MEASURE UPON MEASURE – GUILT AND SHAME – THE RESTORATION OF GOD - Part 2
We commenced a study on The Restoration of God where we have been looking at the consequences of Adam’s sin, and there are 6 consequences of sin we will consider. We continue with GUILT AND SHAME.
THE SAVIOUR’S ROAD - SHAME
We have just looked at the first consequence of man’s sin. Now we shall consider how Christ identified with man in that consequence. I will repeat just a small section from the first message – [[It could be stated in this fashion: SERENITY RUINED - what was perfect peace in the garden, collapsed. SIN’S RESULTS - various consequences flowed from Adam and Eve’s sinful act. Lastly, THE SAVIOUR’S ROAD - meeting the consequences face on was the Saviour’s work. Not only were the consequences dealt with specifically, but also He has added much more in blessing. “MEASURE UPON MEASURE” is a title we could give this whole study.
In the first message we examined the serenity that was ruined, and what the results of sin were (just one - GUILT and corresponding SHAME), and now we look at the SAVIOUR’S ROAD in dealing with that sin and guilt we have inherited. In this, we look at how the Lord Jesus Christ dealt with that awful problem because we were incapable of dealing with it. There would be no solution without the Lord.
Shame and guilt have passed to every man and woman ever born but the Lord Jesus Christ, being sinless, had no inherent guilt or shame of His own. But there was a time when shame and guilt covered Him, and it is in that episode that He identified Himself with sinful man. That was the road Jesus took when He was fulfilling these verses – {{Psalm 40:6-8 “Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired. My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. Then I said, “BEHOLD, I COME. In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I DELIGHT TO DO YOUR WILL, O my God. Your Law is within my heart.”}}
The psalmist in this same Psalm 69:7 wrote, {{“because for Your sake I have borne reproach. DISHONOUR HAS COVERED MY FACE.”}}. And again in Psalm 69:19 he wrote, {{“You know my reproach AND MY SHAME AND MY DISHONOUR. All my adversaries are before You.”}}
I wonder how many on that Golgotha morn looked upon His face and thought that He had to be an evil man otherwise He would not have been on that cross. They recognised the shame associated with the cross and reproaching Him, they left. Little did they know that it was for the sake of the Father (and for sinful man) He was hanging there in reproach, for the Father’s whole purpose of eternal salvation was being worked out that day at Calvary. He was put to an open shame in front of His adversaries.
Paul wrote a most profound declaration in 2 Corinthians 5:21: {{“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”}}. It was when He became sin for us that He identified with the consequences of our sin by making them His own. That verse speaks of substitution. There is a lot of substitution in the bible. That is the Saviour’s Road for He journeyed where we could not. He did what we could not. He achieved what we could not.
Why did He do that for us? Very simply, He did it because we could not, but that is so simplistic. There was a divine purpose worked out here that we will never comprehend where the love of God, along with grace and holiness and retribution in penalty, was being enacted to bring us sinners into the place of eternal forgiveness and peace. I do not want to delve here into those theological matters suffice to say this. Jesus Christ died for me, satisfying all the divine requirements of a just, righteous God. He was despised by man and suffered the ignominy of hateful, mocking, sinful human beings who put Him to an open shame. It really is too deep for us.
In Hebrews 12:2 it is written, {{“... fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who FOR THE JOY SET BEFORE HIM ENDURED THE CROSS, DESPISING THE SHAME, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”}}. Here we are told of two deliberate acts of the Lord on our behalf. He ENDURED the cross and He DESPISED the shame. Crucifixion was a tortuous death but He endured it. The shame associated with that particular death was immense.
Picture for a moment the spectacle on Calvary. There, at that Skull place, was the Creator of the world, of the universe in fact, the Saviour of mankind, hanging naked between two genuine criminals. When He became sin for us, He identified with our sin, taking all our sin, and therefore with our shame, taking all our shame. He made our shame His very own. The shamefulness of man’s sin became His very own covering. He was a spectacle before the whole world and before the demon masses, which possibly rejoiced at the occurrences of that day. But He despised the shame of the cross for the joy that was set before Him. Those who hear me or read, think of His love that endured all those things; that despised the worst that humans could do to Him. It was love for you and for me that underpinned all He did that day.
I plead with any of you who come from old denominational churches that love their history and rituals, who go through the religious motions of church services, but you have never come into a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe you have never heard this gospel where Christ took your place and you must repent wholly, and come to Him to receive Him into your life. You need to be born again, which is saying, to be born from above, through the action of the Holy Spirit making you a child of God. If you don’t, then the sacrifice of Christ on the cross will have no advantage for you. You will be lost in your sin and finish up in hell, which is where you are heading without Christ.
For three hours He shamefully hung there, then for the next three hours the Father obscured the sun and blackened the land. For three hours God covered His shame on the cross with the blackest darkness, but never did He cover the shame of the cross. That He had to endure alone.
[[Enduring the grief and the shame,
You bore all our sins on the cross.
O who would not boast of this love,
And count the world’s glory but loss?]] (T Haweis)
THE SAVIOUR’S ROAD – GUILT
We saw how the Lord dealt with our SHAME, but what about the GUILT? How did our blessed Lord identify with that? When He was made sin for us, God above laid all our sin upon Him, all the shame, all the guilt of that sin, and He alone bore that burden. He became the shameful sin-bearer, the guilty One in our place, and died for every individual. We will look more deeply into this aspect when we examine the fifth consequence of sin. Nevertheless that was true identification and true appropriation.
Christ was identified with our guilt and shame but there is another side to this important truth. In the first few chapters of Leviticus we read of the instructions regarding the offerings the people present to the Lord for their sins. They nearly all have one element in common, though there are various offerings. That commonality is identification. For the person who had committed sins in ignorance or willful sins or had broken any of the Lord’s commandments, then the Law instructs that person to present a spotless animal for the sacrifice, usually a bull or a goat or an animal of the flock (even a dove or pigeon if very poor). The guilty one then lays his hand on the head of the animal and following that, it is slain before the Lord.
That teaching is very important because the sinner identifies with the sacrifice, and by so doing, the guilt of the sinner passes to the substitute, which is then imputed as bearing the sinner’s guilt. All those in Christ have symbolically laid their hand upon His gracious head as He was led away to be crucified, acknowledging that the Lamb of God accepted our guilt and shame when we did that in figure. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world as John the Baptist saw him. That becomes a salvation experience for us when we recognise and confess that the Substitute, the Lamb of God, bore our guilt and sin.
I suppose baptism itself is a symbol of identification. In salvation we come to the realisation that Christ identified with our guilt, shame and sin, but in believers’ baptism we are identifying with Christ in the baptismal waters, testifying to what has transpired in our lives.
I think it is such an awful thing that the whole biblical meaning of baptism has been turned on its head. The Roman Church changed the whole concept to apply it to infants and children and attached to it a new invented doctrine. It is wrong and unbiblical. Study the New Testament to see who were baptised. Maybe what is sadder is that at the time of the Reformation, the practice of the Roman church in sprinkling became the practice of the Reformers without examination or consideration, and thus it has passed down into churches that sprang from the Reformation. That is not Christian baptism, which was for converts only and was by immersion. The full teaching on baptism in the New Testament is so clear about that.
Look at the cruelty that happened to the Anabaptists from both the Catholic and some Reformation churches. All I will say is that God has it on His record.
It should be no other way than that we should want to identify with Him who identified with us. We love Him because He first loved us. If we truly love, then we will follow in obedience. Baptism is the first step of obedience and a public declaration of the faith that is ours.
What affect does Christ’s willing offering have on you? Has it changed your life? Has it brought you out of the kingdom of darkness and placed you in the kingdom of light? This is how one hymn writer applied it to himself:
Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut his glories in.
When Christ the incarnate Maker died,
For man - His creature’s sin.
[[And might I hide my blushing face
When His dear cross appears.
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt mine eyes to tears.]]. (Isaac Watts)
NOW FOR THE RESTORATION – THE BLESSINGS.
Earlier we looked at the shame and guilt which followed sin where first we saw Serenity Ruined by Sin’s Results, and then our Lord’s part in identifying with that which was the Saviour’s Road. The text around which this study is structured is, “THEN I RESTORED THAT WHICH I TOOK NOT AWAY.”
What did Christ restore in this first consequence of sin? Because the work of the cross is eternally efficacious, and satisfied the demands of the Father fully, then there remains no shadow of guilt for us, no shame of sin. Think what a wonderful conclusion to our pilgrim walk it will be when we stand in His presence without a shadow of guilt or shame. He has taken them all away when we were born again. We are declared innocent in the sight of God. There is no more guilt, but even more than that, there is not a glimmer of shame, but rather there remains only glory.
Follow these words of Paul in {{2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all with UNVEILED face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image FROM GLORY TO GLORY, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”}} How wonderful! We are being changed from one step of glory into another; a progression of spiritual grace. Notice though, the whole process is not automatic. There is a condition it seems laid out in the first part of the verse. We need to be occupying ourselves with the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Make it your pursuit to seek the Lord and His glory and to be changed into His image more and more, that you may enjoy and reflect His glory from step to step.
How do we apply THE UNVEILED FACE looking into a mirror? God’s word is the mirror! Those who are deep students of the bible are those who reflect the glory of the Lord. There is no other way. The lazy Christian will never achieve this. Casual Christians and casual approaches will produce merely casual glimmers, and certainly no glory. Paul used “unveiled face” meaning nothing hidden or kept back, all open before God. Don’t you ever think you can approach God with hidden sin or your life be held in reserve.
Paul also says in {{Romans 8:17-18, “... and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him IN ORDER THAT WE MAY ALSO BE GLORIFIED WITH HIM. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.”}}
Paul is comparing the present sufferings Christians undergo in the world with the glory of the Lord’s personal presence. Just how the “glory that is to be revealed in us” will manifest itself in that day, I can not say, but it will be far more wonderful than we could ever imagine. Gone the guilt and gone the shame, overcome by glory inexpressible. What a fantastic restoration the Lord has performed.
Peter explains in his first letter that the prophets made careful search and inquiry into the things which had been prophesied about the Messiah, in regard to salvation especially. He then continues in {{1 Peter 1:11: “... seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ AND THE GLORIES TO FOLLOW.”}}. The expression, “the glories to follow” is significant.
Out of suffering came glory and that glory was two sided. Firstly, we have the glory attributed to the Lord when He was glorified after the resurrection. Secondly there is the glory which has flowed to the believers, and that has been given by Christ. It is undeserved but is ours, graciously provided in place of guilt and shame. All this is of grace as Peter mentions in verse 10.
Adam and his wife ran to hide for they did not desire their guilty shame to be exposed. In Christ there is full cleansing and acceptance in the beloved so that we may stand before Him in a glorious confidence. That is a very great blessing, that we can approach our God in confidence knowing that the division and ugliness of guilt and shame have been forever removed.
The first result of sin was guilt and shame, but our Lord Himself, identified with that so that He could restore innocence and glory to us; those very things which He did not take away. And not only did He restore them, but He has done so in greater measure so that it could be said that we are in a more blessed condition than Adam and Eve were. Ours are the glorious eternal promises and we are sharing in the blessings which have their fountain in the heavenlies.
Not all the blood of beasts,
On Israel’s altars slain,
Could give THE GUILTY CONSCIENCE peace,
Or wash away its stain.
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You, Christ, the spotless Lamb,
DID TAKE OUR GUILT AWAY.
A sacrifice of nobler name
And richer blood than they.
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Our souls look back to see
The burden You did bear,
When hanging on the accursed tree,
FOR ALL OUR GUILT WAS THERE.
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Believing we rejoice
To see the curse remove;
And bless You, Lord, with cheerful voice,
And sing redeeming love.]] (Isaac Watts)
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