The Cross in 4 Words: Forgiveness

Palm Sunday Connection?

Introduction

If you were not here last week then you might have come in today with a question that I heard many times last week, “So what is the deal with the cross”

And that is the foundational question for our Easter series this year. We are grappling together over the question “What is the deal with the cross?”. How has this frightening symbol of torture and death somehow become the banner under which the Kingdom of God here on earth gathers each week?

We are looking at it through 4 words and last week we started out with the word “Freedom”. And if I am honest, I was a bit taken back by how little interest you all seemed to show in this word. I could be wrong, but I sensed something of an indifference, as if it was nice and all but not really something that bears much weight on our every day life.

Maybe not unlike how the freedoms that we have in this country are so easy to ignore and take for granted.

And as I was contemplating this later on, I couldn’t help but think of how the Jews in Jesus’ day seemed to display the same attitude when He spoke to them of their need to be set free. And to be clear, these were not the religious leaders that Jesus was always fighting with, these Jews believed in him.

In John chapter 8 Jesus is teaching many things and then in verse 30 it says..

John 8:30-32(ESV)

30 As he was saying these things, many believed in him. 31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

And that word “free” seemed to set them off, offend them even...

33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

If you think about it, there is a lot of irony in this exchange. For the Jewish people regularly practiced ceremonies that reminded them of the time in their history when “the offspring of Abraham” were in fact slaves in Egypt. That is what the all important “Passover” celebration was all about. Secondly, while they were allowed some autonomy, they were not currently completely free but under the thumb of Roman rule.

But even outside of these two ways in which they had experienced slavery, they still took an attitude that treated Jesus’ offer of freedom lightly… do we?

Jesus said... Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin… and we would all remain a slave to it… except for the FREEDOM purchased by the cross.

Some of us don’t know that freedom because we have ignored the message of the cross

Some of us know the message of the cross, but we are content to ignore the immense value of that freedom distracted by all the opportunities we have been given by it.

But our goal for this series is that none of us be like those, but that we would grow to appreciate and celebrate all that we have been given by the cross.

John 8:31 (ESV)

31 So Jesus said... “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Tension

Our word for today may be in danger of being just as much ignored as the first, but for a different reason. Our need for freedom from slavery may be a new concept to us, but having our sins FORGIVEN at the cross is a pretty common idea. And common things are the easiest things to take for granted.

But before we get into how God forgives us through the cross, we need to stop for a moment ask ourselves what forgiveness even is.

If you are like me, some of our earliest memories of this word forgiveness come from when we were just little tykes and a parent or some other well meaning adult would step into a quarrel of some sort.

After separating the two who were involved (whoever “they” might have been) one party was required to say “I am sorry, will you please forgive me” and then the other party was to reply “yes, I forgive you”.

And I am not saying that this was not well intentioned, or even a bad practice, but I don’t think that I ever left that experience really understanding what “forgiveness” really was. I just knew that those were the magic words that freed me up to get back to playing.

Now as an adult, I still don’t know that have a perfect understanding of what Forgiveness is, but I know that it involves the relationship between things like morality and mercy, guilt and grace, penalty and pardon, justice and love. I also know that in it’s truest form it is pursued in hopes to repair or maintain relationships with others.

The Bible talks about FORGIVENESS inside of two different relationships. Primarily forgiveness is something that God does toward man, but then in reflection of what God has done for us we offer forgiveness to others.

And in our pluralistic world we might be tempted to think that forgiveness is a pretty universal value and a part of most peoples experience around the world, but the truth is that the relational component of forgiveness makes it a uniquely Christian doctrine.

In this way, it is not a part of any other major world religion because it is grounded in the forgiveness offered by our relational God through the work of the cross.

In other words, without the cross we would have no FORGIVENESS.

Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Forgiveness)

In other religions, forgiveness does not have the same force. In animism, there is no awareness of a personal relationship with God. In Hinduism, all have to pay the inexorable consequences of karma in the wheel of reincarnations. Buddhism likewise knows nothing of a forgiving God.

The idea is present in Islam, but there is no personal God and Father. Even in Judaism, forgiveness remains a limited experience, though forgiveness as developed in the NT adds dimension to the teaching of the OT.

And that is what we are going to look at today, how the practice of “Forgiveness” that God began in the Old Testament actually finds it completion in the New Testament through the work of the cross.

So open your Bibles with me to Leviticus chapter 16, p. 95 in the Bibles in the chairs. I’ll pray and we will get into this together.

Truth

Leviticus 16:1–2 (ESV)

1 The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the Lord and died, 2 and the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat.

So the first thing we see here is a clear Warning,

God’s holiness is dead serious

It is not easy for us to wrap our minds around the spiritual nature of this, but basically the purity of God’s holiness is so complete that it cannot endure the smallest presence of any sin.

The closest thing I can compare it to is something like a class 1 Clean-room laboratory. So we are talking intense air filtration, air lock doors, body suits or those long gloves that are built into the walls. Level 1 is the highest possible air quality rating that you can get and still… the standard that must be met is one aerosol particle allowed for every 3 square meters of air space. That is some incredibly clean air… put still not pure air.

A few years ago Scientist believed that they found the place with the purist naturally occuring air quality on the face of the earth. You know where they found it? The Southern Ocean. Do you know where the Southern Ocean is? It surrounds Antarctica, the one continent on earth that is basically uninhabitable by people, or as one scientist said, it “is one of very few places on Earth that has been minimally affected by anthropogenic activities”

That is a very “science-y” way of saying that the presence of people makes things unclean.

This is the problem that God is addressing with Aaron. God’s holy presence is going to come down to be with his people, but “people make things unclean”. And of course God is not concerned with aerosol particles here, but with our sin, our selfishness our outright rebellion against God. The fact that we treat God as if He is less than God.

This is what the text is saying that the “sons of Aaron” did. Instead of respecting the “Cleanroom” protocol that God laid out for them, they decided to do things their own way.

The Bible records their story back at the start of chapter 10 of Leviticus where it says...

Leviticus 10:1–3 (ESV)

1 Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

It is likely that they were trying to behave like the pagan priest that they saw in Egypt by trying all kinds of different things to get their god to do what they want. But God never offers us this, and these men learned that the hard way.

2 And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. 3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’ ” And Aaron held his peace.

God is starting is instructions with this warning, reminding Aaron of how…

God’s holiness is dead serious

And as much as we may not like to focus on this side of God’s character, we can’t really understand the “FORGIVENESS” of the cross without considering the weight of the line that we have crossed in our sin.

Anyone who has ever had any experience with Forgiveness knows that it is about someone crossing a line somewhere. Think about those times when you have been filled with “righteous indignation” over an offense or injustice that someone perpetrated toward you. You say things like,

“That wasn’t right.”

“They should not have done that.”

“ I don’t deserve to be treated like this…”

We know we are sinners, but even we get angry when someone sins against us. How much more then does our perfect God have a right to be angry when His is so grossly mistreated.

God is rightly and justly angry at our sin. Our sin is a corruption of the good that He designed for us to be so he cannot allow us to continue to live this way because his holiness is dead serious...

Which presents a problem for our God who loves us and created us to be with Him but now can’t be with us because of our Sin. So He created a way. That way is called “FORGIVENESS”.

We will first look at the “BETTER WAY” that God gave his people in the Old Testament and then we will see how those very same principles are actually not even applied until the “FOREVER WAY” of the cross.

So Aaron was not to come into God’s presence in any way he wanted, but in a particular way that God laid out…

The Better Way

Leviticus 16:3–6 (ESV)

3 But in this way Aaron shall come into the Holy Place: with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. 4 He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body, and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist, and wear the linen turban; these are the holy garments. He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on.

There is a lot of details given in this chapter and we are not going to go into all of it, but what we do see from it is that this BETTER WAY was God’s way of maintaining the high standard of his holiness even while saving the people that had crossed the line and violated it.

Because “God’s holiness is - still- dead serious”, Aaron was to “put to death” specific animals as substitutes for the people of Israel. These animals would die so the people would not.

And even though this might not sit well with our modern sensibilities, the significance was clearly understood by the people in this day.

Even the New Testament points back to the merit of this…

Hebrews 9:22 (ESV)

22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

And if you read through this chapter this past week then you saw how this was true as Aaron was required to use the blood from the life taken from these animals to cleanse everything in the Tabernacle, including himself. Because he too had sin, First he had to purify himself before he could serve the people in helping them to purify themselves.

Their were two specific animal sacrifices that take center stage when it comes to God’s Forgiveness and they were both accomplished through one of two particular goats.

Leviticus 16:7–9 (ESV)

7 Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.

There are so many different theories about who or what this “Azazel” is that is hard to say one way or another. Some think it is just the name for the goat, some think it a place, still others think it is a name of a demon or false god or something.

What we know for sure is that whatever “Azazel” is, it is to be separated or set aside from the LORD. So this is not something for God, but something that is to be removed from God. One Goat “for” the LORD and one goat taken “from” Him.

And through the casting of lots, God chose which goat would be which...

9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering,

Similar to what we said about the passover lamb last week, the first goat was to be sacrificed and then the blood was to be used to set apart a particular place for the LORD, it was

The sacrificial goat [that]covered their sin

The blood was not just spread on a door frame, as in the Passover, but it is placed all over the Tabernacle. Aaron, and all subsequent high priest were instructed to once a year remove every other person from the tabernacle area and then sprinkle the blood on virtually everything from the innermost Holy Place to the big alter out in the courtyard. This was to cleanse this place where God promised to come and meet with his people and to make it holy. The death of this sacrificial goat covered their sin so that God could be with them.

But then there was a second goat, and the instructions for this goat were a bit different...

Leviticus 16:10 (ESV)

10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

The second goat is commonly called the “scapegoat” and it “took away their sin.”

The ceremony of this goat was very different than the first and it we get those instructions down in verse 20...

Leviticus 16:20–22 (ESV)

20 “And when he[Aaron] has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins.

That is going to take a while! We believe that he did this primarily in categories and not like… “on the 7th day of this month Peter gossiped about...” but more like “We have been gossipers” and then everyone would think on the times when they had done that sin the previous year .

And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. 22 The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

So God’s “BETTER WAY” of forgiveness for his people in the Old Testament involved these two acts.

One that was “for” the Lord and one that went out “from” the LORD.

One that covered the sin of the people and the other that carried their many sins far away.

And the called this celebration “The Day of Atonement” because through this ceremony these unclean people were declared to be Forgiven by God and so “at-one” with Him.

Leviticus 16:30 (ESV)

30 For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins.

If all of this Old Testament sacrifice stuff makes you a little uneasy and uncomfortable than I would say that you are probably exactly where God wants you to be. The idea that God’s holiness would need to appeased is hard enough to wrap our minds around, but it is super weird to think that it could somehow happen by killing a couple of goats.

But when it comes to understanding the difficult parts of the Old Testament Law, the New Testament book of Hebrews is one of the most helpful books.

Hebrews 10 explains these things like so:

Hebrews 10:1 (ESV)

1 For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.

Hebrews 10:3–4 (ESV)

3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Wait, so that didn’t work? Well not exactly. Basically, all those animal sacrifices didn’t do everything that needs to be done. They were just placeholders for something bigger.

But the Day of Atonement was not pointless, it was pointing.

All of the slaughtering and sprinkling and sacrificing was all aimed at reminding God’s people that His holiness is dead serious, that He is rightly angry with our sin but that in his love for us He will make a way to be with us.

Gospel Application

And if you think about it, the cross really doesn’t make sense at all if God is not angry at our sin. Even though we like to think of God as just a loving God, we know that to truly love things like goodness, righteousness and justice means that evil, wrong, and unjust things will make you angry. Right?

It is God’s love for the good thing that He created us to be that makes him so angry over the sinful thing that we have become.

But the good news is that in his perfect love, God has provided the only way for us to be truly forgiven of our sin. A way that is so powerful that it reaches forward all the way to us today and it reaches back and covers all the goat ceremonies of Moses’ day. It’s...

The ETERNAL WAY

The death of some farm animals is not weighty enough to cover the cost of all of our sin. Two goats aren’t even worth one human life and God’s love compelled him to make a way for every human life.

So even before time began, God knew that only one life could ever be valuable enough to pay a bill like this. That only one death would be significant enough to give life to all who would trust in his sacrifice. And that is the death of His Son Jesus Christ on the Cross.

The goats just pointed us to what we needed, but...

The CROSS of Christ covers all our sin

The CROSS of Christ takes away all our sin

Jesus’ death on the cross fulfills the role of both of the goats used in the Day of Atonement. Jesus blood covers the debt so that God’s anger toward our sin is appeased and as Jesus hung there on the cross he bore our sins like the scapegoat removing them far away.

Landing

Hebrews 9:12 (ESV)

12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

The Cross is about Freedom

The Cross is about Forgiveness

And Friday night we will continue this teaching, looking at how the Cross is about Justice.

I’ll invite the Worship Team to take their places as I pray.