Christ's Sacrifice as Propitiation

Driving home: If you touch the keystone, you destroy the building itself.

Picture an arch — every stone matters, but the keystone is the central one. Touch the keystone and the whole arch comes down. So Christ's atonement is the keystone of the Christian system: pull it out and everything else collapses.

The author is saying, here's the keystone. Picture an arch. The keystone is that central stone, which if we move the whole arch comes crumbling down. The author is saying that in that keystone, everything prior to it is bound up in the nature of the creature who was to be redeemed. That is, what man is as a creature and a sinner. And everything that Scripture teaches about the nature of the Redeemer.

5:44 - 6:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Give yourself no rest until you understand the great biblical words — propitiation, redemption — for they are your translated inheritance.

Imagine a wealthy relative in another country dies and bequeaths you everything in his last will and testament — but the document is in a language you cannot read. Would you say, 'Well, it feels good to have a will in my pocket'? Of course not. You would give yourself no rest until you found a translator. So believers must understand the words of their inheritance — like 'propitiation.'

You cannot know your legacy unless you understand the terms. Let me illustrate. Suppose you had a relative who lived in another country, spoke another language. And one day in the mail there arrives a letter. And you see that the return address indicates that it comes from some of those relatives in that other country. And in it there is a statement written in English that this particular wealthy relative who lived in that particular country has died. And he's left a will.

10:00 - 10:27 Read in full sermon

Years after stealing the blessing, Jacob hears Esau is coming with four hundred men. He is terrified, certain Esau still wants him dead. So he sends drove after drove of livestock as a present, saying, 'I will appease him with the gift that goes before me.' That word — appease — is the same word as propitiate.

Esau the hunter, Jacob more the mama's boy. And you remember the story how one day Papa wanted a nice savory meat and Mama with her mama's boy worked out a scheme whereby they could deceive Papa and deceive Esau. And you remember how Esau was robbed of his birthright? Scripture says he despised it for a mess of pottage or porridge. Pottage in Hebrews...

27:21 - 27:48 Read in full sermon

When David and his men are coming to destroy Nabal's household, Abigail rides out with provisions and humbles herself, and David's wrath is turned aside. Pastor Martin uses Proverbs 16:14 — 'a wise man will pacify it' — to illustrate the meaning of propitiation.

When David was ready to set upon her and the household because her churlish husband had treated him with such disrespect, and David and his troops are coming down ready to block them all out. And who comes out to meet him? Abigail comes out with great charm and wisdom. And by these gifts of food and kind words, what did she do? She turned away the anger of King David, so it did not fall upon her and her household. That's what this text is saying.

31:08 - 31:34 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Hell is not the place to which sin in the abstract will be banished. It's the place to which the sinner with his sin shall be banished.

Pastor Martin lists the displays of God's wrath: the angel with the flaming sword at Eden's gate, the Flood drowning a world, Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed, Nadab and Abihu struck dead, the bears and the mockers. The God of Gethsemane and Golgotha is the same God.

and set an angel with a flaming sword at paradise that man would not enter again until paradise is opened through Christ. The God of Gethsemane and Golgotha is the God of the flood when all but eight were absolutely obliterated from off the face of the earth. Men, women, children, babies in arms, infants hanging upon the bread.

36:04 - 36:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Take God's wrath, your sin, and the gospel invitation as real things — none are abstractions.

Picture God's longsuffering as a mighty dam holding back a vast reservoir of wrath. The day will come when God will break the wall and the tribulation and anguish will pour upon every soul that has not fled to Christ. But the believer can stand outside that flood — the wrath fell on Christ instead.

of God is like a mighty wall, a damn wall, holding back that great reservoir. There will come a time when Almighty God Himself will break the wall, and tribulation and wrath and anger will come upon your head. What will it take for some of us to realize that when the Scripture says, flee the wrath,

49:52 - 50:19 Read in full sermon