April 30, 2006
Can we turn for a moment to Judges; we have had thoughts of the cross this morning. I had a thought from Judges 11, starting at verse 30: “And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands. And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon” (vv. 30–36). Here we see a type of the Lord on the cross. We have Jephthah vowing a vow, to deliver whatever came to meet him first to the Lord. There are some differences: Jephthah had a daughter, God had a son. Jephthah’s vow was rash and foolish, but God planned in his infinite wisdom. But the Lord was God the Father’s only child He gave Him up. One writer had said, “Jephthah’s daughter counted her life as nothing in view of the victory.” The Lord, too, counted His life as nothing in view of His victory. We read in Hebrews, “Who, for the joy that was set before Him …” He counted His life as nothing so we could be with Him in Glory.
EG Hymn 372–How wondrous a Saviour is God’s blessed Son! Prayer • Today we will look at a word that is not in the Bible but yet is very important to the gospel message. The word is substitute. A substitute is someone who takes the place of another. In our Hymn, it said “On Calvary we see Him, who died in our stead, exhausting God’s judgement when for us he bled.” The lord took our place on the cross. We’re going to look at an example of a substitute from the Old Testament, Genesis 22. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son to Him. Abraham obeyed God and went to the place and prepared everything and was about to kill Isaac when an angel stopped him. Why did the angel do that, if God had asked Abraham to kill Isaac? God was trying to test Abraham’s faith, to see who he loved more. The angel told Abraham not to kill Isaac. Read vv. 11–14; “… in the stead of his son.” That ram was Isaac’s substitute. There is a story about a class of boys that no teacher could teach. Finally one young man applied for the job. The administrators warned him about the class, but he decided to risk it. As he walked into the class on his first day, one boy, called Big Tom, whispered to the others, “I think I’ll be able to beat him up myself.” Well, to start the class, the teacher said, “Boys, we need some rules, but you are going to have to help me make them; I’ll write them on the board.” “No Yelling,” said one boy. “No stealing,” contributed another. “No lying,” added one. Soon they had a list of ten rules on the board. “That will be enough,” said the teacher, “but rules are not much good unless there is a punishment. What should happen if a rule is broken?” “Ten stripes with the whip without your coat on,” the boys agreed. Only a few days later, Big Tom found out that his lunch had been stolen. They found the culprit, a thin little boy named Jimmy. “How can I whip him?” thought the teacher. “I guess I will have to, or the boys won’t take the rules seriously. Jimmy came to the front and said, “You can whip me all you want, but please don’t make me take my coat off.” “But Jimmy, that’s the rule,” said the teacher. Jimmy took his coat off, but he didn’t have a shirt on under it. “Jimmy, where’s your shirt?” asked the teacher. “I only have one shirt, and mother is washing it today; so I borrowed my brother’s jacket so I could come to school.” Just as the teacher was about to begin whipping Jimmy, Big Tom spoke up. “Teacher, I’ll take Jimmy’s whipping for him.” “Well,” said the teacher, “There is a law that says one can be a substitute for another.” So Big Tom took the whipping, and Jimmy loved him forever. That is a picture of how the Lord was our substitute. In I Peter 3:18 we see that He took the punishment for our sins. So we can see how, even though it’s not in the Bible, substitute is a very important word.
Hebrews 10:26–34 • In verse 18 of this chapter, we see that there are no more sacrifices for sin because the perfect sacrifice has been offered. V. 26 shows us that if you reject this one sacrifice, there are no others. In other words, nothing more is needed, nothing less will do. We saw that v. 26 is not written to Christians, but to professing Christians, saved and unsaved alike. It is a serious thing to come to know—to be in it enough to know about Christ and Salvation—and yet not accept it. They know about Calvary, but have not made it their own. There is a punishment for these people; mind you, these are not people who have only thrown Christianity aside, they had despised it, they are called adversaries. Since the writer is speaking to the Hebrews, he uses an example from the Old Testament. If someone turned away from God to serve idols, they were to be stoned to death (Deut. 17:2–7). God took his law seriously. Here it says that if you turn your back on salvation, there is no other substitution. V. 29 tells us three things that the despiser would do. 1) “hath trodden under foot the Son of God”—to despise the law of God is one thing, but to despise His Son, the very Saviour, is serious indeed; 2) “hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing”—we could say that if he was sanctified, he must be saved; but this speaks of outward sanctification; 3) “hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace”—To break a law is bad, but to despise grace that is offered is worse. These three things could be called the three witnesses against such a person. Instead of asking Christians to stone these people, God says that he will take care of them, vengeance is his. This brings us to verse 31—“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Then the writer asks the Hebrews to remember their former days. They did not have full light, it was mostly shadows. Then they were illuminated. But does this say that after that illumination, they fell away? No, the illumination was at Pentecost; the great fight of afflictions is not a falling away, but persecution. As the persecution got worse, the Christians left Jerusalem and went out, always preaching the good news. As the persecution widened, so did the Christians, with new churches sprouting up wherever they went. As we have been reading through this epistle, we have said that we don’t know who the writer is; but v. 34 sounds so much like the writing of the apostle Paul, who was very often in bonds. EG Hymn 380–Standing by a purpose true, Prayer