“The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone” (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p. 160).

this pic was taken by Matt Hand from his back porch in Denver. church planting in Denver does have its peaks!
I mean perks!

“Put your poor afflicted friends in mind, continually, of the sovereign grace of God in Jesus Christ. Often impress on their minds that He is merciful and gracious; that as far as the heavens are above the earth, so far are His thoughts above their thoughts; His thoughts of mercy above their self-condemning, guilty thoughts. Teach them, as much as you can, to look unto God, by the great Mediator, for grace and strength, and not too much to pore over their own souls, where there is much darkness and unbelief. And turn away their thoughts from the decrees of God. Show them what great sinners God has pardoned, and encourage them to believe and to hope for mercy” (A. A. Alexander).

“Come, learn the lesson of the rod:
The treasure that we have in God.
He is not poor nor much enticed
Who loses everything but Christ.”

~John Piper

One of my great joys in teaching Old Testament History was my trip through the book of Exodus. It has now become one of those books I would love to teach someday. One of its treasures is its emphasis on the mediatorial role of Moses in leading Israel out of bondage into worship. The end for which Israel was delivered was the worship of the one true God (“Let my people go that they might serve me”, Exo. 5:1; 7:16; 8:1, 21; 9:1).

Moses mediatorial role in this endeavor is made very c lear in the last chapter of Exodus. Exodus 40 begins with God commanding Moses to erect the tabernacle and instructing him how to go about it (vv. 1-15). Over and over again God says to Moses, “You shall” (vv. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15). So the key phrase in the first fifteen verses is “you shall.” That is a very significant observation when you also observe that the key phrase in verses 16-33 is “as the LORD had commanded [so] Moses [did]” (vv. 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32). The section ends by stating, “So Moses finished the work” (v. 33).

The significance of these two key phrases becomes apparent in verse 34. “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.” All of Moses’ work and obedience to the LORD was with a view to seeing the presence of the LORD descend upon the tabernacle. His obedience was with a view to seeing the presence of the LORD dwell amidst the camp of Israel (its interesting that the tabernacle was situated at the very center of the camp of Israel). So it was through Moses’ obedience as Israel’s mediator that the presence of God entered the camp of His people.

But what of Jesus? The writer of Hebrews records that when Christ came into the world he said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God.” In other words, Jesus said, “I have come to accomplish all that you have given me to do, O God.” It could be said of every action of Christ that he always did “as the LORD had commanded” him.

The c limax of Christ’s obedience as our Mediator is recorded for us in Matthew 27. In verse 50, Matthew states that Jesus “cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.” John tells us what it is that Jesus cried out, namely, “It is finished” (John 19:30). It is important that we connect these final words of Christ on the cross with what Exodus 40:33 says of Moses. “So Moses finished the work.”

It is important to make that connection because of what follows in both accounts. In Exodus 40:34, what follows is the presence of the LORD coming into the midst of the people. What follows in Matthew 27? “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” When Jesus cried “it is finished”, the curtain separating man from the presence of God was torn in two! Jesus is the better Moses in that he did not merely bring the presence of God into the “presence” (i.e. midst) of man. Rather, he brought man into the very presence of God! In Exodus 40:33-34, God comes into man’s midst. In Matthew 27:50-51, God brings man into His midst!

Think about how Israel must have felt as they saw the glory-presence of God descend upon and fill the tabernacle. They must have felt very strong, intense emotions of joy and awe. This was their experience as a result of the mediatorial work of Moses. What should our experience be as the result of the better mediatorial work of Christ?

“It is important to realize that the ‘rewiring’ work of the Spirit, by which he changes us from the inside out, is a supernatural process that cannot be directly linked to the means of grace (such as prayer and Bible study) in a one-to-one ratio. While these disciplines are important tools for our spiritual maturity, we should not assume that their use automatically or proportionally makes the Holy Spirit work. Were the ratios exact, then legalistic uses of the disciplines of grace would be more pervasive than they already are. Instead, the Spirit seems to respond to humble repentance and dependence on God alone for changing the heart, and then to use the regenerated heart’s longing for change to create new pursuits and godly passions (Holiness by Grace, Bryan Chapell, p. 62).

This post comes to us from Matt Hand. Take some time today to visit his website. Matt writes:

Just days ago, I sat in a hospital room wondering if my wife was going to live or die. She had experienced serious complications eleven days after bringing our beautiful baby girl into the world and was rushed back into emergency surgery. For over twelve hours that day, the doctors were baffled at their own inability to stop her hemorrhaging with either physical or chemical means. Although she received one painful treatment after another, her condition was not improving.

Many times that day, we prayed that God would receive glory by demonstrating to us His mercy. God did, in fact, show us His mercy in the days that followed. Amy’s condition improved almost as inexplicably as it had begun. She was able to come home after three days, and her strength and health have increased in the days since. It is our testimony that God did that. God gets the glory because, ultimately, it was His power, combined with His compassion, that healed her.

In meditating on the events of those few days, God comforted me with another remarkable facet of His mercy. This unique quality of God’s mercy is demonstrated by the distinction between sympathy and substitution.

As I watched my wife suffer through a tremendous amount of pain, I felt great pity for her. My heart ached to see her suffer. I would have gladly given anything to take her pain as my own, but obviously I was powerless to do so. Sympathy only goes so far. Though we’ve all used trite phrases like, “I feel your pain,” to express sympathy, we really don?t feel other people’s pain. We certainly cannot feel pain on their behalf so that they might experience relief!

There was nothing I could have done in the hospital to experience Amy’s pain on her behalf so that she might be healed. It would have been foolish to perform surgery on my body, rather than hers. Sure, she would not have experienced the pain of surgery, but neither would she have been healed by my pain! It would make no sense to draw blood from my arm either. Though she would avoid the pain of having hemoglobin tests, she would not benefit from my having one! And it would be ridiculous for the doctors to give me shots of Demerol and Methergine. Granted, she would not feel the sting of the needles, but her pain and bleeding would not be eased as those drugs were being metabolized by my body! I could sympathize with her pain, but I could not become her substitute in suffering.

As long as I focused on what I could not do for my wife, I was pretty miserable. But thankfully, there came a point in my experience when pity for my wife turned to worship for my God. This happened when I remembered the essence of the Gospel.

The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ did for us what we could never do for ourselves or for one another. Jesus was not merely sympathetic concerning our suffering. Jesus actually made Himself our substitute by suffering in our place so that we might be healed! The Bible plainly reveals to us both the suffering and the healing aspects of Christ’s substitution.

1. Christ suffered and died on behalf of others who were suffering and dying (because of their own sin).

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Isaiah 53:4

“But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities.” Isaiah 53:5

“The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6

“He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.” Isaiah 53:8

“He bore the sin of many.” Isaiah 53:12

“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” 1 Corinthians 15:3

“Christ also suffered for you.” 1 Peter 2:21

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” 1 Peter 2:24

2. Christ earned healing for those who are suffering and dying (because of His own obedience).

“Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5

“By one man?s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Romans 5:19

“In Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:22

“By his wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:24

Note in each of these passages that the suffering of Jesus was not merely sympathetic in nature. It was substitutionary. This double substitution is clearly stated in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In other words, Christ took our pain and suffering and death upon Himself, even though He was not deserving of any of those things. But Christ did not merely “zero our account” by taking away our sickness. Christ also earned permanent healing for us by His perfect obedience to God, and He credits that healing to our account by faith.

The next time circumstances providentially compel you to feel sympathy for the suffering of a loved one, take time to praise the Lord for providing a substitute who did far more for us than just “feel our pain.” Praise Him that He took our pain, not by loading us up on painkillers, but by experiencing that pain on our behalf. And, above all, praise the Lord that He offers us the eternal cure for all our ills (physical and spiritual) that we might receive freely by faith!

“Our . . . longing to be reunited with something from which we often feel [distanced], to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache . . . We do not want merely to see [God’s] beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it.” ~C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, pp. 12-13

Hebrews 10:19-22 - Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, [20] by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, [21] and since we have a great priest over the house of God, [22] let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Romans 5:1-2 - Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. [2] Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Psalm 16:11 - You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

O Jesus, take my bent away
For thinking much of me,
And kill my pride, and from this day
With mercy make me free.
O Jesus, grant the gift to see
The treasure that you are,
And as the night eclipses me,
O be my Morning Star.

And now if I should serve, or lead,
Or give, or mercy show,
O Jesus, let my love be freed,
And like a river flow.
O Jesus, be the treasure of
My heart and all I do,
And may the river of my love
Alone make much of you.

“It is important to see that if the Deity of Christ is denied, then the Cross becomes a terrible monstrosity. If Jesus Christ is man only and not also God, then we lose faith in God and man. We lose faith in God because we could not believe in a God who allows the best man that ever lived to be hounded to death on the Cross — is that all that God cares about our humanity and its search after God, after truth and righteousness and peace? Put Jesus Christ a man on the Cross, and put God in heaven, like some Mohammedan deity imprisoned in His own lonely abstract Deity — and you cannot believe in Him, in such a god who is monstrously unconcerned with our life, and who does not even lift a finger to help Jesus. But if you deny the Deity of Christ we lose faith in man also, for that means that man is such that when he sees the very best, the very hightest and noblest the world has ever known, he crucifies it in spite, and will have nothing to do with it except to hate it. Put God in heaven, and Jesus a man only on the Cross, and you destroy all hope and trust, and preach a doctrine of the blackest and most abysmal despair. Denial of the Deity of Christ destroys faith in God and in man, and turns the Cross into the bottomless pit of darkness. But put God on the Cross, and the Cross becomes the world’s salvation. All the Gospel rests upon the fact that it is God who became Incarnate, and it was God who in Christ has reconciled the world to Himself” (The Hypostatic Union by T.F. Torrence, p. 36).

Sorry! Things got out of hand with the c lippers!

God graciously gave us Noah in the middle of our first anniversary of Daniel’s last days with our family on this earth. Daniel’s “last days” on this earth began October 13th and ended November 19th. God gave us Noah a year later on November 5th when we were experiencing afresh our grief over Daniel’s suffering and death. Though we were very thankful for the Rest that Daniel had entered into on that early morning November 19th, our hearts were extremely heavy from our memories of those final days.

Well, right in the midst of our heaviness God surprised us with a son (and it was a surprise! We were not expecting to adopt our second son for another two or three months.). We received a call at 9:00 pm, Tuesday, November 4th, asking us if we were interested in an African-American baby boy. “Yes,” we answered, “when would we be able to pick him up?” “Tomorrow morning!” We could not believe it! We were going to have an addition to our family in less than 24 hours! God sweetened our grief over the death of Daniel with the joy of new life in a third son!

You ask, “Why did you name him Noah Daniel?” The answer is found in Genesis 5:28-29 where we find mention of the first Noah in recorded history. “When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” In giving us our second adopted son in the midst of our freshly awakened grief, God was granting us a gracious measure of relief and joy. So we named him Noah Daniel as testimony to the gracious God who gives rest to His people.

The ultimate fulfillment of the rest pointed to by Lamech in Genesis 5 did not come in the son he fathered, but rather in the Son God gave. Noah only brought creation a slight measure of rest. The Son of God came and dealt the curse of sin the decisive blow so that all who are weary and heavy laden may come to Him and find true, eternal rest for their souls (Matthew 11:28-29). Noah’s name is not meant only to remind us of God’s gift to us a year ago in the midst of our grief. It is mainly meant to remind us of God’s unspeakable Gift in the person of His Son some 2000 years ago.

So with great joy and gratitude in our hearts we say to our one year old son, “Happy Birthday, Noah!!”