In the not too distant future, 27 seconds hence. Equipment I carried away with so much knowledge to dispense. Sit down for just a moment to talk about the topment. Got it to the Bible overload. And now we've got an extra big episode.
SPEAKER_00Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And you know how sometimes when you do things, there's more than one reason. I mean, I know that's that's not how internet discourse works. On the internet, everything is very, very simple, and you can magically tell other people's motives without ever having met them from just two lines of a tweet. And some of the most unfortunate internet discourse is, of course, you know, it's born out of assuming we know why somebody did things and that the reason why was one thing. Yeah, but when we think about our own lives, we know that usually when we do things, there are lots of reasons that we did those things. And oftentimes when we do a good thing, there were a lot of reasons that we did the good thing. Maybe some of them, you know, as as humans, we're not um as proud of, and others we'd be happy if people knew what our motives were. But the the very simple point, and it it almost, I mean, it goes without saying, yet I'm saying it, is we do things for multiple reasons. That's how decision making usually works. Rarely is something as simple as I did a thing for a reason, the end. Okay. Well, we got a real complicated one here in terms of multiple reasons why, when it comes to Jesus and the cross. In John 3, we get this line from Jesus talking about this story from the Old Testament in Numbers 21 about some venomous snakes that were biting people. And then God's like, hey, Moses, if you make a bronze serpent, you put it on a stick, you can raise that up. And if anybody beholds the stick, they will be saved from the venomous snake. It's kind of a strange story, but Jesus invokes that story and applies it to himself in a conversation with a Pharisee. Jesus says in John 3:14, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. And then it just doubles down in the next verse, famous verse. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Okay, so what we get there is what's going to happen. That is, the Son of Man will be lifted up in sacrifice. You know, it seems to also anticipate in glory, and then we get an outcome. The outcome is uh it everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. But there's this other question that Christians have wondered about for a very long time, and that is the question of why? Why did God do that? Why what happened on the cross? What does it accomplish? What's the the invisible guts and thinking and theology behind Jesus living a perfect life, going to the cross, dying on the cross, being buried, and then raised again on the third day? Over the years, there have been several competing theories on what's actually happening with the cross. Sometimes this the fancy term for this is theories of the atonement, you know, meaning like the atoning sacrifice of Jesus or the atoning work of Jesus on the cross. And I think that most of the people who asked this question, why? What was God doing with the whole cross thing throughout church history? We were able to believe that God was doing it for multiple reasons, that it was a multifaceted decision, that many things were occurring with the cross. However, in the age of internet discourse, it seems like there's more of a proclivity to argue for one. There's one singular thing that God was doing, and we have to figure out what that thing was, and it must be at the expense of all of the different things that God might have been doing by raising up Christ on the cross. And God, he must have been singular in what he was trying to accomplish. But when I look through the text of scripture, what I see is that much like when you make decisions and there are a lot of things going on, multiple things are accomplished, or there are multiple whys behind it. So I see some stuff that's just inarguable in the Bible that God was clearly doing. But also I see some other stuff where it's like, well, yeah, it looks like God was doing that as well. And these needn't be in competition with each other. Yesterday we looked at Mark 10, 45, where Jesus says that he came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Well, what's a ransom? Well, it's a a buying back. Ah, well, there you have it. We're done here. What happened on the cross? Why did God do that? Well, it was to buy us back from sin, or maybe buy us back from Satan or hell. That's it. It's a buyback. We're done here. We don't need to look at any more verses, but that would be silly because the Bible talks about this a lot, and that isn't the only place. When we look at these other verses, we kind of figure out okay, well, it looks like in Mark 10, 45, Jesus is talking about one why as to what Jesus was here to do when he talks about this ransom stuff. Then we went and looked at John chapter 10, and the idea of almost a swap. Jesus is laying down his life. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and it isn't something that's inflicted on him. Verse 15 of John 10 says, Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. It's voluntary. This isn't happening to Jesus. He's making a conscious decision because he knows that this is the way. You know, picture the Doctor Strange thing, or, you know, from the Marvel universe where he's he's envisioned every possible universe, and there's like one way that this works. Well, God is infinite. You know, maybe maybe there's a lot of ways that he could have done all of existence and salvation and everything, but he ordained this one way. And Jesus is in on the plan. It's it's not like the plan is being inflicted upon him. It's not like the father is abusing him, like, oh, well, I, you know, I just completely disavow you and I'm going to inflict this penalty upon you. Jesus is in on the plan. So that adds a couple more whys to what's going on here. Why? Well, even from just that verse in John 10, we see that the cross and Jesus being raised up on the cross and raised from the dead demonstrates unity within the Trinity, unity between the Father and the Son. And then yesterday we looked at Romans 3, which has such overt language about Jesus being the sacrifice for sins. He is an atonement. It uses language right here in Romans chapter 3 that is directly evocative, not just of any of the sacrifices from the very multifaceted sacrificial system of the Old Testament, but specifically the atoning sacrifice. God presented Jesus, him, Jesus, as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. There's not ambiguity there. That is a substitution. Jesus is filling in for those for whom the sacrifice is offered. That isn't the only thing that's going on in the cross, but it is one of the wise that is clearly there. Romans 4. Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins. Uh Christ died for the ungodly. That's Romans 5. And then in Romans 8, toward the end, this is where we get the um that God, his son not sparing, sent him to die. I'm stalling. 832. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Even when Paul is kind of moving past in the book of Romans the stuff about the atonement, he's still talking about all these different whys behind the atonement. So we're seeing it together, and I'm not done. We get we're gonna just lightning round a bunch more Bible on this topic. But as we do, keep your antenna out for this. It isn't one thing. Clearly, with what we've looked at and what we're still going to look at ahead, there is a substitutionary aspect here. Jesus is taking on something in our place, taking on something that was headed for us, and instead, his sacrifice is covering that. Clearly, Jesus says himself that he gives his life as a ransom for many. Clearly, the crucifixion and the why behind the cross is to demonstrate the glory of God and the unity between the Father and the Son. Clearly, there is resolution to sin in a sacrificial language context going on here. Second Corinthians five, let's do that. I turned right to it. I was meant for this one. Okay, 2 Corinthians 5, starting in 18. All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. How are we made right with God? Through Christ. There's another why. So he gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world, same language used in John 3, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them, and he is committed to us the message of reconciliation. Okay, so here's another why: reconciliation. He is reconciling all things to himself. He's reconciling us specifically. We are being made sons, daughters, children, heirs, agents of the kingdom by the work of Christ that he's referencing in John 3 with this whole thing, reference back to the snake being raised up and the son of man being raised up. This is amazing language. And it is such a pity that some vitriolic internet discourse from time to time undercuts this as people too vigorously argue for one of these whys at the expense of all the other whys. But get what happens next in 2 Corinthians 5. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors. I love it. We flip from being the bad guys, the villains, the enemy of God, to representatives of God because of what he did on the cross. Okay, so here's a why. It wasn't just to save us for the glory of God, it was to flip us, 14-point swing us. Saul the persecutor to Paul the evangelist, us, from outsiders and enemies of the work of God to children and heirs and ambassadors, agents of the kingdom of God. That is so stinking, exhilarating to me, by the way. This is this is the heartbeat of the adventure of Christian faith, is that we we don't just become Christians. It's like there, well, now I have uh a new team, I have a new loyalty or whatever. Like I have a new use, I have a purpose and a role in existence that transcends this life and carries forward into the next. You always hear, like, you know, you can't take it with you. Well, you can take this with you. The purpose of what we do in this life, when we have new life in Christ because of what happened on the cross, that purpose just there's no break. Death is no interruption. If anything, we get better at it and get to participate more in this task, this mission, this objective, this quest, this adventure on the other side of death. Maybe you don't care about things like that. I'm getting a little bit off track here, but I also think this is exactly on track. I care about stuff like that a ton. Purpose, the point. What are we doing here? And scripture speaks so specifically to the fact that part of the why behind the cross is that is a complete wholesale transformation of us from meandering purposelessness as outsiders and enemies to the things of God, to people given a purpose that transcends life, death, this world, and the next. What an amazing gift of God to include us in his plans and to give us this esteemed role of ambassadors. We who used to be enemies. I just love this. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Are you kidding me? You want a verse that spells out the why behind the cross. Uh, well, I'll give you that one right there. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. He took on the curse and penalty of sin, the shame of the thing. Paul expresses this, in other words, just a couple pages over in the book of Galatians. We did a whole season, two seasons ago, was all on this stuff. If you want to know more about it, you can go and look. In Galatians 3, 10, Paul says, All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. And then he goes on to talk more about that curse. And he says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. Obviously, there's a larger context there. Like I said, you can go fill that in by listening to the Galatian season. But the point is that cursed is everyone who's hung on a tree is a reference to the same thing Jesus is talking about in John 3 with Nicodemus, when he's talking about the Son of Man being raised up like that snake in the desert. So why is the cross happening? Well, in part, it's to transfer the curse from us to Jesus. And he isn't even like he's just owning the curse. The language that's being used here in 2 Corinthians and Galatians is not just like, oh, you know, he carried sin or had it for a minute, he became it. Not just he carried curse or got touched by it and it was gross, he became the curse. The scriptural language about what happened at the cross and the why behind it is so essence-oriented. The the shame, the scandal of the cross, that this stuff would not just be on Jesus, but that Jesus would become this stuff. Despite being the perfect son of God, God in the flesh, the Messiah, it it's meant to be jarring. And if these passages are troubling, good, they're working. First Timothy 2, Christ gave himself as a ransom for all. Ephesians 2, I'm gonna read this one. Ephesians 2, starting in verse 13. Yes. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace. Okay, so why? Well, because at the cross, Jesus being raised up, it was making a new family of faith from people who formerly were disparate and were divided. Also, it's making a new family of faith between people who could not be in the presence of God rightly, who now can, because this dividing wall, this barrier that's being veiled, referenced to here is a veil that was torn in two at Jesus' crucifixion, that is representative of that division between God and man, a division caused by sin, not a division caused by God. He gave himself to redeem us from all wickedness. That's Titus chapter two, uh, to break the power of death and Satan. That's Hebrews chapter two. That's another why. So it's to defeat evil, to defeat Satan. 1 Peter 2 uses the language that Jesus Himself took on, he bore our sins in his body on the cross, on the tree, I think it says. Christ uh later on, just one page over in uh 1 Peter three, it says, Christ uh died for the sin once and for all, the righteous and the unrighteous. And this is all to reconcile you to God. I probably didn't get that paraphrase quite right, but that's really, really close. Uh John 1, and we're gonna look at all of this stuff later on, 1 John 1, that is, the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sins. Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, as 1 John 2. 1 John 4 again stresses that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And then more of that ransom language gets employed in the early going of Revelation, where uh Jesus purchases people for God at the price of his blood. Here's my point, my friends. It is a great pity that at times, in certain corners of the discourse, this beautiful, wonderful, most precious gift of God that is the life we have in Christ through his work on the cross and in the resurrection, like the big, the punchline of the Bible in the best sense, the the big take-home that is like where you fit into the story is you go from being an outsider to being a child of God, a son, a daughter, an heir, an agent of the king. It's like the best thing in the whole Bible as it applies to you, it as it applies directly to you, is the hope that is given to you in the Bible. And it's a pity that, you know, sometimes in our eagerness to sound smart or whatever, I don't know, like feel like we discovered something new, or I don't know. I I can't judge people's motives. It is a pity that this becomes a point of uh bickering every now and then, usually not, but every now and then, instead of a point of appreciating the multifacetedness of the glorious work of Christ on the cross and in his resurrection. Are we ransomed from sin and death by the work of Christ on the cross? Is that why it happened? Uh-huh. Yeah, it is. Does Jesus' work on the cross is the reason it happened? So that Jesus would stand in victory over Satan and sin and death? Yes, Jesus is the victor. It's seen in the Gospels and it's seen even more clearly in the book of Revelation. Yes, that is also why this all happened. Is the reason that Jesus died on the cross to satisfy the wrath of God as an atoning sacrifice, as characterized in the Old Testament? Yes, that is also why this happened. Is the why behind Jesus going to the cross as a substitution for our sins that he bears the penalty of the sin, the penalty that you and I deserve? Uh-huh. That is explicitly in the Bible. Absolutely. Is the reason Jesus went to the cross to model submission to God the Father and obedience to his glory? Uh-huh. Yes, it is. All of these aspects are true. And Jesus was fully in on the plan and in agreement with the Father on every single point. So when we flip back here to John chapter three, and I know we've been going for a while, but today, it's just a lot of Bible, it's going to be a long one. As I'm recording this, we're heading into a weekend, so you got a little extra time to get through it. Uh, thank you for bearing with me here on stuff that I think is very important that I'm very excited about. If we flip back here to John chapter three and we put ourselves in the shoes of Nicodemus as he's listening to Jesus talk about this stuff, surely we can understand that every single layer of meaning that we just worked through with the benefit of having the whole New Testament in front of us, every single layer of that meaning is not going to pop for Nicodemus right away. But it did eventually. Nicodemus was in. Nicodemus put his neck on the line for Jesus after this conversation. Two different times it's recorded in John. But this is where I think all of that really starts to take root. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, Jesus says to Nicodemus, you know, Nicodemus, this story that you know so well. Okay, well, just as Moses did that, and you know what God did through it, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. Now look, it's not just for Nicodemus, for you and me as well. If that's where the Bible ended, and Jesus didn't say anything else or do anything else, I mean, we're not going to be able to sort that out. It's it's too cryptic, it's too much. In his mercy, God saw fit to give us a lot more Bible and a lot more time with Jesus to see to have that statement that I just read to you be informed and undergirded by the clarifying words of Jesus and actions of Jesus as we go along, so that the whole thing really does come into focus as to why the cross happened very, very clearly. But I don't know, there's one more verse that kind of speaks to all of this, and I think I'll give it the last word for today. You know, Jesus says in Nicodemus, once again, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. Okay. Um, why? What is the why behind that? Very next verse. Well, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. The final why that we see here is the love of God. The love of God is what is behind that hideous, violent event that is the cross. And that tension is something that you know we're gonna live with as we work through the book of John, but that tension is gonna make more sense as we go along, not just to Nicodemus, but also to us. Thanks for hanging with me on a little longer conversation today. We'll be back to a more uh normal time length next time around. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.