Life Conquers Death | Atonement Explained Series

[00:00:01] Speaker A: The death pays the penalty. The death absorbs the wrath. The death satisfies punishment and the resurrection. It's like a stamped receipt that said, okay, the transaction worked. And that is what I am challenging. Not in any way the resurrection or the cross. I'm not saying that Christianity ignores the resurrection. It does not. Easter is the holiest day on the Christian calendar. The Resurrection is central to the Christian faith, to its worship, to faith, to hope, to proclamation. But you think about how much of Christian devotion has been shaped by the suffering itself. The hymns, the altar calls, the Passion, [00:00:52] Speaker B: plays, God forbid, the Passion of the Christian. I understand that the suffering is very real. [00:01:03] Speaker A: The brutality is real, the love. But if death and suffering occupy the biggest chunk of real estate in our devotion, we may miss what it is [00:01:19] Speaker B: that the Gospels are actually showing us. The Gospels are giving us something bigger. [00:01:25] Speaker A: They're showing us that the resurrection is not just the paid in full receipt. It is the revelation that his holy [00:01:35] Speaker B: life was stronger than death itself. [00:01:43] Speaker A: Here's the stage. [00:01:46] Speaker B: Here's the stage in John 1. [00:01:50] Speaker A: He stands in the wilderness and he says, I immerse in water. John answered, among you stands one you do not know, coming after me, whose [00:02:03] Speaker B: sandals I am not worthy to untie. [00:02:08] Speaker A: These things happened in Bethany, beyond the [00:02:10] Speaker B: Jordan, where John was immersing. The next day, the next day, John [00:02:15] Speaker A: sees Yeshua coming to him and says, behold the Lamb of God who takes [00:02:22] Speaker B: away the sin of the world. [00:02:26] Speaker A: I want you to picture that moment [00:02:28] Speaker B: for just a second. John is doing all of this work [00:02:31] Speaker A: and speaking of repentance. And you can just picture it. It's like out of nowhere. The next day, [00:02:41] Speaker B: Yeshua and John stops and makes eye contact and says, here he is. Here he is. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This is the one about whom I told you as he speaks. And I can imagine the excitement and [00:03:19] Speaker A: even some nervousness and maybe some tears. This is the one I told you about. He comes after me. He's above me because he was before me. I didn't know him. I came immersing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel. That's the moment we ended last week [00:03:47] Speaker B: at a threshold where we learned that [00:03:49] Speaker A: the prophets did not place Israel's ultimate [00:03:53] Speaker B: hope in the ordinary sacrificial system, although [00:03:56] Speaker A: they knew that system was holy. They knew how much it mattered. They knew that it did what God [00:04:03] Speaker B: asked it to do for his people. [00:04:05] Speaker A: But when the. The deepest corruption was in view, that kind of polluted land that brought exile, they looked beyond the system to God forgiving, to God washing, to God placing his spirit within his people. And then he sees Yeshua and he [00:04:31] Speaker B: says it, behold, here it is. That line is so. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. [00:04:48] Speaker A: So loaded actually for most people as well, that it is almost impossible to hear that line, to think of that story without importing an entire finished theory into it, that actually within this, many are taught to hear it in some sense as a death announcement. Here he is, the final sacrifice, the atoning victim, the one, the lamb, who will absorb all punishment so God can finally forgive. Behold, We're going to come back to [00:05:37] Speaker B: the phrase next week, who takes away the sins of the world. But the setting matters here that John has been baptizing with water. [00:05:48] Speaker A: And he says the coming one will [00:05:50] Speaker B: immerse in the Holy Spirit. [00:05:52] Speaker A: As we know from last week, that is prophetic language. That is Ezekiel language. That is divine cleansing language. That is water washing. I will sprinkle clean water on you. [00:06:08] Speaker B: God says through Ezekiel in verse chapter [00:06:10] Speaker A: 37, I will cleanse you from all your impurities. I will put my spirit within you. And what is about to happen [00:06:24] Speaker B: is [00:06:24] Speaker A: that Yeshua is going to show in [00:06:27] Speaker B: the land that he is that answer, [00:06:33] Speaker A: that he can and will do what [00:06:35] Speaker B: the promised prophets promised that God would do. [00:06:42] Speaker A: So when John points, stops, stares, beholds [00:06:49] Speaker B: the Messiah, we read this in the stream that John has been standing in. Again, pun intended. He is announcing the one through whom God is about to do the work. And this is not one who talks of purification. It is one who brings it. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Now, we have explored this principle of ritual impurity contamination. And what happens ritually. Impure contamination moves outward from the unclean to the clean, from the impure to the pure, from death that contaminates the living. The sick contaminate the well. The corpse contaminates an entire room, a house, A person with scale disease, tzarat cannot enter the camp because their contamination, their impurity, would spread to everyone that they touched. This is how the system works. Impurity flows outward and holiness must be guarded. [00:08:00] Speaker B: And what happens in the Gospels is this reverses. And that's what I want to talk to you about today that Yeshua walks [00:08:09] Speaker A: through the land, and at every encounter with the major forms of ritual impurity, the direction flips. Impurity does not spread to him. Holiness spreads to them. This is Matthew Thiessen's argument in a [00:08:32] Speaker B: book entitled the Jesus and the Forces of Death. I recommend everyone read it. And it fits the Gospels perfectly. [00:08:42] Speaker A: Yeshua's holiness is contagious. Life moves outward from him and the current runs backward. Let me show you what this looks like in three escalating related cases. The first one we talked about last week. I'll touch on it briefly. The Metzorah, the one afflicted with serat, the man with scale disease in Mark 1, you remember this? He comes to Yeshua desperate. He's socially cut off. He's a picture, literal picture of disintegration. And Yeshua touches him. And instead of that impurity reaching Yeshua and spreading, cleansing goes out to the man. Something was being revealed in this moment of time that people do not pay attention to. When scale disease, it heals. When scale disease is healed. We've seen it before. The prophet Elisha instructs Naaman to wash in the Judea, in the Jordan. I'm sorry. Moses intercedes for Miriam when they have scale disease. But Yeshua does not stand back and pray. He doesn't defer the cleansing to water and time. He simply touches the man and impurity leaves. You see, the priest could diagnose, the prophet could intercede. But Yeshua comes and purifies at the very source of the thing. He sends the healed man to the priest to offer what Moses commanded. We touched on this because he's honoring the order that God established. He's not bypassing the priesthood. He's doing something the priesthood was. Was never able to do. That's beat one. [00:10:48] Speaker B: The next thing. [00:10:50] Speaker A: The woman with the issue of blood. Mark five. An ongoing discharge. How long? 12 years. I need you to understand. 12 years and what that meant for her. 12 years of separation, of restriction. 12 years of embodied weakness. 12 years unable to participate normally in sacred life, in family life, in intimate life. And she is not morally wrong. She has not sinned. The Torah does not condemn her. She's suffering under a condition that has turned her body into a boundary between living and feeling dead, Between being apart, between belonging and a feeling of separation. 12 years. And she comes to Yeshua completely, like, desperate. She's in the crowd. She probably knows she shouldn't be there. She reaches out, she touches. And by every rule of what we know, that impurity should have traveled out of her and up his garment and into Him. [00:12:27] Speaker B: But that is not what happens. What happens? [00:12:32] Speaker A: Power goes out from him. Her impurity did not, could not, defile His Holiness. His holiness dried up her impurity, [00:12:49] Speaker B: and the direction is once again reversed. And what gets restored is not just [00:12:57] Speaker A: the removal of blood. Her access, her participation, her purity, possibly fertility. I mean, think about the depth of this. I know from experience the pain of infertility for women that I have counseled. I understand this. 12 years and in a touch it's gone. [00:13:31] Speaker B: He restores her life in the community of God. Reconciliation. Step two. Beat two. [00:13:38] Speaker A: Beat three. Avi avot Hattumach. The father of fathers of impurity. The rabbis called it death. Corpse contamination. Death, the highest level. Death is the final contamination, the most. Mortality has accomplished its work. A corpse defiles everything. Stepping on a grave defiles the person because of the death and its impurity going out. [00:14:15] Speaker B: And yet Yeshua moves toward what everyone backs away from. Jairus daughter. He takes her by the hand. The widow's son at Nain. He touches the bier Lazarus. He stands at the grave and he calls him out. And every one of those encounters should have defiled him. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Everyone. [00:14:51] Speaker B: But death does not conquer him because life goes out from him. That is beat three. Now consider the escalation scale disease. The living resemble the dead. Chronic flow of blood drains life away continuously. [00:15:11] Speaker A: Corpse impurity, the full reality of death. In every case with Jesus, the current runs backwards. Impurity does not spread. Holiness should withdraw. It does not. They are restored in relationship. And these are not random miracles. And even their placement from scale, disease to blood to death. The Gospels are trying to show you something. It's the way that they're telling who this is. Ritual impurity, especially major ritual impurity, belongs to the realm of morality, mortality, of loss, of decay, of brokenness and death pressing in on human life. And that is the frame. And what Jesus is doing here is not battling against the strict purity laws of the Torah. He's not just doing nice things. He's not just being compassionate. It's not just that he had power. He is confronting the forces of death [00:16:24] Speaker B: with his life. [00:16:29] Speaker A: Because [00:16:32] Speaker B: we know that the sacrificial system could address the effects of impurity as they pressed against that sacred space. We spent a lot of time talking about that. But the sacrificial system could never do this. The temple could not cleanse those people. [00:16:48] Speaker A: The temple in many ways managed the consequences. [00:16:52] Speaker B: And Yeshua addressed the source. That's what he's doing. And please don't miss. [00:16:59] Speaker A: If Yeshua can remove the sources of major ritual impurity themselves, not just managing their after effects and not certifying that anyone's clean or contained, but if he can remove them, it's telling the world something's different here. Something's very different. And John's moment of pause that we opened with his acknowledgement, it echoes this. Behold the Lamb of God, the one I told you about, the one the prophets told you about, the one God promised. If he can do these things, he can do those things. Major, major things he can accomplish. The deeper purification the prophets long for, the moral purification, the forgiveness of sins. It's within his life to do it. These are analogies in action. [00:18:03] Speaker B: Actually. [00:18:04] Speaker A: These are the Gospel's way of showing that God is finally dealing with, with [00:18:11] Speaker B: the pollution of the heart. So I want you to catch this. [00:18:14] Speaker A: This is why. This is why in Matthew 12, Yeshua can say something greater than the temple is here. No matter what you've heard previously, that is not an anti temple line. This is not him saying the temple was bad, the priesthood is illegitimate. The temple is holy. He went there, the priesthood is appointed. He deferred to them. The Temple, holy as it was, could not do what he's doing. [00:19:00] Speaker B: Something greater is here, he said, not because that's wrong, but because God's own cleansing power has arrived that's greater. And there is a second thing that the pattern tells us, and this is [00:19:19] Speaker A: really everything I told you in a messianic synagogue. It's all got a point here. And this is where it points. The Gospels do not present Yeshua as some disembodied force that's happening to touch some impure people along the way. And oh yeah, I'll do some greater things later. This is a man living a particular life in real time, under real circumstances, walking in real dust, among real people. And we have been tracing the weight throughout this series of that kind of life. From the very first message that we hit in this series, we started talking about, about merited favor. The tzaddik, the righteous one who demonstrates faithfulness, carries the covenant weight. And we saw Noah as this, we saw Joseph, we saw Moses who refused to be separated from his people because he was fully invested. He said, blot me out. Remember this, this is the pattern. And then we said, that's not just grace, that's merited favor. It's not automatic. It has to be demonstrated, walked out, proven. And that is what Yeshua is demonstrating through his tzaddik life. This is what it looks like. It is holiness around perfection and covenant, fidelity. [00:20:55] Speaker B: And his hain walks into a room where the forces of death are and they are gone. It is his life that's doing this, The contagious holiness of a perfectly faithful life. The Gospels are not random. They're showing you all of this so beautifully. Death itself cannot stay in the room when he walks in. Now, in much popular atonement theology, the resurrection is celebrated. [00:21:43] Speaker A: But what I find is that the saving mechanism, the saving mechanism is still so often entirely located in the death. The death pays the penalty. The death absorbs the wrath. The death satisfies punishment and the resurrection. It's like a stamped receipt that said, okay, the transaction worked. And that is what I am challenging. Not in any way the resurrection or the cross. I'm not saying that Christianity ignores the Resurrection. It does not. Easter is the holiest day on the Christian calendar. The Resurrection is central to the Christian faith, to its worship, to faith, to hope, to proclamation. But you think about how much of Christian devotion has been shaped by the suffering itself. The hymns, the Altar calls, the Passion [00:22:46] Speaker B: plays, God Forbid, the passion of the Christian. I understand that the suffering is very real. [00:22:58] Speaker A: The brutality is real, the love. But if death and suffering occupy [00:23:06] Speaker B: the [00:23:06] Speaker A: biggest chunk of real estate in our devotion, we may miss what it is [00:23:13] Speaker B: that the Gospels are actually showing us. The Gospels are giving us something bigger. [00:23:19] Speaker A: They're showing us that the resurrection is not just the paid in full receipt. It is the revelation that his holy [00:23:30] Speaker B: life was stronger than death itself. Now listen, I'm going to tread lightly, but I'm going to walk boldly where no man has walked. I'm just kidding. Death by itself is not unique. Suffering by itself is not unique. Injustice by itself is not unique. [00:23:57] Speaker A: If all we say is that salvation happened because a righteous person died, then [00:24:04] Speaker B: we have missed the real story. [00:24:09] Speaker A: Because if what saves is simply that there was suffering and death, guess what? The Jewish story, that's already part of the Jewish story, the idea of suffering. The prophets knew innocent blood. John the Baptist himself would suffer, and he could qualify as a righteous martyr. Rome had crucified many, many Jews. When Yeshua was a young boy, Varus crucified about 2000 people during unrest in Judea. 2000 innocent people crucified along the streets, the sides of the road. So crucifixion itself was not unique. Jewish suffering under Rome was not unique. Courageously willing to die for others was not unknown. It is not unknown today. [00:25:13] Speaker B: It has to be something about his life that entered that death. And here is the turn. Because his death absolutely matters. [00:25:26] Speaker A: Absolutely. It is a foundational component of the whole story. [00:25:34] Speaker B: It matters because of the life behind [00:25:37] Speaker A: it, because of the chain, because of the perfect fidelity that shaped it, because of the demonstrated merit that allowed it to have weight with God, because of the bond that he bore with the very people that were his own, because of his mission, because death could not hold him. This is my son, in whom I'm well pleased. You know that text, right? That does not mean merely, I am so pleased with him, because one day he will be executed. It means the whole life, his whole life, his whole path, it matters, the whole obedience. And we're going to come to Isaiah 53, and there will be plenty of [00:26:29] Speaker B: talk about suffering, if that's the language you really like. [00:26:33] Speaker A: But I'll take you there and it'll become clearer. [00:26:37] Speaker B: But for now, put this together. [00:26:39] Speaker A: We spent the last weeks establishing that blood atones not because of the killing, [00:26:48] Speaker B: but because of the life, that the blood carries. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Life deployed against the forces of death. That has been the claim of the entire series. The same principle reaches its fullest scope on the cross. [00:27:07] Speaker B: Not the blood of a brutalized victim offered to pacify divine wrath. Not a transaction in which death satisfies death. Blood carries life. [00:27:25] Speaker A: A particular tzaddik whose chain has been visible from the beginning, from the first chapter of the Gospels. John knew it, the disciples did. The holiness that's pressing back the forces of death in all these encounters. And when the sacrificial texts say that life overcomes death in sacred spaces, they were describing a principle like this, that when Yeshua walks into death carrying this kind of life, this is the fullest extent. [00:28:03] Speaker B: And that's what the Gospels want us to see. And there's this last thing I want to say. [00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeshua does not come into a healthy Jerusalem. He is not walking into a city that's ready for renewal. The prophets had warned about a land reaching this breaking point. [00:28:24] Speaker B: And that's the setting that he's entering into. [00:28:28] Speaker A: Blood guilt accumulated. [00:28:30] Speaker B: We have leadership that's resistant and corrupt. [00:28:33] Speaker A: And the hour of his visitation has not been recognized. And this is why he laments over Jerusalem. This is why he says, how often I long to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks. When he's overturning the tables in the temple again, it's not a sign, it's not a critique of that. As the way people see it. He's not rejecting the temple or the sacrificial system. He is acting as a prophet. This is a sign act, saying to the people, this is what is coming. If you do not come to me, if you do not repent, no stone will be left on another. That's what the table turning is. It's a sign act. It's getting attention. Judgment is coming. The moral state, it's moved past what anything can help except this life. And he Knows he will be rejected. And he knows his blood, his murdered blood, will be added, added onto the already existing blood guilt of the land in which he's walking. And he walks into that catastrophe ready and willing, eyes open, demonstrated favor. [00:29:59] Speaker B: And yet [00:30:02] Speaker A: he does not die instead of Jerusalem. [00:30:08] Speaker B: Jerusalem is still destroyed. [00:30:11] Speaker A: He does not die instead of the disciples in any kind of substitutionary status, many of them, they still have to suffer. Now, I know there's a troubling sentence for people because many of us were taught to hear every part of the [00:30:31] Speaker B: cross through the language of instead of, instead of. But the Gospels give the other category that I've already alluded to along the way. Ahead of not instead, but ahead of. [00:30:47] Speaker A: He does not say, I will go through this so you never have to. [00:30:55] Speaker B: He says, follow me. He says, take up your cross. [00:31:04] Speaker A: Lose your life. [00:31:07] Speaker B: Follow me. That is not substitution language in the easy popular sense. That is solidarity language. He goes first. He goes first. [00:31:24] Speaker A: He pioneers, pioneers the way he enters this catastrophe and opens the unique path through death. And interestingly, here we are back at Moses. Blot me out with them. Moses, says the tzaddik who refuses to be separated, the one who his fate is bound with his people. And Yeshua now stands in that line. But even greater, the first Redeemer and the final Redeemer, because his bond with his people is even deeper. His merit and his favor is even weightier. And his fidelity is absolute and complete. And he goes ahead of us not as a replacement, but as the firstborn who will pass through. [00:32:23] Speaker B: And then he rises. Peter says in Acts 2, it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. Him. Impossible, he says. [00:32:36] Speaker A: He's not saying that God swooped in and pulled him out. [00:32:43] Speaker B: He's saying something about the nature of his life that death was trying to hold. It was impossible. This life, this particular life, this chain [00:32:54] Speaker A: bearing faithfulness, demonstrating holiness, radiating life, could [00:33:00] Speaker B: not be held down by death. He had already started the defeat of death during his life. [00:33:09] Speaker A: The Metzorah we talked about, that's the first crack. The woman with the issue of blood, that's the second crack, raising people from the dead. The third, the widow's son, Lazarus. Every encounter. And by the time that death finally closes around him in the tomb, death has already been losing for three years. Out there in the real world, resurrection, that's the fracture of the whole thing. It's not just some happy ending. This is the thing. It's the vindication, the public revelation that into death itself, his life is stronger. [00:33:51] Speaker B: So here it is, the Gospels do not first present Yeshua as atonement theory. They present him as the promise bringer of divine cleansing. That's what John sees and says. He is John's announcement, the greater immersion, the one in whom the prophetic washing and the divine spirit occupying flesh takes flesh, who confronts the powers of death, who opens a path for others not by standing at a distance, but by going ahead of them in faithful solidarity with them. And that's why his death matters. Not just because of blood being shed, [00:34:48] Speaker A: not merely because of suffering, not merely [00:34:51] Speaker B: because another righteous man was killed or crucified. [00:34:56] Speaker A: I am not asking you in any way. [00:34:59] Speaker B: I would never want you to disconnect from Yeshua's death. I'm asking you to see the life, the holiness, the fidelity, the solidarity and the resurrection that give the death itself meaning. His death matters because his holy life entered death and broke its power and resurrection. That is the merit of the one who went through the chain of the faithful one, the life that death could not hold. And all of it comes together in one unforgettable meal. As death was approaching him, he knew Jerusalem was doomed. He knew his blood would be poured out. He knew he's entering the great crisis of Israel and the consequences of human corruption are here. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Why does he choose to speak about [00:36:03] Speaker B: it the way he does at the final meal? Why Passover? [00:36:07] Speaker A: Why body? Why blood? Why the blood of the covenant? Why not at Yom Kippur? [00:36:15] Speaker B: As you might imagine, this is not an accident. And next week we'll go to the Lord's Supper to understand the words and the symbols through the lens of life, not death. Stay with me now, Shabbat Shalom. [00:36:39] Speaker C: 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're subscribed to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch. Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom Macon.