Tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT, The Discovery Channel will show The Lost Tomb of Jesus. This program, directed by James Cameron of Titanic fame, purports to reveal the actual tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.
How significant would such a discovery be:
1 Corinthians 15:13-19 [13]But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. [14]And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. [15]We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. [16]For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. [17]And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. [18]Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. [19]If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
If the Lost Tomb of Jesus has been found then I am waisting my time, your faith is a joke and we are misrepresenting God to the world, there is no salvation, all those who have died do not exist and we are the most pitiful people on earth.
The Talpiot tombs discovery in Jerusalem, a.k.a., �the Jesus Family Tomb� story is just the latest in the long-running media attack on the historical Jesus. I’ve listed a few responses to the attacks in the bulletin. More detailed examination is on the blog. The program has raised questions around the essential nature of Salvation. We can find answers to these questions.
As if to reemphasize the greatness of God�s salvation presented in 1 Pt.1:1-12, vs. 18-21 provide believers with a theology of redemption by answering four crucial questions: 1) What did God redeem believers from? 2) What did He redeem them with? 3) By whom did He redeem them? 4) And, for what did He redeem them?
1) WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS FROM?
1Pe 1:18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,
Scripture makes clear the truth that all believers were once in bondage to sin and wrath, and that only Christ’s redemption broke that bondage.
Romans 6:6 [6]We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin
Redemption is a term that describes one of the essential features of salvation. It deals specifically with the cost of salvation and the means by which God received payment. Because all people are helpless slaves to sin and condemned by the law, if they are to be forgiven and reconciled to God, He has to purchase them back from their condition. Only then can He release them from sin’s bondage and curse.
Please turn to Exodus 12
Redeemed is the key word in this passage. This term means "to purchase release by paying a ransom", or "to deliver by the payment of a price". To the Greeks the word was also a technical term for paying money to buy back a prisoner of war.
Rather than the typical Greek sense of the word, referring to slaves and prisoners, the apostle Peter’s imagery describing redemption derives from several Old Testament passages. Undoubtedly a primary one was the narrative of the first Passover:
Exodus 12:1-13 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, [2]"This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. [3]Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their father’ houses, a lamb for a household. [4]And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. [5]Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, [6]and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. [7]"Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. [8]They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. [9]Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. [10]And you shall let none of it remain until the morning, anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. [11]In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover. [12]For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. [13]The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. (ESV)
The lamb�s life was the price required to spare the life of the Israelite family’s firstborn child. The lamb was a divinely ordained illustration, and its sacrifice typified the sacrificial death of an innocent substitute that redeemed those in bondage. This Passover event immediately became the symbol of substitutionary redemption (1 Cor. 5:7-8).
1 Cor. 5:7, Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (ESV)
God further decreed that Israel annually celebrate Passover to perpetually remind the nation of His powerful deliverance of her from Egypt (Deut. 16:2-3, 5-7) and to point the people toward the true Lamb who would one day die and rise again as the perfect and final substitutionary sacrifice to redeem sinners with His blood (Matt. 26:28, John 1:29, 1 Cor. 11:25-26, Heb. 9:11-12, 28).
The Israelites remembered the first Passover as God’s greatest display of redeeming power up to that time. But as great as that redemption was, the one about which Peter wrote infinitely surpassed it.
The opening verse of this passage refers to the third feature characterizing the unredeemed, their futile ways, which identifies a vain, useless, and worthless existence. No matter what they may think, every unredeemed man or woman is living a futile life. Even the grandest accomplishments unbelievers seem to achieve are pointless from eternity’s perspective. Jesus made that clear by means of two penetrating questions to His disciples:
Matt. 16:26 [26]For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
Last weekend saw the Academy awards. For all the pageantry and accolades, where will a particular film be 50 years from now, yet alone in Matt. 16:26. What does it really profit to have such esteem and loose the most important thing: Eternal life.
The futile ways is described as one inherited from their forefathers.
The Pharisees and their followers were prime adherents to such worthless tradition, which prompted Jesus� harsh rebuke of them:
Matthew 15:7-9[7]You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: [8]"This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, [9]in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men."
God is not impressed in people following actions they do not understand. Christianity is not about imposing man made rules and regulations for the sake of such. Christianity is about the doctrines of Grace that give true freedom in genuine love and true worship of God.
1) WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS FROM?: MAN MADE RELIGION.
2) WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS WITH?
1Pe 1:18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 1Pe 1:19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
Psalm 49:7-8 [7]Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, [8]for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice,
Last week I said that freedom isn’t free. Indeed the price for the redemption of [a] soul is costly. Peter appealed to his readers basic knowledge that there was nothing available to mankind that could meet that price.
Knowing emphasizes that believers know that they were not ransomed/redeemed with perishable things. Redemption’s price was not some valuable earthly commodity such as silver or gold. But why did Peter in this context even mention those prized metals?
Remember how I mentioned in previous weeks that salvation has always been by grace through faith and that Grace is a gift from God seen in the earliest pages of His word.
In this instance Peter quite possibly recalled the Old Testament passage about the ransom money God required the Israelites to pay (cf. Ex. 30:13, 15) for the action of numbering all males of military age: in Ex. 30:11-16. The taking of a census was a sin and considered as a lack of trust in God.
Please turn to Acts 8:18
Peter knew that, unlike the temporal redemption with money that God permitted the Israelites to purchase in Exodus 30, no amount of money could redeem people’s souls from the bondage of sin.
Act 8:18 Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles hands, he offered them money, Act 8:19 saying, "Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit." Act 8:20 But Peter said to him, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! Act 8:21 You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Act 8:22 Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. Act 8:23 For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity."
The prophet Isaiah saw the true nature of God’s ultimate redemption of His people when he wrote:
Isaiah 52:3 [3]For thus says the LORD: "You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money." (ESV)
Please turn to Heb. 9
Having stated what believers were not redeemed with, Peter declared the means by which God did redeem them with precious blood.
He used blood as a vivid synonym for sacrificial death involving the shedding of blood. The blood was not just any blood but precious because it belonged to a lamb without blemish or spot.
The blood of Christ is the most precious blood of all because He was the only utterly perfect person who ever lived (cf. John 1:14, 27, Heb. 4:14-15, 7:26-28). The writer of Hebrews captured the essence of Christ as the perfect Mediator and High Priest of the new covenant, made possible by His death as the perfect sacrifice:
Hebrews 9:11-15 [11]But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) [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. [13]For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, [14]how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. [15]Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. (ESV).
cf. 4:15)
The blood of Christ refers not to the fluid in His body, but to the whole of His redemptive death.
Scripture speaks of Christ�s blood nearly three times as often as it mentions the cross, and five times more often than it refers to the death of Christ. The word blood, therefore, is the chief term the New Testament uses to refer to the atonement.
Illustration: Origin Of Yellow Fever Vaccine
In West Africa, in 1927, a blood specimen was taken from a native named Asibi, who was sick with yellow fever. A rhesus monkey which had just been received from India, was inoculated with the specimen. Asibi recovered, but the monkey died of the disease.
All the vaccine manufactured since 1927, by the Rockefeller Foundation, the government and other agencies as well, derives from the original strain of virus obtained from this humble native.
Carried down to the present day from one laboratory to another, through repeated cultures, and by enormous multiplication, it has offered immunity to yellow fever to millions of people in many countries.
Through the creative imagination of science, the blood of one man in West Africa has been made to serve the whole human race. The blood of this person makes sick people well. The blood of Christ, makes dead people live.
1) WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS FROM? MAN MADE RELIGION.
2) WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS WITH? A PERFECT SACRIFICE
2) BY WHOM DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS?
1Pe 1:20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake, 1Pe 1:21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Who specifically is this perfect sacrifice?
That He was foreknown (proegn, smenou), literally he having been foreknown, clearly indicates that God planned to send the Son as the incarnate Redeemer before the foundation of the world. The Father did not react to the Fall with a last-minute fix, before the Fall even before the creation. He predetermined to send His Son as the Savior
Acts 2:23, this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. (ESV)
Acts 4:27-28 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (ESV)
(2 Tim. 1:9, Rev. 13:8, cf. Isa. 42:1, Rom. 8:29-30, Eph. 1:5-11).
Please turn to Phil. 2
The precious Lamb, secondly, is unique because of His incarnation. The verb rendered made manifest (phaner,thentos) contains the idea of making something clear and is an aorist passive, which denotes a historical event in this context, the Son becoming human (cf. Gal. 4:4-5).
This is how we understand the plan of God: It is an unfolding revelation.
In his rich passage on the humility of Christ, Paul summarizes the incarnation:
Phil. 2:6-8 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (ESV).
(cf. John 1:14, Gal. 4:4)
The phrase in the last times is a familiar expression referring to the entire period between the birth of Christ and the Second Coming (cf. the synonym last days in 2 Tim. 3:1, Heb. 1:2, James 5:3, 2 Peter 3:3, and last hour in 1 John 2:18). The Greek for times (chronos) refers to a chronological point in God’s calendar of events.
God, who raised him from the dead in unmistakably powerful proof that He was the sacrifice for sin and had accomplished God’s redemptive work
Acts 2:24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. (ESV)
(Acts 2:32, 3:15, 4:10, 13:33, 17:31, 26:23, Rom. 4:25, 1 Cor. 15:20-26).
Peter reminds believers that Christ is unique because in ultimate, culminating affirmation, God gave Him glory. That phrase points to the ascension (Mark 16:19, Luke 24:50-51, Acts 1:9-11), when Christ returned to the heaven of heavens and the glory He had enjoyed with the Father from all eternity
John 17:4-5 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (ESV)
(Luke 24:26, John 17:4-5, Eph. 1:20-21, cf. Ps. 68:18).
Writing of the superiority of Christ, the author of Hebrews referred to His ascension as the reward for His perfect redemptive work:
Heb. 2:9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (ESV)
(Heb. 2:9, cf. 9:24, 12:2).
1) WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS FROM? MAN MADE RELIGION.
2) WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS WITH? A PERFECT SACRIFICE
3) BY WHOM DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS? CHRIST, THE ETERNAL ANOINTED ONE
4) FOR WHAT DID GOD REDEEM BELIEVERS?
1Pe 1:20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake, 1Pe 1:21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Please turn to Jn. 10
Who then did Christ Die for? Who was Peter speaking to? Recall, the Churches in Asia Minor, modern day turkey.
That is why he writes that Christ died: for your sake, meaning all the redeemed.
John 10:10-15 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. (ESV)
If Jesus died for everyone that ever existed without exception, then all would be saved. We have seen from Rom. 8 and Eph. 1 that God brings redemption to pass from start to finish. If Christ died for someone that did not receive eternal life then either is a deficiency in His sacrifice or individuals have power that is greater than God and are able to wrestle away from God His ability to redeem.
The Promise was made of the Redeemer:
Isa. 53:4-6 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned--every one--to his own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
To Christ’s earthly parents:
Mt. 1:21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." (ESV)
The Intent of the Redemption by God is shown here in who He intended to save but also how it is accomplished through Him (Christ) alone (Acts 3:16, 4:12, cf. John 3:36, 10:7, 9, 1 Cor. 1:4, 1 Tim. 2:5, 1 John 5:11-12, 2 John 9-11). There is no other way to God (John 14:6). This marks the exclusivity of the gospel as the only way of redemption.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (ESV)
It should also be considered that the phrase through Him may not only indicate the way to saving belief in God, but the power to believe the gospel.
The end of verse 21 reveals the ultimate, twofold blessing of redemption�so that believers faith and hope will be in God. Faith enables believers to trust God for necessary grace in the midst of life’s present circumstances, struggles, and anxieties (5:7, Pss. 5:11, 31:1, 37:5, 56:11, Prov. 29:25, Isa. 26:3, Nah. 1:7, Phil. 4:6), and hope enables belief in future grace, to be revealed for them in heavenly glory (cf. Ps. 146:5, Acts 23:6, 24:15, Rom. 5:2, 8:18, 25, Gal. 5:5, Titus 2:13, Heb. 6:11, 19).
Rom. 5:2, Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (ESV)
God redeemed us from man made religion with a perfect sacrifice, Christ, the eternal anointed one. Through grace, he gives faith and because of this we can rejoice in hope, of the glory of God.
Illustration: Shackleton Found Them Ready
While on one of his expeditions to the Antarctic, Sir Ernest Shackleton was once compelled to leave some of his men on Elephant Island, with the intention of returning for them and carrying them back to England. But he was unavoidably delayed, and by the time he could go for them he found to his dismay that the sea had frozen over and his men were cut off. Three times he tried to reach them, but his efforts ended in failure. Finally, in his last effort, he found a narrow channel through the ice.
Guiding his small ship back to the island, he was delighted to find his men not only alive and well, but all prepared to get aboard. They were soon on their way to safety and home. After the excitement ended, Sir Ernest inquired how it was that they were ready to get aboard so promptly. They told him that every morning their leader rolled up his sleeping bag, saying, Get your things ready, boys, the boss may come today.
The return of the Lord Jesus to this earth is much more certain than Sir Shackleton’s return to Elephant Island. Christ’s promise to return to claim His redeemed is established upon His Word and His character. It is still the blessed hope of all who love Him-a hope that will not fail.
