The Curse Motif of the Atonement – R C Sproul

The following sermon is from the YouTube site, Ligonier Ministries, linked below.

The Ligonier conference, from which this sermon came, was themed, ‘Together for the Gospel.’

R C’s sermon carefully explained The Day of Atonement; covenant blessings and curses; propitiation; expiation; the cross; imputation; substitution… the foundation stones of the gospel.

If you  desire to know the biblical gospel message; bolster your own gratitude to the Lord; draw nearer to Him by possessing greater knowledge of Him…, then this sermon can benefit you.

The following points are HIGHLIGHTS [bracketed statements, emboldening and underscoring are mine]:

• Text: Galatians 3:10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” 11  Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” 12  But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” 13  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14  so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. 
• For 50 years he has contemplated, studied, read many tomes about the cross of Christ, yet believes he has only a superficial grasp of THAT MOMENT IN REDEMPTIVE HISTORY
• Speculations about his initial moments in heaven and knowing more about Christ’s work on the cross
• In contemplating the cross as it is described in the NT, we eventually understand that there is no one description or metaphor that can completely describe the cross
• We find many images, many metaphors that indicate that the cross is a multi-faceted event
• Running through the scriptures are numerous threads the make up a tapestry that is the atonement of Jesus
• Terms and images used to speak of the atonement include: substitution, a vicarious death; satisfaction of the justice and wrath of God the Father; the metaphor of the kinsman redeemer who pays the bridal price to purchase His bride with His own blood, releasing her from bondage; the motif of ransom that is paid; the motif of victory over Satan and the powers of darkness when the serpents head is crushed under the bruised heel of the Redeemer; and a curse, inflicted by God upon His own Son
• Earlier sermons at this (2008) conference focused on the more ‘gentle and kind gospel’ of our times, wherein the idea of the curse is neglected; such that it has almost become obscure
• We shrink in horror from such scriptures as the following:
• Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
• Isaiah 53:10  Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief… [KJV]
• Can you receive that, that somehow the Father took pleasure in bruising the Son when He set before Him that awful CUP of divine wrath?
• How could the Father take pleasure therein, EXCEPT that it was His eternal purpose via that bruising of Him to RESTORE us as His own children
• The word ‘curse’ today, conjures up images of voodoo and witchcraft; but the idea of the curse is deeply rooted in biblical history:
• God’s anathema on the serpent in Genesis 3
• At the giving of the Law under Moses via the covenant at Sinai, God attached to that covenant dual sanctions, a positive and a negative
• Positive sanction, or blessings from God, is seen in Deuteronomy 28:1-14
• Deuteronomy 28:1 “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2  And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God. 3  Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4  Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. [Refer to your Bible or to the following Bible Hub link for the rest of the verses: https://biblehub.com/esv/deuteronomy/28.htm  ]
• R C read those verses and then stated them again in a way that made them seem more relevant to our daily lives as follows:
• “What God is saying to Israel, If you keep my word, then I’m going to bless you in the city, in the country; when you rise up; when you lie down; I’ll bless you in the kitchen; I’ll bless you in the bedroom; I’ll bless you in the living room; I’ll bless your fields; I’ll bless your goats, your sheep, your cows, I’ll bless you all over the place. Your life will be nothing but an experience of divine benediction and blessedness…”
• BUT, if you DO NOT obey the voice of the Lord your God, and be careful to do all the commandments I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you: [read the above quotation and replace the word blessed with the word cursed]
• [The curses are recorded from verse 15 through verse 68, the end of the chapter. And Israel experienced most of them as a consequence of their sins.]
• R C quoted a verse from Isaac Watts song, Joy To The World:
• No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found, Far as the curse is found, Far as, far as, the curse is found
• How far do we find that curse?
• The apostle Paul said that the entire creation groans together in travail, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God
• We live on a planet that is under the curse of God
• What does that mean?
• THE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF GOD’S DIVINE CURSE VIA TWO WAYS:
• Via oracles. Most have heard of the Oracles of Delphi; but there were oracles before that, Isaiah, Jeremiah…
• Oracles given by God’s prophets were either oracles of weal or oracles of woe
• Weal = blessings, good news, prosperity…
• Woe= doom, cursing
• Oracles of weal: Psalm 1: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly…
• Oracle of woe: Psalm 1:4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
• Oracles of weal in the scriptures include: the beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…
• Isaiah pronounced an oracle of doom on himself in Isaiah 6, after he had a vision of the glory of the Lord:
• Isaiah 6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. 
• His words were the consequence of seeing himself in relation to God’s glorious presence
• Modern ears love to hear oracles of blessedness; but hate those of woe, examples given
• The idea of God bringing judgment upon a nation has been removed from our Bibles and pulpits…
• WHAT IT MEANT TO THE OT JEW TO BE CURSED:
• The simplest way will be to look at the Hebrew benediction and learn how the Jew understood blessing
• Numbers 6:24 The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: 25  The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: 26  The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace
• R C explained the Hebrew poetic form known as parallelism:
• Antithetical parallelism: ideas are used that contrast one another
• Synthetic parallelism: the building to a crescendo by piling words of on top of one another
• Synonymous parallelism: stating the same idea in different ways, as in the benediction above
• To the Jew, “May the Lord bless you,” = to be bathed in the effulgent glory that emanates from God’s face = may the Lord make His face to shine upon you
• Moses asked God to see His face:
• Exodus 33:18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19  And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20  But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 21  And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock,
• Exodus 34:6 The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…
• The beatific vision: 1 John 3:1  See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2  Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
• R C gave an example of divine effulgence shining upon the face of a slave from the movie, Ben Hur
• Now that you have some understanding of how the Jew viewed blessing from God, we are ready to talk about the antithesis, the polar opposite of God’s blessing; the malediction
• Substituting the word ‘blessed’ from the Aaronic benediction, we have
• May the Lord curse you and abandon you; May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace; May the Lord turn His back upon you and remove His peace from you forever
• THE DAY OF ATONEMENT:
• The imagery involved several animals: [see Leviticus 16]
• Before the high priest could enter into the Holy Place inside the veil, he had to make a blood sacrifice for himself and complete an elaborate ritual purification
• Then the high priest takes two goats, one is killed, the high priest uses its blood to sprinkle on the mercy seat, the throne of Yahweh, to bring reconciliation
• In this drama, the only power of that blood is that it is pointing forward to the blood of the Lamb
• Even as the blood on the door posts on the night of Passover pointed beyond itself to Christ, our Passover, who was sacrificed for us
• We learn two things from The Day of Atonement: without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins; and from the epistle of Hebrews, that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin
• The blood of the sacrifice that is sprinkled on the mercy seat symbolized an act of propitiation
• Some mid-twentieth century translators took from the Bible, to their everlasting shame
• Those two words which are central to the biblical gospel, propitiation and expiation, what is the difference? They have the same root
• R C noted that he explained to his congregants that their church building is built in the form of the cruciform; from the air, it forms the shape of a cross; when they walk down the center aisle, they are to let that remind them of propitiation, the vertical part of the cross
• Because in propitiation, the Son does something to satisfy the justice and the wrath of the Father; a vertical transaction; that was prefigured in the sacrifice that was made on the mercy seat
• The other animal, which liberal theologians try every way to erase from the biblical record; the goat, the scape goat, which becomes the object of imputation
• The priest lays his hands on the back of that goat, symbolically indicating the transfer or imputation of the guilt of the people to the back of that goat
• At the end of the ceremony, the goat is driven into the wilderness, OUTSIDE THE CAMP
• When God (in the book of Numbers) numbered the tribes and ordered them around the tabernacle, each on an equal distance from the tabernacle, He indicated that He is in the midst of His people
• That is, God established the camp, the covenant community
• To be driven outside the camp, was to be driven to a place that the blessings of God did NOT reach: sent into the outer darkness; into the wilderness; into exile; into the curse
• That is expiation
• In the cross, not only is the Father’s justice satisfied by the atoning work of his Son, but in bearing our sins the Lamb of God removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west
• HOW does He do it?
• By being cursed
• Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, not simply by being cursed for us, but becoming a curse for us. He who is the incarnation of the glory of God; not becomes the very incarnation of the divine curse; as it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree
• Example of R C was invited to speak at the Quaker society of Friends, to explain to them the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant
• As he spoke of The Day of Atonement in Israel and the crucifixion of Christ becoming cursed, a heckler said: “That’s primitive and obscene!”
• R C used those words to explain further and noted that the gospel was written for the common person, not scholars, so primitive a child can understand it
• Obscene: an obscenity that violates contemporary community standards, is Jesus on the cross; after He became the scape goat and the Father imputed to Him every sin of every one of His people, we see the most intense, dense, concentration ever experienced on this planet; Jesus was the ultimate obscenity
• The Father could not look on this concentration of evil; His eyes were averted from His Son; the light of His countenance was turned off; all blessedness was removed from His Son whom He loved – in its place was the full measure of the divine curse
• All the imagery that portrays the historical event of the cross is imagery of the curse
• Jesus had to be crucified by the Gentiles; to be executed by Gentiles outside the camp, Jerusalem, at Golgotha, so that the full measure of the curse and the darkness that attended it be visited upon Jesus
• God add to this scenario by prohibiting the sun from shining on Calvary
• Bearing the full measure of the curse, Christ screamed, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”
• The theologians distort that also
• Albert Switzer, for example, called Christ’s words the cry of a disillusioned prophet who believed that God was going to rescue Him at the eleventh hour, and He felt forsaken – He didn’t ‘feel’ forsaken, He was forsaken
• For Jesus to become the curse, He had to be utterly forsaken by the Father
• After 50 years of contemplating these things, R C can’t fathom what it meant that Jesus was forsaken by God
• But there is NONE of this to be found in the pseudo-gospels of our day
• Every time R C hears a preacher say “God loves you unconditionally,” he would that he be defrocked for such a violation of the word of God
• The words in such a message say to the Pagan, ‘I have no need of repentance and I don’t have to fear continuing in sin; it will all be taken care of by grace.’
• God does love people, even in their corruption. But they are still under His anathema
• Even though most of you are ministers or related to ministers; there is no guarantee that you are in the kingdom of God
• In a conference of this size of professing Christians, the odds are great that many in this room are still under the curse of God
• People who have not yet fled to the cross; who are still counting on that nebulous idea of the unconditional love of God to get into His Kingdom; or of getting in via works…
• However, by works, no one will enter; no one has kept the law for 5 minutes in their entire life
• THE REALITY: You will either bear the curse of God yourself; or you will flee to the One who took the curse for you
• The promise of the vision of God in the beatitudes, is a promise made to the ‘pure of heart’
• The reason you cannot see God with your eyes is not a fault of your optic nerve, but your heart, your impurity
• But Jesus had no impurity; but when my sin was placed upon Him, He was pure no more and God cursed Him
• It was as if God said, “God damn You!” As, that is what it meant to be under the anathema of the Father
• EVERY PERSON HERE, AND IN THE WORLD, WHO HAS NOT BEEN COVERED BY THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHRIST, DRAWS EVERY BREATH UNDER THE CURSE OF GOD
• If YOU believe that, then you’ll stop adding to the gospel and start preaching it with clarity and boldness, because it is the only hope we have and it is hope enough – END
• Closing prayer
• The conference: Together for the Gospel, 2008

 

 

STUDY RECOMMENDATIONS:

Read Leviticus 16 to review the Day of Atonement imagery and purposes

Read Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 to review COVENANT BLESSINGS AND CURSES

Read Galatians, Romans and Hebrews to get a sense of the connectedness, progression, unity… of God’s progressive redemptive plan based on a covenant of grace that was foreshadowed in Genesis 3, began with Abraham, amended with Moses and fulfilled in the New Covenant ratified in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For more on covenant theology in this blog, see CATEGORIES: Covenant Theology

Narrative and links from Ligonier Ministries, YouTube

Link to this sermon at Ligonier Ministries YouTube site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgwpd0SKpmc

146,138 views  May 13, 2015

This message is from the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference.

Purchase this conference as a digital download: http://www.ligonier.org/store/togethe…