Ruined and Restored - Week 2

Message by:
Pastor Terry Crawford
Covenant Church
Shepherdstown, WV

Jesus Ruined My Sacrifice

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NAS)
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

Mercy Seat - sat on top of the ark of the Covenant (10 Commandment tablets, Aaron’s staff that budded and a gold jar of Manna )

Temple Veil - 4 inches thick, 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, weight - 4 tons (took 300 men to hold it)

Jesus’ death on the cross ruined…

The tainted sacrifice I bring.

Hebrews 10:11-12
Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,

1 John 2:1-2
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

The temporary reminder of my sin.

John 15:26
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.

The terrible wrath that was meant for me.

Isaiah 53:3-6
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Question:
Are you still trying to bring your own sacrifice instead of resting in Christ’s?

In other words, there will never come a time when Jesus' work of intercession will end. This means that all believers in Christ will never again come under the wrath of God, once they are IN Christ (Romans 8:1).

"Propitiation means the turning away of wrath by an offering. In relation to soteriology, propitiation means placating or satisfying the wrath of God by the atoning sacrifice of Christ."

In Rom. 3:25 and Heb. 9:5 the Greek word hilasterion (KJV, "mercy-seat") is used. It is the word employed by the Septuagint (LXX). translators in Ex. 25:17 and elsewhere as the equivalent for the Hebrew kapporeth, which means "covering," and is used of the lid of the ark of the covenant (Ex. 25:21; 30:6). Hilasterion came to denote not only the mercy-seat or lid of the ark, but also propitiation or reconciliation by blood. On the great day of atonement the high priest carried the blood of the sacrifice he offered for all the people within the veil and sprinkled with it the "mercy-seat," and so made propitiation.

Christ is called the "propitiation for our sins." Here a different Greek word is used, hilasmos. Christ is "the propitiation," because by his becoming our substitute and assuming our obligations he expiation our guilt, covering it by the vicarious punishment which he endured. (Compare Heb. 2:17, where the expression "make reconciliation" of the KJV is more correctly in the ASV "make propitiation").

Propitiation literally means to make favorable and specifically includes the idea of dealing with God’s wrath against sinners. Expiation literally means to make pious and implies either the removal or cleansing of sin.

The idea of propitiation includes that of expiation as its means; but the word "expiation" has no reference to quenching God’s righteous anger. The difference is that the object of expiation is sin, not God. One propitiates a person, and one expiates a problem. Christ's death was therefore both an expiation and a propitiation. By expiating (removing the problem of) sin God was made propitious (favorable) to us.

Matthew 27 - when Jesus died, after his last breath, the bible says the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. Then the life’s blood of the spotless lamb, the perfect sacrifice was taken once and for all into the holy of holies and God’s wrath toward our sin was appeased. Propitiation to the fullest.

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