Errors Concerning Propitiation, Part 1

If you want to teach a child what a horse is, you draw it, describe it, list its parts. But then he sees a giraffe and says, 'Pastor Martin, look — there's one of those things.' Now you must differentiate. Then he sees a cow and asks again. Teaching by contrast is essential — it is how Pastor Martin defends propitiation against errors.

If my concern is to teach a young child what a horse is, he's never seen a horse, but he's heard the word horse. Well, I would start by taking a picture or drawing a little rough diagram of a horse. And I would tell him a horse is an animal that has four legs. A horse is an animal that has a long neck. A horse is an animal that has two ears and has a tail. A horse is an animal that when full grown is usually bigger than the average man or woman.

6:28 - 6:55 Read in full sermon

Cartoonists in the seventies caricatured Nixon's ski-jump nose by exaggerating it to look like the slopes at St. Moritz. Caricatures distort one feature for effect. So enemies of the gospel caricature propitiation as pagan appeasement and then say, 'You don't worship that ugly thing, do you?'

Now, artistic caricature is for the sake of humor or emphasis of a certain facet of a person's personality or his political stance or something else. Everyone caricatured President Carter's 32-tooth grin. That was an easy one to caricature. Well, you see, the enemies of truth, instead of looking at the truth in its beautiful symmetry as found in the Scripture, they take a facet of the truth and they stretch it out of all due proportion until it becomes ugly.

12:31 - 12:59 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin reads from Packer's 'Knowing God,' chapter 18: pagan propitiation imagines capricious gods who get jealous, take offense at small things, and must be managed by cunning bribery — including human sacrifice. That is the caricature liberals project onto biblical propitiation.

issue than is found in J. I. Packer's book, Knowing God, chapter 18, The Heart of the Gospel, in which he says this, The idea of pagan propitiation is as follows. There are various gods, none enjoying absolute dominion, but each one with some power to make life easier or harder for you. The temper of these gods is uniformly uncertain.

13:31 - 13:56 Read in full sermon

After the Flood God promised never to destroy the earth again with water. So generation after generation of wicked nations have stood unconsumed. Why? Has God become indifferent to sin? No — Romans 3 says God 'passed over' sins in His forbearance, then displayed His righteousness in setting forth Christ as a propitiation.

God says, I'll never destroy the earth again with a flood. As long as the earth remaineth, there shall be seed time and harvest. And you look at the generations of the nations that lived in sins as bad as the sins of what we call the antediluvians. That's the before flood people. We see wickedness is great after the flood. Why no flood? We see wickedness right here. We are

26:10 - 26:34 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Propitiation is the answer to the great dilemma within the nature of God. How can He in love forgive and in light punish sin?

Pastor Martin asks why fire and brimstone do not fall today on flagrant immorality in the New York area as it fell on Sodom. Is God less righteous now than in Genesis 19? No — He passed over sins beforehand to demonstrate His righteousness in the cross.

Main Street Sodom in the New York metropolitan area, when men flaunt their homosexuality and their perversion and their deviant behavior. Why no fire and brimstone? Is God less righteous now? Is God less angry with sin and sinners? What about the generations whose sins cried up to heaven for a flood, for fire and brimstone, It appeared as though God was not righteous. What was He doing? He was passing over sin in His forbearance. Why? Because He was waiting for the fullness of the times when He would send His Son. Now get the text. When He set Him forth, He set Him forth to be what? Copaciatio...

26:37 - 27:31 Read in full sermon

The point: Refuse the cartoon of an angry Father and a loving Son — see all three persons as love and wrath together in one undivided will.

When Jesus drives out the moneychangers and overturns tables, what is that? It is divine anger in human manifestation. The Son shares the Father's holy wrath against sin — there is no opposition between a wrathful Father and a loving Son.

When you see him going through the temple, turning over the tables of the money changers and driving out the oxen with a scourge, what is that? That's divine anger in human manifestation. The spirit is angry. You see what happened when people lied to him in Acts chapter 5. He killed them. Why hast thou lied to the Holy Ghost? So you see, we must never conceive of the propitiation as though the father...

37:06 - 37:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray the publican's prayer in earnest: 'God, be propitious to me the sinner, on the grounds of what your beloved Son has done.'

The Pharisee thought he could deal with God directly without a mediator. The publican stood at a distance, would not lift his eyes, smote his breast, and said, 'God, be propitious to me, the sinner.' Pastor Martin notes the publican uses the very word — propitious — that he has been preaching.

Stupid Pharisee thought he could have direct dealings with God without a mediator. Not so the publican. He does not so much as look up to heaven. His eyes, as it were, form a triangle. He says, I shall have dealings with heaven only in terms of what's happening on that altar. Oh, God be propitious to me, the sinner. He goes completely out of himself in seeking forgiveness and acceptance and a turning away of divine wrath.

48:51 - 49:18 Read in full sermon