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Did Jesus Disregard the Sacrificial System?
Audio Transcript
Well, if you’ve read and studied the Gospels, you notice that in the life of Christ there’s not a lot of detail about temple practices — in particular, animal sacrifices. We know that Jesus, as a small child, was presented at the temple with an offering of turtledoves or pigeons (that’s told to us in Luke 2:24). This was the offering of a poor mother, in lieu of a lamb sacrifice (as permitted in Leviticus 12:8). But this is a pretty rare connection between Christ’s life and temple sacrifices. In fact, later in his ministry, Jesus will forgive sin all by himself, bypassing the whole Jewish sacrificial system altogether. And that leads to a question from Karen, a listener to the podcast who wants to know why.
Here’s her email: “Hello, Pastor John, my name is Karen, and I live in Germany. Thank you for this podcast. My question concerns the act of forgiveness mentioned in the Bible. I have learned that without blood there is no forgiveness. Hence the sacrifices in the Old Testament and the dying of Jesus in the New Testament. I understand that. But what I don’t understand is the period between the two. When Jesus walked on earth, he often addressed people by simply telling them that their sins were forgiven. He didn’t prescribe an offering in the temple. And he had not shed his own blood yet. So how was that possible, under the assumption that blood is still needed for forgiveness?”
This may sound like a question with limited application or a question of interest to only a tiny number of Christians. But I want to show that it touches on the issue that is at the heart of Christianity. Every Christian needs to be aware of it for our own stability and courage and joy. So, hang on.
Forgiveness Requires Blood
The question starts with a biblical assumption from Hebrews 9:22, which says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That’s what it says. So God instituted in the Old Testament the way, the plan, that there would be animal sacrifices, and that sinners who looked to God and, by faith, identified with this killed animal would be forgiven for their sins. The death of the animal would be counted, so to speak, as the punishment for their sin.
For example, in Leviticus 4:15, if the people as a whole have sinned, it says, “The elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the Lord, and the bull shall be killed before the Lord.” Then verse 20 says, “The priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven.” So that’s where Karen’s question starts. God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death, a blood-shedding, in order for sins not to be counted — that is, to be forgiven.
“God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death.”
Then the second premise of Karen’s question is that Christ has in fact shed his own blood for sinners so that, if we are united to Christ by faith, our sins are forgiven for his sake. His blood-shedding counts for us.
He became “a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). He bore our condemnation in his flesh (Romans 8:3). This is the center and the glory of the gospel. So Paul says in Romans 5:9, “We have now been justified by his blood,” or in Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood,” or in Ephesians 2:13, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
So Karen’s question is, When Jesus walked the earth, he often addressed people by telling them that their sins are forgiven, but (she says) there was no offering in the temple, and Jesus had not yet died — how’s that possible under the assumption that blood is needed in order to have the forgiveness of God from all the sins that we do or that take place?
Animal Blood Was Not Enough
Now let’s clarify the question, first of all. Whether or not there were sacrifices being offered in the temple, Jesus pronounced forgiveness on his own authority, without any reference to those sacrifices. For example, in Mark 2:5–7, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” And the scribes say, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
So Karen wonders about this relationship of forgiveness that Jesus pronounced to the God-appointed shedding of blood, when Jesus hasn’t yet shed his blood and he isn’t pointing people to the blood-shedding of the animals. And here’s one of the keys that unlocks this puzzle for Karen. In Hebrews 10:4 and 11, the writer says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. . . . Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”
So now we get the startling revelation that all those animal sacrifices actually in themselves accomplished nothing. Oh, we’re not between two really effective seasons here — Old Testament, New Testament. The forgiveness that God pronounced on faithful worshipers in the Old Testament was not ultimately owing to animal sacrifices.
The true saints in the Old Testament, they grasped this — they did, at some level. For example, David said in Psalm 51:16–17, “You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrary heart, O God, you will not despise.” And God said in Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” And Jesus quoted that verse, Hosea 6:6, twice to show how badly some of the Jewish leaders were misreading the Old Testament (in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7).
Every Sacrifice a Pointer
So now we can see that Karen’s question about forgiveness during Jesus’s lifetime really does apply to the entire history of Israel. The animal sacrifices were not achieving the forgiveness of sins — not ever. So what were they doing?
The answer is, they were pointing to Jesus — God’s final, once-for-all, decisive sacrifice for sins. They were foreshadowing the blood-shedding of Christ. So it says in Hebrews 9:12, “[Christ] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” So the reason all blood-shedding has ceased — animal blood-shedding has ceased; Christ’s blood-shedding has ceased once for all — is that Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.
“Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.”
If you have Christ, you have eternal forgiveness for all sins. Now I think Karen knows this, but what she may have overlooked (I don’t know) is that not only does the sacrifice of Christ extend forward as an eternal redemption but also backward in history as a redemption for all those saints who put their faith in God for his forgiveness — through the foreshadowing of the cross in the animal sacrifices. The cross worked effectively backward and forward.
And that’s what Paul makes clear in Romans 3:25. He says, “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” In other words, the reason God was righteous to pass over — that is, forgive — the sins of all Old Testament saints, and the sins that Jesus forgave during his lifetime, was that God was looking to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. So just as our sins two thousand years after Christ are covered by the blood of Christ, so Abraham’s sins were covered by the cross of Christ two thousand years before Christ existed. And so it was with all the saints in between.
Glorious Divine Achievement
So, Karen’s question is not of limited significance. It takes us to the very center of the gospel — indeed, the center of reality. It shows us that all forgiveness, and all the benefits that flow from forgiveness through all time — as far back as you can go, as far forward as you can go, all of it — all of that forgiveness is based on those few hours when the Son of God suffered and bled and died for sinners.
If we grasp how central, how profound, how glorious was that divine moment, that divine achievement, our lives will be more stable, more courageous and more joyful.
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Six Reasons Jesus Left Earth After Easter
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. I mentioned Monday that we’re in the middle of answering a batch of apologetics questions on the life and work of Christ. And today’s question is one several of you have asked about — namely, why did Jesus have to leave earth after the resurrection? It seems like he could do some amazing ministry if he were still here on earth with us.
That’s Dalton’s question, and he speaks for many of you. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for the APJ podcast,” he writes. “A question I have for you is this. Why did Jesus leave earth after his resurrection? I understand that Jesus left to leave us the Holy Spirit, but couldn’t he have just stayed and continued his ministry as the risen Christ in tandem with the Spirit? Wouldn’t that have been more effective? Why did Christ leave the earth?”
A question like this can have value if we make it a stepping stone to insight into Christ’s present ministry from heaven — in other words, if it helps us understand the wisdom and the goodness of what is the case, and doesn’t just become an occasion for curious speculation of what might have been the case. Let’s tackle Dalton’s question that way, with that goal in mind.
The question is, Couldn’t Jesus have just stayed on earth and continued his ministry after the resurrection — and not gone back to heaven as the risen Christ — in tandem with, alongside the work of the Spirit? “Wouldn’t that have been more effective?” he asks. Why did Christ leave the earth? Here are a few thoughts.
1. Confusion Avoided
If the risen Christ remained on earth for all of church history, a serious competition would be introduced into global Christianity. Who has the risen Christ nearby? He would be spatially bound. He could not be in one place and another place and another place at the same time. The temptation would always be there to make the place where he was the sacred place.
His presence would introduce a serious confusion for how Christians are to relate to him. Some would be relating to him face-to-face at any given moment as he visits churches. Some would be trying to relate to him by the Spirit, but be put off-balance — knowing that he’s one hundred or ten thousand miles away on earth.
The role of the Holy Spirit in relation to Christ would be confused. If his role is to glorify Christ (John 16:14), would we seek the fullness of the Spirit in order to experience Christ by the Spirit’s revelation of him in the gospel, or would we seek the Spirit to bring him, say, from Chicago to Minneapolis? It would — in other words — be a confusing way to go about God’s work.
2. Authority Demonstrated
Christ’s post-resurrection role as the God-man ruling the cosmos is better signified if he’s sitting at the right hand of God than walking on the earth. His role as the head of the church would be misrepresented if he were part of the church on earth. Here’s the key text from Ephesians 1:
[God] raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:20–23)
This exalted role — as above all rule and authority in the universe and as the head of the universal church — would be obscured, wouldn’t it? It would be obscured if Jesus were still walking among us.
3. Coronation Accomplished
The exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of God’s majesty is the fitting coronation for his triumphant work on the cross and his new incarnate superiority over angels. Hebrews 1:3–4: “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”
If he had not taken this seat, the greatness of his achievement on the cross and the greatness of his new incarnate superiority would be obscured.
4. Intercession Enabled
The present intercession of Christ at God’s right hand would not be rightly exercised or exhibited if Christ were still here among us after the resurrection.
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Romans 8:33–34)
It is fitting that Jesus be in the exalted presence of God as he intercedes for us and brings his sacrifice to bear on our behalf before God.
5. Spirit of Glory Given
The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to send when he returned to the Father (John 15:26) is the Spirit of the risen Christ. And according to John 7:39, the Spirit of the risen Christ could not come until Christ was completely glorified — which included his ascension to the Father. Here’s what John said: “Now this [Jesus] said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39). The glorification of Jesus at the right hand of God was essential, because the Spirit who would be sent by Jesus and the Father is the Spirit of the glorified Christ.
6. Climactic Appearing Arranged
God’s plan is that the risen Christ would get great glory at the end of this age, not by itinerating on the earth for two thousand years, but by descending from heaven in power and great glory, and defeating the man of lawlessness, and being marveled at by all his people.
The Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (2 Thessalonians 1:7–8)
Then the lawless one will be revealed [the son of destruction], whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 2:8)
The second coming of Christ is the great climax of God’s way of glorifying his Son.
These are some of the reasons why Jesus did not stay on the earth after the resurrection, and there are many more. God’s ways are great. God’s ways are good and wise. Let’s revel in what he’s doing through Christ from heaven.
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The Curse Under Our Breath: What Grumbling Sounds Like to God
At first, it seems a little thing,A want unmet, a prayer unwinged.Voiceless, it interrogates the King,When sounded, Lucifer sings.
Grumbling.
If you do not stand at the gate armed with sword and spear, if you keep down the drawbridge and fail to post men on the watchtower, gurgles and grunts will occupy your heart. Self-love and unbelief have a fruitful marriage, multiplying little moans and murmurs as rabbits in the forest or as crabgrass in the front lawn.
What is in a grumble? The sound, unheard in heaven, is the heart shaking its head, rolling its eyes, cursing under its breath. It is the seemingly harmless exhale of several respectable sins — ingratitude, thanklessness, discontent. It’s a controlled rage, an itchy contempt, the muffled echo of Satan’s dismay. A broken tune. It can be voiced in a sigh or strangle a praise. It is the cough of a sick heart.
We overhear these pitiful pleas all over the New Testament. The volume turns up with the crowds and soon-to-be apostate disciples of John 6, and in episodes with the envious scribes and Pharisees. Yet New Testament authors often bend the ear backward to hear the mumblings of an ancient people. None better expose the horror of this muffled mutiny than ancient Israel.
The apostle Paul writes,
We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 10:9–11)
God’s Spirit records Israel’s history in the wilderness to teach us about this too-easily-committed and too-easily-overlooked sin of grumbling.
Lessons from the Mumblers
If we had to venture a guess as to who the first grumblers mentioned in Scripture would be, could any man or angel have suspected it to be God’s own people, and that right after their wondrous redemption from Egypt?
Ten plagues have fallen on Pharoah’s defiance. His army and chariots now lie at the bottom of the sea, a calm settles upon the water’s surface — Israel is free. Uproar sounds in the heavens, and praise to God extends to earth. Music sheets are passed around beside the Red Sea, they begin,
I will sing to [Yahweh] for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. (Exodus 15:1)
Who could have guessed that these same tongues would rot into a chorus of murmurs by the end of the same chapter? Satan’s song intrudes. Lucifer’s lyrics, once sung, get stuck in their heads. Trial after trial — needing water, then food, then water again — leads to more and more muttering. Consider, then, just a few lessons from the all too familiar sounds of Exodus 15–16.
1. God deprives us to see what’s inside us.
God led Israel around the Philistines, in front of the Red Sea to bait Pharoah, and through the Red Sea, and now to the wilderness of Shur. Millions marched waterless. One day turned to two turned to three. Finally, in the distance, water. They bend down to drink — yuck. Dying of thirst, they spit out the sour beverage. They named the place “Marah,” meaning bitterness (Exodus 15:22–23). We finally find water and it is undrinkable? Is this where trusting the Lord gets you? For the first time in the Hebrew Bible we read, “And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’” (Exodus 15:24).
“When you find yourself kneeling by the bitter waters of God’s providence, what does God hear from you?”
And then, as he did with the water, so God did with their stomachs: “he tested them” (verse 25). He “let them hunger” and led the people to depend upon him that whole forty years to see what was in their hearts (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). And he found Marah in his people — out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth sighs. When you find yourself kneeling by the bitter waters of God’s providence, what does God hear from you? Cries to your heavenly Father for help and mercy, or grunts against an unreliable god?
2. Grumbling complains against God.
Grumbling would weaponize our circumstances against God if we let it. Yet, it doesn’t always feel like that, does it? I am complaining because my darling child pooped through her diaper, or because I’m late for work and now stuck in traffic — not because I dislike God. Hear Moses’s analysis of Israel’s grumbling,
“At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him — what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.” (Exodus 16:6–8)
Moses speaks in capital letters: The arrows of your complaints fly at the Lord. So it is with us. He hears our creaturely objections, as protests against his throne, even when we do not lift our eyes to meet his. What is a boss or infertility or ruined plans or cancer that we gripe at them? God rules all with infinite wisdom and care. Against him, him only have we grumbled, and done what is evil in his sight.
3. Grumbling is severely short-sighted.
Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water. (Exodus 15:27)
The springless wilderness of Shur often leads to the plentiful land of Elim. Even in Shur, God responded graciously to his people’s huffing and puffing, turning the bitter water sweet. But before the relief arrived and the parched throats tasted sweet drink, how many kept trusting him?
This point climaxes at the arrival to Elim — and cuts me to the heart. How many times have I finally arrived at the place of twelve springs and lush palm trees — the place God was leading the whole time — with sharp regrets about my distrust? He blessed me, but despite me. I pouted the whole way.
“To my shame — and to the glory of his patience — our God is more gracious than we are grumbling.”
To my shame — and to the glory of his patience — our God is more gracious than we are grumbling. But this should make us hate the murmurs more. Our protests and complaints cannot see past our own noses. Often just around the corner is the respite of some smiling providence. Our God leads us out of Egypt to hold a feast to him in the wilderness (Exodus 5:1). Blessed is he who did not curse God under his breath in the meantime.
4. A grumbling heart distorts reality.
Would that we had died by the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. (Exodus 16:3)
The muttering heart thinks the worst of God and the best of its former suffering. God would be their provider and their healer (Exodus 15:26). Yet, meat pots and a full-service bakery in Egypt sprout in the malcontent’s mind. They would rather have died under the Lord’s plagues in Egypt than suffer want in this wandering wilderness. A month ago, they praised God for sinking his enemies under the sea like a stone; now they wished to be that stone.
When the way seems meandering and lost, when resources dry up, when circumstances seem too cruel to have a purpose, God is for his people, teaching us precious truths.
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:3)
God’s great Israel, Jesus Christ, learned this lesson in his forty days in the wilderness, and he quotes it at the devil when tempted (Matthew 4:4). These seasons can teach us also to walk by faith, to nourish our souls with his word, to venture all upon his promises. And these lessons, should we learn them, become the defining moments of our lives and our proudest memories in heaven.
Satisfied and Shining
At first, it seems a little thing,A knee now bent, thanks to bring.When in need, it trusts a worthy King,When sounded, heaven rings.
Prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.
This is the Christian’s lot — not just starving grumbles alone, but feeding worship. God has delivered us through a greater exodus and manifested a higher love in his Son: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We are a people who now address one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs “with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).
How startling then, for angels to hear us begin our day with songs to Jesus, only to end that same morning with snorts of irritation and resentment. Paul gives a glorious battle cry against it. Directly after the momentous charge to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:13), listen to the first thing Paul would have us work out in the next verse.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life. . . . (Philippians 2:14–16)
Paul describes the luminary life of trusting saints; a life that shines in a dark and thankless world (Romans 1:21). Blamelessness, innocence, proving ourselves to be children of God — all by a supernatural life of worship instead of bleating.
Don’t you want to live that brightly to the glory of Christ, holding fast to his word, journeying toward the greater Elim just around the bend?