Summary: In this smaller message we look at the way Christ died for the sins of the world to redeem and restore what Adam lost. Jesus Christ is the Passover Lamb and fulfils the two goats on the Day of Atonement. His death for the whole world has brought eternal redemption and salvation.

MEASURE UPON MEASURE – DEATH – THE RESTORATION OF GOD - Part 10 (Section 2)

I am doing a presentation on the results of sin that entered the human race. There are six consequences of that sin I am outlining, and we began DEATH in the last message with Serenity Ruined in the Garden through sinful disobedience. The study on death is the largest of the six, and I have had to split it into five separate sections. This time we are looking at the Saviour’s Road, that is, how our dear Lord encountered death in this world and on the cross.

Death is not nice and people shy away from it, and I think also they shy away from reading about it. I don’t expect too many might want to read these studies resulting from Adam’s sin and I can understand that. It is the isolation principle. In recent times I have lost so many relatives and friends to death, but praise the Lord, most of them belonged to Christ. Once you hit 70 and 80, you deal with the death of friends a lot.

Jesus did not shy away from death and one command he asked of us is to remember His death in the Lord’s Supper (Communion). Therefore it is imperative for us that we understand the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

THE SAVIOUR’S ROAD

In this next section about death, we shall analyse what Christ has done on our behalf and the manner in which He identified with us in this particular consequence of sin, which was death. When considering the Saviour’s Road it soon becomes apparent that there are many angles from which this study could be approached. That is not surprising as the death of Christ stands as the central theme in the whole canon of scripture.

Paul delivers it concisely as, {{“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES.”}} (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). We shall therefore reflect upon those portions which I feel are among the more significant.

Every sacrifice made in the Old Testament for sin carried with it a time projection spanning the centuries to the momentous morn on Golgotha’s hill. The central truth of any sacrifice, is that of a victim surrendering its life in a substitutionary role for the sinner. The animal sacrificed thus, stood in the place of the one who should have been there and whose sins would now be covered by the sacrifice. The account of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis chapter 22 is an example of that SUBSTITUTION but it also demonstrates God’s PROVISION of a sacrifice.

The first record there is of sacrifice involves the two brothers, Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 where one recognised the requirement of an acceptable offering. Abel then brought a lamb from the flock, but in contrast Cain brought the produce of a cursed earth, the best collections of human effort in his own strength.

God rejected Cain’s offering and while many reasons have been forwarded for that rejection, I think one valid reason was that it did not typify or portray the greatest sacrifice of all, that of the Lord Himself. Without shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins and that was recognised by Abel. Abel’s lamb spoke of the coming Lamb. As mentioned last time it was a lamb in all probability that God killed to provide a covering of skins for Adam and Eve. Cain rejected God’s way.

A precious account has been given in Exodus 12 of the Passover that meant redemption and deliverance for the families of Israel held under bondage in Egypt. Each family took its lamb and the shed blood was applied with hyssop to the doorposts and the lintel of each home. It was the blood that saved the firstborn sons. {{Exodus 12:13 “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live 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.”}}

The lambs died for the deliverance from death when the angel of death visited. No blood, no deliverance; the blood saved from death. The people, safe from the judgment of God, sheltered in safety and feasted on the lamb, which was their strength for the exodus ahead in their wilderness journey. The lamb that met their redemption also provided their strength. What a wonderful provision God planned for those people.

One of our key verses in the New Testament is, “. . . For Christ our Passover has also been sacrificed.” (1 Corinthians 5:7). That is an eternally supreme fact for at the centre point of our faith that simple statement anchors an unfathomable depth. Charles Wesley put it this way, “‘Tis mystery all, immense and free, that Thou my God shouldst die for me.” Our Lord Jesus is the Lamb who stood in our place, in the place of sacrifice. He accepted our sins as His own and suffered the righteous punishment for us, and died in our stead. Through Adam we were dead, and death had its stranglehold over us. The Lamb made all that His own. As God provided for Adam’s covering to make him acceptable, so God’s Lamb has done the same for us.

You have the cross endured

In love beyond all measure,

The curse, the grave, Your saints to save,

And have us as Your treasure.

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We see You as the Victim,

Our sins and sorrows bearing,

The Lamb once slain, alive again,

The crown of glory wearing. (James G. Deck)

How forever grateful we shall be when we comprehend the import of His sacrifice, when with the redeemed Church, we shall understand more perfectly in that day of His triumphant coming. But our understanding should not be reserved for some future time only. Now should be the times of meditation on His sacrifice to gain an increased understanding, as much as we are able, of the love that allowed and motivated our God to become our Passover Lamb. Not only are we saved by the blood applied by those nail pierced hands, but ours is the privilege also, and the honour to feast upon Him, gaining strength for the journey through the wilderness of this sinful world. His provision is our entire sustenance.

John the Baptist knew full well the prophetic fulfillment that lay in the Lord Jesus Christ, the great Antitype of all the lambs. When he first saw Jesus approaching immediately prior to the commencement of His public ministry, he greeted Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He knew perfectly well who Jesus was and why He had come. This was none other than the Lamb of God prepared before the foundation of the world, prepared to be the sin-bearer for us and tasting death for every man. Indeed, John knew what His mission was. Jesus also knew exactly why He had come to earth, and He knew the events which lay ahead, unlike that blasphemous portrayal of Him in the rock musical from hell, “Jesus Christ, Superstar” as an indecisive buffoon.

Earlier in the Lord’s ministry, He had recounted to Nicodemus one night a parallel to the snake of brass, the only answer to the deathly consequences of the nation’s sin in the wilderness. {{“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man BE LIFTED UP; that WHOEVER BELIEVES, may in Him have eternal life.”}} John 3:14-15. That is a beautiful verse. Poor sin-infected, mortally wounded people can be released from the bondage of death by trusting in the crucified One on the cross, dying for us. What relief, what a flood of joy, what a wonder working power salvation is! Let our hearts go out in thankfulness to Him. We love Him because He first loved us, even unto death.

THE ANNUAL DAY OF ATONEMENT

One of the most important days in all the Jewish calendar was the annual Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. The account of the events which were to be enacted during the Day of Atonement and recorded by Moses in Leviticus chapter 16, is highly significant. We shall cover it briefly. Two male goats were taken and the casting of a lot determined which goat would become the sacrificial one and which would become the scapegoat. The first goat was offered as a sin offering and its blood was taken and sprinkled on the mercy seat within the most holy place of the tabernacle. Its blood was to make atonement for the whole nation of Israel.

The scapegoat stood there while Aaron placed his hands upon its head and confessed the sins of the nation over it. It was not killed but it was led into a solitary place into the wilderness and went bearing away the sins of the people to a place they did not know of. The combined contribution of both goats meant that atonement was made for sins and there was removal of the people’s sins.

Both goats point ahead to Christ and typify Him. Christ became our atoning sacrifice represented by the first goat, and His blood has been sprinkled on the mercy seat in a figurative manner as Paul sets out in in {{Hebrews 9:11-12: “But when Christ appeared as a High Priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but THROUGH HIS OWN BLOOD, HE ENTERED THE HOLY PLACE ONCE FOR ALL, HAVING OBTAINED ETERNAL REDEMPTION.”}}

Also He is represented by the scapegoat because He has carried our sins to a place of no recall, into the depths of the sea of God’s forgetfulness. Never more will they ever be found or remembered. Does this not cause you to praise Him and to increase your love for Him?