Substitutionary Atonement

Well, it is a wonderful day to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ.

It is not about the celebratory things that we do for our children, such as painting eggs and things like that.

The heart of Easter, of course, is the cross and the resurrection. Almost anybody in church this Sunday in evangelical churches across America would agree with that.

Easter is about the cross. It is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, I believe that very few people understand what the heart of the cross and the resurrection is.

In your mind, answer that question. What is the heart of the cross and the resurrection? What is the cross all about? If you don't know that, if you don't know the heart and the full meaning of the cross, you don't know the full meaning of the gospel and you don't know the full meaning of the word of God, the Bible.

If you don't understand what the cross and the resurrection are all about, if you cannot name for me the heart of it all, you do not know, friends, the gospel.

Unfortunately, there are many people who understand the facts of the resurrection and maybe mentally and intellectually assent to the resurrection of Christ. And yet they do not know the heart of the cross and resurrection.

Well, what is it? It is the substitutionary atonement of Christ. It is a fact that he was our substitute upon the cross. It is a fact that he was the expiation and the propitiation for our sins.

That is that he bore the wrath of God for us in our place. That is the heart of the cross and the resurrection.

That is the heart of the gospel. Truly, that is the heart of the entire Bible. In fact, from the beginning to the end of the scripture, it testifies to this fact, the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

With that in mind, I'm going to have you turn in your Bibles to a very unlikely place on Easter morning. I want you to turn to the book of Exodus, the book of Exodus. If you have your Bibles, please turn to the book of Exodus, chapter 12.

We're actually going to be looking at three chapters, sort of a cursory overview of all three of these chapters, Exodus 11, 12 and 13. And then we're going to peek into the New Testament.

But I want us to to really hunker down and look at this section of scripture, because in it we will see the substitutionary atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I want to read to you verses 12 and 13. Why don't we stand in honor of God's word this morning? As I read these scriptures, these verses aloud, just follow along in your text with me.

Let me read verses 12 and 13 of Exodus, chapter 12. This is God speaking. For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast and against all the gods of Egypt.

I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. The blood shall be assigned 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. Father, I thank you for this passage. I pray that we will allow the full brunt of the meaning of the substitutionary atonement of Christ to land upon our hearts.

Father, not only as saved people to understand what you have done, what work you have wrought in us, but Lord, for those this morning who have never repented and never turned to you, Lord, I pray that they will see it for the first time this morning and will repent.

Lord, they will allow the cure of the curse to wash over their souls. Give us repentance and faith this morning.

I ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Before we look at this passage, I need to do some context. What is going on?

Of course, some of you know this is part of the ten plagues of Egypt. Let me give you some history. If you remember, the ultimate patriarch for the Israelites and for all Jewish people, even today, is Abraham.

Several hundred years before this text, Abraham met with God and God made a covenant with Abraham and said, Abraham, I'm going to bless you. You've been unable to have children. I'm going to give you a son and you're going to have descendants that will number the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.

And I'm going to use your people to bless the nations and from your tribe, from your people will come the savior of the world. And so God blessed Abraham.

He blessed him with a country. He blessed him with a location, a promised land. And he began to bless his family. Well, a few generations passed and there was a famine in the land. And the family, Abraham's family, by this time pretty large, moved down to Egypt and they began to intermingle with the Egyptians.

And after four hundred and thirty years of intermingling in this family was not still a family, but they had turned into a nation. Thousands, actually millions of Israelites. But they were now enslaved to the Egyptians.

And so we had a quandary here. God was going to bless. He had made a covenant. And yet their very existence was threatened. They were in bondage. They didn't have a land. And they faced extinction.

And so God rose up a leader, Moses. You know, Moses. God raised up a deliverer. And Moses was raised up and he was raised up actually Egyptian family in Pharaoh's court.

And he finally came to Pharaoh after meeting with God and said, let my people go. And God began to issue plagues against the Egyptians so that his people would be freed.

Nine plagues had passed. And there finally was this tenth plague. But this tenth plague was much different than the first nine plagues. It was different in this way.

In fact, if you read all the way through chapter 11, they all seem the same. All ten plagues seem the same. There's a distinction between the Israelites and the Egyptians. These plagues come down and there's a very clear distinction.

It was blessing upon the Israelites and cursing and plague upon the Egyptians. And all of the plagues happened that way. But you read chapter 12 and you realize something. That this tenth plague was much different.

For this curse, this plague, was also headed straight toward the Israelites. The Israelites, the Israelites in this plague, their lives were jeopardized just as the Egyptians were.

And you realize that the distinction was not automatic between the Egyptians and the Israelites. The distinction now was conditional. And they had to go through some steps in order to be relieved of that curse.

And so we come to this chapter, chapter 12 of Exodus, and we find God talking about the cure. But before we can understand the cure, we must look at the curse.

If you're taking notes this morning, my sermon is very simple. It has two points. The curse and the cure. First of all, let's look at this curse. Remember, it begins in chapter 11.

He begins to talk about this tenth plague. And I want to show you some things about this curse. Look at verse 4. Moses said, Thus says the Lord.

Verse 4 of chapter 11. About midnight, I'm going out into the midst of Egypt. And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.

First of all, this is a deadly curse. A deadly curse. If you think about the other nine curses, they really weren't deadly.

Though there had been some livestock that had died. As far as humans go, there was no death. There was the curse of the water turning into blood. You could live with that. The people could carry their lives on, relatively speaking.

And they could find other sources of liquid and drink other things to sustain them. And so it really wasn't deadly. They could go on living. The next curse, the second curse, the plague of the frogs.

Again, the Pharaoh could probably just hire someone and pay someone to keep frogs out of his area of living. The palace and the campus palace there. The same could be said about the gnats and the flies.

The fourth curse. The fifth curse was some of their livestock died. Not all of it. Just some of it died. Again, this would not have too much of an effect on people. Maybe for some sustenance.

But not really to kill anybody. Some livestock died. The sixth curse were sores. And who hasn't had a sore? They could live with that. The seventh curse was hail.

And again, us being in Oklahoma, we know you can live with hail. It's terrible. It's frustrating. But you can live with it. The eighth curse was locust. The ninth curse was darkness. All things that they could live with.

But the tenth curse was death. And this curse, unlike all the other curses and all the other plagues, this curse was a deadly curse.

It would kill people. And it wouldn't just affect those people that it killed. Remember, this thing would be terrible. It would affect everybody.

It talks about the firstborn son. And you need to understand something. The firstborn son doesn't necessarily mean simply the firstborn. It means the primary son. Really, the patriarch or the heir to the patriarch of each family.

Men would die like a terrible war would ravish them. And people would die. This curse was deadly. We also need to understand that this curse is definite.

It is a definite curse. Look at the second part of verse five. He says, all of the firstborn in Egypt shall die from the firstborn of the Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl.

So there we see the first hint. It's not just restricted to the Egyptians. It's carrying on into the Israelites as well. The firstborn of the slave girl who was behind the millstones, all the firstborn of the cattle, the livestock, all their firstborn will die as well.

This is a definite curse. It's not something that might or might not happen. It's not something that could possibly happen. It wasn't some theory that Moses had.

This was something that most certainly would happen and most certainly would affect itself upon every human being in Egypt. And all the firstborn cattle will die.

Therefore, you think about it, that happening greatly restrict the reproduction of their means of food. And so a terrible thing, a very definite thing. Let me tell you something else.

It was a deserving curse. We read in verse 12. It's against the gods of Egypt. We see in chapter 13 that the people of Israel, they were given to the gods of Egypt.

In fact, let me read out of Ezekiel for you because it's very clear what was going on to the people of Israel in Ezekiel. In Ezekiel chapter 20, verse 7.

God says, I said to them, cast away each of you that intestable things of his eyes. Do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God. But in this talking about the people of Israel in the time of Egypt, but they rebelled against me and were not willing to listen to me.

They did not cast away the intestable things of their eyes, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. So what's going on? These people deserve this.

You see, the people of Israel and people get this wrong all the time. The people of Israel didn't just need to escape the bondage of the Egyptians. They needed to escape the wrath of God.

They were worshiping the idols of Egypt. And therefore, God was sending a plague that wouldn't just impact the Egyptians, but also impact his chosen people as well.

This curse was deadly. It was definite. It was deserving. Finally, it was dreadful.

It was a terrible curse back in Exodus chapter 11, verse six. Moreover, there shall be a great cry in all the land of Egypt, such as there not has been before and such shall never be again.

There will be weeping and grinding of teeth. This curse will be a dreadful curse. Now, you can just imagine the banter and the conversation that happened after Moses had announced this curse.

He announced this curse. The Israelites suddenly were culpable for sin and they were open to this curse, this plague that Moses had now announced. And you can imagine some of the banter.

You can imagine some of the talk in the tents and in the Egyptian households. Maybe a wife comes home to speak to her husband. She says, honey, Moses is preaching again and he's announced a tenth plague, a tenth curse.

But honey, this curse is not just against the Egyptians. It is also against us for worshiping false idols. It is a definite curse.

It's a deserving curse. It's a deadly curse. Honey, it is a dreadful curse. It'll be terrible. Maybe the husband would. Roll over in the bed and say, honey.

You're not talking about the tenth plague theory, are you? Honey, I've heard all kinds of preaching in my life. I've heard all kinds of preachers. Some of my favorite preachers would simply say, God loves us.

He would never harm us. He's out really to make our lives easy. God is out really to make us healthy and wealthy. God would never kill anybody. And maybe that man would say, honey, listen, we are God's chosen people.

I've been a Jewish person since I was born. Why? I even go to the synagogue on Passover. Why, honey? I'm always at the synagogue and I give money to God's work and I do all those things.

God would never harm me. He would never plague me or curse me. She would say, honey, but Moses, God's man has has spoken.

It's the word of God. It's not just Moses. It is the word of God. Honey, don't bother me with all that. Can't you see that we're in bondage? And Moses, his preaching has caused things to even be worse than they were to start with.

Don't bother me with all this hell, fire and brimstone. If you came home and told me about God's love and that he wants my best and I can have my best life now and all these wonderful things, then I'd believe you.

But don't tell me that God wants to curse me for my sin. That's not the God I know. That's not the God of love that I understand.

You can hear the talk in the tents and in the houses of Egypt. You see, ladies and gentlemen, the curse pictured here is much like the curse that we suffer today.

The curse of sin. All of us, every single person, we have all gone astray. We have each turned our own way.

All of us are tainted with sin. You can imagine maybe someone saying, well, I know I've done some idol worship. But God certainly wouldn't curse me and plague me for what little I've done.

And people have the same excuse today. I go to church. I come to church on Easter. I put money in the offering plate. I'm a part of things that happen at church. God would never send me to hell.

God would never curse me. Let me tell you something. If you don't understand the curse, you cannot understand the cure.

Right? If you don't understand your gratuitous sin, you cannot understand the grace of God. God. For a part of salvation is coming to that point where you are under a load of conviction and you realize that God would be just and righteous and perfect to send you to hell for an eternity.

And it wouldn't be unjust or unrighteous or unrighteous or unloving for God to do so. The curse is real. The curse is deadly. It is definite.

It is deserving. It is dreadful. And if you can understand the curse, you can understand also the cure. Well, chapter 12 is all about the cure.

Now, I'll explain something about God that is wholly different. There are many things that are wholly different between God and us. But let me explain one aspect. We can, as humans, we can exert and execute justice.

We do it all the time in the courts. We even do it in our families. It's if one of my daughters has done something wrong and she understands that there's punishment there, we'll bring her.

We have a pew from one of the first churches I pastored. We have a pew in our house and that's where justice is executed. And we sit down on that pew and we talk about it and we talk about what's happened and what the violation was and what the expectation was and how they did not live up to that expectation, but they broke that expectation.

And then we execute judgment. It's called a wooden spoon. We execute judgment there. We can also exert mercy as humans, right?

Sometimes we sit down on that pew and we walk through the process of how this young one has gone wrong and how they have turned away and and done something wrong and disobeyed mommy or daddy.

And sometimes I'll say, honey, but I want to show you what mercy is. You deserve this. You deserve punishment. And I want you to know that there's always pain involved when you sin.

But this time I'm going to give you mercy. I'm not going to spank you. Now. The problem with mankind is we cannot exert both mercy and justice simultaneously, can we?

It's one or the other for us. We either in this situation, I'm either executing justice or I'm exerting mercy. I'm either giving them justice or I'm giving them mercy.

I cannot give them both perfectly and simultaneously. But let me tell you something. God can. And he can through the mode and through the tool of the substitutionary atonement of a substitutionary atonement.

And that's what chapter 12 is all about. God is angry with the people of Israel. They are his chosen people. And yet they are worshiping the false gods. And now they are culpable for judgment. And yet God shows them a way in which they can be saved, a cure.

And in that cure is both the justice of God and the mercy of God. Let's talk about this cure. Let's look at this cure very closely together.

First of all, this cure was a violent cure. A violent cure. Look down in chapter 12, verse 1.

Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be the beginning of months for you. It is to be the first month of the year for you.

Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month they are to each take a lamb for themselves, according to their father's households, a lamb for each household. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then his neighbor nearest to his house shall take one according to the number of persons in them, according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb.

Your lamb shall be an unblemished male, a year old. An unblemished male, a year old.

They are to take this perfect little lamb. Now think about it. It could be, they say, a lamb of a goat or a lamb of a sheep. It could be either one, but it is to be perfect, unblemished. No spots, no dots, no dirt, no sickness, no gimpy leg, nothing wrong with this lamb.

This lamb is to be perfect. And they are to bring that lamb into their family with them on the tenth day of the month. Verse 5, You shall take a lamb that will be unblemished, a male, a year old.

You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. So this lamb comes in like a pet, like part of the family.

And this beautiful little lamb, perfectly clean, nothing wrong with this beautiful lamb, would be with that family for four days, living with them. I'm sure the kids maybe would name this lamb.

This lamb would be with them. And this lamb would reside in the house and maybe even eat from the hands of their owners for four days. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day.

Verse 6, Of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts and on the lentil of the houses which they eat it.

They shall eat the flesh that same night roasted with fire. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs with its entrails.

You shall not leave any of it over to the morning, but whatever is left until morning, you shall burn with fire. Now get the picture. Now just imagine the picture here. They were to take an unblemished lamb into their family.

They were to treat it like a pet. To love it. This perfect lamb, this spotless lamb, would be in their family. They would love it. They would cherish it. They would keep it for four days.

And then one ominous evening, four days later, when they got the lamb, Dad would sit down cradle that lamb between his legs, pull his neck up, outstretch it before the family, take a knife or a sharp rock, and sever its throat, the blood would spill out into the living room.

All over the floor, this lamb would spill out its blood. And not just its blood, we see that he would butcher it right there. The entrails would spill out. The blood would be all over the floor as they took pieces of it to be roasted.

And not just pieces of it, but the whole thing was to be burnt up or eaten. All of it was to be consumed. They would take maybe a mop or a piece of cloth and they would soak up some of the blood and they'd take this bloody instance and take the blood and walk over to the outside of their house and slosh the blood all over the sides and the top.

This was a violent affair. And it was a sad thing as they saw this lamb, their pet for four days now, was destroyed and slaughtered and then eaten by all of them or burnt completely, entirely consumed.

None of it left. This was a violent cure. But there's something else you need to know about this cure.

It was a vicarious cure. A vicarious. That simply means in place of. Substitutionary. It was in place of. Now let me show you in chapter 13 that first of all, it was in place of the son that was to die.

Look at chapter 13, beginning in verse 14. Chapter 13, he's issued, God is issuing them that they should do this ceremony once a year to remember that he had rescued them from Egypt and rescued them from God's own wrath for their sin.

And in this ceremony, the son, the firstborn son would stand up and ask the question, what is this all about? Verse 14, God is describing this. And it shall be when your son asks you in time come, saying, what is this?

And you shall say to him with a powerful hand, the Lord has brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery. Of course, we know they're the dual meaning the slavery to Egypt and the slavery to their own sin. And it came about when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go that the Lord killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn man and the firstborn of the beast.

Therefore, I sacrifice to the Lord the males, and it's talking about the male sheep, the first offspring of every room, but every firstborn of my sons, as I redeem, I buy back with that lamb.

That's what that means. So in place of the son dying, the firstborn son, the lamb would die. Now, I want to show you something even further.

Scholars tell us it wasn't just in place of the son because the son dying wasn't the only thing. It didn't just affect the son. In fact, it talks about the weeping and the crying all over Egypt.

So this is something that would affect everybody if they didn't sacrifice the lamb. Back in chapter 12, we see, and we just read it, your lamb shall be an unblemished lamb, verse 5.

You shall keep it to the 14th day. They shall take the blood, verse 7, and put it on the doorpost. And then, verse 8, they shall eat the flesh. They are to eat the flesh and the blood of the lamb.

Why? Because this sacrifice was for them too. It wasn't just the firstborn son, but the sacrifice was to save them from grief and torture and the curse.

So this sacrifice was a vicarious sacrifice. It was a vicarious cure in that this lamb would die for not only the firstborn son, but for everyone, for the family.

This was a vicarious cure. The third thing I want you to see is that this cure was victorious. It worked. This cure worked.

Look down in chapter 12, verse 40. Chapter 12, verse 40. It worked. You read the story about it. You get down to verse 40 and it says this, Exodus 12.

Now the time that the sons of Israel lead in Egypt was 430 years. And at the end of 430 years, to the very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.

They were saved. It was a victorious cure. It worked. They slaughtered the lambs. They went through this very violent cure. They saw that this, if they didn't kill this lamb, it would be them.

It was either them or the lamb. So they killed the lamb. They took part. They believed in this vicarious cure. They sacrificed the lamb. They followed the operation that God had set in place and God released them from bondage and released them from his own wrath.

In Exodus chapter 13, we begin to see that God says, listen, I want you to do this every year. This is so important, this delivery and this idea of the substitutionary atonement with this lamb.

I want you to do this every year in your calendar year. In fact, that's what Easter is all about, by the way. You wonder why Easter's date moves around so weirdly.

It's because we're following a Jewish calendar when we talk about Easter. We're following a Jewish lunar calendar. That's why Easter lands on different Sundays. And so they follow this Jewish calendar and they have this year after year.

But I want to fast forward. You've got your Bible open to Exodus. Now turn to Luke chapter 22. I want to fast forward to a Passover dinner 1500 years later.

1500 years later. There is a Passover ceremony just as God has prescribed it back in Exodus chapter 13.

The Jewish people are carrying it out here in Luke chapter 22. And it's Jesus and his disciples. And Jesus and his disciples are caring about and they are now nearing Jerusalem and nearing the day of Passover.

We read in verse 7 of Luke 22. Then came the first day of unleavened bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.

Christ. And Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go prepare the Passover for us so that we may eat it. They said to him, where do you want us to prepare it?

He said to them, when you have entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house that he enters and you shall say to the owner of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the great room in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And he will show you a large furnished room, prepare it there. And they left and found everything just as he had told them and they prepared the Passover. Now you read this account in Matthew and Mark and Luke and it's almost the same account each time.

There's something very interesting about this account in each one of these accounts. It's a question that came to my mind as I read this account as I prepared for Sunday. It's a question that came to mind.

Where's the lamb? Where's the lamb? It's Jesus, isn't it? The lamb was sitting there in their midst.

The lamb was right there with them. They were to see this. Fifteen hundred years of history was pointing to the true lamb of God.

Now look what happens. Look what Jesus says in verse fourteen. When the hour had come, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

You see, right then, right there, there's no accident that Christ was to suffer on the Passover. Because they were to see precisely what they had been seeing for fifteen hundred years.

This was to be a violent cure. Many of you have seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ, and it is a gory movie, and it's grotesque, and you see what happened to Christ.

But let me tell you something, it doesn't do justice to the gore that was truly there. They literally ripped every bit of flesh off of his body. He was a bloody pulp.

It was a violent sacrifice. They threw the cross over his shoulder. He could not even carry it. They pierced his side.

They hammered a crown of thorns on his head. They threw a coat on him and waited for the blood to coagulate, and then tore it off him again. It was a violent affair.

cure. This was a violent cure. And they broke him, and there he was.

He'd lived with them for 30 some odd years. They'd learned to love him. They'd learned to cherish him. He had grown in favor both in God and man, and though the leadership did not love him, the people loved him.

if only on a surface level they loved him. And there was Jesus violently getting torn.

It was a violent cure, but let me show you something else. Look down in verse 19. It says, And when he had taken some bread and given thanks, he broke it and gave to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. Verse 20, In the same way, he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in my blood.

You see, just like they had done 1500 years before, they were eating, figuratively eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the lamb.

Why? Because this is not only a violent cure, this is a vicarious cure. They were ingesting this because they needed it. They needed God to pour his wrath, not out upon them, but upon his son.

That's why Christ stretched out between heaven and earth, cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because God's wrath was poured out on Jesus Christ.

You say the Roman soldiers killed Jesus. No, they didn't. You say the Jews, they killed Jesus. The leadership of the Jews killed Jesus.

No, they didn't. You say the Jews as the crowd, just the people, they killed Jesus. No, they did not. Dear friends, God, killed Jesus. God's wrath was poured out for us on that cross.

It was a substitutionary atonement. It was a vicarious cure. But let me show you something. Turn a couple chapters to your right, to chapter 24.

Luke chapter 24. The disciples, Christ has died. The disciples go to see if he's there in the tomb.

The ladies are there. And they see an angelic being. And what does he say? Verse six. He is not here.

But he has risen. He is risen indeed. Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying that the son of man must be delivered in the hands of sinful men and be crucified on the third day, rise again.

And they remembered his words. Let me tell you something. The cure of the cross. Yes, it was a violent cure. Yes, it was a vicarious cure.

But it is a victorious cure. It's a victorious cure. It is a victorious cure. He is risen.

And folks, if we appropriate in faith and repentance, if we trust just as the people did back in ancient Israel and say, Lord, we trust in the substitutionary atonement of the lamb and us, the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.

If we trust in that lamb, ladies and gentlemen, when Christ suffered on the cross, he suffered for you. Only believe. Only believe.

On a day like today, Easter Sunday, I have no doubt in my mind. That a few of you are what pastors call Easter bunnies.

You hop in on Easter. We're glad that you're here and we're happy that you're with us, especially today. But how great would it be if on Easter Sunday you finally got it?

It clicked in your mind what the crucifixion and the resurrection was all about. It is about the substitutionary atonement. cross. And if you believe Christ's blood has covered you, you can be delivered not only from the bondage of this world and the temporal things of this world, but you are delivered most importantly from the wrath of God that you deserve.

You can be delivered. And you can understand both the curse and the curse. may may may may may Thank you.