Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: The working definition of grace in most of Western Christianity comes down to two words, basically unmerited favor.
God's goodwill given to people who have done nothing to deserve it and in fact deserve the opposite of, of that.
Grace is seen sort of as the divine override of an earned and horrendous judgment that is owed. You've heard this, got questions, which is.
I use it a lot because if you type a Bible question into Google, you are very likely your first option will take you to gotquestions.org it is a very, very influential site. GotQuestions.org is helpful here. It says grace can be variously defined as God' favor toward the unworthy or God's benevolence on the undeserving.
In his grace, God is willing to forgive us and bless us abundantly in spite of the fact that we don't deserve to be treated well or dealt with generously.
The fact that grace is a gift means that nothing is owed in return.
But the price of such an extravagant gift came at a great cost for our Lord Jesus, who died in our place.
Now that last line, I want you to file that away for later because this really is going to become a key component of the work that we're going to do in our weeks ahead and in our series. But what I highlighted there, what I describe, is a fundamental understanding of grace for most Jesus followers. And I am in no way like showing up to tear that down. But. But it is important.
I want to show you what the Hebrew text actually is doing with a similar word, chain, and why it matters so very, very much for us as disciples of Yeshua. This is, by the way, where we start our series that is called Atonement Explained with Grace. That's where we start, Atonement with grace. We are just today opening the book of Leviticus for the first time through this Torah cycle. So we began in Leviticus 1:1 learning about atonement and burnt offerings and blood and birds and cows and flour and meal offerings and all that stuff. But in Hebrew, the word chain.
Say it just so you got it.
Good, good. As long as you don't have like a respiratory infection, you can really dig into the chain.
Chain in, in the places where that actually is living and breathing in the Torah. It's doing something different than what I just described to you, something I would.
I don't want to put weight, but something very, very rich. Something that is going to help us understand, hopefully how we see and know and appreciate Yeshua. Now someone will hear that description of grace. That I'm offering, supported bygotquestions.org and say, yes, and so what?
What's wrong with that? That's what I've always believed. And that is how grace is primarily taught and brought backed up by Scripture. One would say, and there is a litany of Scripture to back this up. Ephesians 2. 8. I don't want to read through all of them, but for grace. For by grace you've been saved through faith. This is not from yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast. Romans 3. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace. Romans 11. And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works. If it were, it would no longer be grace. These are real Pauline verses.
And nothing is wrong in any way with that explanation of grace.
It is simply incomplete. Actually, The very, very familiar and real part of the concept of charis in Greek, in New Testament charis, great Greek. I mean grace.
Every single one of those verses is telling you something about your merit.
Your merit, your righteousness. They are saying quite plainly, you did not earn this.
This is not from you. It's not of works. No one can boast about it. All have sinned and fall short. Paul is making very specific argument. He's saying, the ground that you're standing on right now, you didn't build it.
And don't think for a second that your obedience constructed that platform. That's what he's saying, in a sense. And he's right. Of course he's right.
But here is what Paul is not saying.
He is not saying that righteousness is irrelevant to the equation. He is not saying that merit plays no role at all in grace.
And he is not saying.
He is saying that your merit doesn't get you there. But there is a massive difference between no one's righteousness or merit matters and your righteousness matters. It's a little confusing, but just stay with me. It belongs to someone else. The merit. Someone did merit it. You didn't. And that's why you can't boast. Is that simple enough? It's pretty clear. I think we all know this.
But it is that merited favor.
Merited favor that brings us in line with what the Hebrew Bible calls chain or grace.
And we'll see how this chain has worked.
Grace even before Jesus.
The people whose faithfulness is operative in securing grace.
Tzadikim is the word. Tzadikim. Righteous ones, the ones who stand before God on Behalf of others and the Torah and the Tanakh. Show us what this looks like. Noah, literally, the word Noah found Chain in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6. Joseph found chain with his master, Potiphar. Esther found Chain before the king. And Moses says to God over and over in Exodus 33, if I have found Chain in your sight.
Merited favorite.
Now you read those four. Listen to those four things. What do they have in common?
Well, in every case, Chain here is describing a relational dynamic between two people or between one person and God.
One party has demonstrated something. Faithfulness, trustworthiness. They have a track record. The other party has taken notice of this and that. Favor results in other and real favor, meaning meaningful favor. Even salvation through Chain.
Now, you have to hold on to that for a second.
Noah walked with God, right?
The favor followed the faithfulness.
He was a righteous man. It says Joseph found Chain with Potiphar.
Not by just showing up to work.
Joseph had Potiphar watching over him, who saw his integrity. He saw that everything Joseph did prospered. And the favor followed the faithfulness. Esther did not just fumble into the throne room and happened to find grace with the king. It was not accidental. She prepared, she fasted, she risked her life. He loved her very much. She had demonstrated many things. And Moses was. Moses, Moses, Moses. I know the last time I was here, before you, we talked a lot about Moses. Guess what? Let's talk a lot about Moses today anyway.
For a lot of time, we see this with Moses. Now you notice the pattern. Every one of those stories Chain is connected to demonstrated standing. It is not arbitrary.
It's not really even a gift.
It implies merited favor. Someone merited it. And that, I know that turns some things upside down a little bit. That sounds kind of like we're undoing the Reformation in Macon, Georgia, on a Saturday morning. Because we're changing grace. We're fiddling with grace.
We're not, but just stick it out.
We covered the golden calf crisis in detail, right? You remember the narrative. God got really, really angry. He distanced himself from Israel. He called them Moses. They're your people, right? Offered to send an angel. But first he said, I'm going to kill you all. Then he said, I'll send an angel and not his presence. And Moses pushed back and he argued and he pressed and we went through all that. But I want some additional perspective that's related to this word study on Chain for what Moses was doing in the tent of meeting.
Rabbinic tradition has a term for this. It is called a sonagor. Which is from Greek. It doesn't sound Hebrew, does it?
The advocate, the defense attorney, Moses, the sonagore. Have you heard this before?
Probably not. It's a courtroom image. Israel stands not only accused, but guilty.
The evidence indisputable. 40 days after hearing God's voice from Sinai, they did this really, really bad thing. Moses stands up and he doesn't even try to deny the facts. He doesn't try to minimize it. He's just simply going to this thing with God. He's going to argue the case. He's going to present the reasons why the judgment should be tempered and why God should change his mind.
Because that's what is at stake.
And I want you to pay attention to this because, again, we talked about it. But Moses argues in stages. First, God's reputation.
Moses is calling God's reputation into question. Right. What are they going to think about you in Egypt if you abandon us?
It's a legal argument. It kind of works. Then the patriarchs. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Remember what you swore to them? He's challenging God on his word.
That is called zechut avot.
Say it.
I'm really working on the ches with you today.
Zechutavot, the merit of the fathers. That's the second component of Moses argument. Very real, very powerful. That's covenantal stuff with Abraham. Moses leans on it.
And as the conversation deepens, though, Moses moves away from those two things, relies less and less on those.
And the reputation thing goes away. The patriarchs go away. And what is left now is Moses himself, his relationship, his chain.
He uses God's own words back to God.
God said, you have found.
You have found favor. Okay? God, if that chain is real, if that actually means something, if I've done that, if I've earned it, then let it count. Let it matter for these people and not just for me.
That's like the ultimate synagogue. And remember what we established about that chain. What was significant about chain. God offers to go because of Moses. Chain. God says, okay, you're right. You've earned it. I'll go with you.
Singular pronoun. My presence will go with you, Moses, because you have chain. You have found favor in my eyes. That's a generous offer which Moses immediately turns down.
If your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. Us, not me. You gotta love Moses.
Got to love him. He has every reason to take that deal. He has already been through hell and back with these people. They've already started complaining about what they miss in Egypt. It's already started. He's come down and has this. They built this calf, which would make any leader say, this is not worth it.
Yes, The God of the universe offers me a personal arrangement. I'll take it.
But he says, no. If my chain means anything to you, God my favor, it has to mean something for them too.
He binds himself to the people.
He refuses. I will not be separated. And God, Moses wins.
I mean, do you think about the miraculous occasion here?
Moses wins the argument.
I will also do this thing of which you have spoken. Why?
Because you have found chain in my sight.
Because of you, on the merit of one righteous man, standing with God, all Israel is granted standing with God.
Does this sound familiar?
That's the mechanic. That's how it functions. The chain of the tzadik, the righteous one, extends it to the people. He identifies with it. There's another thing.
The last part of this pattern, that tzadik, Moshe, Moshe the righteous. He's demonstrating. In Exodus 32, after the calf, verse 32, before the tent of meeting, Moses says, but now, if you'll forgive their sin.
Stop.
Read the text. The sentence cuts off in the middle.
This is like.
This is the intense moment.
You can picture it, you can imagine it. And he's but if you'll forgive their sin.
And he stops. There's a fancy word for it. It's called apasiopesis.
A sentence that breaks off in the middle because the speaker simply cannot finish it.
The emotion cannot, will not. The emotion is too large. But then he continues. He says, but now, if you'll forgive their sin.
But if not, please blot me out of your book which you have written.
Blot me out. Now we need to stop.
Because you have to know what he doesn't say and what informs the rest of the stories that we read. The narrative of the Bible. He does not say, take me instead of them.
He does not say, punish me instead of them.
That would be a penal substitute.
That would be, I'll take their penalty, release them. A transaction. That would be a swap. He doesn't say that. What he says is, if they go, I go. If they're erased, erase me. If they have no standing before you, then I have no standing. My fate, Their fate, my destiny. Their destiny. It is not a transaction. He is declaring solidarity with these unworthy people in this moment anyway.
And it's everything he has, all of the accumulated favor. He brings it and lays it before God and says, forgive us.
If my chain means anything, it must count for them. Now he can say this.
Why can he say this?
Because he knows something about God. Early from the burning bush, he knows God said, you have my favor. And Moses trusts that. And he's gonna stake everything on it. It's not some kind of gamble. Paul actually does something similar. You wouldn't really see it this way. But back In Romans, Romans 9, when Paul says, I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Messiah for the sake of my people, those of my own race, I could wish, but I don't have to because I know God. And he continues this incredible section of Romans in 11 by saying, I could, but I don't have to because God is faithful and all Israel will be saved.
Moses trusts God unbelievably here to say what he says.
The pattern, Paul's pattern is the same. It's the passion, the willingness to be bound to a people before God.
Moses does not speak here in the language of transaction as much as solidarity. I want you to hear that. Not transfer. My transfer, a penalty.
Blot me out if they're blotted out.
Solidarity. And this is what it looks like when a tzaddik, when a righteous person stands with people before God, not instead of them with them.
You understand how significant the difference is?
This is very close to what Jewish tradition or the rabbis later would describe. As we talked about. Zechut avot. This is Zechariah.
This is the merit of the righteous.
Moses as advocate, as Sonagore makes very, very clear arguments. He did zechut avot.
Now he relies most heavily. All the weight goes on Zechut hatzadikim. The merit of the righteous. The righteousness of a living person demonstrated in real time, obedience, walking with God so much that their relationship has weight with God.
You remember a message a few weeks ago I gave called Impressing God. Really unpopular title.
This is it.
The genuine favor, the chain that can be placed on the line with God.
His final appeal is not about the Father's or God's reputation. It's about Moses and what God promised to him.
Not a bargain. He earned it.
He earned it.
So I'll come back to where we started. Most people have a definition of grace.
The grace definition usually ends up landing squarely on us.
Personal salvation through grace. But it's so important to always see a much, much, much bigger story. One man's chain becomes the means by which Israel receives mercy.
The pattern runs through the Torah.
Noah's chain preserved eight people through the flood.
Noah's chain actually saved people.
Joseph, he has shown chain but listen to what his brothers say. His brothers say, you have saved our lives. We have found chain in your eyes. But only because he first found chayn and in someone else's eyes. And this time in a gross pagan Egyptian death centered culture, Joseph was seen.
By the way, Joseph is certainly a type, a representative of Messiah.
So many people were saved by Joseph. This is a recurring biblical pattern. The righteous one stands before God. The righteous one stands with the people. And the people stand with them because of who stands with not instead of them with them. So when Paul says not of works that no one may boast, he's still not dismantling this, he's actually explaining it. The reason you can't boast is because what you're enjoying isn't yours. And he's not even saying it's because of your filthy, sinful, worthless, despicable, deserving of flame and torment state. Paul doesn't even believe that. That's another message.
It's about the tzaddik. He's saying someone did merit it, just not you.
Now this is not a rejection of the Christian understanding of grace, it's an expansion of it. What we've inherited from Western theology is in no way wrong about what you didn't earn. But it's incomplete because it's going to miss some things about the one who did.
So here we are. Chain merited favor. Solidarity, not substitution. The tzaddik binds himself to the people. He refuses individual favor. He stands with them. His standing becomes their standing. Moses earned it.
Now, most people hearing what I'm saying believe that Yeshua is the ultimate tzaddik. Yes, in the room, I'm certain of it.
Online, I don't know. But I believe that too.
The one who's standing before God covers us. But when most people think of grace, they think only of Jesus Christ.
Grace is salvation. Salvation comes through the cross. That's the whole picture for most believers.
But that's not what we just saw.
We saw Moses ched chat. He earned favor that covered a nation. Israel was saved. Not metaphorically. God forgave them and saved them. The relationship that was about to be destroyed and end survived.
But no one died for it.
Now actually some Levites died, but that's a different thing.
No one died for it. We start Leviticus. As I said, this happened before any discussion of sacrifice or blood. In the way many people instinctively assume these things. The first Redeemer, that's Moses, secured salvation for his people through demonstrated faithfulness and solidarity. So if grace is misunderstood and I think it is part of the misunderstanding is that we skip straight to the cross and miss everything that came before it.
And everything that came before it is going to matter a great deal as we move forward.
When we come back next week, I have to ask these questions. Is Yeshua's chain, which he definitely has in unlimited measure, is it real in the same way as Moses, not just that God showed up and performed a rescue, but that a man, lived a life, was tested, proved faithful, demonstrated something that with the Father carried weight.
Because if his righteousness is just God being God, then the pattern we've been tracing does not apply to him.
And if it doesn't apply, then we might need. Well, if it does apply, then we might need to talk about him differently than we've been taught in some circles. And that's where we're going to go.
Right before Passover, when our eyes turn to the sacrifice of Jesus.
We have very much to cover.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Shabbat Shalom I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel.
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