed, we cannot pray apart from the Spirit.  Prayer that is pleasing to God is initiated and guided by the Holy Spirit, which means that prayer mysteriously puts the believer somewhere between the Spirit and the Son on the way to the Father.  We do not become part of the Trinity, but when we pray we are participating in a spiritual dance of sorts with the Triune God. Therefore, true prayer is necessarily Trinitarian, and thus all the prayers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons, and New Age Spiritist are worthless.  The Living God rejects them all.

Back to Exodus

So what should we say? Does Moses change God’s mind?  Yes and No.

Yes, Moses prayer changes things.  Verse 12, Moses asks God to “relent” and verse 14 confirms that God “relented.”  I fully believe that if Moses had not prayed, God would not have relented and Israel would have been wiped out.  Moses prayer was instrumental.  But did it change God?

No, Moses doesn’t change God or what God was going to do.  On the surface, it looks like God got mad, Moses stepped in the middle, and saved Israel by changing God’s mind.  But that is a very man-centered view. It makes God little better than a moody old man.

Still better: Moses prayer, while it is genuine, real, and passionate, is also Scripted.  The sovereign God who answers his prayer, also gives him his prayer.  That is to say that God sent Moses to intercede for Israel.  God circumcised Moses heart and gave him a passion for his people.  And then in this moment, Moses responded to the circumstance by pleading God’s mercy.

Maybe you are saying, “I still don’t understand.  How can Moses prayer be free and effective, and Scripted?” Let me take one more stab at it, again recruiting the analogy of other Scriptures.

  1. His prayer is not based on his own inventive reasoning.  Everything he says is based on God’s previous promises.  In this way, the Script is the Scripture.  God’s word, written on his heart.
  2. As we read the testimony of Romans 8, we learn that when we pray, God helps us, and gives us the words.  This is true in the OT and the NT.  So, he is praying by the Spirit.  Confirmation of this is seen in Numbers 11, when it says Moses is filled with the Spirit.
  3. Further testimony in the Bible says clearly that God knows the words that we will speak long before they cross our lips (Ps 139:4).  But even more amazing is that Scripture doesn’t say that God just knows our speech, he gives it to us.  Proverbs 16:1, “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.”
  4. Going one step further, since the mouth speaks what is in the heart (Matt 12:34), God must also be in charge of what is in the heart; which is confirmed in Proverbs 21:1, when Solomon records, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD, he turns it wherever he will.”

In the end, some may say, this is too deep, too mysterious.  And I agree that it is mysterious.  But I disagree that it is too deep.  God made you to go deep with him (Prov 25:2), and the reason why so many Christians are bored in church and flirt with pornography, gambling, and materialism is because they have never gone deep with God.  Here is the truth, as we go deep with God, the sovereign Lord who made us and redeemed us will fills us with joy eternal, and he will give us power to say no to ungodliness.  Moreover, he will enervate our prayer with life like we have never before experienced.  Moses prayer is a theological problem, but it is one worth thinking about deeply because it reveals so much of God.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

True Confession: When “I’m Sorry, I Messed Up” Isn’t Enough

/ davidsschrock

How often have you heard or said, “Yeah, I know I messed up. I’m sorry.  I don’t know how it happened. I’ve got issues.”

This language is typical in our day, when as a culture we have abdicated responsibility, absorbed psychology as a means of explaining sin issues, and abandoned God’s perspective on guilt and forgiveness. Sadly, this kind of thinking is just as rampant in the church as in the world.

Confession, which is an integral part of the Christian life, has become less of a transaction of offense confessed and offense forgiven.  It has instead become, or it at least it appears often, as an excuse-laiden, cross-less, appeal for acceptance.  But is this new?  Not really.  In Exodus 32, we find in Aaron the age old problem of a false confession.

Exodus 32:22-24

After the golden calf is destroyed, Moses turns his attention to Aaron and the people. Like a lawyer before the judge, Moses questions the accused. In v. 21, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” Aaron’s answer echoes that of Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Verse 22.  Aaron blames Israel for their evil. Which is true.  But it seems that he uses their wickedness as a shield from his own law-breaking.

Verse 23.  Then he recites the demands of the Israelites.  Further adding to their guilt.  Now, notice for a moment who is saying this—it isn’t a commoner in Israel; it is the priest.  The one who is supposed to remove guilt, not add to it.  Moreover, one wonders if Aaron uses the people’s words about Moses absence from camp to insinuate his own guilt in the episode.  For, if Moses had been there, none of this would happened.

Verse 24. Then finally he gets to his part. Instead of admitting the active role he had in “making” the calf, he shows surprise in how this beast was fashioned.  Paraphrased, it sounds like this “I threw the gold into the fire, and out popped this calf.”

It is easy to point at Aaron, or even to laugh at the ridiculousness of his excuse, but we should be quick to notice how similar we are to Aaron.  Paul says we are to learn from the counter-example of Israel (1 Cor 10:1-11), and thus God uses Aaron’s ridiculous confession to show us what confession is not.

Five Attributes of False Confession and True Confession

(1) Confession does not name others first; it takes the first step to admit wrong. There is no place in confession for pointing to the faults of others as contributing factors.  It is satisfied to single our self, and to deal with the Lord and others, without pulling others into the mix.  Though Scripture models corporate confessions–one thinks of Nehemiah or Daniel–personal confession has no business finding comfort in the sins of others.

(2) Confession does not blame-shift; pointing out the sins of others.  It points to self. It is not looking for a scape-goat or an external reason for the moral failure or relational offense.  There is no need to load our sins on anyone else, because for Christians, Christ has already taken that sin on the cross.  Thus confession gives us another reason to rejoice in sin pardoned.

(3) Confession does not simply claim that wrong was done; it is admitting your part. Unlike Aaron, who passively recounts the events of the golden calf, true confession steps up and says, “I am the man. Forgive me.”

(4) Confession does not aim to save face; it is looking to see the face of Christ again. With Christ and his cross in view, it always sees the penalty of sin as a bloody cross; but it also remembers that the greatest sin has been covered by the greater grace of God in Christ (Rom 5:20).  Thus, it frees us to confess even the most miserable and atrocious sins, because in Christ they have been fully forgiven.

(5) Confession is not a lame ‘yeah, I’m sorry,’ It demands a spirit of contrition & brokenness, and willingness to do anything to bring about reconciliation. It abandons personal rights, and is willing to suffer hardship to make-peace.

(6) Confession does not simply retell the shame, it agrees with God that the act, thought, speech, motive, pattern, etc was a sin, and then it boldly claims the blood of Christ as the once for all atonement for that hell-deserving sin.  

Confession that is true reiterates our belief that we are more sinful than we ever knew, and that Christ as our mediating high priest is more sufficient than we ever imagined. It is prompted by the Spirit and leads to forgiveness and cleansing (1 John 1:9).  It comes from a heart that has seen sin the way God sees sin; it cannot be manufactured, it is a gift from God.

In short, it is part and parcel of the Christian life, one that is illumined by God’s word and directed by the convicting work of the Holy Spirit.  For truly born again Christians, it should not be an irregular activity or something initiated by a pastoral reminder.  It should be a daily, even moment-by-moment offering to the Lord.

Still, with all that said, I wonder how many Christians do confession much like Aaron. I am concerned that many “Christians” play church–that confession, repentance, and reconciliation are not part of their daily lives.  And thus, their professed Christianity is nothing like the real thing.  Instead of a genuine relationship with Jesus, programs and platitudes have sufficed.

Ask yourself: How often do I make confession to the Lord, and to others?  Is it a regular practice of my life, one stimulated by the Spirit?

Jesus is clear. Those who are forgiven will forgive; and those who are convicted will confess. This is not optional; this is the normal Christian life.  God’s love confronts us and calls us to regularly confess sin and seek restoration with God and others, and Aaron’s errant confession teaches us that “I’m sorry, I’ve got issues,” just doesn’t cut it.

Lord pour out a Spirit of grace and pleas for mercy on your church and on me.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

 

Sermon Notes: Exodus 34:6-7 In Biblical-Theological Context

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The Context of Exodus 32-34

Exodus 32-34 are at the center of the tabernacle section (Exodus 25-40).  They function as a break between the instructions (25-31) and the construction (35-40). But the break is not just literary, it’s relational.

After all that God has done for Israel—remembering them in Egypt, redeeming them from slavery, making his covenant with them—Israel returns the favor by committing spiritual adultery.  In Exodus 32, God’s people make a graven image, and bow before it.  This invokes God’s wrath, but it also sets the stage to display YHWH’s mercy and grace.

Exodus 34:6-7 is the capstone of this passage, and in these two electric verses, we find the center of Old Testament Theology in God’s revelation to Moses (see Jim Hamilton, God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment for a full development of this idea).  These verses are programmatic for the rest of the Bible and they read,

The LORD passed before [Moses] and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

To know our God, it is vital to understand these passages in context and content. To better acquaint ourselves with this passage, notice three ways that God’s revelation on Sinai functions much like the cross in the New Testament.

1. Like the cross of Christ, these chapters show God’s mercy and his justice. Like a perfect kaleidoscope, they radiate the colors of God’s severity and kindness (cf. Rom 11:22).  In the New Testament, wrath and mercy meet at the cross; in the Old Testament they meet here.

2. Like the cross of Christ, the role of Moses is that of God-given Mediator.  In other words, he stands between God’s holy wrath and Israel’s rebellious sin.  In this way, as he pleads for mercy, he foreshadows Christ.  But lets not make the mistake that Moses or Christ change God’s mind; in both cases, the God who metes out perfect justice, also sends his a mediator to plead for pardon.  In this, there is the beautiful mystery that God who seeks to destroy Israel, is first the God works to save them.  He listens to Moses’ prayer, because he sent Moses to pray.

3. Like the cross of Christ, this episode shapes the rest of the OT (and NT). Exodus 34:6-7 is quoted throughout the rest of the Bible, and gives shape to all that follows.

This verse is picked up in places like Num 14:18. When Israel rebels against Moses, Moses quotes Exodus 34:6-7 in full as he pleads for Israel’s pardon. In the Psalms, it is often cited to remind Israel of God’s gracious character (cf. 86:15; 103:7).  But in the prophets, Nahum stresses God’s wrath: “The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet” (1:2-3). Even Jonah quotes the verse, saying it was this reason that he did not go to Nineveh, because the reluctant prophet knew God would forgive them if they repented.

Exodus 34:6-7 is so programmatic because of the way it expresses God’s relationship with the world.  YHWH is unchanging (Mal 3:6), yet people are not.  Thus, God has made a world in covenant with him.  Which means: Those who keep covenant will receive grace, mercy, and forgiveness (thru atonement).  However, for those who reject or ignore him, he loathes. His anger burns red-hot. His patience is slow, but not infinite.

Finally, Exodus 34:6-7 is fulfilled in Christ himself. In John 1:14, the beloved disciple introduces Christ saying, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  The connection with Exodus 34:6-7 is in the last phrase.  The God who is abounding in steadfast love (hesed) and faithfulness (emeth) is fully revealed in Christ who is full of grace (charis) and truth (aletheia).

This is our God.  Though, Scripture reveals him progressively over time, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  The Old Testament God and the New Testament God are not juxtaposed, rather, as I recently heard D. A. Carson say, the New Testament vision of God is simply more clear and precise–this is true with God’s love and his justice.

May we this week, worship the God of Sinai and Calvary, and learn to know him in his faithfulness to forgiveness and judge.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

A Temple Story: Tracing God’s Presence Through Scripture

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A Temple Story

What is the best way to describe the Bible?  Is it a collection of verses that supply promises and warnings for the Christian life?  Is it a collection of books that each point to Jesus Christ?  Or is it an epic story of Paradise Created, Paradise Lost, Paradise Promised, and Paradise Made New in Christ?

Perhaps, the best answer is all the above.  While each of these three answers are correct, I think the last is the most difficult to see in Scripture.  In the last month at our church, we have given attention on Sunday mornings to the tabernacle in Exodus and how it fits into God’s plan of redemption.  Because of that, I want to give you a biblical roadmap that traces God’s “tabernacles.”  I think by seeing this line of dwelling places, it will give you and I a greater ground for hope in God.  Call it a temple story.

Garden of Eden.  This is God’s first dwelling place on earth. In Genesis 3, it describes God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day.  This garden has many features of the later sanctuaries of God—gold, bountiful trees, flowing rivers, priestly guardians, and more.  Thus, from the beginning, God sets a pattern for the kind of place he will inhabit with his people.

Exodus 25-40. On Mount Sinai God gives Moses a vision of his throne room, which becomes the pattern for the tabernacle and all future sanctuaries.  Interestingly, as we have seen this tabernacle points back to Eden and ahead to a New Eden.  The tabernacle given in Exodus is a portable Sinai where God’s people—through the priest—can climb the rungs of Jacob’s ladder and come into God’s presence.

1 Kings 8.  After Israel is settled and resting in the land, 1 Kings records how God gives Solomon wisdom to build a temple in Jerusalem.  This temple replaced God’s nomadic tent and became a permanent fixture in Israel.  It’s size and beauty surpassed that of the first tabernacle, showing that as time goes by, God’s temple increases in glory and beauty.

Ezekiel 40-47.  During the Exile, after God’s spirit had abandoned the temple, Ezekiel describes a future temple that overflows with streams of living water.  This water will cleanse the earth, and God’s presence will once again dwell with his people.  Significantly, when Jesus comes, John uses imagery from Ezekiel to describe Christ’s cleansing ministry (see John 7:37-39).

Jesus.  Perhaps most amazing of all, Jesus Christ is described as God’s dwelling place.  He is God with us, Immanuel.  John 1:14 says that the Word became flesh and “tabernacled” among us.  In truth, Christ is the meeting place between God and man.  In him the fullness of God dwelt bodily (Col 2:9), and in him we have access into the very throne room of God (Heb 10:19-25).  Therefore, we ought to come regularly into his presence with thanksgiving and supplication.

The Church.  Today, God dwells in heaven, but by his Spirit, he also dwells in his church. Paul says, “We are the temple of living God” (2 Cor 6:16), and that our bodies are the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19).  Likewise, 1 Peter 2:5 describes believers as living stones “being built up as a spiritual house.”  In this way, the church is the spiritual house of God (Eph 2:19-22).

Revelation.  Finally, there is the promise at the end of the age that God will dwell with his people on earth.  In fact, Revelation 21 speaks of a New Jerusalem that will come down out of heaven adorned as a bride. It says there won’t be a temple, for the lamb will be the temple of God.  This is our hope. At the end of the age, all the cosmos will experience the glory of God’s holiness, and will be as sacred as innermost chamber of the temple.

This temple theme is a source of great wonder and hope.  When the world around us seems to be crumbling, the ever-steady rise of God’s dwelling place in our world is a gospel reminder that even if our flesh and funds may fail, God is bringing us into his dwelling place.

Remember what Jesus promised.  He said, “In this world, we would have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).  Such a promise is good news, but its goodness grounded in another promise: “Let not your hearts not be troubled.  Believe in God; believe also in me.  In my father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1-3).

I am praying that this month God will give you and me a greater vision of his heavenly tabernacle, and that such a vision will purify our daily desires, and motivate us to live more radically for Christ.  God’s temple story gives us hope for tomorrow, no matter what is transpiring today.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

Sermon Notes: The Sweet-Smelling Aroma of Prayer (NT)

/ davidsschrock / 4 Comments

Not only does the New Testament develop general themes of Christ’s fulfillment of the tabernacle.  It also picks up more specific details, like that of the golden altar of incense.  Yesterday, we considered the law and the prophets on this theme.  Today, we venture into the New Testament.

4. Christ’s offering is fragrant and acceptable to God.  We see this in at least two places in the New Testament.

Ephesians 5:2.  Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  In Exodus, “fragrant” always described the incense.  Here, we have evidence of Christ’s offering on the golden altar and the sacrifice on the bronze altar.

Hebrews 5:7.  In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

5. The Gospel: We have a God who hears us.  In Christ, our prayers get behind the veil. In the nostrils of God our prayers are a fragrant offering because they have the scent of his son.  This is seen most convincingly in Revelation.

Rev 5:8. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

 Rev 8:3-4. Another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, w the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.

In both of these texts, the prayers of the saints, are received in the presence of God, because they emit the fragrance of Christ’s sacrifice, as they are always lifted in the name and power and intercession of Jesus Christ.  This then leads to our application.

6. Christian Application: Pray. Pray confidently (Heb 4:16). Pray often (1 Thess 5:17). Pray in Christ’s name.  More specifically, let me list three points of application.

We do not come before God in our own name.  On our own, our works are an aroma of death and dung before God.  But in Christ, our prayers are a pleasing scent to God.  He delights for you and I to come and speak with him, because he “smells” his Son on us.  Thus in Christ, Proverbs 15:8 applies to us.

Proverbs 15:8. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.

Now, you and I are not upright.  The law condemns our sin and unrighteousness.  But with Christ as our altar of incense, his righteousness covers us, and our unrighteous prayers are covered by his blood.  So that, they are pleasing to the Father!

The prayers that the enter heaven are prayers that are effective.  The good news of prayers by New Covenant believers is that they are not only empowered and directed by the Spirit, but they are guaranteed to have effect as we pray according to God’s will.

By extension, this means that God does not listen to the prayers of unbelievers. Psalm 66:18 says, “If I cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”  That is the perpetual state for those who don’t know Christ.

Because Christ is our fragrant offering to God, when we come in his name before the Father, we will never be turned away.  This is a great word that calls us to pray with greater intensity.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

Sermon Notes: Christ’s Consecration is Our Confidence (OT)

/ davidsschrock

TEST CASE # 1 :: Exodus 29: Consecration of the Priests

Following the five-fold model (Law, Prophets 1 &2, Christ, Gospel, Christian Application) presented in the last few days, I will today try to give a “test case” for getting from the consecration of the high priest in Exodus 29 to Christ to Christians today.

1. Exodus 29 gives explicit laws for consecrating the priest. 

Exodus 29 is an exposition of Exodus 28:41, “And your shall put them”—that is the priestly garments— “on Aaron your brother, and on his sons with him, and shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.”  The point of the chapter is to explain how the high priest might be received into the presence of the Lord.  And it is an incredible process. To begin with, verses 4-9 give a point by point process for cleansing the priest.

Verses 4-9: Five Steps for Consecration

Verse 4. The priests are washed.  In a hot, dusty desert, these men needed a bath. This would not be sufficient, but it was a necessary beginning.

Verse 5. The priest is clothed.  All the garments made for “dignity and honor,” or “beauty and glory” were put on the priest.

Verse 6. The priest is crowned. The most significant element of the apparel was the turban.  It was put on last, and it essentially crowned the priest (Zech 6).

Verse 7. The priest is anointed.  With the anointing oil, the priest is ordained, as God’s chosen vessel to represent the people before him.  This anointing is defined with greater detail in Hebrews 5, where it says that the priest did not appoint and anoint himself.  As one commentator has said, this anointing basically stamped the priest with heavenly approval.

Verse 8-9. The priest is supported. Each of the priests are dressed and ready to serve him, in the service of the temple.

Verses 10-28: Six Atoning Sacrifices

Now everything was ready for the offerings.  In verses 10-28, Moses lists six different kinds of offerings that were involved in the priests ordination.  Most of these would be further explained in Leviticus 1-7, but let’s take a short survey here to simply mention the complexity of all the sacrifices involved.

Sin offering.  Unclean sections of the animal are taken outside the camp and burned.

Burnt Offering. First ram is completely consumed, symbolizing the priest’s total devotion

Ram of Ordination.  Only for the priests, this lamb was slaughtered and the blood applied to their ear lobes, thumbs, and big toes.  All the exposed parts of the priest are cleansed by the blood.

Wave Offering.  Taking the cooked meat and bread, the offering was waved before the Lord. Walter Kaiser describe them like this: “The waving was not from side to side but toward the altar and back, showing that the sacrifice was given to God and then received back by the priest for his use” (Exodus, 470). This food is then burned up on the altar as a Food Offering.

Peace Offerings.  Included in the consecration was the eating of the food before the Lord.  This ‘portion’ to eat represented the kind of peace the priests (and Israel) had with God through the atoning sacrifices.

Verses 29-42: Further Priestly Instructions

After the offerings came another round of detailed instructions.  Everything from how to boil the food that the priest would eat with God to directions on the daily offerings.

Verse 29-30.  God gives instructions concerning the garments, and how they are to be passed down from one generation to the next.

Verse 31-35.  The priests have instructions for boiling the meat and eating it.

Verse 35-37.  This ordination takes 7 days, again showing how weak the sacrifices were and how great was the need for cleansing.

Verse 38-42. On top of the ordination service, there is the morning and evening sacrifice, which twice a day provided atonement for the holy place.

This elaborate system, along with everything else in Exodus 25-40, was put in place to teach Israel about the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and what it takes to get into God’s presence.  In one sentence, the message was this: You need a priest who will represent you before God, and that priest needs the highest degree of cleansing.  Now the question becomes, “How did Israel do with this?”  Let’s see.

2. Malachi 2:1-9 shows how the priests failed to keep covenant with God. Reciting the covenant God had with Levi, Malachi indicts the sons of Levi for their corrupted service.

 And now, O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it. So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the LORD of hosts. My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the LORD of hosts, and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.

3. Zechariah 3 promises a new priest who will be pure and devoted to God. In a book full of Messianic promises, the hope of a royal priest who will cleanse the people is especially prominent, because God’s dwelling with his people depended on the people’s purity.  Verses 6-10 read,

Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. In that day, declares the LORD of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.

At this point in redemptive-history, the people of God wait for a pure priest.  God’s promise is sure, but the fulfillment is still future.  The flow of the narrative builds anticipation for the arrival of the Messiah.

Following the lead of the inter-testamental period, we will pause here too, and come back in our next post.

dss

Sermon Notes: How to Avoid Getting Lost on the Way from Leviticus 15 to Luke 15

/ davidsschrock

On Monday, I suggested a five-fold system, a Gospel-Positioning System (GPS), to get you from obscure passages in the Law through the Prophets to Christ and the Gospel.  These five-steps are listed again.

1. Law
2A. Prophets: Judgment
2B: Prophets: Salvation
3: Christ
4: Gospel Response
5: Spirit-Empowered Action 

Today, I want to suggest four common errors that plague evangelicals today. Four ways we misread the Scriptures.

1. We skip from 1 to 5.  In pursuit of application and life-change, we read a command, a law, even a story, and we immediately move to application. Instead, of asking how the said pericope fits into the flow the Bible (i.e. textual, epochal, and canonical horizons), many of us move straight to activity.  This is wrong.  It misses the power of the law, the promise of the gospel, and the person of Jesus.  In effect, it makes the Bible about us, and no longer about Jesus.  The solution?  We must move from law through the prophets to Jesus Christ and then to us.  Personal application is vitally important but only after we encounter Christ.

2. We are afraid of 2A & 2B.  The prophets frighten us.  They are strange.  They don’t talk normal. They are hard to understand.  I get this!  I remember reading Isaiah 13-20 one time.  As I read the pronouncements against Babylon, Damascus, and Moab, I got upset.  Not because God was punishing these sinning nations, but because, “I needed a word from God, and this was not it”–so I thought.  I closed the Bible (for that day) upset, because I hadn’t seen how those words related to the rest of the Bible or my life.

If you have had an experience like that with the Prophets, it makes it hard to be a regular reader of that challenging genre.  Yet, to neglect the prophets is to neglect the greatest section of the Bible for fueling Christ-centered hope.

Maybe this will help: The prophets get a lot easier if we remember two things. First, they are speaking a word of judgment, based on the law against sinners like us.  Their words condemn covenant-breakers, social injustice, and unfaithful worship.  They speak to us about our sin.

Second, they are speaking a word of Messianic hope, based on the gospel. They give us glorious images of the Christ who is to come.  They offer salvation to sinful people, and the reality that God is going to bring recreate the world.  If we remember these two things and tie a rope from the law to the gospel, we can learn to walk thru these strange books.

3. We minimize 3.  This may sound strange, to minimize Jesus, but I have heard countless evangelical, Baptist preachers (and you have too) who preach and never mention Him.  Instead they list moral instructions from the life of Joseph or Caleb, and at the end say, “Unless you are Christian you cannot do what I just said.  So become a Christian.”

Friends, this is Christ-less preaching.  It has no power and I can hardly believe that a message without the content of Christ, will bring anyone nearer to our Lord and Savior.  In fact, it is disingenuous, to tell anyone to become a Christian after you have spent 40 minutes preaching moral lessons and not telling them about Christ.  Yet, this happens all too often.

4. We divorce 1-4 from 5.  If we are tempted to skip Jesus, we are more culpable of divorcing the gospel from application. In other words, we read the Bible for application, and we find all kinds of commands that say—Make disciples.  Love one another.  Be unified.  Forgive your enemies.  Turn the other cheek.

Yet, those commands have ZERO POWER, in and of themselves. These biblical commands are good, but in Scripture they are always set in relation to gospel promises.  To say it another way, imperatives are always grounded in gospel infinitives.  Why?  Because laws never produce godliness!  Grace produces godliness (Titus 2:11-13).

Jesus commands his disciples to be witnesses to all the nations, but he commands them to stay in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes so they will have power to do what he commands.  Paul tells us to forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you.  The power is in the gospel.  Failure to couple commands with Christ’s antecedent work, will lead earnest Christians to live the Christian life in the power of their own strength.

Instead, we must move to application and action, but as we do so, we must continue to walk in faith, loving others out of the love that has been poured into our hearts.

This is my prayer and hope!  That as we read Scripture, our minds are not just informed.  Rather, our eyes are opened to behold Christ and to become like him. Indeed, Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified by his word (John 17:17), and that comes to fruition when in his word, we see Jesus (2 Cor 3:18).

Open our eyes, Lord to see the wonder of Christ in the pages of Scripture, dss