Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Frameworek - Blood Atonement & Justice
The concept of justice permeates every aspect of our lives, but do we truly understand biblical justice? Jeremy Thomas walks us through the Old Testament framework that prepared humanity to recognize the ultimate act of justice—the cross.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.
SPEAKER_01:God has assigned life to the blood. That's the meaning. Okay, in other words, what would you do if you killed an animal in the Old Testament and you wanted to eat it? What did you first have to do? You had to drain out the blood. Right? Why would you need to do that? Well, because God had assigned the meaning of the blood to be life. And it was not to be eaten. It was to be drained out or poured out as signifying it's life given for you.
SPEAKER_03:Naked and afraid. The name of a reality TV show or the state of every human being? Well, it's both. Now, are you sitting listening to this completely naked and afraid of your eternal state? Probably not. But when we look at people in general, what are they doing? So many people in this world are running from God. They don't want to face their natural state up against a holy, righteous, just God. They are acting naked and afraid, running from their true state. What's the resolution to this? It's not to run and hide, but it's to come before Lord God Almighty, the Messiah, and accept the substitutionary gift He provided on the cross, the death of His Son, so that we can no longer be naked, we can be clothed in His righteousness. And we would no longer be afraid because we would now have restored fellowship with the God of the universe. Today Jeremy walks us in review through the Old Testament pointing to this beautiful truth of Christ's substitutionary death.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so right here what you see is the first seven events of the Old Testament that we went through as far as the framework. And of course, now we're over in the New Testament, we're talking about the death of the king. With the death of the king, the focal point that we have to start with is the nature of justice. And I discussed this last week. Justice is a basic question that every human is dealing with on a daily basis. Because justice is a question of what's right, what's wrong, what's the standard for what is right and what is wrong. Scripturally, of course, we define this and we said God is the standard for what is right and wrong. In other words, God doesn't look outside of himself and say and see something and say that's right, see something else, say that's wrong. In other words, right and wrong are not independent of God where he looks out and he imputes a value to it. But rather, something is right or wrong because of the nature of who God is himself. Now, the world has a lot of ideas of justice. I've shared some of these with you, like uh distributive justice, which is basically any attempt to, usually through taxation, like a progressive taxation system, to try to make everybody more equal. Another system of j uh of justice is called egalitarianism or equalitarianism. It's also a system, both of these are social justice systems, which are derived basically from Marxist ideology to try to get everybody equal. So they're kind of non-meritocracy systems. Like a merit system is a system where if you work, you get paid, you know, the value for your work, which is imputed by other people to your value, you know, whatever it is you're selling, whatever product. Um, in other words, if if someone always says to me, Well, how much would you sell your Jeep for? This is a joke, but you know, uh, well, to me, you know my Jeep, you know, I mean, I've worked on it for six years, you know, all this kind of stuff. So it has a certain value in my eyes. You may say, Well, I'll give you$2,000 for that, and I'll say, Hit the road, Jack, you know. Um, you know, it's just it's it's a system where we get to impute value to things. And that's perfectly viable. So in a capitalist system, um, which is a merit system, you know, things have value based on what someone will pay for. Um, if I can sell it for$75,000, I'll sell it in a heartbeat. You know, it's that it's that type of thing. Um, it's what is the value to you. But in in these other systems, uh it's not based on merit, it's not based on the value that one imputes to it. It's more like of a government-imposed value uh upon things, and you just pay whatever price the government says. Uh but anyway, so there's lots of systems of justice, is the point. But in the Bible, what's so interesting is the central picture of justice in the whole universe is Christ's death on the cross. What you're looking at is God's justice being satisfied. We sang about it, right? The second song we sang today. Uh is it called We Will Hold, He Will Hold You Fast? Um There's one of the sections there that talked about what Christ did on the cross and God's justice being satisfied. And and that is probably not the first thing that people think about in our world when they think of what is the best picture of justice that we can attune our minds to. Um but it is, it is what is happening on the cross. So, what I wanted to do was take us through, of course, and try to through the Old Testament and try to understand what the Old Testament system of justice looked like. And so we we worked on that. But um, let's back up a little bit and talk about how we can get there and then finish up aspects of justice and what's happening on the cross. So at creation, again, we have three doctrines, right? Three big doctrines. This is just a framework. This isn't every detail. So at creation, who do we learn about? We learn about who God is. We go through his attributes, Sergey Louis, right? Sovereign, righteous, just, loving, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, immutable, eternal. It's not all of his attributes. I'm not trying to exhaust, it's just a picture, Sergey Louis, right? We learn who man is. Man's made in God's image, so he has certain qualities, right? In correspondence to God's sovereignty, man has choice. In correspondence to God's righteousness and justice, man has a conscience, right? The corresponding analog to God's love is man has love. It's just finite. And his is infinite, right? God is omniscient, meaning he knows all things. Man has knowledge, we we know something. Uh God is omnipresent, meaning he's completely present in all points. Uh we have we have space, the concept of geometry, where we take up a specific zone, uh, and so forth. So we always have a correspondence because we're made in God's image. And then, of course, there's nature. Nature is outside of man, and it is what God created man to rule over, right? So think about those three doctrines and how these relate to Christ. We've been working on the birth of Christ, the life of Christ, and now we're going to the death of Christ. Do those three doctrines relate in any way to Christ? Well, of course. His entire person is based on, and his works are based on these three doctrines. All his person and all his works. So let's start with this person. Who is he? He's God and he's man. Okay, he's God who took to himself human flesh. We even, there's a Hebrew who had the word Emmanuel, God with us. Uh He's born in a manger of a virgin as a human being. So he has a true human nature. He's also a divine nature, but he's only one person. So just to understand the person of Christ, we we have to go back to the categories that were laid at creation. And that's how God, God is setting it up through creation. And then during his works, right, did he do any miracles that involved nature? Sure. He walked on water, he stilled the storm. You know, he's doing lot, he's healing people who are lame and people who are blind. All these things are related, many of these things are related to nature. What's he saying? What are these miracles saying? It's saying he's the Lord over nature, right? He's the God of all nature. So he can bring it back into a state of restitution, you know, a restored state. You know, it's a fallen state now, uh, due to man's sin, due to the fall, right? The sin and suffering are introduced, but he's going to restore all that. So this is all setting up the stage for the person of Christ and his birth, his life, and then of course, his death. Look at the fall. We've got two major doctrines there: the doctrine of sin and the doctrine of suffering. You know, in other words, why do we suffer? Why do we uh have illnesses? You know, why is there persecution? Why is there murder? All these things. Well, it's because of sin, right? Um, people are born with a sin nature or the human, the flesh, which is worldly carnal, it's against God. And so as a result of that, there's all this suffering in the world. Of course, we studied why. There's reasons for suffering, and there's also ways to cope with suffering, biblical ways of coping. But doesn't that also set us up for the death of Christ? I mean, why is he coming? I mean, he's coming for many reasons, but one of the reasons, one of the preeminent reasons is he's to solve the sin problem, right? And as a consequence, solve the suffering problem. You remember the end of the Bible, Revelation 21, it says there's no more curse, there's no more toil, there's no more tears. You know, there's gonna be a day where he wipes away all tears. There's not gonna be any more suffering, no more pain, no more hurting, no more crying. He's gonna make all things new, right? So that's a restoration, and it's all tied to the concept of justice. Uh the flood, is that tied to justice? You see, this is a big idea. Justice is a huge, it's what I would call a fundamental idea. There's really only 10 or 15 big ideas in the world that people have to master or should master. Um, and justice is one of them. At the flood, obviously, justice is in view. God looked on the earth, he saw the wickedness of man, that it was great, that all men continually only thought about evil. I mean, and so, of course, there was a judgment. But there's a salvation of those who were right with God. Noah found grace or favor in the eyes of God. He had trusted in God. And so he was, he and his family were on the ark, and God delivered them. He brought salvation. So this is all tied to and prep preparing us for the ultimate salvation, which would come through the Messiah, right? Uh the Noahic covenant, we've got, again, God, man, and nature, because God made a covenant. He set the rainbow in the sky, right? And he said, What? Every time you see this, you're supposed to remember what? I will never flood the whole world again. I will never destroy all flesh by way of water. So that covenant, it gives every human being and animals, because it's made with animals too. Um, it gives them security that God is going to keep us around. He's not just going to destroy the whole earth, or the earth isn't going to get hit by a meteor and destroyed, or something like that. Um, he's keeping us here, um, giving people an opportunity to get right with him. Um, call of Abraham. We have the picture of faith. Abraham is always the picture of faith throughout the New Testament. Uh, how did Abraham get right with God? He believed God and God credited him as righteousness, right? God justified him just by believing. What, what, well, what about what about works? What about works? Well, Jesus did the work, right? You know, and of course, after we believe, we're supposed to do good works. But why do we do good work? Out of gratitude that he justified us the moment we believed in Christ. Not to get right with God. You can't do any works to get right with God. You just believe in Christ. That's how you get right with God, right? It's very simple, justification by faith. And then he elected him or chose him as an individual to be the covenant nation through whom he would bring the Messiah, right? And then, of course, the Exodus, again, another picture of judgment salvation we'll look at today because we're talking about justice, right? And the tenth plague, what was the tenth plague? What'd they do the night of the tenth plague? Didn't they, weren't they instructed to take the blood of a lamb? One year old, male, unblemished, and take it and do what with it? Put it on the lintels of the door. And that night the angel of death came through, and when if he saw the blood, what? He was satisfied, and so he passed over, right? And he did not enter that home and did not take the life of the firstborn son and cattle, right? Isn't that a setup for justice being worked out on the cross? You know, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. See, all these things are preparatory. They're preparing the way that humanity thinks so that when he comes into the world, he's understood. And of course, we've studied that. He wasn't very well understood. The Jews didn't understand him, and in many cases, the Gentiles got it better than them. Uh, Mount Sinai, this is where we learn about the Bible itself. God speaks, revelation. He speaks through men, inspiration, and it's contained or captured in the Bible called the canon, right? So that this becomes the source of all truth. The conquests under Joshua, right? What are we learning here? We're looking at the difficulties of sanctification. The nation is being put on display as a nation that's now under the law, and they're supposed to follow the law in order to be sanctified, that is, to grow. And of course, they're gonna realize, or they should realize, hey, we can't keep the law. We can't be righteous on our own, so we're gonna have to look for a righteousness that comes from outside of ourselves. And that's why you have the messianic promises all through the Bible to get them to realize, oh, well, he's coming, he's coming. There's one that's coming. God's gonna send the Messiah, the seed of the woman, seed of Abraham, right? Isaac, Jacob, Judah, the house of David. We're looking for this one individual, and he will be our righteousness, right? So the conquest is setting up that picture because Israel's got to go into the land, they've got to remove their enemies, and this deals with all of the aspects of sanctification, you know. Um, and their aim was hey, we're gonna learn loyalty to God, and God's gonna fight our battles for us, he's gonna give us victory, he's gonna bring us into the land, he's gonna give us peace and prosperity in the land, right? And they conquered a lot under Joshua, but he didn't, they didn't finish because they didn't learn loyalty to God. And uh they began to follow other gods, the gods of the other nations, and so forth. And so um they dwelled among them and they began to mix religion, to syncretize things, right? And God wasn't happy about that. But this goes on, and then you've got a generation that leads to the reign of King David. You've got a few generations there in the time of Ruth, you know, and um this whole story uh of this one particular line that results in David. You know, you've got Ruth, and you've got uh Boaz, you know, and you've got Obed, Jesse, and then you've got David. And so you can see those generations that live in the times of the judges, there's there's a like a there's a pocket of believers in Israel who are really strong. And they're building on the basis of the scripture. And it comes to David. Remember, David's a man after God's own heart, right? He's just a shepherd boy, right? He's out there taking care of his father's flock, you know. I mean, he's being groomed by God, see, for a shepherding type ministry as a king. Because a king will be a good shepherd, right? If you're a good shepherd, you know how to take care of those who are weak. And isn't David being groomed for that, see? And so he fails, we know, we know, he failed with Bathsheba and he had his her husband Uriah murdered and all that. And that's that's that's where we learn about the dimension of fellowship that King David he got out of fellowship with the Lord, but what did he do when he was sinless pointed out? He got back in it, right? I mean, the guy suffered the loss of four of his sons' lives. I mean, imagine as a father or a mother losing four of your sons. And yet he never turned and said, Okay, God, I'm I'm done with you. I'm tired of. He always kept walking with the Lord through all the repercussions of his sin. He just kept trusting the Lord. And this becomes a picture of the Davidic house, and that's leading to the Messiah, right? This is this is Jesus' line. Okay, and it goes back all the way to David. So important things now. Jesus never got out of fellowship, right? So he's a little bit different. He's a greater than David, he's a greater than Joshua. The golden era of Solomon, this is the when the culture of Israel was at its high point because they had learned loyalty to God until the end of Solomon's reign, of course, when Solomon decided to tank and go into human viewpoint, all of that, and make treaties with all the nations and marry thousands of girls to bring, you know, bring all, get into treaties with these nations and so forth. But but he is he is a picture of the wisdom of the Messiah, isn't he? Because he's the wisest man to ever live in the world until Messiah comes. So he's also preparatory for Messiah, because Messiah said, you know, the wisdom of Solomon, but he says a greater than Solomon is here. Yeah, God in the flesh, God's wisdom in an individual. An individual who came to give himself for us. And then, of course, the kingdom then begins to divide, it divides, you know, after Solomon with Rehabam. And God begins to discipline the nation. You know, why does he discipline Israel? Because he made a covenant with them, because he's in that relation, a covenant relationship with them. And he loves them. It's the same reason he disciplines you because you're in a relationship with him. And he loves you enough to not let you ruin your life. You know, so the Bible teaches about discipline, you know, divine discipline. We transfer that into our families, right? You know, parental discipline. Parents, if they love their children, what will they do? Let them do whatever they want, right? You know, let them figure it out. No, no, no. Parents have to be very hands-on. Kids need direction. They have to have that. They have to have discipline when they've done wrong. Otherwise, they won't learn authority. If you don't learn authority, you'll never get right with God. You'll never get right with God because you'll always act like you're the authority. And God's saying, no, you're not the authority. I'm the authority. I say. And you do, or you suffer the consequences. People say, I don't like that. Yeah, I know you don't. We don't like that. Why? Because we have a sin nature that says, I'm God. I'm going to do what I want. So all this authority orientation, it starts in the home, see? And God is teaching Israel discipline during the kingdom divided, that they need to get right with him if they're going to enjoy blessing. That's why it says in Romans Ephesians 6, 1, that parents should obey their, uh, children should obey your parents in the Lord. And then you, this is the first command with a promise, so that you may live long in the land. What's that saying? It's saying if you learn authority orientation to your parents, guess what? It'll make for a good and prosperous long life. Why? Because you'll be living within specific parameters. It's when we step out from those parameters and we try to go and do it on our own that all of a sudden we get in a lot of trouble in this world. Getting involved in drugs, vice, robbery, theft, you know, all sorts of crazy things. See, because and all that's violation of authority, right? Civil authority, which God has set up. Romans 13. There's no authority except that which comes from God. So we have to learn authority orientation. He was teaching that to Israel with the kingdom divided. Kingdom goes into decline again. They're just the nation at this time is just in rebellion against God for the most part. There's a few good kings here and there that lead the people in the right way, but for the most part, they just go into decline. And God's disciplining them. But what happens? What happens when this nation and when humans go negative to God, negative to God, negative to God? What happens is you can't, you begin to be blinded to what's true, what's right, what's just, you know, which is what happened by the time you get to the Gospels, Jesus comes on the scene. You're thinking, can't these people tell this is God in the flesh? Can't they tell this is their Messiah? And and yet Jesus says, What about the Pharisees? That they're blind. They're blind, they're the blind and they're leading the blind. The leadership of Israel is blind. They they couldn't see it. Why couldn't they see it? Because they had so much sin, so much carnality by this time that they were unable to even recognize the God of the universe when he came in the hidden flesh. That's why I wonder a lot of times in the church today if if if Jesus Christ came here today and and came into a pulpit of this church or he went into a pulpit of some other church, if people would even know who he was. You think, well gosh, yeah, everybody knows that's Jesus that's the God of the universe, right there. No, that's I I really don't think that's the case. I think a lot of people would totally miss it. Just like the Pharisees missed it. They would, you know, not like him and they'd try to catch him in all sorts of logical and scriptural dilemmas, and when he turned it around, they'd just get mad.
SPEAKER_02:You know?
SPEAKER_01:That's not my interpretation.
SPEAKER_02:Whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Um, baloney, you know. So all this is leading us up, see, to to the world up to recognize the king. So let's go a little bit more into the death of the king. We've seen the live or the birth, the virgin birth, where you've got God coming in the flesh. And we, of course, celebrate that at Christmas. Remember that every year, because it's a unique moment in history. And out of that, you know, you have aspects related to the Trinity, because he's the second person of the Trinity and all of this. You've got, you know, the hypostatic union, you've got, you know, he's God, he's man. Sometimes he's thirsting, right? And he's hungry and he's sleepy or tired. Other times he's, I saw you under the fig tree. I knew you, you know, before this moment. So you see the divine aspect. And then, of course, um, but he's just one person, right? And he's tempted in all things as we, we said, but he's without sin, right? So he's qualified. And he knows what you're going through, but he's qualified to pay the sin penalty for the whole world. So that's the justice aspect. Let's review to that. Let's review that. In the Old Testament, Genesis is the first picture of this because that's when sin is introduced. You've got everything good in Genesis 1 and 2. God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good, right? Genesis 131. So there was nothing wrong with the creation when it was, so to speak, you know, set free from his hands.
SPEAKER_02:He just crafted it.
SPEAKER_01:Um man sinned, and then we see this picture, right? A man hiding from God, right? He's hiding. And God coming into the garden saying, Where are you? Where are you? It's not like he doesn't know where he is. It's asking, Where are you in relation to me? It's a spiritual question. Just like a father might say to a son or a daughter when they violate the rules of the house, Where are you? Like, what are you doing? What have you done? Let's get right. What are you doing?
SPEAKER_02:You're inviting the person to respond to you to get back in good fellowship, right?
SPEAKER_01:You're not saying I don't know where you are. I see you're standing right in front of me, but where are you now in relation to God? And that's the same question God's asking Adam. And Adam, of course, and Eve, they have the fig leaves, they're they tried to solve their problem with work, right? But God takes a lamb, remember? I said this last week. He takes a lamb. I mean, can you imagine? It's an innocent lamb. I mean, Adam and Eve are just standing there like and then you know, slit the throat and the blood to just gush out over that white wool. I mean, can you imagine?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, the horror of the moment from Adam and Eve's perspective. Like, what did that lamb do? What what why'd you do that? But it's a lesson, see, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:It's the first lesson on justice that for God to be satisfied, once you've stolen life from God by sinning, you've stolen life, now you're dead, right? Something has to die for you to get life back. So God takes those skins. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, I've skin deer, right? You've got to get all the entrails out, cut it open, just stirn them, you know. Pull all that mess out. In the Old Testament, when they would do this when they'd prepare the sacrifices in the tabernacle, they'd have a bucket and they'd catch all the blood. You drain the blood out, right? And then you take the skins and you'd skin it. This is what God did. God skinned it right in front of them. Our culture doesn't they they don't want to look at that.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's just like I said last week, uh there was a funny meme I think I saw at some point where it's like someone said, Why can't why can't you hunters get meat like the rest of us do at the store?
SPEAKER_01:That's just a attempt to separate yourself from the horrible moment of the shedding of blood, you know, and all that comes along with that. And Adam and E they would they had to watch that. We we did this. When I hunted, I would take the boys, I would take them out, and we'd shoot the animal, and you know, it was always about a clean kill. It was very important. And we trained for that, and then when we'd go and we'd recover the deer, the first thing we do is we'd stand there and give thanks.
SPEAKER_02:We wouldn't take it lightly. It's not it's not a light thing to take life. An animal very serious moment. And uh it impresses on you the value just going around shooting things. That's not that's not right.
SPEAKER_01:Shoot things, recognize the value, the life that's been given now, and that you're gonna take that meat and you're gonna get nourishment from something that you killed, something that died for you. And that's preparatory for the cross. This is a lesson in the cross, right? And that's that's what was happening here with Adam and Eve. He was teaching them that lesson, a lesson that would then begin to be passed on through humanity. So plants wouldn't work, and that's the point of this first point. I mean, they tried to make the fig leaves, but plants don't have life. The Hebrew word for life is nephesh, and in Leviticus 17, 11 it says the life is in the blood. So the nephesh is in the blood, and God has assigned life to the blood. That's the meaning. Okay, in other words, what what would you do if you killed an animal in the Old Testament and you wanted to eat it? What did you first have to do? Right? Why would you need to do that? Well, because God had assigned the the meaning of the blood to be life, and it was not to be eaten, it was to be drained out or poured out as signifying it's life given for you. And so he assigned that meaning to it. Now, plants don't have blood, everybody knows that, but this is an essential category to understand biblically that animals and plants are not the same thing. Okay, um, they're different, and God has assigned different value to them. So when you see like the burnt offering in the Old Testament under the law in the temple and all that, uh, which is it's a it's a it's always an animal sacrifice. The whole thing is burnt, right? It's it's a signification of substitution, okay. And plants can't do that. So what Adam and Eve tried to do with the fig leaves, that was just a picture of human works trying to resolve their problems. But God's solution was to come on the scene and slaughter an animal, okay, to pour out the life and clothe them. And this was to set things up. So substitutionary, meaning the lamb for the individual, blood, blood is poured out, and atonement. Um, which let's not go too far into that right now, because it's a deep issue, this word, but but this is the means of biblical justice, which is restitution. Okay, there's two types of justice technically in the Bible, retributive and restitutionary. Okay, retributive, this is the you you know the passages that say eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. This is retributive justice. So, for example, if I if I came up and knocked your eye out or knocked your tooth out, the idea in retribution is because I knocked your eye or tooth out, well, I have to lose my eye or tooth. Now, usually in Old Testament Israel, there was uh a means for monetary compensation for the eyes, so you didn't have everybody running around without eyes and things like that. Um at least I've got your attention. And but there wasn't a monetary compensation for life, that one was not permitted. So if someone murdered you, then the only thing that could pay for that was capital punishment. And that was, of course, to teach people, and it was swift justice, by the way, that's another thing. They didn't have like long holding periods with courts going on for years and years and years and years where the taxpayers are just sit paying to support these people, three square meals a day, a gym, a library, you know, and all the fellowship they want to have with other criminals, so if they do get off, they can be better criminals. So nothing like that, okay, of swift justice, right? And this taught a lesson. Because the capital execution took place very close association to the murder itself, people didn't forget. And they realized, oh, maybe we shouldn't murder, see? So it was a deterrent. Okay, capital punishment is a deterrent when it is carried out correctly. If you wait like 30 years, you know, it's it's it becomes less of a deterrent. Um but when you have swift justice, it's very penetrate. It gets into your, whoa, we don't want to do that. I could be, if I murder somebody, I could be dead next week, you know. So that's not what I'm I'm wanting to happen. So uh capital crimes like life for life, there was no monetary payment. Why is that? Why? I mean, you could do a monetary payment for you know, you pull someone's, you know, cut their ear off or something like that. But not life. And the reason is because man is made in the image of God. Genesis 9, 5, and 6. Man is made in the image of God, so that if you take a man's life, it is an attack on God Himself whose image the person bears. And so that was never permitted for any, you can't put a value, in other words, a monetary value on a person's life. I mean, how much? I mean, if I kill your wife, man, how much do you think she's worth? How about$25 million? Will that cut it? I hope you say no in every case. Um because there's no monetary value you can put on my wife.
SPEAKER_02:She's priceless. God said so. And um I want my value system to line up with His, right?
SPEAKER_01:And so that's the only true justice. So what's happening on the cross? See? I'm jumping ahead now, but what's happening on the cross?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, it did there's an execution. Did he commit a capital crime?
SPEAKER_01:No. So it's an act of injustice. Did God know that when he put capital punishment in the books and said life for life? Yeah, he knew that. He's omniscient. He knew that his own son would be capitally executed under a system that he put in order, but misallocation of justice, right? But through that, he would be a substitutionary blood atonement for the sins of the whole world. So that becomes a restitutionary type of judgment. So again, retributive, that's like eye for eye, okay. I mean, you, you know, but but then you've got restitution. You've got to have some kind of, that's a the idea of restoration. Things have to be restored to a proper order. If you've noticed in the Bible, doesn't it move that way? You start with a perfect, it's perfect. God made everything very good. Then there's the fall, right? And then you've got all the rest of the Bible until the last two chapters, and then what is there? It's a restoration, see, of humans who are right with God through Christ and the whole universe. It's a whole new heaven and new earth, right? See, God is interested in that. And in fact, it takes it one step higher because in the final state, the new heaven and new earth, there's no tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You know, you're never gonna have a fall again, right? He set up a system where there's a fall in the first one, okay, because of man's negative choice to God. But then he raises it to a level where there's never going to be a fall again. But it's a restitution that's at the heart of all this that is transpiring in the history of the world. Um, let's go to Genesis 3, which we've already talked about, but I didn't mention this verse, Genesis 3, 15. I talked about the fig leaves and the lamb and being slaughtered and then the skins being used to cover them. You know, remember, remember leather pants last week? God's the first one who made leather pants. All the bikers and cowboys said, Amen. Thank you, Jesus. Okay, so but there's another verse here that implies death, and that's Genesis 3.15, what's called the first good news. I put the word proto-evangelium there. That's just the Latin way of saying that's actually Latin and Greek, but first good news, Genesis 3.15, where he says, I will put enmity between you, that's the serpent, and the woman, and between your seed, it's the serpent's seed, and her seed, which ends up being the Messiah, right? He shall bruise you on the head, you shall bruise him on the heel. Or actually that word bruises crush, okay, in the Hebrew. He shall crush you on the head, you shall crush him on the heel. So again, you know, you you would think of a serpent on the ground and a human heel, right? And well, you want to get the head of the snake, right? You don't want to step on the tail, but you want to crush the head. But as the woman's seed crushes the head of the serpent, he his seal is crushed, his heel is damaged badly, right? And we would say, well, this all looks, in hindsight, we'd say, well, this all looks forward to the cross, what happens there, as you know, Satan thinks he's victorious, right? With Christ going to the cross through a misallocation of justice with with uh Judas Iscariot and Pilate and Caiaphas and the whole nine yards, right? Um and the people saying, Well, give us Barabbas, crucify this one who claims to be king of the Jews. And why did you write that? Take that down. All that whole scenario, right? Um but what's happening on the cross, see, is this this verse is being fulfilled. This crushing of the Messiah's heel is a picture of his death on the cross. It's a wound you can recover from, though, right? Your heel.
SPEAKER_02:You can recover from that, which he did in the resurrection, right? But the crushing of of Satan, serpent here, in the head. See, that's not you can't recover from that, right?
SPEAKER_01:If your head gets crushed, that's it, you're done. And so that was the that was a death blow, so to speak, to Satan. In other words, Satan's not gonna be victorious. Christ through resurrection, boom. I mean, this is it, right? He's going to rule and reign over this universe, he's gonna take it back for himself. And um, anyone who's on his side, this is this is really good news. So, but this is a this is a death, it's a death that's being described here, this crushing, see, and that's why we point out this is the first uh indication that there's gonna be uh a Messiah who comes who through death in some way is going to bring justice, restitution for sin, and and solve our problem.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And obviously there'd be blood involved in the crushing of a heel or the crushing of a head. So it's kind of implied here in these this this verse. The first good news. Let's go to Abraham and Isaac over in Genesis 22.
SPEAKER_02:Genesis 22.
SPEAKER_01:Verse 1, Genesis 22, 1, another messianic link to uh the concept of substitution and justification. I'm sorry, substitution and and restitution. It came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am. By the way, that's the only thing to say if God calls you. Here I am. Remember Samuel in the book of Samuel? Here I am. He said, Now uh take now your son, your only begotten son. That's the Hebrew this is the Hebrew equivalent of John 3.16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. This is the Hebrew equivalent of that. Take your son, your only son. Now wait a minute. Abraham had other sons through Hagar, right?
SPEAKER_02:What do you mean, your only son? This this expression, which later is used in John 3.16, refers to the heir. The heir. That's why it says Jesus is the only begotten.
SPEAKER_01:He's the heir, heir of what? Heir of all creation, the heir of everything. Um this is the origin of that, but he says, Take now your son, your only son, that would be the heir, which was Isaac, right? One whom you love. Isaac, go to the land of Moriah, offer him there as a burnt offering, on one of the mountains of which I will tell you. The Jews, the tradition among the Jews is they took him to right where the temple was built, Solomon's temple, which is over there in the temple mount today. That's where they think that uh Mount Moriah there, where Abraham took Isaac. So Abraham rose early in the morning, he saddled his donkey and two uh took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and he split wood for the burnt offering and rose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. Abraham said to his young men, Stay, y'all stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there, and we will worship and return to you. I guess you didn't know that Abraham was Scottish, right? Laddie. Come on, Laddie, let's go up here. Okay, my jokes probably aren't that good, but you know. Verse 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, he laid it on Isaac his son, and he took it in his hand, the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, My father, and he said, Here I am, my son, and he said, Behold the fire in the wood. But Dad, where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
SPEAKER_02:Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.
SPEAKER_01:So the two of them walked on together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him, and Abraham built the altar there, he arranged the wood, he bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Now, all the while did Isaac kind of trust his dad here? His dad said the Lord would provide. Now, your dad has taken you, he's wrapped you up and bound you to an altar. Um, you really got to trust your father that, hey, the Lord's gonna provide. And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. I mean, we're talking like, I mean, you know, this is just this is just seconds away, right? The burnt offering was to be killed and then burnt in full, and it signified substitution. And he bound his son, laid him on an altar on top of the wood, a stretched out his hand, took the knife to slay his son. But, verse 11, the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, and he said, Here I am. See, always good to respond to the Lord right away, not delay.
SPEAKER_02:Because if he delayed, Isaac would have been slain, right?
SPEAKER_01:But he didn't. He responded. And he said, Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you've not withheld your son, your only begotten son from me. Then Abraham raised his eyes, he looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horn. And Abraham went and he took the ram and offered him up for a burnt sacrifice.
SPEAKER_02:In the place of his What does that mean? In the place of as a substitute.
SPEAKER_01:As a substitute. This is how we get the more information about the substitutionary nature of the blood atonement. And isn't this isn't this whole picture preparatory for God sending his own son to be a sacrifice in our place? Isn't Isaac in this sense a picture of the Messiah? Except the Messiah didn't have a ram, but come in his place, right? But this is a picture that goes on and it says in verse 14, Abraham called the name of that place Yahweh Yere, or Jehovah Jirah. Some people say it using the Latin Jehovah Jirah, as it is to this day, in the mount of the Lord, it will be provided. What will be provided? A substitute. A substitute. We need someone to substitute for us because we have no life to give God. We're dead in our transgressions and sins. So this is a picture that sets us up for understanding the substitutionary nature of blood atonement. Let's go to Exodus chapter 12, right? The Passover. A common picture that we're all familiar with because we take communion. Communion grew out of Passover. Why were they to keep Passover annually? I mean, what was the core purpose of Passover? You know, you'd take the little kids, you'd go through the whole Passover meal, they were involved, you'd teach them, the Father would teach the children everything about the Passover. Why were they doing that? To remember. To remember. To remember. To remember what? To remember what God did to deliver them out of Egypt. It's the great picture of redemption in the Old Testament, right? But all that looked forward to what? All that looked forward to our Passover.
SPEAKER_02:1 Corinthians 5. Who is our Passover? Christ, the Messiah. See?
SPEAKER_01:And so when we take communion, you know, and it says, you know, this cup, you know, is the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of remembrance of me. We take the bread and we say, This bread you broke, you know, it's for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Remember. See, the nature of communion, when we take communion, what we're supposed to be doing is remembering. Because it grew out of Passover, and that's what they were supposed to do. Remember. And it's telling us something too. It's telling us you forget. You forget. You forget. Because the life, your life is going on. You're out there in the world, you're doing this, you've got your job, you got your kids, you got all this stuff. It's all the time, it's all it never quits. And what do you do? You forget. What do you forget? The most important thing in the world. That you can't operate on any other basis than the shed blood, the life of Christ given for you. He's the one who, by his grace, has given you life. And he's the one who keeps giving you life if you keep on depending and trusting in him for every day, right? So, what do we need to do every morning before we go out and do anything? Go back to the foot of the cross. We need to remember. We need to remember. Because we tend to forget, and then we're off on our own, doing our own thing. Just living in our own flesh, causing lots of problems, being frustrated and stressed, and all the things that come with it. So going back to the foot of the cross. Exodus chapter 12, verse 1. Here's where we see the picture. Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be the beginning of months for you. It is to be the first month of the year to you. This is going to be like an April, what on our calendar, when we celebrate Resurrection Sunday, Easter. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month, they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their father's household, a lamb for each household. Now, if the household is too small for a lamb, then he's the uh he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them, according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb. Now here we go with the lamb again, right? I mean, like, did it do anything wrong? No, it's innocent. It's an innocent, and here's the thing it's not just any animal. Keep that in mind. This is a specific animal that God targeted and created to use for this purpose, and we're gonna talk about why. Your lamb shall be in, first of all, unblemished. That's a requirement. Couldn't have any injuries. See, an injured lamb is not worth as much as an uninjured lamb, is it? So people might be like, well, I'm just gonna use this injured one over here, you know. God says, no.
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_01:You take the best. You take the best. By the way, if you if you some people think, oh, I'm gonna make a sacrifice to God, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, and they give some used thing or whatever away, whatever. God's not interested in used stuff. He wants you to actually sacrifice something, something that costs you something. We're not really we're we're not built that way. We're not, well, I'll donate this thing even though it doesn't, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Have you ever thought about did that require anything really of you? Because if it didn't, you didn't make a sacrifice. Sacrifice means what? It it impacted you. I always say it this way, it impacted your wallet. That's a real sacrifice. But if it didn't, uh, it's not.
SPEAKER_01:Your lamb shall be unblemished, so it's got to be the best of the best. Male, male is more valuable than females for breeding reasons. A year old, one year old. So in the prime of getting ready to breed. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Okay, you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month to watch over, keep it separate. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. What? I mean, this innocent animal is unblemished, male, just one year old, just on the prime of life. Yeah, well, what did this all look forward to, by the way? What did John the Baptist say?
SPEAKER_02:Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's who the Lamb looked forward to. Unblemished, without sin. Male. In the prime of life. One year old. In the prime of life.
SPEAKER_01:Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts, on the lintel, and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat. They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roast it with fire, both its head, its legs, along with its entrails in entirety. It's an entire sacrifice. And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning you shall burn with fire. Complete consumption. Now you shall eat it in this manner, with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand, you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. I am Yahweh, and the blood is a sign for you on the houses where you live. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day is to be a memorial. You keep it as a feast of the Lord, you remember, as a permanent ordinance, because why? Because it looks toward the substitutionary death of the Messiah, who would give his life to pay for the sins of the world. Lastly, Isaiah 53. And this is where we'll talk a little bit about the Lamb. And why the Lamb was chosen. But all these are messianic links in the Old Testament pointing to Messiah to teach us about justice and God's desire to have restitution. Substitution that leads to restitution. How does a man get right with God? Through God's system of restitutionary justice.
SPEAKER_02:That's how. Isaiah 50. Well, we're going to start in 52, right?
SPEAKER_01:52, verse 13. Behold, my servant will prosper. He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, my people, so, notice that's added, just as many were astonished at you, leave off my people. That's not in the original text. So his appearance was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. Thus he will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths on account of him, for what had not been told them they will see, and what they had not heard, they will understand. Now, he's introducing a figure in Isaiah called the suffering servant. Okay. Now, Christians, for their first twelve hundred years of church history, presented this as a picture of the Messiah, Jesus, right? And they would present this to Jews, the Jewish people. Jews who are unbelievers, they say, Well, what about Isaiah 53? I mean, the suffering servant, I mean, Jesus, he went through all the things that are described here in chapter 53. Uh, so why aren't you believing Jesus is the Messiah? So Rashi, one of their rabbis, came along and he, you know, after 12 centuries of this dealing with this, you know, Christian argument, this polemic for Jesus being the Messiah, they said, We're sick and tired of this. So Rashi, smart and brilliant rabbi as he was, said, No, no, no, the suffering servant is the nation Israel. And that's been the official Jewish interpretation down to this day, to avoid the idea that this is actually talking about their Messiah. So they say Israel is suffering on behalf of the sins of the nations. They're the suffering servant. It's a suffering nation. Um, but well, let's read on. 53, who has uh believed our message? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. You know, when Jesus came into the world, he wasn't a Greek Adonis. He wasn't a, I don't know, Tom Cruiser or whatever, you know, with these great looks.
SPEAKER_02:He wasn't anything to look at and be attracted to in that way.
SPEAKER_01:He was just your average Joe. Verse 3, he was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face, and not even someone you want to look at. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Now there's Israel. We. That's Israel. Israel's not the suffering servant. Israel's the one who did not esteem this esteem the suffering servant. Surely our griefs he himself bore. Now, what is what concept is that? We're talking about atonement, restitution. Isn't that the concept of substitution? He bore our griefs, our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God inflicted. What did the Jews say about someone on the cross? Well, they would read out of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy says, He who hangs on a tree is the cursed of God, right? That's what they thought of Jesus on the cross.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, he's getting what he deserves. God is cursing him. No. He was taking the curse that belonged to you upon himself. That's what he was doing.
SPEAKER_01:But he was pierced through for our transgressions. There it is again. Is that substitution? He was pierced through for our transgressions. He didn't have any transgressions to be pierced through for. So he was taking everyone else's sins upon himself and being pierced through for their sins. Our sins, my sins, your sins, the world's sins. He was crushed. There it is, crushed for our iniquities. Remember the serpent? The serpent would crush his heel, a wound that you could recover from through resurrection? Crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. He is the source of our atonement and our being made right with God, being restored to God. All of us, like sheep, it says, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. See, we're all sinners, right? But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. This is what Paul calls the power and the wisdom of God, the word of the cross. That what was happening there was he was taking every sin that every human in the history of the whole world has ever committed.
SPEAKER_02:All the terrible, wicked things that are happening right now.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know there are more slaves in this world today than there ever has been proportionally in the world? More.
SPEAKER_02:And he paid for all of it at one moment in time. Now, look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_01:He was oppressed, he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep that is silent before its shears. So he did not open his mouth. Remember, they tried.
SPEAKER_02:They mocked him, they spit on him, they divided up his garments, and he did not open his mouth because it's not just a lamb, it's the way that a lamb died depicted the way that the Messiah was.
SPEAKER_01:By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people, Israel, to whom the stroke was due, Isaiah's people. The stroke was due for them, but he paid it. His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet he was with a rich man in his death. Remember the story? Because he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth. None. He was perfectly sinless, he was impeccable. But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, if he would render himself as a guilt offering. And the result of this is he will see his offspring, he will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it, and he will be satisfied by his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, will justify the many. Justification by grace through faith, right? Because he bore our iniquities, he paid for it. Justice has been met. The Father is satisfied by what? By you, by me? No, by Jesus Christ. When we believe in him, yes, he is satisfied by you. Why? Because you believed in his son and you are clothed with his righteousness. That's why. It's not your righteousness that he's pleased with, it's not mine. It's the fact that we're clothed with Jesus Christ's righteousness, that he says, I'm pleased and I'm satisfied with you. So pleased and satisfied that guess what? You spend eternity with him. We could go on, but I wanted to point all these things out as messianic links in the Old Testament that force us to really consider what Christ is doing on the cross. And the reason why, when they said, if you are the Son of God, take yourself off the cross, that he wouldn't do it. He could do it. He could do it. But if he had done it, guess what? God's justice never would have been satisfied. And if God's justice is never satisfied, he can never call you justified.
SPEAKER_02:He never can. Because you have you you can't be good enough.
SPEAKER_01:I can't be good enough. It's not about what we we do. It's about what did Jesus Christ do on the cross. And once we understand that he was perfectly righteous, like a lamb led to slaughter, silent, no, no deceit, no sin, but bearing our sin and giving us in exchange his life. Then we understand. Then we understand. We who are dead in our transgressions and sins are made alive by grace through faith at a moment in time. This is the greatest story ever told. Once a person comes to grips with the fact that they're a sinner, and they start to ask themselves, how am I going to resolve this? How can I fix this? Adam and Eve said, Well, we'll make fig leaves, right? We'll fix our problems. You know, everybody's got a solution.
SPEAKER_02:God is the one who has the only solution. That's why it says, for God so loved the world that he gave his heir, his only begotten, the heir of the world. That whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
SPEAKER_01:Because God is satisfied by him. And the nature of justice is restitutionary and substitutionary, and it requires the a life given. And that's what he did. And that's why Jesus said on the cross, it's finished.
SPEAKER_02:What's finished? The resolution of God's justice. And now you come freely to him.
SPEAKER_01:Grace through faith. It's a gift of God.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spoke and Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.