©2001 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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2/25/01
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Old Testament Salvation
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2/25/01 Old Testament Salvation
We have a little unfinished business to take care of
today
before we return to our study of Romans.
During our discussion time last week
a question came up
concerning what happened
to all those people who lived,
and died,
prior to the coming of Christ.
Was it just their tough luck
that they dropped into the flow of history
before the death of Christ
opened the way for man to know God's
forgiveness and salvation?
I want you to know
I am aware of the dangers
of spending a morning on a question like
this.
At first glance it has the feel
of dead orthodoxy -
mucking around in Bible ideas
that seem to have no relevance to the
immediate issues of life
we are all fighting our way through
on a daily basis.
With the very announcement of this topic
some of you are already
quietly retreating into that favorite mental
playground of yours
reserved for surviving half-hour lectures
on topics that could not interest you less.
But, before your mind goes completely,
stay with me just long enough
to allow me to explain
why we are going to do
what we are going to do this morning.
There is a kind of theological study
that is nothing more than an intellectual game
played by those who like such games.
It motivates those involved in such games
to line up their pile of verses
to be used as ammunition with which to
attack and destroy
those who hold opposing views.
It can lead to contention,
and division,
and in the end it has little if any real impact
on the lives of those involved in the game.
That is not what God intended,
and it is certainly not what we are after this
morning.
You see, whether we realize it our not,
every one of us possesses
our own clearly defined theology.
Each of us have our fixed set of ideas
about God -
who He is,
what He's like,
how we think He relates to us personally,
and generally what kind of a Being He
is.
Though we rarely or never consciously realize it,
our theology,
our ideas about who God is
and what He is like
form the foundation upon which
every other aspect of our belief system is based.
What we believe about morality,
and ethics,
and priorities in life,
and about political issues,
and about money,
and where and how we invest our time and
money each day,
all of those things grow directly out of our own
personal theology.
The man who fills his tool box
with his employer's tools
does so ultimately
not just because he is a thief,
but because he holds a concept of God in His mind
the allows him to believe that being a
thief is to his advantage.
I want us to spend our time this morning
talking about this question
of how God related to those people
who lived before Christ
because questions like this
go to the very heart
of the most important issue in life -
our perception of who our God is,
what kind of God He is,
and how He relates to us, His creation.
I made a statement last week
in response to one of the questions
that came up during our discussion
that I want to repeat for us this morning.
I said that the love of God is the only real constant in
life.
His love for us
is the foundation upon which
everything else in our existence is built.
When we normally think of the constants in life,
we think about the air we breath,
and the sun that rises and sets each day,
and the earth beneath our feet
and the stars in the night sky.
But the truth is
all of that is just a temporary tool
in God's revelation of Himself to us.
Psalm 102 says of our Creator,
Ps. 102:25 "Of old You founded the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your
hands.
Ps. 102:26 "Even they will perish, but You
endure; And all of them will wear out like a
garment; Like clothing You will change
them and they will be changed.
Ps. 102:27 "But You are the same, And
Your years will not come to an end.
The truth is,
the only real constant we will ever know,
the only thing upon which
we can hope to build our lives
with absolute security
is the love of our God for us.
I mention this again
because it is our faith in that constant
that Satan is forever seeking to attack
and destroy within us.
And where he succeeds in that attack
there ceases to be any real hope,
any solid footing left for us.
If we believe we do not have a God of love,
who cares about each of us personally,
intimately,
then there is nothing left in life
but an endless stream of futile little people
games
that leave us feeling empty,
and hopeless.
And when we find ourselves wrestling with
questions about
what happened to all of those people
who lived and died before Christ came,
underlying that question
is the far greater issue
of what kind of God we really have.
Does He have some people He loves
and some He hates,
or worse, some He doesn't even notice?
Is entrance into His offer of redemption
mostly a matter of blind fate
determined by when and where we
happened to have been born?
Or does our Creator God
love each one of us equally,
personally,
eternally,
offering every human being who has ever lived
the offer of restoration and redemption?
In other words,
is He truly,
absolutely,
unceasingly GOOD?
Is His love truly
the only unchanging constant in life?
Before I offer you
what is really a pretty uncomplicated
explanation
of how God related to those people
who lived prior to the coming of Christ,
I want to first of all read for us
some words written by a man
who lived nearly a thousand years
before Christ was ever born on this
earth.
He was certainly not a theologian in the academic
sense.
He was, at least early in his life,
a shepherd,
the youngest in a large family.
I want us to listen
to what this man understood
about God,
and about God's forgiveness,
and about how He relates to our sins,
and about what kind of God we really have.
As I read this
I want us to keep in mind
that this man knew nothing
about Jesus Christ,
or about his death for our sins,
or about most of the other doctrines
that form the foundation of our faith today.
But listen to what he did know and experience.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, And all that is
within me, bless His holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget none
of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities, Who heals
all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit, Who
crowns you with lovingkindness and
compassion;
Who satisfies your years with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the
eagle.
The Lord performs righteous deeds And
judgments for all who are oppressed.
He made known His ways to Moses, His
acts to the sons of Israel.
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in
lovingkindness.
He will not always strive with us, Nor will
He keep His anger forever.
He has not dealt with us according to our
sins, Nor rewarded us according to our
iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the
earth, So great is His lovingkindness
toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west, So far
has He removed our transgressions from
us.
Just as a father has compassion on his
children, So the Lord has compassion on
those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame; He is
mindful that we are but dust.
You may know those words
as the first 14 verses
of Psalm 103 written by David.
Nearly a thousand years before Christ came
David described His God as the One... "Who
pardons all your iniquities, Who heals all
your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit, Who
crowns you with lovingkindness and
compassion;",
and he tells us that, "As far as the east is
from the west, So far has He removed our
transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his
children, So the Lord has compassion on
those who fear Him..."
I've read this for us because
it would be difficult to find
a more vivid description
of God's redemptive work in us and for
us even in the New Testament writings.
And here was David,
hundreds of years before the arrival of Christ,
clearly sharing in the reality of God's
redemption.
So how could that be?
To answer that
I need to make a statement
that may trouble some of you
until I explain what I mean.
You see,
it is not the death of Christ
that saves us from our sins
and restores us to a love union with
God.
The death of Christ is the basis upon which
God can make the offer to us,
but it is not His death that saves us.
It is our faith that saves us,
our belief that our God has done for us
what we were powerless to do for ourselves.
Scripture is clear
that the death of Christ
was an adequate payment
for the sins of the entire world.
But relatively few human beings
will ever share in that salvation.
Why?
Because our sharing in that salvation
requires us to reach out to our God
and ask for His forgiveness.
It is the death of Christ in our place
that allows God to offer us His mercy,
but it is our faith in God's mercy
that unites us with Him
and enables us to personally share in the
salvation He offers us.
Now, obviously the people who lived prior to the
coming of Christ
knew nothing,
or very little about how God was going to
remove their sins from them.
But the means of their salvation
was identical to ours -
choosing to believe
that their God would provide a way
for their sins to be removed from them.
I want to state this
as simply and clearly as I can.
Salvation comes to us
when our spirit cries out to our God,
"I have sinned against You, oh Lord,
please save me!"
That is the beginning of faith.
That is the point at which our restoration to God
is established.
When David cried out in Psalm 25:5
"... You are the God of my salvation..."
he had no clear knowledge
about how God would one day accomplish
the removal of his sins.
But his faith in the truth that God would remove his
sins
was the means of His salvation.
A thousand years later
Paul would write,
Eph. 2:8 For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God;
Eph. 2:9 not as a result of works, so that
no one may boast.
But the truth of those words
was as applicable to David
as it is to us.
So,
this is the way it works.
1. Jesus Christ's death is God's payment for the
sins of the entire human race
from Eve's first act of disobedience in the
Garden of Eden
through the last act of willful human
rebellion
the instant before God disposes of this world
forever
in the still distant future.
2. Our recognition of our need
for the mercy and forgiveness of God
and our faith in that offer of payment for our
sins
allows us to share in that payment
as God removes our moral debt from us
forever in response to our faith in Him.
3. The only difference between the faith of those
living before Christ
and those living after Him
is that those who lived before Christ
looked to the future
trusting that God would one day do whatever
would have to be done
to remove their sin debt from them,
whereas we now by faith
look back at what God has already done in
Christ
accepting His death as total payment for our
sins.
But with both those who came before Christ
and those of us who have come after,
the requirement for salvation is the same:
a heart response to God that says:
"My God, I have sinned against You, and You alone
can save me."
However,
having said that,
I cannot leave this without completing the
picture.
For, you see, even though, throughout all of human
history,
salvation has come to man
through our crying out to our God
and asking Him for the forgiveness,
and the mercy,
and the grace He alone can give
us,
those of us who live now,
in the year of our Lord,
with our debt having already been paid,
have been granted access
into a walk with God
unlike anything those who lived before
Christ could ever have known.
Peter describes for us the excitement
and the anticipation the Prophets before Christ
felt
as they prophesied what would one day come
to us through Christ.
He says,
1 Pet. 1:10 As to this salvation, the
prophets who prophesied of the grace that
would come to you made careful search and
inquiry,
1 Pet. 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.
1 Pet. 1:12 It was revealed to them that
they were not serving themselves, but you,
in these things which now have been
announced to you through those who
preached the gospel to you by the Holy
Spirit sent from heaven-- things into which
angels long to look.
I tried to come up with some sort of human
illustration
of what I want us to see here,
and everything I came up with
sounded rather pathetic and inadequate,
but I'll share one of them with you anyway.
It's a little bit like the difference
between the son and the grandson
of a father who possesses incredible wealth.
When the son enters his adult years
he makes some tragic financial choices
and encounters tremendous debt.
In desperation he approaches his father
and pleads for help.
The father responds by assuring the son
that, when the father dies,
the son will indeed inherit all that the father
possesses,
and his debt load will be removed
forever.
This gives the son hope for the future,
but it doesn't change his immediate situation.
The grandson, however,
who enters his adult years
following his grandfather's death,
knows the living reality of his inherited
wealth.
Now, that's full of problems as an illustration,
but what I want us to see
is the difference between living with the
hope of our sin debt removed by God,
and living with the reality of it being gone.
Those of us who come to Christ now,
bringing our load of moral debt to our God,
crying out to Him for mercy,
discover that, to our utter amazement,
in response to our cry,
He instantly takes our certificate of debt
from our hands,
nails it to the cross of His Son,
and declares us to be forever more
His holy ones,
sinless,
righteous,
and pure.
2 Cor. 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.
And here is the great and amazing thing -
because we are now sinless,
because our spirits are now as holy as God
Himself,
without spot,
without blemish,
without flaw,
He is now able to literally indwell us,
so that we live in His presence
and He lives in ours every second
of every minute,
of every hour,
of every day of our lives
forevermore.
If any of us really knew who we were in Christ,
if we knew who we have become,
if we knew what we already posses,
if we had any idea what Peter was talking about
when he tells us that we "...are a chosen
race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
people for God's own possession, that (we)
may proclaim the excellencies of Him who
has called (us) out of darkness into His
marvelous light..."
it would transform our lives forever.
True growth in Christ
has nothing whatsoever to do
with striving to become the people we should
be.
True growth in Christ
is the growing discovery of who we have become
as a result of the cleansing work
God has already completed in our lives.
We are not here simply to play church,
or to fulfill some pre-established set of religious
duties.
We are here to discover what our God has
already accomplished in our lives
as a result of our faith in Christ,
and through that discovery,
to each proclaim in our own unique
ways...the excellencies of Him who has
called you out of darkness into His
marvelous light...