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 Framework - Atonement Made Clear
Ever wondered why entering the innermost holy place of the temple was fatal, yet stepping into a church service today is not? We follow that tension into the heart of atonement, showing how Leviticus, Passover, and the temple prepare us to make sense of Hebrews and 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:You remember the guys who touched the Ark of the Covenant when it started to topple in the Old Testament as they brought it back from Philistia? What happened to them? Dead. Five minutes later, 20 minutes later, no, instant. That is what will happen. And this is what I'm trying to point up. When the physical presence of God is on earth, you have to have sacrifices that would deal with these physical impurities that we pick up just from being mortals and walking around in the world.
SPEAKER_00:We need to change our mind. Each and every one of us has something we need to change our mind about. And if you think about it, you must admit that that is true. Why else would we study the Bible? If we thought we knew everything already, if we thought we had everything figured out, there would be no reason to study the Bible because there would be nothing to learn. And yet we each pick up our Bibles, we read, we go to church, we listen to our pastor. We dig in because we want to learn. The most honest among us come to the Bible and we come to teaching and we say, Could this be true? And then we look to the Bible to see if it is. And why doesn't the New Testament talk about atonement like the Old Testament does? What has changed? And like most topics, there isn't a change per se. It's just that the New Testament takes an Old Testament concept and explains it and personifies it and makes it more interesting and reveals the nuances. That is what happens within the New Testament teachings. And why we are looking at atonement in detail.
SPEAKER_01:I introduced something that was maybe not very commonly taught, but that's uh the re usually it's just taught that atonement means to cover that's based on older well, it's this whole concept you have to go and do a lot of research, but basically it deals with word origins and what is the origin of the Old Testament word kipper, from which we get atonement. Remember, I said this word is only used in the Old Testament, it's not even used in the New Testament. New Testament breaks it down into these three categories: redemption, reconciliation, and propitiation. One of these words is very close to the Old Testament word uh kipper, as far as a Greek counterpart, uh, but none of them are really the exact word. So I tried to describe that kipper atonement really doesn't mean cover. Like what was happening in the Old Testament when they had Old Testament animal sacrifices was not like a cover was being put over those sins or something like that. Um, nothing can cover uh spiritual sins. It even says this in the in the book of Hebrews: the blood of bulls and goats can't take away sin. Um, this whole concept that what was happening was you if you'll back away from everything and stop thinking I know what I'm talking about here, and I and you'll come at this from the vantage point of I don't really know the book of Leviticus. I mean, because I want to say to people a lot of times, do you really know the book of Leviticus? Do you know one verse in the book of Leviticus? I really want to say that because uh how many people study Leviticus? Well, not many. And then how many people study Hebrews in the New Testament? Well, some more than Leviticus, but guess what? The background of Hebrews is what? Leviticus. So if you don't have a good handle on Leviticus, how good of a handle can you really have on Hebrews? Here's the thing. In the Old Testament, when you were a Jew and you had a tabernacle or you had a temple, who was dwelling in that? Whose presence was in the most, what they call the most holy place or the holy of holies? God's indwelling presence. In the Old Testament, this is called Shekinah glory from the Hebrew root shekan, which means to dwell. God had taken up residence on earth in the most holy place. So if you're gonna go to the tabernacle or later the temple, you're going somewhere that is quote unquote holy, right? Because of his presence. You know everything had to be cleansed. The altar had to be cleansed, right? Or atoned for. Everything the priests had to be atoned for because they're working in God's presence, right? So if you're gonna go there, or I'm gonna go there, we have to be holy when we go into his presence. Now, um, this required that certain sins be, let's say, atoned for, so that you could actually be there, okay, without dying. You remember the high priest would go in once a year on the Day of Atonement, and there's this old story that they would tie a rope around his leg, so if he did die, nobody'd have to go in after him and possibly die too. They could just drag him out, right? So it was kind of a serious thing. You could in the Old Testament have physical contamination, okay? Like on your physical body. There are certain what we call what they called unintentional sins. For example, if my grandfather dies in Old Testament Israel, and he's laying there on the bed in the home, he's dead. And I we well, we've got to do something with the body. I mean, we can't just leave it there. The moment you touch that body, you are physically defiled. Okay? You could not touch a dead corpse. But you've got to touch a dead corpse, right? Because you've got to get the body out. So, but this caused physical contamination, okay? And you couldn't just go into God's presence now because that had to be cleansed or atoned for. So there are, you have to think in the Old Testament, you've got spiritual sins and you've got physical contamination. And the physical contamination is what was being taken care of or atoned for, so that they could go into God's presence at the tabernacle or the temple. Okay? Now, what what what about all the other stuff, as somebody asked me last week? Well, what if it if if it wasn't covering their sins, you know, like in the spiritual sphere, um, what was happening to them? Well, we'll see today, Romans 3 says they were passed over. Acts 17. It wasn't covered, they're just passed over. Like God winked at it, okay? He just winked at it. Because none of that was dealt with, none of it, until Jesus Christ on the cross. Okay. So he was winking at it. So this word, okay, atonement, means basically to smear, to cleanse. I said this is the first time you see this word is when they built the ark, and it says they took pitch and they covered it. That's the word atonement. Okay, they were smearing or uh putting this substance on it, and it it signified something. It signified that those that were inside the ark were cleansed. Okay, they were cleansed. And so the idea in the Old Testament then, animal sacrifices would cleanse the offerer and bring ceremonial forgiveness in the physical sphere so people could approach God's presence, which was indwelling the tabernacle temple. Now, these sacrifices did foreshadow Christ's sacrifice, but look what Christ's sacrifice does: it brings forgiveness in the spiritual sphere. As the book of Hebrews puts it, the blood of bulls and goats could not cleanse the conscience. But the blood of Christ can. It deals with guilt in the human conscience, which is a spiritual context. So that what? So Christ's indwelling presence could enter into spiritual temples, that is, within us. See, we don't have a physical external temple that we go to, right? Like in Jerusalem, you know, like where we've got to go to meet God. No, God has taken up residence inside of us, right? We are a temple. 1 Corinthians 3.16, 1 Corinthians 6.16. Um, we are the temple. So how can he come to indwell us? Well, because Christ paid the penalty for the spiritual sin, that's the sphere, and so that God is free to enter into us, and we, as individuals, as well as corporately, become the temple of God where God dwells. Okay? And where the world comes to meet God is supposed to be through through believers, through the church. So that's the basic idea of atonement. The animal sacrifices did atone for, and they did forgive sin. It states this explicitly, uh, Leviticus 4, verse 20, and other places, in the physical sphere, for those contaminations. Okay, but here's the deal, and you know this from Hebrews, hopefully, the priest who who stood there among Israel and worked in the tabernacle or temple had to keep standing. They could never sit down, right? Why? Well, because once the offerer was forgiven for those external uncleanliness and blemishes, so they could be in God's presence, there were more sins that they're going to commit after that. And so more sacrifices had to be offered, right? And this went on and on and on. Okay, but again, once when Christ comes, right, and he um offers himself, Hebrew says, once for all. And the veil is torn, right, from top to bottom, and he's sat, it says he sat down at the right hand of God. Why does he sit down, whereas all the priests in the Old Testament kept standing? Well, because his work is finished. There's no more sacrifice for sin. I mean, no nobody can do that except Jesus Christ. And so now we have immediate access to his indwelling presence uh within us. Okay? So this is a little different way of thinking about things, but I think it well, it's clears up what's going on in Hebrews and especially Leviticus, but also for the future messianic kingdom when there's gonna be a millennial temple. I mean, I was telling my daughter before, this millennial temple is gonna be one mile wide and one mile long. So you've got one cubic mile or square mile temple that Jesus Christ is gonna personally build. And this is can you imagine how big that is? That's gonna be his temple, and there's gonna be sacrifices. People say, Oh, that can't happen because Jesus. Yeah, I we know Jesus is the only one who could ever pay for our spirit and deal with our spiritual problem. But what do you have in the millennial kingdom temple that you we don't have now? You have another physical temple, just like in Old Testament Israel. In that sense, it's the same. So if people are gonna go up into God's presence and they have physical contamination and they walk in that temple, guess what? Dead. I did that for fun. Because I saw some of you, okay? Because y'all know I never do that. But you will literally die. Okay, you will literally die. Dead. You remember the guys who touched the Ark of the Covenant when it started to topple in the Old Testament as they brought it back from the sea? What happened to them? Dead. Five minutes later, 20 minutes later, no, instant. That is what will happen. And this is what I'm trying to point up. When the physical presence of God is on earth, you have to have sacrifices that will deal with these physical impurities that we pick up just from being mortals and walking around in the world. So it's in that sense, it's the same, and this explains the whole concept of atonement and the differences in the physical and spiritual sphere. Now, um, this the picture of atonement, the best picture in the Old Testament of atonement is the Exodus, you know, the 12th, I'm sorry, not the 12th, the 10th plague. Um and we said when we taught the Exodus event, we went through the ten plagues, and we said there's five truths that are taught there under the heading judgment, salvation. Because it it's very clear that if anything's happening in the ten plagues, you've got judgment and you've got salvation or deliverance. You know, you've got judgment on the Egyptians, right? You got salvation or deliverance for the Israelites, they're all in Goshen, you know, and they're protected and so forth and so on. So you go through those ten plagues. When you get to the tenth plague, of course, you've got the lamb, unblemished, one-year-old male, take it, slaughter it at twilight, okay, put the blood over the door, right? And if the angel of death comes and sees he will pass over. So this is the primary picture of atonement in the Old Testament. It's involving blood, it's involving a lamb, it involves God passing over, so there's a deliverance for those that are inside. And so this kind of sets up in our mind how to think about it so that when we come to the New Testament and we see Christ, and John the Baptist says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that we put two and two together and we realize that he is the Passover Lamb, right? And all becomes clear. So we want to go into the New Testament and talk about the three words that the New Testament authors use to describe the atonement, because again, they don't use the word atonement. The closest one is the third one, propitiation, but it's still not a perfect um a perfect word to describe the Old Testament words. So this is common though. We we do this in every area of life that we study. You start with really basic things, and some of these terms are just kind of all and you know, all encompassing words that capture an idea, and then later we flesh it out. And that's how God teaches. He teaches us on a very basic level, and then later he comes along and he adds details. As we go into this, you'll understand, of course, and you may already understand, of course, that when we talk about salvation being simple, on one hand it is entirely simple. I mean, it's so simple that a kid can understand it and believe the gospel, right? A four-year-old. Um, you just tell him, hey, Christ paid the penalty for your sins. If you believe in him, you know, you know you won't go to hell, or you or you'll go to heaven, or whatever. You just put it in simple terms. It's not that complicated. But then you it's salvation is so complicated you can spend the rest of your life getting into the details. And this just shows us some of the some of the details as you look more closely. So I want to look at these words uh redemption, reconciliation, and propitiation. They're all aspects or develop the concepts of the Old Testament atonement. So redemption. Let's talk about this term just in terms of our culture, okay? It's an economic term. I mean, if you get a coupon, you know, when you take it and you give it to the checkout lady, they do what to it? Redeem it. Okay, so it's an economic term. It describes being an indebted slave that's freed because the debt has been paid. Okay, so that's the background of the term in economics. And by the way, um, this term relates to the concept of debt in our society. So, well, governments today they're real responsible. They operate on debt. Um, basically, they're like little children who have no clue how to spend money. Did y'all hear what happened in Argentina recently? Uh, one of the guys that wants to run the country or whatever was proposing that Argentina they're on uh the peso, okay. Before COVID, the uh 20 pesos was an American dollar, okay, before COVID. This guy wants to go over to the American dollar. He wants to get Argentina on the American dollar as their currency. Um why? Well, because now, after COVID, it's a thousand pesos for one dollar. Uh that's the kind of inflation that they've seen. Well, why why do they have so much inflation? Because they don't know how to spend money. They don't know how to spend within limits. Um we have many, most societies around the world, which are now trending toward global societies, include our own society, uh, our governments, they have no idea how that, you know, if if it says you have this many dollars in your bank account, that's all the money you have. But not for them. Um we can just, you know, make more money and spend more than we have. Um, you know, we we tell our children you should be res well, maybe we tell our children you should be responsible spenders. If you get a credit card, you should pay it off every month and so forth. Uh, but don't you know run yourself into a lot of debt because debt biblically is slavery. The the borrower is indebted to the lender. Um and what most people do, of course, is they just have a piece of plastic and so they just they just spend wildly. And because it's so wild and debt is accepted as a pot as a reasonable way to live, now we have this thing called bankruptcy where you can just get out of it all. Well, um biblically this is what what is happening is societies like that are losing the capability to understand what Jesus Christ has done on the cross. Because God doesn't allow you to just file bankruptcy at the end and say I messed up and it just gets erased. No, like the debt actually has to be paid, and that's what Jesus Christ came to do. He came to pay the debt. But you can see how it gets increasingly difficult to communicate this concept to people when they live in a system that endorses debt and ultimately just filing bankruptcy. So let's look at this word a little bit and turn to 1 Peter 118. We were slaves to sin. Romans 6 says this, it was our master, and we've been freed because our debt has been paid by Christ. 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 18. This this uh word focuses, or I say this word redemption is sinward. Okay, reconciliation is going to be manward, and propitiation is gonna be godward. So each of these words have a different direction or main focal point. And the focal point of redemption is sin. It's dealing with the sin problem and the payment that's made for sin. So 1 Peter 1.18. Knowing that you are not redeemed, there's the word redemption, you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but you are redeemed with precious blood, as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. Right? The uh he's the Passover lamb, the fulfillment of Passover. And so he made the payment. This word is looking at a payment that's been made for our debt, and that payment was his own notice, not just blood, but precious blood, because his blood was unblemished and spotless. These are both figures. I mean, they play off the Passover imagery of the lamb, but they're talking about his purity and his lack of having any sin, right? Which is what makes him qualify to actually pay the debt, the redemption price, to free us from being slaves to sin. Uh so in order to redeem us from slavery to sin, someone had to make a payment. It's it's his his precious blood, which is his life in the Old Testament. The life is in the blood. He gave his life to pay our debt, right? And therefore give us or set us free from being slaves. Let's look at another passage that talks about this. Uh Luke 24, 21. Luke 24, 21. So back. This is the road to Emmaus. You remember the guys that had a talk with Jesus and they didn't know it was him after the resurrection? Um they're walking along the road having a nice theological uh conversation. In Luke 24, verse 21. They say to him as they walk along, uh, we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Now they're talking to him. They were just walking along. We were hoping it was he who was going to redeem Israel. That is what to pay the price that Israel owed. That's the concept of redemption, to pay the debt that Israel owed. And he says, indeed, besides all these, it's the third day since these things happened. Okay. And so, you know, they're assuming, well, he's dead. He wasn't the guy who came to redeem Israel. He died, you know, he got crucified, so we're all out of luck here. And uh verse 22, but some women, he said, they say, Well, some women among us, they amazed us. They went to the tomb early in the morning and they didn't find his body. They came saying that he had uh they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. And some of those who are with us, they went to the tomb to check it all out. They found it just exactly as the women also said, but they didn't see him, so I guess he's dead. That's what they're saying. And Jesus says, Well, oh foolish men, slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. In other words, did all the prophets speak of the Messiah having to die? Sure. Sure they did. So that he asked in verse 26, was it not necessary for the Christ, the Messiah, to suffer these things and enter into glory? I mean, like, hey, have you guys read the prophets? Well, remember what I said a few weeks ago. When the Jews looked at the Old Testament, they saw and they focused their attention on the glorious kingdom when he would reign. And they didn't focus their attention on the sufferings which would precede his reign. So there are two types of prophecies in the Old Testament that are messianic. There are those that prophesy his sufferings and those that prophesy his glories. Well, who wants to think about suffering? So you you they like to think about the kingdom, the glory, Israel's, you know, being redeemed from all the nations and coming into their fullness and being the greatest nation on earth. Who doesn't want to think about that with their nation? We're the greatest nation on earth. Do you want to think about your nation going down? In the days of Jeremiah, they didn't want to listen to it. Jeremiah goes to the king and he says, You guys are going down, and the guy says, Burn all his scrolls. And so they burned all his scrolls, and God said, Okay, write it again. See, because you can't destroy the word of God, right? So he wrote it again, see? What he has written, it stands. I mean, that's it. So you can try to fight God, but you're gonna have a big L on your forehead when it's all over. I mean, he's God. I mean, you're not competition. I'm not competition. He's going to win. So he predicted the prophecies of suffering as well as those that predicted the glories to come. And you can see these guys are only thinking about you know the glories to come when Israel's redeemed. Okay, when the their penalty, their debt has been paid and they're restored to the kingdom and being first among the nations. Um that wasn't the full picture. Titus 2.14. More on redemption, so we make sure and get it down. Remember, five T books all together, first seconds, first second Timothy, and Titus. So if you find one, you can find the others. Titus 2.14. Eventually we'll all learn our Bible, right? We have alternative to figure it out, but it's better to do it now. Titus 2. One of the small theological sections that he puts in here periodically, so verses eleven through fourteen go into the great theology. And one of the things that it says he did here in verse 14 of Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us, notice from what? From every lawless deed. Nor normally we say sin, but sin is lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. The Antichrist, when he comes, he's called the man of lawlessness. But one of the um variants in the manuscript of 2 Thessalonians 2 3 says man of sin. But sin sin is lawlessness, right? It's against what law? The law of God's righteousness. That's the definition of sin. It's defined on the basis of who God is and his righteous character. But Christ gave himself for us to redeem. That's to pay the economic penalty of our sin or our lawlessness, right? And to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds. See, look, if he paid for your sin, why should you go on living in it, right? Like me. Why should I go on living in sin if he's redeemed me from that? So that I, you know, live a to keep on living a sinful life? May it never be, right? But to go on to live a purified life to live a different life, one that's zealous for good deeds. Titus is the book of good deeds. That's the key word of the book. The Bible talks about good deeds. Not so you can get saved, but because you are saved. Right? Um Matthew 2028. Matthew 2028. I figured if we didn't go over several verses with redemption, we wouldn't really remember it, so we're doing a few more than normal. Matthew 2028. Which is the same as Mark 10 45. So if you found Mark, you can go there too. It's basically the same verse. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, that's always so interesting because people say, Well, I serve Jesus Christ. Oh, I serve Jesus. Guess what? Jesus served you. People are not comfortable with that statement. But that's exactly what it says, isn't it? He did not come to be served by you and to me. He came to serve us. Our creator came down here and served us. How did he do that? It says to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. That word ransom is a word for paying a price. I mean, what do you do when you ransom someone? You usually have to pay some kind of price, some outlandish price. We'll take two million dollars to release your son that we kidnapped or whatever. Um it's a you've got to pay a price. And that's what he did. He gave his life. That's the payment. He's the, by the way, he's the only one who had life to make a payment. The rest of us are dead in our transgressions and sins. What are you gonna give? You don't have you can't make the ransom payment. I can't make the ransom payment. All the people in the world can't make the ransom payment. We're dead, and I mean, you're gonna take somebody giving you a dead body? Is that a good payment? That's nothing. I mean, we need a lot, we need something that has life inherent to it to be given on our behalf so he can pay our debt, our life debt. And that's what he did. He paid our life debt. And in exchange, when we believe in him, guess what? He gives us his life. This is really good news. That means we are in good standing with God. Um, Luke 168. A couple pages to the right. Luke 168. Redemption, money, payment. Um, and then in this one, I'll make a point that'll prepare us for next week. In Luke 168, this is Zacharias, John the Baptist's father, you know, who he was told you're you know, your wife is with child, and he laughed. Ha ha ha ha. Whatever. Okay, well, I guess I'll just shut you up for the rest of the pregnancy. And every woman said, Thank God. Um, so he doubted, and because of that, well, he couldn't speak for a while. And so when it's all said and done, uh Zacharias uh was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, verse 68, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited us and accomplished redemption for his people. There it is again, redemption. The one who would make the payment for Israel's sin debt. Um, but here's the thing notice the past tenses. He has visited us, he has accomplished, but did you notice this is a long time before the cross? This is a long time before the cross, over 30 years before the cross. But see, it's a done deal in Zacharias's eyes, right? I mean, who's else is gonna pay the sin penalty for the world? Is Muhammad gonna do that? Is Joseph Smith gonna do that? No, these people are sinners. They died, they're dead. They're dead right now. They rotted away centuries and centuries ago. Well, century and a half for Joseph Smith. But anyway, um Jesus Christ didn't rot. He lives forevermore. You're gonna believe in a dead guy? Are you gonna believe in a guy that lives forevermore? Which one is this? I mean, this is a logical choice. It's not a complicated choice, it's a very easy choice. But he says he has visited us, he has accomplished redemption for his people. Now, when he Was on the cross, he he made the penalty in full full. The payments have been made, right? Well, why isn't everybody saved then? If he already paid the penalty for everybody's sin, why isn't everybody saved? Because some people don't accept that he made the payment for them. They reject that he made the payment for them. They say, I'll do it myself. I'll pay it myself. Yeah, but you're a dead man walking. You don't have any life to give. You can't make the payment. Yeah, but I'm gonna try to do it myself. I got my good works. Yeah, but all of our good works are but filthy rags. Yeah, but God's not like that. God's really just gonna weigh it. He's gonna say, Well, you got these good works, you got these bad works, your good works outweigh your bad works, therefore I let you in. Did they ever pay the life debt? No, there's just some good works. What does that do? That's what was required anyway. Now you're telling me that's gonna work? What about all the bad works? Are you saying God's gonna compromise his justice? That's not who God is. See, it just doesn't work like that. People don't get to choose the way of salvation. You know, God does. He's the creator. That's he did he said, you know, there's no other name under heaven by which man may be saved in the name of Jesus Christ. That's it. That's only one name. You can't choose the way. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. People say, I don't like that. Well, I mean, sorry. I mean, you may not like it, but it doesn't really matter what you like. Matters what's true. What's true is what matters. Right? So we got to deal with what's truth. I mean, truth is truth. It doesn't change. Otherwise, it wouldn't be true. So it's viewing it as a completed act 30 years before it ever happened. But to have that enjoyment of redemption, a person has to believe. They have to accept it for themselves as true. Uh 238, we might as well, it's just one chapter away, 238. This is Anna the prophetess, who saw him when they took him up to the temple on, I guess it was the eighth day, I believe. Um, verse 37, she is a widow to the age of 84. She never left the temple serving night and day with fastings and prayers. At that very moment, she came up and she began giving thanks to God when they've got little baby Jesus there in the temple, and Simeon was there. And uh she continued to speak of him to all those who were looking for, there it is, the redemption of Jerusalem, which Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, so this is just a metaphor for the people of Israel. Right? They were apparently looking for this, but by the end of the Gospels, they're saying, crucified. We have no king but Caesar. So their sentiments didn't continue 30 years later. All right, so but redemption is sinward, it focuses on the payment due for our sin debt. And uh, as I mentioned, the the problem that we have with debt, debt is a form of slavery. You're enslaved to the debtor, uh, the lender. And so, you know, because of the way that our world's economy is working, which is on a debt system, and this concept that you can just get out of it all by bankruptcy, filing bankruptcy, then you know, it weakens our ability to communicate the power of the cross and what Jesus was actually doing. He's actually had to pay the debt. God can't just forgive, okay? He's not just gonna forgive people. There had the payment has to be made. And what we're saying is Jesus Christ made it, it's been paid. And so we can freely be debt-free spiritually by believing in Jesus Christ. The next word is reconciliation. This is not an economic word, but this is a social term that describes a situation where you have two hostile parties, and somehow they make peace by coming to terms. And so, by analogy, of course, it speaks, you know, the fact that God and man are at hostility toward one another, but Christ made a peace initiative on the cross so that God is now at peace with uh the world, with man, but man is not necessarily at peace with God. Something has to happen for him to be uh at peace with God. It's sort of like if you have two countries who are warring one another, or two people groups, let's just say Israel and Hamas, whatever, okay, Ukraine and Russia, you've got two people groups that are at hostility with one another. If one side's saying, hey, look, we we we want we want to be at peace with you, but you know, you don't want to be at peace with us. Well, you've got one party that's willing, you've got another that's not. You can't you can't come to peace on those terms. Um, you have to have both sides wanting uh the peace. And so um that's what reconciliation is about. And it's not sin word like redemption, it's man word, it's directed on man because God and man are in hostile, a hostile uh situation. The Bible says before we believed we were enemies of God, right? It doesn't say we were friends, it says we're enemies, but those who believe become friends of God. We're at peace with God. Romans 5, 1. We have peace with God. So um reconciliation is looking at this peace initiative as it relates to Christ and what he did on the cross so that God could be reconciled to man. So let's look at uh 2 Corinthians 5 first, 2 Corinthians 5, 18 through 21, uh 20. And then we'll look at some of these others. Some of these others are just um people that are not reconciled with one another, just human relations. But why why aren't why aren't why is there war in the world? That's kind of a big question, right? Like, why is there war in the world? Why are people and people groups fighting one another? Uh well, very simple. I mean, it's sin, right? I mean, that's why, because we're selfish and we have sinful ambitions. Um, and so that's all consequence of sin. Which first our problem is with God. That's why we have a problem with God because of our sin. Then it becomes a problem with man. Then we have a problem with man. Uh so think think about the Ten Commandments for a second. We're okay. Another cultural item in our society, you know. We post those up on the Supreme Court, you know, the Ten Commandments. But oh, we can't have that up there. It's a I guess we agree with murder now, you know. I don't know. Take that down. Adultery, oh, that's good. Take that off. We don't want to we don't want to say that's wrong. Um, silly things like that that people do in our country. But all this stuff is like posted there in the Ten Commandments. We've got Ten Commandments, right? We say ten words, the bar, Hebrew to bar. The ten words that God gave Israel at Mount Sinai. Now, the first three or four, depending on how you count them, are all between God and man. Like thou shalt make no other gods before me, right? Thou shalt have no graven image, okay, and so forth. They're all like this relationship, vertical, man to gut, man and God. Then after that, you see things like thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet. Now, those are all man-to-man, right? What we call horizontal. Now, why why is it in that order? Um, why does it start with the God word commands and then move to the man word? Because this is where the problem starts. In other words, we can look out there at the world and say, man, it's a mess out there. I mean, somebody stole my car. You know, why why do you guys steal my car? That's that's wrong. You shouldn't do that. Why do we have stealing going on? Well, because we have a problem between man and God. That's just, this is the root problem, man and God. This is the fruit problem. We say, well, we want a better society. We want things to be nice, we want nice clean parks around here, we want plenty of room on division so we're not having a whole bus lane taken up and we want to get places fast and we want, we want a better life. Yeah, well, guess what? The way to a better life down here is to get this straight. When this gets straightened out, guess what? Nobody has their vested interest in the politics of this city in making stupid decisions. They want what's best for everybody else. Why? Because they have a right relationship with God. That's why. See, all the stuff that we have to deal with down here, the stupid stuff, is because people won't get right with God. Because once you get right with God, then you're a condition of humility. That is necessary. You have to. To come to the foot of the cross, you can't come with arrogance. Arrogance says, I'm going to do it myself. Humility says Jesus Christ did it for me. Now, once you believe in Jesus Christ, you have a humble attitude toward everything. That means you put everybody else ahead of yourself in your own vested interests. But if you're if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it's all about you and your power agenda that is usually played out through the political agenda uh political scene. And that's why Americans hate politics. We can't stand it that those people up there are just really interested in themselves and not interested in us. But why are they interested in themselves and not in us? Because they're arrogant. This is the most obvious thing in the world, and it's driving me absolute crazy. Sorry. A lot of rants today, but it's this is a is a problem that really is only resolved by the cross. It really is. That's why the only people that Jesus is going to let into his kingdom are guess what? Believers. He will not let one unbeliever in there. Why? Because they're spoiled, brats. He doesn't want that nastiness coming in there to do what? Mess everything up that he set up that's perfect. Oh my goodness. So we've got this verse. 2 Corinthians 5.18. And I'm still still in Thessalonians. 2 Corinthians 5.18. And this shows you both sides of what happened when Christ died on the cross. Now, all these things are from God. Oh, what things? Well, the things he's been talking about since 217, but we won't go through all that. All these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Now, all the salvation that we have, it's it comes to us from God, verse 18, who reconciled us. There's the word. We were hostile to him, but he reconciled us to himself through Christ, his work on the cross. And then he gave us, believers in him, the ministry of reconciliation. I just, that's so interesting. He could preach the gospel himself. I mean, he's not a mute. God can preach the gospel. He can speak to the whole human race right now if he wants to. But it says he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. He wants us to take the ministry of reconciliation and tell the world about what Christ has done to reconcile us to God. Why does he want to do that? Why, when you're working in the garage or you're a mother, you're working in the kitchen, do you take one of your little kids beside you and you say, look, here's how you dice green peppers. Here's how you prepare the pasta. Here's how you why do you do that? Because you want to involve them in the process and get to teach someone something that they will take them with them for the a life. You're investing. That's what you're doing. You're investing in the little kid, right? You're teaching them, you're training them. Why does God want to involve us in the ministry of reconciliation? Because he wants us to get to be a part of what he's doing. He wants to invest in us. And so he says, I'm not going to take the ministry to the world. That's for you to do. I give that to you. I reconciled you to me. Now you tell others, and they can become reconciled to me. Verse 19 describes the reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Now, is that the world of the elect or is that all people? We're going to start talking about this next week. We'll get into the extent of the atonement. For whom did Christ die? God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Is that all humanity or is that a subset of humanity? Not counting their trespasses against them. Well, why? Well, because Christ already paid for them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. He's given that to us. And here it is in verse 20. This is our this is our ministry. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us. See, we he brought us in to this process to be the ministers of reconciliation, to be these ambassadors, but he's making the appeal through us. See, the gospel isn't from us, it's through us. Right? And so he says, we beg you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. Now that's the problem. God has reconciled the world to himself through Christ, but has the world been reconciled to God? There's two sides to the equation. If you have two countries and one side says, Oh, we're willing to make peace, we want to make peace. We're at peace with you. We don't want to attack you anymore. We want to be at peace. But you, but the other side says, no, we're going to keep attacking you. Then what you can't get peace between both parties. You have one-way peace. But you need two-way peace to have true peace. And that's what God has done through Christ. He said, okay, it's a one-way peace now. He's paid it in full. Okay, I'm friends with you. I'm not angry. I'm not counting your trespasses against you anymore. I'm done with that. I already put it on Jesus Christ on the cross. But what about you? What's your response? Do you want to be at peace with me? If so, accept Christ's work on your behalf, then we can all be at peace, right? So God does lay forth terms. He says those terms are believe in the Lord Jesus. Then we'll have peace. Because I'm good with you. It's just, will you come into good terms with me? And it's a lot like Israel. Israel's like, hey, look, we don't want to attack these people, but if we let them keep living here, they're just never going to leave us alone. I mean, if we put a state there, what? It's going to be a terror state. That's what's going on. I mean, we unearthed hundreds of miles of crazy tunnels that they could drive vehicles through. You know, these things are 60, 70, 80 feet underground. I mean, like, unbelievable lengths to do what? If you built a tunnel, you went to all that effort. Are you going to keep things that you want people to see down there? Or are you trying to do something secret and keep things hidden? I mean, it's pretty obvious that whatever you're doing down there isn't good. I don't know why the world can't see this. Actually, I do know why, but we won't go into that. That's a whole lesson. Um, so that's reconciliation, right? God has reconciled the world to himself through Christ. Okay. Now Christ just needs to, uh people just need to believe in Christ to be reconciled to God. Then there's peace. Okay. Um, which would is a good thing. It's a good thing. We want to be in peace with God. You don't want him to be on the other side. Uh the last word is propitiation. This is the one that's closest to the Old Testament word for atonement. Okay. It's a personal term. It's this one's Godward, okay? The first one, redemption, is sinward. The second one is manward, and the last one is Godward. It's directed toward God. It's a term that describes being satisfied with someone, okay, due to some appeasement. And of course, with us and God, it it speaks uh God being satisfied with us because Christ made a sacrifice that was pleasing to God. Now, um here's an analogy from uh our our lives. Um I always have to pause if I'm gonna think about using an example from somebody that may be listening to this. But um every one of us has in some sphere wanted to please someone. Maybe it was a parent, maybe maybe it was a teacher or a boss. You you want to satisfy them, but you never seem to be able to. Have you ever had that experience? It's like it's like no matter what you do, they've just got something critical to say. And you're like, I mean, I mean, you're doing your best, and you're just constantly uh let down because you never seem to be able to please this person. This this doctrine is so important for overcoming that feeling of falling short that we all have since try to please, try to please, never can, never can. Because guess what? God is satisfied with you in Christ. He's 100% satisfied with you in Christ. Why? Because Christ satisfied him. He was perfect in every way and he paid our penalty. And so is God satisfied with you? I mean, I want I want you all to say yes in your mind. Yes, God is satisfied with me. Why? Because He is and also because so many times this week probably you're going to on some in some relationship feel like you can't satisfy this person. No. That said, who really mattered? Does it really matter what your boss thinks? I mean, in the grand scheme of things? Does it really matter what your wife or your husband think in the grand scheme of things? Does it really matter what your parent thinks in the grand scheme of things? If God is satisfied with you and you've done whatever you can to please this other person and you didn't please them, okay. Get over it. Get over it. Move on. God's satisfied. Um, He sees what you went through. That's the other thing, is so many times when we're trying to please someone else, there's a lot of thought that went into it. There's a lot of time and effort. Maybe you're an artist, you're trying to please your art teacher, maybe you're a musician, you try to please your music teacher, whatever. They're not satisfied. But think about how much time and effort you put in that they didn't see. They can only see, well, your results are kind of eh. But God sees, see. God sees all that stuff that your teachers don't see, that your parents don't see, that your brothers and sisters don't see, that your boss doesn't see. He sees all that. And guess what? You've done your best, you know what? He's totally satisfied with you. And spiritually, of course, he's satisfied with you. You're in Christ. So propitiation is God word. Okay. Closest word to the Old Testament word atonement, okay? The seat, when you had the Ark of the Covenant, right? The seat of it was called the kipparet. The kipparet was we call it the mercy seat. And it that's where they take and they put the blood on the annual, they'd smear it on the surface of the Ark of the Covenant, on the mercy seat. So this word really focuses on the location. The location where satisfaction was made. So in the Old Testament, on the Ark, it was on the mercy seat, right? In the New Testament at the cross, it's on the cross. That's the location. There were three crosses, right? People say, well, you know, Jesus wasn't the only one to die on a cross, right? I mean, lots of people were crucified on the sides of roads in Roman Roman uh the Roman world. But something significant was happening at the specific location where he was crucified. It was more than just a criminal being um put on display for people to be scared of going against Rome, which is the point of these crucifixions. Say, don't do this, don't rebel against us, or this will be you. But there was a lot more than that going on on the cross, right? There was a transaction going on that was directed toward God, and that God had been offended by the human race, and here is the God man who's come to satisfy. So let's look at um Romans 3.25, because this one, this passage has a number of these words, has redemption in it, has propitiation in it. So of all the passages, this one more than any put together a lot of these concepts around the atonement. We know Romans 3.23, right? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Well, that's somewhat, that's the problem that gives the background for why you have to have an atonement, right? There's nobody righteous, no, not one. We got a problem. That's the problem. Verse 24 being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, there's redemption, the penalty paid, which is in Christ Jesus. See, He He made the payment, okay, and we're justified just as a free gift by grace. Verse 25, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation. See, the it's that this word is really about the location. Where did he display him as a propitiation? Right outside the walls of Jerusalem on a cross, right? That's where the satisfaction was made. So another word for propitiation that's too big is typically the word satisfaction. Okay, so God displayed him publicly as a propitiation by his blood. There it is again. The life is in the blood. So he's giving his life on the cross, and his life comes to us through faith, right? And this was to demonstrate his righteousness. See, he's not going to just pass over sins forever. I mean, the sins they had to be paid for. He says, because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed. See, that's what I said about the Old Testament sins. They weren't being covered by animal sacrifices. He just simply passed over them, he winked at them. But Christ, he paid for them, and his offering satisfied God, so that now anyone who believes in him is given his life in exchange. So we have eternal life. Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life. Three words then, New Testament, all looking at the atonement, developing aspects of it. All three contribute to the concept of the atonement as being penal, that is legal, substitutionary, him in our place. The payment for the debt that we owe has been made by Christ. That's redemption. The peace of God with man has been accomplished through Christ. And the satisfaction of God's justice or righteousness has been met by the substitutionary blood atonement or life-giving of Christ on the cross. That's propitiation. Alright, so in that light, we've got a work of the atonement that's sinward, man word, and Godward. Is there anything else that needs to happen? What what do we need in order to then be saved? Believe. Jesus Christ is in all that's necessary for a man to be right with God. There remains only one thing for every human doing being to do to get right with God, and that's believe in Jesus Christ. Now that said, um brief word that I keep seeing this about repentance, so I'm gonna address it. Now first thing I'm gonna say is the word repentance does not mean to turn from sin or to feel sorry for your sin. Okay, it just doesn't mean that. But those who include repentance as something that's required that we have to do usually are defining it as turn from your sin or feel sorrow for your sin. There's actually another Greek word for feel sorrow. It's metamelami, it's not a Greek word repentance, which is metanoia. So those are actually two different words. If you want to look for the feel sorry word, that's over in 2 Corinthians 7, okay? It's there. Um but this word doesn't mean that, okay, but people often think it does. Now, if you're if you think that it does, mean that. Like I gotta turn from my sin or I've got to feel sorry for my sin. What are you saying about Christ's work on the cross? It's insufficient. You have to do something else. That God is going to on that basis, in addition to Christ's death, which I'm sure they all say is necessary, but it's not quite enough because a person also has to be willing to turn from their sins or they have to feel sorrow for their sins. But isn't that taking everything away from Christ? I mean, did he do everything? I mean, was it really finished? Just almost finished. And we have to come along and add our subjective feeling of sorrow, or we have to add a promise or willingness to turn from sin. See, this idea that has crept into so commonly in Christianity today that we have to repent, meaning, in their view, turn from sin or be willing to turn from sin or feel sorry for sin. Is really just another way of attacking the gospel. It's a very does Satan come in the room with a r with red horns and a pitchfork? Or does he come as an angel of light? Second Corinthians 12. I mean, are his are his deceptions easy to detect or are they difficult to detect? Well, they're difficult. That's why they're deception. You don't it means you don't know. You you've been tricked. This idea is actually a very bad idea that has crept in. Metanoia, the Greek word for repent, which is from Latin. Repent actually is a Latin term, it's not Greek or Hebrew. Um, it comes from penitentia, and in Roman Catholicism it's called penance. You've probably heard of it. Do penance. Again, is is penance a work? If you're thinking in Roman Catholicism, yeah, it's a work. Everybody knows that. You've got to do penance. But it's come over into Protestantism as repent. And we we tend to think that means I've got to give something back or I've got to be willing to turn from my sin or something like that. That is adding works. That is adding works. Do works mix with faith? No, works eliminate faith. Faith is only consistent with grace. And and believing is consistent with grace. Romans 4, 16. Romans 4, 16. Mark it down. The only thing that's consistent with grace is faith. Works will not work in there. So faith is not a work. It can't be a work. And it says that in Romans 4, 3 and 4 and 5. It says that. It says, not to those who work, but those who believe. He counted it to them as righteousness. There's no such thing as works that can be brought into the equation of salvation. And repentance, when you interpret it as a turning from sin or something like that, is making the basis for salvation rest on Christ plus your repentance. And that is not going to save anyone. It can't. It's either Christ alone or there's no salvation. What does repent really mean? Change of mind. Meta, change, neuea mind. Change mind. Change, what does that mean? Change your thinking, right? Change your thinking. Now, when you believed in Christ, did you have a change of mind about Christ? Yeah, of course you did. Otherwise, you couldn't put your trust in him. You had to at one moment be thinking, no, Jesus Christ is not the way, the truth, and the life. And then another moment you were thinking, well, now he is the way of the truth and the life. So you had to change. Now that's necessarily tied up in faith. That's why John's gospel never ever says repent. Not even once, not even used, ever. In the whole gospel of John. But every time it uses what? Believe. Hundreds of times it says believe. But then in the book of Acts, you see repent. Why do they say repent over there, but John doesn't say it over there? You know, people go, uh, they're essentially synonymous or they occur simultaneously. You can't believe in something if you haven't had a change of mind about it. I mean, if you're going to sit on a stool in one minute, you're like, I don't know, that thing looks pretty shaky. Are you having faith? No. But let's say you change your mind and sit down. See, that happens together. Now you believe the stool can hold you, and that's you've got to change your mind. So they they go together. You can't separate them. It's just a change of mind. So not all this turning from sin stuff. Now, should we turn from sin after we believe? Well, obviously. That that should be obvious, but that doesn't do anything to save you. That doesn't get you to heaven. Jesus Christ does that. He's the one who made propitiation. He's the one who reconciled the world to himself. He's the one who redeemed us by paying our penalty in full. And then all we got to do is believe in him. If you mean repent, if you want to say repent, fine. Just as long as you just mean, well, it just means you have a change of mind about Christ. So you're not believing him, now you believe in him. Then we're good with that. We're all good.
SPEAKER_00: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 Spokane 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.