Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to Gospel and Life. While some might think that Christian faith is just a blind leap, a closer look shows us that it requires deep, rational thinking. Join us all month as Tim Keller preaches on genuine faith, which requires both a deep conviction of the heart and a sound understanding of the mind. The passage on which our teaching is based, we've been staying in the book of Hebrews...
And we're in chapter 11. And we're only going to read these three verses, but in particular, we're going to be centering on the middle of the three verses. Hebrews 11, verses 27 to 29, but especially verse 28. Talking about Moses now. By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith...
he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. This is God's word.
By faith, Moses kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.
Now, this is a story in outline. It's amazing. It's very convicting for a minister or a person who does a lot of public speaking of how you can put a whole story in a very, very small amount of time and a very small compact space. And the whole story of Moses...
And the leading out, the Exodus, the people of Israel out of Egypt, out of their slavery, is all told here in just a couple of phrases. And if we use the outline of the phrases, we can get an overview and remind ourselves of the account itself, of what happened, of what the event was that's being talked about here. Notice, first of all, it says, God sent the destroyer of the firstborn. Now, what was that about?
You see, over three, between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, Israelites, the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had settled in Egypt but had grown to be such a great people, had grown to be so strong numerically and in many other ways as well, that the Pharaoh, the leaders of the Egyptians, feared them and decided to hold them down. And the way to hold them down
was to oppress them, conscripted them into slavery, kept them away from all of the rights and privileges of the rest of the country, and in many cases did some systematic efforts to kill them. At one point, the pharaoh had decided to seek to kill all newborn males
of the Israelites in the hope that if they killed the newborn males an entire generation rose up of almost only female Israelites and lose their national identity. These things didn't work but there was regular intentional deliberate oppression and violence visited on the Israelites. And finally one day God comes to Moses and says go to Pharaoh I have a message for Pharaoh tell him
Tell him to let my firstborn son, Israel, go. You can read about that in Exodus chapter 4, around verse 22, where God says, go to Pharaoh and say, Israel is my firstborn son. Let my son go. Now, what is he doing?
God is such a communicator. What he's doing is he's showing Pharaoh his true situation. In those days, the custom was that all the wealth, all the inheritance of a family would go to the firstborn son. That was the only way they felt that they could keep their family's wealth intact. If there were 17 children, it all went to the first son, and that son then took care of the family and kept the family's position in society.
And as a result, the parents doted on the firstborn son like on no other one of the children. Now, we're not here to talk about whether that's a right or wrong custom, but what God's doing perfectly and beautifully is he's taking this custom, which they all knew, and he's saying, Pharaoh, how would you feel if someone was oppressing your firstborn son, the apple of your eye? How would you feel if someone was assaulting him and seeking to take his life?
How would you feel? What would you do? You wouldn't be passive, would you? You wouldn't just stay passive. You would do something about it. I am not going to be passive either. You are oppressing these people. You are assaulting these people. And now I say, I warn you, let them go.
That was the warning. It's a brilliant warning. It explains the injustice of what Pharaoh's doing. It says, understand this, but Pharaoh was the greatest man in terms of power in the entire world, and he hardened his heart. God sent nine plagues, plagues of lice, plagues of locusts, plagues of darkness, things that destroyed their crops, things that destroyed their livestock.
Nine warnings to Pharaoh, but after many, many chances and after Pharaoh had trampled all these chances underfoot and every time he made a promise, he'd gone back on it. Finally, God, in the end, says something. And you can read it in Exodus 11. And it's a spine-tingling, chilling message. And he says, because you have not let my firstborn son go, I will send the destroyer.
And every firstborn son in Egypt, from the son of Pharaoh who sits on the throne to the son of the slave girl that sits at the loom, all will die and there will be such wailing in Egypt, he says, as has never been heard before and as never will be heard again. And God sends out his full justice. He sends out the destroyer. He sends out the angel of death. He sends out his full justice. And as a result of that,
In every other situation, the first nine plagues, if you read it, you can read about it in the book of Exodus. In every case that God had sent out lice or locusts or hail or some kind of disease, Israel's land was not subject to it. The rest of the Egyptians suffered, but the land of Israel, the land of Goshen where they lived, was not subject to it. But in this case, and this is the thing that's so surprising about the tenth plague, the destroyer. God says to the Israelites, the destroyer is coming to everybody.
And you can only be saved if you take some evasive action. In other words, unusual. It seems kind of odd. Why? Why would the destroyer, we'll get back to this actually in a minute, why would the destroyer come not only to the Egyptians, but to every door unless there was something on that door?
And it's because, you see, the other plagues was not really full justice. It was not really poetic justice. It wasn't commensurate repayment for the violence that Pharaoh had been doing on the Israelites. All of those other plagues were really warnings, but they really weren't commensurate repayment. But now God, in a sense, and occasionally you see this in the Bible, God was letting forth judgment day early.
He was letting Judgment Day intrude in this one controlled situation. He was bringing Judgment Day down on this land for one brief time. He was literally giving people what they deserved. But he says, in that case, the Israelites will get it too, unless they do something. Well, what did he tell them to do? Keep the Passover and sprinkle the blood. God said to the Israelites, you must eat, you must kill a lamb, a little lamb,
Then you must eat the lamb. You must spread the blood over the doorposts of your house. And if you do, the justice of death and the death of justice, when it comes by, will pass by you. The justice will pass over and you will be saved. And he said to the Jews, don't you think that just because you're Jews that the angel will pass by? Oh, no. You must put the blood. You must take shelter under the blood.
And they did. And the angel of death came and passed by their homes. But the firstborn, from the pharaoh who sits on the throne to the slave girl that sits at the loom, they died. And the Egyptians let them go. And they went out and they escaped. But why? What does the lamb mean? You see, and God said to them, and we read part of that today, last week and this week, we read from the Old Testament. God said, I want you to do this every year. I want you to slay a lamb every year.
And I want you to eat it the same way every year. Why? And in this ordinance of the death of a lamb and taking shelter under its blood, in this ordinance, God gave the Israelites and anyone who wanted to read the Old Testament a clue to the meaning of the universe. Even though it was a clue, it was incomplete. It was a puzzle. The clue, the mystery of it. You remember when we went back and looked at the story of Abraham?
And God had come to Abraham and said, I want you to offer up Isaac as a burnt offering. And you remember what we said then? Abraham did not complain to God that God was being unjust. Abraham knew. He had a good enough theology to know this. He knew that he was a sinner. He knew that Isaac was a sinner. He knew that God is not unjust to ever demand anybody's life. God is not unjust to demand Isaac's life.
So Abraham was not struggling with whether God had the right to be just. He knew God would be just, but he asked himself, is there any way for God to be just and merciful? And it was on the way up the mountain as he was wrestling with this, and Isaac, going up the mountain with his father, said, Father, I see the fire, and I see the knife, and I see the wood, but where's the sacrifice? And suddenly...
Abraham groped out wildly and he got an insight. It was an insight from God. He didn't understand it, but he said it. He was sitting in there and he was, he was, he was in his, he'd been sitting in his tent all night and he was walking up thinking about the same thing. And he was thinking, yes, I know God can't not be just. And I know God can't not be merciful.
He's got to be just and he's got to be merciful. But how, how, how? Wait a minute. And when Isaac said, where's the sacrifice? Suddenly Abraham said, God will show us a lamb. God will provide a sacrifice, a lamb. God will provide something else to die in your place. If a lamb dies, Isaac, you won't have to. Abraham got the principle. And now here in the Passover ordinance, Abraham's wild groping became a yearly principle.
If a lamb dies, you won't have to. But what does it mean? And any thoughtful person, any thoughtful Israelite, and they did, over their ears looked at that and said, wait a minute. I get the principle. I get the what of the principle, but I don't get the how of it. I don't see how in the world the death of a cute little animal would get us out from under something we deserve. How could this be? How is it possible? And Isaiah said,
If you want to understand this principle, the clues that God leaves in the Old Testament are found in three places. One is in Abraham's walk up the mountain. Two is in Exodus and the ordinance of the Passover. But three, Isaiah, in a very mysterious statement, at one point in one of his prophecies, he says, you know, all we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to our own way. And he says, but a servant will show up, God's servant.
and God will lay on him our iniquity, and he will be oppressed, but he will open not his mouth. He'll be like a lamb led to the slaughter. You see, all these clues, all these clues. The idea is if a lamb dies, you won't have to die. But how could that be? And it all came together on one wonderful day.
In the history of redemption, one of the greatest days was the day that the last of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, was with his disciples, and he looked at Jesus of Nazareth, and suddenly he understood. It must have all come together by revelation. It might have come together because he was thinking about it, and he knew a number of things about Jesus, and he'd been pondering the Old Testament. But suddenly on one day, it all came together, and he looked at Jesus, and he said to his disciples, Behold!
Behold the Lamb of God. In other words, Abraham going up the mountain and the Passover. And what Isaiah said, it all came together. He says, wait a minute. Behold, look, the Lamb of God. Not a Lamb of God. The Lamb of God. God did not spare our firstborn sons because of the death of some wooly little cute creatures.
He spared our firstborn sons because he didn't spare his firstborn son. Behold, I get it. That's what it means. You know, you want a translation for what it means? Behold, it was John the Baptist saying, I get it. Do you get it? Christians need to get it. Listen, put it this way. If you had grabbed an Israelite on his way to Canaan,
After the Red Sea. And if you had just come up and said, who are you people and what is happening here? You know what he would have said? The Israelite would have said, well, I can only put it to you this way. I was in slavery and under sentence of death, but I took shelter under the blood of the Lamb. And now God dwells with us. And though we're in a desolate situation right now, he's taking us to our true country. Now, if Christian, if somebody grabs you,
and says, who are you people and what's going on here, what would you say to them? If you understand things, you'd say, I was a slave under sentence of death, but I took shelter under the blood of the Lamb. And now, even though there's a lot of desolation around me, he dwells with me and he's taking me to my true country. It's the same thing. This is the reason that we're told in Luke chapter 9,
that when Moses showed up on the mountain of transfiguration, Moses showed up and talked to Jesus, and the disciples saw it. And in Luke 9, verse 31, in a way that never completely comes out in your English translations, in the Greek it literally says, Jesus spoke to Moses about his exodus that he would accomplish in Jerusalem. And it's one of the most powerful and glorious word plays in all the Bible.
Because the Greek word at that time, Exodus, meant both death and an escape. It could mean both. And what Jesus was saying to Moses is, my death will be the escape for my people. My death will be their exodus. I'm the lamb. My blood will go over their door. The judgment of God will pass by them. They will go out free.
There's no greater hope for you today than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In fact, His resurrection is the key to understanding the whole Bible and the greatest resource we have for facing the challenges of life. Discover how to anchor your life in the meaning of the resurrection by reading Tim Keller's book, Hope in Times of Fear, The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter.
Hope in Times of Fear is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's redemptive love with people all over the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give to request your copy. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Do you get it? Do you get it? Do you do what John the Baptist said you ought to do?
Did you hear what he said? He said, friends, you should always be beholding the Lamb of God. Behold, look at it. Look at Jesus as Lamb and a greatness of life will develop, a tremendous greatness of life. This is the object of our faith. This is the thing we look at to become people of faith that we've been talking about all fall.
Let me just show you, even though there's a number of things we get, what are the main lessons this tells us? What are the main lessons? I'm only going to mention three. I wish I could mention more. There's a lot more. Three, from looking at Jesus as our Passover, Jesus as the Lamb of God, we get three lessons, and here they are. Number one, first of all, we see that everybody deserves judgment.
Everybody deserves judgment. Let me show you what that means and then why that makes an impact on us. The thing you learn here is that it's not the Jews' blood that saved them from the wrath of God, but it was the Lamb's blood. This is a radical teaching. Moses specifically told the Jews, listen, the angel of death, the destroyer, this is the justice of God. And when the justice of God comes...
If you're not in your house under the blood of the Lamb and the destroyer meets you, you're history. You see, God did not send the destroyer to the Egyptians because they were Egyptians and God did not save the Jews because they were Jews. God is no respecter of persons. Moses was specifically saying it's not your pedigree, it's not your attainment, it's not your family, it's none of those things. Everybody is subject to the destroyer and anybody can be saved under the blood of the Lamb.
But that's the only two distinctions there are. Paul says it in Romans chapter 3, you know. He says, pagan and religious, Jew and Gentile, nice and nasty, moral and immoral, all are alike under judgment. Now, we cannot divert ourselves too long to discuss this. This is one of the most important teachings of the Bible, and here it comes out in such vividness here, such vividness.
You know, if you and I are in a room and there's two amoebas in the room and one of the amoebas is four times the size of the other amoeba, compared to us, that difference is negligible. We don't make any, you know, in other words, there's no, it doesn't register. They're still invisible. We make, we take no measures. We don't make room for them. In the same way, here's a person who's 400%, 500% more moral, more self-controlled, more loving than this one over here.
But compared to the standard of God himself, compared to the absolute purity, the absolute love, the absolute kindness, the absolute holiness, the absolute truth of God, the differences between you and me, the difference between the nice and the nasty, the difference between the moral paragons and the moral failures is negligible, the Bible says. Now, how do we apply that?
The fact that we are all subject to the destroyer... and yet we can all come under the blood of the Lamb. It's not your blood...
But it's Jesus' blood, it's the Lamb's blood alone that can save us. What is that? Let me just say something to those of you who may not be Christians, you're not sure where you are, you're maybe outside the faith, and those of you who are inside the faith. This is a radical thing. First of all, for you, those of you who aren't sure what you believe, maybe you're on the outside, maybe you're thinking about God, maybe you're thinking about Christianity. You're wondering whether this is for you. This is good news. You know why? Why?
It doesn't, I don't care what you've done. I don't care where you've been. I don't care how bad you've ever been. I don't care what your record is like. And the gospel in a sense doesn't either. See, people very often say, well, I need God. I need him in my life. I need to connect, but I don't know after what I've done. Don't you see what this is saying?
It doesn't matter whether you've been practically to the gates of hell. It doesn't matter whether you're guilty of murder, and this is New York City, and some of you may be. It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't matter how dark the secrets. It doesn't matter what you've been living with. Don't you see? You are no more hopeless than the most respectable person in the world. And you are every bit, every bit, every bit as capable of walking under that doorpost.
Don't you see? It's not your blood. It's not his. It's not your perfection, but his perfection that provides this. It doesn't matter what you are. It doesn't matter what you've done. Come. On the other hand, Christian friends, now listen carefully. Do you believe this?
Do you believe that we are no different than anybody else, that it's not our blood? See, we may say this, but there's all sorts of ways in which you can easily come into the Christian faith and still, in sort of deep and profound ways, still think that what makes you right with God is your blood. And now, in some cases, there are people in the church who essentially think of themselves as superior because of their family. It's not your blood.
But a little more normal thing for it to happen in a place like New York is, you know, you've worked hard. You've sweated blood to get where you are. You've done an awful lot. You've attained. You've performed. And there's a tendency to look down your nose at people who haven't, who haven't worked that hard, haven't sacrificed, haven't gotten where you've gotten. It's not your blood. We should be so open.
to people who are of different races. We should be so open to people who are of different levels of performance. We should be so open to people who disagree with us, people who have different approaches, different cultures. Nobody should be more open to people different than we are because nobody should be more open. Why? Because we know that we're all under the destroyer and it's only the lamb's blood that makes a difference. Number one.
We're all under judgment. Think of what that means. Number two, Jesus' death. The second thing we learn here is that Jesus' death is a propitiation. Jesus' death, the meaning of Jesus' death is that it turns away the wrath and justice of God. I know this is the most unpopular doctrine. Why would the death of a man 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, be relevant to you?
I suggest, unless you understand as the land of God, there is no relevance. I've heard people say, well, the good thing about it is we don't believe in the wrath of God and this blood atonement. We believe that Jesus Christ, his death showed how much he loved us. He showed how it's good to sacrifice for other people. But in your effort to get rid of this idea of the wrath of God,
In order to come up with a more loving concept of God, you have come up with a less loving concept of God. Don't you know? What did he do there for you? The reason the destroyer... What did he do there for you? The reason the destroyer did not go in to the doors where there was blood was because the destroyer saw the blood had already been shed. The sword had already come down. Destruction had already happened.
So the destroyer didn't go in. It was the wrath that had already fallen that turned away the destroyer. God never takes two payments for the same sin. One payment has to be made. When Jesus Christ was on the cross, it got dark outside. But there was nothing like the darkness that happened inside his heart.
And a lot of people want to know what happened on the cross. What was so bad? If you don't understand him as the lamb of God, if you don't understand that what he did on the cross was he took the wrath of God. I'll tell you what happened on the cross. The destroyer came to his door and went in.
the destroyer, the wrath of God. And if you want to understand what happened, you have to just look at this word, firstborn. The reason that God keeps calling Jesus the firstborn is not because, by the way, that the Bible is trying to keep the law of primogeniture on the books. The reason is because God is trying to show you what kind of relationship that the Father and the Son had.
The Father and the Son had a relationship of love that we cannot even imagine. The Father is a fountainhead of joy. And whenever the Son turned to the Father to pray to the Father, heaven opened up every time. In came waves, a tidal wave of love, perfect intimacy with the source of all joy and love in the universe. That's what Jesus had. And on the cross, when the destroyer came in, Jesus turned to the Father.
And what opened to his view? Nothing but utter darkness, the abyss, hell. He was cut off. The destroyer went in. Now, there's two kinds of sufferings that Jesus had. He was speared. He was nailed. He was pierced with thorns. And then the other kind of suffering was the destroyer came into his door.
Now, if you don't believe the destroyer came in, you have no idea what he did up there for you. Because the physical sufferings were just flea bites compared to the spiritual sufferings. In your effort to have a more loving God by saying, I don't believe in the wrath of God and the blood atonement, you now have a less loving God. Put it this way, the glory of God's mercy is not that it devours his justice, but that it satisfied it.
That's what Abraham saw when he understood the Lamb of God. Let me put it to you this way. If you found a person that had robbed you and you pulled that person into court and the judge looked down and said, well, yeah, this guy's guilty, but let's forget it. You know why you'd be unhappy? Because mercy had devoured justice. Mercy had just eaten it up, had gotten rid of it, had just laid it aside. Abraham knew that can't happen. You don't want a God like that. You don't even want to have a judge like that in your town, do you?
You don't want a God like that, but what you want is a God who's merciful and just. And on the way up the hill, Abraham said, how can God be just and merciful? Not a merciful God whose mercy devours justice and not a just God whose justice devours mercy. I can't live with either. How? How? How could it possibly be both? The Lamb. See, the glory of God is not that his mercy doesn't need payment.
but that his mercy makes the payment. God is not like these ancient gods where you had a sacrifice to them to turn aside their wrath, you know, like Agamemnon in the Iliad. You know, he's not getting good winds. He can't get to Troy. So what does he do? He sacrifices his daughter. And the gods say, okay, I'm appeased. And then they let him go. And you say, I can't believe in a God like that. You don't have a God like that because pagan gods...
With pagan gods, you have to propitiate. You have to do it. And you know what? A lot of you are still doing it because you've turned religion into a commercialism. The reason you come to church, the reason you give money, the reason you pray is you're bribing God. You're hoping that God will somehow turn aside his wrath. If you're good enough, maybe he'll listen to you. You're no different. That's not Christianity. In Christianity, God propitiates his own justice. Let me close with this kind of
I have to close, but let me close with a real, real practical point here. If you don't have a God both of mercy and justice, if you don't have a God both of incredible grace and holy anger towards sin, you will distort yourself. Distortions will be injected into your life. Think about it. If you have a God...
in which mercy devours justice. In other words, if you have a God of mercy and you say, I don't believe in a God of wrath. I don't believe in a God of hell. I don't believe a God who judges people and punishes people. I believe in a God who is a God of love. You're like a child who's got no boundaries. And they talk a lot about
abusive parents, but the worst abuse possible is to not ever say no to your kid, not to ever contradict your kid, not to ever confront your kid, not to ever say these are the limits, not to ever go head to head with your kid. If you don't, and that child grows up without boundaries, and that child decides that any impulse is okay.
That child grows up with a disorientation, a kind of spiritual vertigo. That child grows up not knowing which end is up. That child grows up feeling like an orphan because he or she is. And therefore, if you are growing up or if you have given to yourself a concept of a God of mercy only and not justice, you will feel like an orphan because you are.
If you have not got a God who can say no to some of your deepest desires, if you don't have a God who can cross your will, if you don't have a God who says these things are wrong, if you say no, I believe in a God who would never, never contradict my deep feelings. If it feels so good, it couldn't be wrong. I don't believe in a God like that. If you don't have a God that can contradict you, you don't have a God. You've only got yourself. You feel like an orphan. You are.
But on the other hand, if you've got a God who is in which the justice eats up the mercy, if you've got a God who is all standards and all righteousness and no grace and no mercy, friends, you're going to be devoured too. You're going to be a driven person. Only love can elicit love. Fear can't elicit love. You're going to be a driven person. You're going to always be fleeing and no one pursuing. You need not a God whose mercy eats up justice or justice eats up mercy.
You need a God whose mercy satisfies justice, and that will only happen if you see the Lamb of God. Don't you see, friends? You will never be... The reason that Jesus Christ was so weak as the Lamb was because his love was so strong. And the more you look...
at how he loved you. It'll make you a lion on the inside and it'll enable you to be a lamb on the outside. You'll be able to be kind to people. You'll be able to be gentle to people no matter what happens. You know why? You know why you're never going to panic? You know why you're never going to go crazy? You'll stay a meek, gentle, peaceful lamb all the time because on the inside you're a lion because you know what he did for you. You're beholding the lamb of God. Are you doing it? This is the love you want.
No family love, no friend love, no parent love, no child love, no spouse love, no critical acclaim will ever fill you like this. Behold the Lamb of God. Let's pray. God, give us all such a vision of what our faith is in. We've talked about faith all fall, but now we see that faith and faith is not it. It's faith in this.
Faith in Jesus, our Passover. Faith in the sprinkling of blood. Faith in Jesus, the Lamb of God. Help us to see what that is. Help us to put our faith there so that we too become open, loving, stronger than death like your Son. In his name we pray. Amen.
Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. It's our hope that today's teaching challenges you to go deeper into God's Word. We invite you to help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great Gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com.
Today's sermon was recorded in 1994. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.