21) Righteousness Mercy Demonstrated
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Turn with me to Romans 3:21. We have been working through this passage that brings forth God’s righteousness and places it in the mind in a way that is missed by many. The scriptures are clear that there is a judgment to come for all people. An evaluation by the creator of the universe. A day that we will want to be fully assured that we will know the outcome.
30 “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
This day of justice will be the most important appointment that any person will have. A meeting like no other. One where eternal live is on the line.
6 He will repay each one according to his works: 7 eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality; 8 but wrath and anger to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth while obeying unrighteousness. 9 There will be affliction and distress for every human being who does evil, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek; 10 but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does what is good, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.
I don’t know about you but the options seem pretty clear to me. There will be those that receive eternal life, as they lived seeking God and those that will receive wrath and anger for being self-seeking. This does not seem to be a hard choice. Who would choose wrath over eternal life. The choice is simple but the reality is that man cannot get there on his own. He cannot be righteous, So God made a way for men to be saved.
21 But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. 22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. 23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. 26 God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
Man will stand before judgement and have to answer two questions. The first is “Have you fulfilled the law?” Have you met all of the requirements and have you proven to be perfectly moral and right before God. Every person will know that the answer is no. But those that have faith that Jesus’ perfect righteousness has been given to them will trust in those promises and will have become the righteousness of God.
21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
The second question will be “Have you ever broken and law, transgressed any commandment?” are you a law breaker? Every person will know that the answer is yes and that God’s word says that the wages of sin is death. That is the just sentence for the law breaker.
23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;
Sin has a consequence. One that we very carefully work to avoid thinking about. One that we try very hard to imagine doesn’t exist.
14 But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. 15 Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.
Sin earns a wage, like a paycheck.
23 For the wages of sin is death, ...
It is being stored up for judgement
5 Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed.
This next section answers the quest of what does a just God do with all of the sin that has been charged to a person’s account. We read that it is forgiven or absolved on our account but how is that accomplished. Does God just cancel it. Take the ledger of our debt and strike through it and say move on there is nothing more to see here. Or is there more to it. Scripture says,
15 Acquitting the guilty and condemning the just — both are detestable to the Lord.
God’s justice demands that sin must be punished and the the guilty cannot just be acquitted before the court. Here Paul shows how God’s righteousness is demonstrated in his mercy to man.
God Presented Him
God Presented Him
25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.
God’s righteousness has been revealed to the world through Jesus’ perfect life and that righteousness has been given through faith to those who believe. And here we have the righteousness of God demonstrated before all of human history.
The great act of God saving mankind was not a hidden act. It wasn’t a deal behind closed doors. It wasn’t an act that happened at some secret religious ritual in a secluded building, with only a select few special people. It wasn’t an act that happened in the highest heavens or the deepest pit that no one would see.
God presented Jesus publicly. He presented him in the greatest empire of the world at the time. He presented him during the Passover which would have had close to 200k to 500k people in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. This was a very public time. Jerusalem at the time was about a 1/3 of a mile square.
Map
This was not an act that God worked to hide. God had prepared it to be fully witnessed. As Jesus’ 3 year ministry progressed he drew great attention to what he was doing. His ministry started with the baptism by John and the heavens opened up and a voice from heaven said “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
He traveled all over the region. He gathered large crowds, teaching and proclaiming that the kingdom of God is near. He taught against the Jews. Claimed to do what only God can do. Forgive sins. He performed miracles of healing, walked on water, calmed the storm, filled nets, told people about their lives, cast out demons, and raised people from the dead. He had captured the heart of the mob, the ire of the religious. So when he entered Jerusalem that Passover he entered not like a thief in the night but like a conquering king with shouts of Hosanna.
It was a spectacle to see for sure. A man rides in during a religious festival and rides the symbol of the long awaited messiah. Could it be that he will rescue us from the Romans? As the week progresses. He would draw more attention and scrutiny from the people and the religious leaders. He flipped tables in the temple, claimed he was the fulfillment of prophesy in the synagogue. He would escape every trap laid out for him. So they would falsely accuse him. He would be arrested and tried behind closed doors in the dead of night without proper witnesses. He would be put before Pilate who would attempt to release him. But the crowd would shout crucify him. The entire city would know that this man who claims to be the son of God is sentenced to death. Death on a cross.
He leaves the public eye and reappears beaten. He is whipped, forced to wear a crown of thorns, carries his cross until he can do it no more. He is taken up onto the hill. He is nailed to the cross. He pleads for forgiveness for those that are killing him. Shouts out it is finished. Gives his last breath.
The earth shakes, the sun goes dark, the dead are raised, the curtain of the temple is torn in two. He is taken to the tomb of a rich man. The door is sealed. The city goes quite. It is Passover. A day of “What just happened?”
The women go to the tomb the next day and it is empty. Rumors spread. People speculate and then he starts to reveal himself to them. In the flesh. With the holes in his hand and feet. With his pierced side. He has risen. What a stir that would be. The government and religious leaders scramble to figure out what has happened.
What has happened. God has publicly presented Jesus. But what did God present him as. He was presented as the Mercy Seat by his blood. It was a display of God’s righteousness.
As the Mercy Seat
As the Mercy Seat
If you are not using a CSB the verse may read something like this
25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, ...
The Greek word here has been translated to a series of different words in English to attempt to describe what Paul is communicating. Some will say that God presented him as the atoning sacrifice, the expiation, or the propitiation by his blood. Here it is translated as the mercy seat. To probably every one here most of these don’t really make sense since we do not use any of these in our common language today. The word has a root that means mercy. There are quite a few other forms of this word used in the New Testament that are translated into atonement and propitiation but Paul uses this one specifically here.
The issue is that this specific word is only used twice in the New Testament. Here and in Hebrews 9:5. It is translated as mercy seat based on the context of the verse.
5 The cherubim of glory were above the ark overshadowing the mercy seat. ...
Though this word is only used twice in the New Testament it is used many times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament of the time. This is the translation that the early church would have been familiar with and when it was used in that translation it was referring to the actual mercy seat on the arc of the testimony that resided in the Holy of Holies.
16 Put the tablets of the testimony that I will give you into the ark. 17 Make a mercy seat of pure gold, forty-five inches long and twenty-seven inches wide. 18 Make two cherubim of gold; make them of hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat. 19 Make one cherub at one end and one cherub at the other end. At its two ends, make the cherubim of one piece with the mercy seat. 20 The cherubim are to have wings spread out above, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and are to face one another. The faces of the cherubim should be toward the mercy seat. 21 Set the mercy seat on top of the ark and put the tablets of the testimony that I will give you into the ark.
This was the most sacred of the objects in the temple. The mercy seat sat in the deepest part of the sanctuary. It was the place where the High Priest would make atonement for the nation on one day a year. For anyone else to enter, or for anyone to enter on any other day, for any other purpose, in any other way, the person would die. It was a sacred place for a sacred action, to make atonement. To appease the wrath of God, to cover the nations sins, to remove the guilt of the sins.
2 The Lord said to Moses, “Tell your brother Aaron that he may not come whenever he wants into the holy place behind the curtain in front of the mercy seat on the ark or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud above the mercy seat. 3 “Aaron is to enter the most holy place in this way: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. 4 He is to wear a holy linen tunic, and linen undergarments are to be on his body. He is to tie a linen sash around him and wrap his head with a linen turban. These are holy garments; he must bathe his body with water before he wears them. 5 He is to take from the Israelite community two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering. 6 “Aaron will present the bull for his sin offering and make atonement for himself and his household. 7 Next he will take the two goats and place them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 8 After Aaron casts lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other for an uninhabitable place, 9 he is to present the goat chosen by lot for the Lord and sacrifice it as a sin offering. 10 But the goat chosen by lot for an uninhabitable place is to be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement with it by sending it into the wilderness for an uninhabitable place. 11 “When Aaron presents the bull for his sin offering and makes atonement for himself and his household, he will slaughter the bull for his sin offering. 12 Then he is to take a firepan full of blazing coals from the altar before the Lord and two handfuls of finely ground fragrant incense, and bring them inside the curtain. 13 He is to put the incense on the fire before the Lord, so that the cloud of incense covers the mercy seat that is over the testimony, or else he will die. 14 He is to take some of the bull’s blood and sprinkle it with his finger against the east side of the mercy seat; then he will sprinkle some of the blood with his finger before the mercy seat seven times. 15 “When he slaughters the male goat for the people’s sin offering and brings its blood inside the curtain, he will do the same with its blood as he did with the bull’s blood: He is to sprinkle it against the mercy seat and in front of it.
The word propitiation means
propitiation n. — the means of appeasing wrath and gaining the good will of an offended person; especially with respect to sacrifices for appeasing angered deities.
This word would have been used very commonly as the false God’s of the time were always needing to be appeased for all sorts of myths. This was one of the themes of Greek and Roman mythology. The idea of appeasing or placating a god or spirit to gain favor or avert their wrath. This was essential in ancient belief systems, where gods were seen as powerful, emotional beings who could bless or curse humans depending on how they were treated.
What if you offend a person. Lets say I offend my wife in some understandable way. Has any man here offended his wife? This is a legitimate offence, you were wrong and you know it. How do you appease the wrath of your wife or gain her good will? There is usually a peace offering of some type. It is given to gain the good will of the person who is offended. And one who is offended gets to set the price right. If I offend my wife and then by her some paper. Do you think that she will be appeased. No. She gets to set the price.
By His Blood
By His Blood
God set the price for the appeasing of his wrath. It was the death of his son. The second person of the trinity.
21 In the same way, he sprinkled the tabernacle and all the articles of worship with blood. 22 According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. 23 Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands (only a model of the true one) but into heaven itself, so that he might now appear in the presence of God for us. 25 He did not do this to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the sanctuary yearly with the blood of another. 26 Otherwise, he would have had to suffer many times since the foundation of the world. But now he has appeared one time, at the end of the ages, for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment—28 so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
God set the price for the appeasing of his wrath.
18 For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.
Under the Law they would sacrifice bulls and goat as a symbol of the substitute, for the death they deserved. It was a reminder of God’s great mercy has he passes over their sins. Like the symbol of the blood on the door posts of the Passover. God’s justice demands that all sin is punished by death. But he allowed an atoning sacrifice, a substitutionary sacrifice to be made on the behalf of the offender. The copies were to foreshadow and to point forward to the perfect sacrifice that would be God himself.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
As God’s mercy is appeased against those that have earned his wrath, he demonstrates his righteousness.
13 But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
God Demonstrates His Merciful Restraint
God Demonstrates His Merciful Restraint
25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.
The greatest act of mercy is the fact that God passed over the sins previously committed. His great restraint allows mankind to breath even with the sin that separates us from him. He had every right to enact his justice on Adam and Eve the moment they transgressed in the garden. They knew the consequences. They knew the command.
1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. 3 But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
Yet, they fell. They ate and earned death. The debt was added to the books. God could have called the bill due that very moment and that would have been the end of humanity. But instead, he shows his loving patience as he restrains the punishment due. Giving time for those who will repent to do so.
9 The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
The day has been set when there is no more time when the restraint will be over and that will be it.
30 “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
This week I browsed the news of our country. There are many topic of great concern going on around us. And as I browsed through pages on politics, crimes, wars, and other hot topic ideas. There is one unifying conclusion that can be made from a detailed look at the news of the world. That conclusion is that humanity does not agree on anything. For every article on this side saying they are right there is an opposing on over here saying the exact opposite. What is right is what is moral? A moral person does what is right. But who is the moral one when everyone is in conflict.
The news alone should show us the truth of the word of God.
23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;
There is only one hope for what we see today in our world. That is that people will come to trust in Jesus as their Lord and savior. For all will be held accountable.
36 I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak.
God is still restraining his wrath for many to come to faith in him. Faith in Jesus as the only place of atonement, the only place of appeasing the wrath of God, the only place of forgiveness, the only place of reconciliation and redemption, the only place of salvation. God is still patiently waiting for his gospel to reach all that will hear the message of reconciliation and believe. He is waiting for all of this children to be saved.
Jesus’ sacrifice demonstrates the righteousness of God. For only a perfect high priest could enter the heavenly tabernacle. He had to be sinless to not have to offer a sacrifice first for himself. So he enters into the presence of God on our behalf. He presents himself as the mercy seat, the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice, the means of appeasing God’s justice. Only his perfect righteousness could qualify him as the perfect, spotless, lamb of God that can fully at one time appease all of God’s wrath and remove the guilt of sin from the offender.
For he is the God of our Salvation and as the one who is just and one who can justify it is all done for his glory. Man has not had a hand in any of it. The only thing that man does is to believe. To have faith and to trust in the promises of the Lord. Of God.
9 God of our salvation, help us, for the glory of your name. Rescue us and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake.
Conclusion - Through Faith
Conclusion - Through Faith
The questions are the same for us today. Can you confidently stand before the almighty God with boldness that Christ’s perfect life was given and has made made you the righteousness of God. Can you stand before God and with boldness that the blood of Christ has appeased the wrath of God on your behalf, that you have received the greatest mercy you can every receive, that his pierced hands have shown you his great love for you and you trust that he is the atoning sacrifice for your sins.
10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Do you know that God is faithful to his word and promise of the new covenant that was inaugurated in his blood.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 And each person will not teach his fellow citizen, and each his brother or sister, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them. 12 For I will forgive their wrongdoing, and I will never again remember their sins.
Jesus is the judge who evaluates all men before the Law, The High Priest that enters the sanctuary on behalf of the people, he is the sacrifice that reconciles men to God and redeems them back into a state that can be in the presence of God. Are you confident before the Just Justifier? Or are you all talk and no commitment? Does your life seek the things of God or the things of yourself? What about our families and our church. Will we be like the Church in Thessalonica?
8 For the word of the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place that your faith in God has gone out. Therefore, we don’t need to say anything, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception we had from you: how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
or the church of Galatia
6 I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! 9 As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!
Today is the day to believe and trust in Jesus as both Lord and savior. Do not leave here without settling accounts with God? through faith your debt can be cancelled and you can be credited with God’s righteousness. What will you do today?
Let us pray.
Let us pray.
Prayer
Blessing/Benediction
5 Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, according to Christ Jesus,
