Grace & Restoration
Notes
Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
Good Morning, friends, would you believe it, we’re in the second to last week of our series—and, we’re talking about something really important today, and I would say that it is, perhaps, the most important—because, it is why we are all here, we believe that we are forgiven, or maybe we haven’t fully claimed it. Still, at the very least, we believe in “the forgiveness of sins.”
Transition
Martin Luther said, “The Old Testament reveals our sin, and the New Testament reveals the righteousness of Christ.” Peter tells us, in his first epistle, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1:14–16). Jesus is recorded in Matthew 5 as saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (17-18). So, we ask ourselves, what does that mean?
Background
We read accounts in the Old Testament of what it took to approach the Glory of the Lord. Leviticus 16 outlines the rituals for the Day of Atonement, during which only the High Priest could enter this space, and only once a year at that. He was born of a certain family of Levitical priests, who would have to wear a special white linen garment that was, itself, holy, and only after bathing in a long, drawn-out, ritualistic manner. He would then enter, bringing a censer filled with coals and incense to create a smoke screen, protecting him from seeing God’s face directly. After this, he would have to offer a bull to atone for his own sins before being able to offer a goat for the people’s sins, sprinkling the blood of the sacrifices seven times in front of the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.
The reality of God’s presence in the Exodus—that God has come to live with them—was not good news for the Israelites. It was, in fact, a rather large burden.
BUT
What if the Israelites perceived the tabernacle all wrong? You see, they regarded the tabernacle as existing, so that their sins could be forgiven. But Exodus 25:8 doesn’t say, “Build me a place for sacrifices,” it says, “Build me a sanctuary that I may dwell among [you].” God didn’t give them the tabernacle for sin offerings—He gave them sin offerings because they had the tabernacle.
The whole institution was about cultivating a relationship, not managing their guilt. When God dwelt with them, it wasn’t that He became harder to please—it was that closeness demanded alignment.
“You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:14–16). The greater the closeness, the greater the impact on them. It was meant not to be a burden, but a blessing. The tabernacle wasn’t about sin-management. It was God’s way of saying, “I want to be with you—so let’s make sure you can survive My presence.” The sacrifices weren’t the point. They were the way to maintain the intimacy and immediacy with God.
Point 1
The faith of the Israelites, having both a purity code and moral law, rendered sacrifices obsolete when Christ fulfilled the purpose of the purity code and atoned once and for all for our moral shortcomings. But the wile of the devil is convincing us to regard sin the same way, managing guilt rather than hosting the Presence of the Spirit.
And that’s the first thing I want you to take away: If we read Scripture transactionally, we’re only ever going to feel like we’re trying to keep God satisfied. And the truth is that we can’t. If you were raised in a church where you were taught God loves you, but came to feel as if like He didn’t like you very much—it’s because you’re perceiving things this way. If we read it relationally, we ask a different question: ‘How do we live in alignment with a holy God who wants to dwell with us?’ That shift changes everything.
Scripture
So, let’s not forget where we are. We’ve professed belief in Jesus, six stanzas of who he was, how he came to us, his nature, death, resurrection, and reign, right after Jesus tells the Apostles “It is for your good that I am going away” in John 16, speaking of the Spirit’s role when He comes, starting in verse 8, He says:
8 When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment: 9 About sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; 11 and about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. [He says] 12 I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come.
Did you catch that middle part? It was kind of sandwiched in there, between “you’ll no longer see me,” and “I still have a bunch to tell you,” I imagine their heads were spinning at this point, too. Clearly, John was cognizant of the fact that this was noteworthy! Because he wrote it down, for us to see, the Spirit declares judgment because “the ruler of this world has been judged, it says in verse 11.”
Transition
So, how does the Spirit guide us into truth? He reminds us of our inheritance. To fully appreciate that nuance, we have to look at a concept that anchors the entire Bible: a concept called the Kinsman Redeemer, which actually brings the entire story of our reconciliation into focus.
Background
For this to make sense, we have to understand the transactional practice that God actually instituted when they entered the promised land. God doled out the portions of the land amongst the 12 tribes. So, a tribe had property that was assigned to its bloodline. The practice was that when they bought the property, the original owner would keep a sealed deed to prove it was in their bloodline.
What this means is that when someone who held a sealed deed died, their heir would inherit the right of redemption to purchase the property back and restore ownership to the original family, keeping it in the bloodline.
Somebody from the original family that owned the property could pay a great price to redeem the property the family had lost. That person is called the Kinsman redeemer.
Scripture
This is a good place to pause, I think, and remind ourselves of what is going on in this life, because there’s a parallel. We see in 2 Corinthians 5:1–10:
5 For we know that if our earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal dwelling in the heavens, not made with hands. 2 Indeed, we groan in this tent, desiring to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 since, when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 Indeed, we groan while we are in this tent, burdened as we are, because we do not want to be unclothed but clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment.
6 So we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 In fact, we are confident, and we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 Therefore, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to be pleasing to him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
So, there will be a settling of accounts. Now I want to look at something else: it’s a rather obscure story in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah 32: “Jeremiah Buys a Field.” And this is weird, right? Why is it here? But we profess, concerning our Scripture, in 2 Timothy 3:16 that, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” So, we know it’s useful, we just have to figure out why…
Transition
I submit to you that Jeremiah 32 has two meanings. It’s got a historical value. And it’s got theological value. Jeremiah’s a prophet, remember that. Essentially, what God’s saying is, “you’re going to be taken out of the land to go to Babylon.” And at the same time, He’s promising that this land is going to belong to you again. It’s worth buying this property because I’m going to restore you to the inheritance I originally gave you. So that’s the historical meaning.
The book of Hebrews says that everything that was written in the Old Testament is for our instruction. Like this world and our dwelling, as described in the Scripture I just read, it is a type and a shadow of Christ. Jeremiah 32 is a type and a shadow of Christ. God reveals himself to us through Scripture, and that’s what is going on here. Because verses 10-14 talk in detailed depth about sealed and unsealed copies containing the terms and conditions of their transaction—for what other reason?
Background
The storyline is this: God originally created the world, and He held the ‘sealed deed’ of ownership. He then entrusted people with ‘dominion,’ saying in Genesis 1:28, “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
This was a temporary, ‘open deed’ that he entrusted to Adam and Eve, making them stewards. When they sinned, they surrendered that ownership; in Genesis 3, God issues curses to all of creation, to animals, to men and women, to the ground, and this is a departure from—a corruption of the likeness in which we were created, an introduction of depravity; our fall, likening us to another figure whose nature was changed.
Being the father of deception and forbearer of corruption, all of creation having received its curse, this dominion is transferred to Satan. This is why, in Luke four, he could offer Jesus all the kingdoms of the world; he says, “they have been delivered to me”—and Jesus doesn’t correct him, which would seem to implicitly acknowledge the fact. Also, the New Testament calls Satan, ‘the God of this world,’ saying elsewhere that this world is lorded over by ‘the father of lies.’
Point 2
But Jesus, as the Son of God, is the kinsman redeemer—a family member with the legal right to buy back what was lost. At the cross, He fulfilled both the purity code—which is why we don’t follow that anymore; it was how we would know who the Messiah was, that He had come, and that His purpose was fulfilled. He atoned also for the moral law violations, which we ourselves were not righteous enough to pay. He did so, not with silver or gold, but with His own blood, to redeem and reclaim ownership of the world. His resurrection and ascension were the public declaration of this victory. When Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” He is stating that the deed has been returned to its rightful owner, and that’s our second takeaway.
The first is ‘how do we live in alignment with a holy God who wants to dwell with us?’ Changing our paradigm from sin-management to a relationship, the second is being reminded of our inheritance and redemption!
Application
When we read Revelation five, there’s a scroll. It’s a sealed deed. That is the context of 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” Brothers and sisters, this is not a burden, but a blessing—THE blessing—our hope!
Don’t fall for the wile of the devil, which seeks to convince us to regard sin as managing guilt. It’s about hosting the Spirit’s Presence. How do we live in alignment with a holy God who wants to dwell with us is what we should be asking ourselves.
True love is inherently intolerant of whatever destroys the beloved. It’s because a father loves his child that he is intolerant of his child’s misbehavior. It’s because a doctor loves their patient that he or she is intolerant of a tumor.
We see this in the ministry of Jesus. He didn’t ‘tolerate’ the scales on the eyes of the blind or the paralysis of the lame—He drove those things out because they were robbing people of life. Yet today, we have ‘churches’ where every ideology is invited to the table, but the Lordship of Christ is asked to wait in the hallway.
Point 3
So, first, how do we live in alignment with a holy God who wants to dwell with us? Second, proclaiming our redemption; finally, applying the house rules. This shift from passive belief to active alignment changes how we do everything, including how we pray together.
For a couple weeks now, I’ve included, before our corporate prayer, a reminder of John 17:9– That Jesus specifies, I pray not for the world, but for those 'you have given me,' contrasting the world and the church—those who are called to affect the world. I’ve added that in keeping with this, when we pray, that we should understand it is a two-way conversation, listening and speaking as in the calling of Samuel, in 1 Samuel 3 “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (v9). We do this in recognition of the Spirit’s work in us. What is placed on our hearts when we pray for one another—though it is right to pray—is the Spirit’s calling on our own life. The proper response is, “Here am I, Lord; send me!” Not, Lord, “send someone else!” I’m not saying prayer is a bad response, but when prayer is our only response, this is no longer faith.
This is precisely what James wrote about, mockingly offering a hypothetical, “But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Replying to himself in the same verse, 2:18, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.”
I see social media posts from church leaders, asking “what would Jesus do?” directed towards what they call intolerance. Let’s be clear, this is intolerance, and they don’t like it when intolerance applies to something that they are doing! When someone says that calling out false teaching is ‘mean-spirited.’ I’ll tell you what’s actually mean: watching someone walk toward a cliff and staying silent because you don’t want to ruin the ‘vibe’ of their walk!
Transition
Pastor Josh Howerton of LakePointe Church says:
Tolerance is the satanic counterfeit of repentance. Repentance says, “I’m wrong, and I need to change myself.” Tolerance says, you’re not wrong. You just need to accept yourself. Tolerance is mentioned three to five times in the Bible, depending on your translation. It is only ever mentioned as something negative that God rebukes. And this flows from the heart of the love of the Father.
Challenge
God gave us His word and we talked about the accuracy of it last week, and if we want to view the presence of the Spirit as a blessing rather than a burden; hosting the Presence of the Spirit rather than simply managing guilt—we need to regard prayer as a we would calling in a precision airstrike rather than paging the butler, as if we were in charge of God. And Scripture as providing the lens through which we view life, rather than a GPS or something we can program. That is, if we believe God’s Word is truly living and active:
Because, as John Piper says:
The Bible doesn’t tell you which person to marry or whether to marry. It doesn’t tell you which car to drive, which home to buy, vacation to take, cell phone plan to buy, or brand of orange juice to drink—there are thousands of decisions you must make that are not explicitly addressed in the Bible. So what do you do if you want to obey the will of command? He say’s you must have a renewed mind—that’s why the text says be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may prove how to eat how to drink, cars to drive, houses to live in, missions to go on, lifestyles to choose from, friendships to cultivate, conversations to have and not to have—thousands of decisions not written in the Bible, and yet informed by all the teaching of the Bible, so that you think with the mind of Christ and assess things the way Christ would assess them so that the decisions that are made flow from the revealed will of God, as it transforms your mind.
Close
If Jesus bought the world back with His blood as our Kinsman-redeemer, He sets the house rules. ‘Tolerating’ things He forbids isn’t just ‘nice’—it becomes squatting. If Christ has truly redeemed the deed to our lives, our primary concern isn’t ‘what can I get away with?’ Rather, it’s asking ourselves, ‘what honors the Owner?’”
