Sunday Night, July 22, 2018 PM

You have to get to know the story. Rightly divide the Word of God. It takes a little bit, you gotta study it. But yeah, that's a good point that James brings up. Sometimes you need to be a little bit careful and read closely, right?

Good question. Yes, Joel. Why tin in particular? So when we look at the plagues and we think of the gods of Egypt and we read closely in Exodus, it was the intention of God to show the falseness, the deadness of the Egyptians gods by targeting each one in successive order with these plagues.

Dwight, I know it's been many, many weeks since you've taught in Exodus, but did y 'all go over the plagues? Did Norm ask you why there was tin? Yes. Well, and you think about just, you know, an orderliness and ease of memory and just how often do we see tin in the scriptures, the tin words, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, the tin plagues, and so on.

It's a nice round number for those of us who have all our fingers left. Sorry. But certainly, you can sense a completeness, right? A completeness. Isn't that the idea of the tin? It's a fullness, there's a completeness to it.

That God completely defeated the gods of Egypt. There was a finality to it and, you know, Israel never hoisted a spear, never shot an arrow, and they plundered Egypt because of the completeness with which God defeated Egypt and their false gods.

There is. There is. In Jewish apocalyptic literature, numbers are often adjectives in the completeness and the fullness and those things. So, but you see that God is a God of order and you see in the way that he accomplishes things how thorough he is.

Meat Offered to Idols and Conscience

Norman Jeff, Tygo's the runner, but it's about acting in conscience and people can tell that. And so, notice it says in verse 28 of 1 Corinthians 10, but if anyone says to you, this meat is sacrificed to idols, do not eat it.

Or in this case, Norm, don't continue to eat it if you find out. For the sake of the one who informed you. For the sake of the one who informed you. And for conscience sake. Part of this is, okay, idols, this meat offered to idols, Paul says, you know, if you eat this meat offered to idols, is it going to poison your bloodstream?

No, this is just cooked meat. But it will go against conscience to stumble someone in thinking that you are participating in the worship of idols, which Paul says is demon worship. So, for the sake of the clarity of the gospel, for the sake of a clear distinction between the church and the world, there are some things that if you understand that this is going to stumble someone, then you don't do it.

So, that's, I think that's what the idea is. Yes, Jeff. Yeah, what we have here is, probably have here a couple of different issues, right? So, one's going to be a pastoral issue and one's going to be a theological issue.

If we have someone who has believed in Christ, they're born again, okay, and, you know, what they know of Christ is essential of who he is. He's the Son of God. He died on the cross for their sins so they could be saved.

They may have, you know, a week later, a really bad day. And they're like, this isn't working. Okay, and they may not understand what's going on. They may feel unsteady. Spiritual infancy in the Bible talks about instability.

There's just this, you know, I, you know, don't feel very stable. And that's what we're called to grow out of spiritual infancy into maturity. So, obviously, someone who is a Christian can have some issues about assurance.

Am I still saved? Okay, as their understanding of the gospel is continually sanctified, as they come to know more and more of who Christ is, that lack of assurance is going to go away. But you think about 1st John.

How often in 1st John does the Apostle try to help his parishioners understand their assurance? Okay, that's a needful thing. That's part of our sanctification. Not just our behaviors, but also our beliefs.

Not only what's on the outside, externals, but also the inside. That we grow in that assurance and that confidence. That he will hold us fast. Okay, we're talking to a man who was a new Christian, and he talked about how he felt like he was falling in and out of grace.

Okay, so we had to take some time and talk about that, and talk about and clarify for him, you know, what it meant to be saved. And that that's a helpful conversation to have. Okay, now that's one thing.

That's one thing. But the other thing is this. Why is someone saying that you can be a Christian, alive in Christ, united to Christ through faith, and then one day you're not? You're no longer united to Christ, therefore you're no longer spiritually alive, and everything that was said of you as a Christian can no longer be said of you, because you're not a Christian anymore.

And that these people also think that at some point they can jump back on the boat, and at some point jump back off the boat. Why are they saying that? You gotta dig a little bit, because some people live by experience.

And this goes back to, and these people may not even be Christians, but they just live by experience. When I feel very spiritual, I'm a Christian. When I don't feel very spiritual, I'm not a Christian.

I just live by experience, and everything they believe about God and the Bible is only experience ratified. If I don't experience it, it's not true, okay? So again, that's going to be more of a clarifying the gospel for someone.

But again, what I'm trying to say is that now you get to the point where someone is going to start talking about the work of Jesus Christ in a way that is not true and is another gospel, okay? And this may be the reason why they're believing.

What we have at a certain point is people are going to be talking about the gospel and talk about salvation, but somewhere over here, there are going to be some presuppositions about what it all means, okay?

So they're going to be interpreting the scriptures through an already fixed idea of how it all works, okay? We have to be aware of that even in our own study of the scripture. Let's pick on Charles Finney because he's easy to pick on.

Charles Finney was a lawyer who decided to become a preacher, and I've read chunks of his systematic theology and his lectures on systematic theology, but his assumptions were all based on the legal system that he had learned, okay?

How everything fit together for him theologically was based on his legal training, okay? And thus he said it is impossible for God to accept a sinner unto himself who is not yet fully holy and sinless, okay?

So your acceptance before God, your justification is based on whether or not you're holy, because that's how it works in the court. You can't tell someone they're not guilty if they're guilty, and if they're guilty, and Finney called this an abominable idea, that their guilt or their sins would ever be placed on anybody else.

Now that's his presuppositions, that's his legal presuppositions. He was trained as a lawyer. So when he comes to the Bible, he comes to these doctrines that are taught, he is informing everything that he's looking at and engaging with as he was at one point a Presbyterian, then left that, became a Congregationalist, but he is informing all of what he's studying and preaching by his background, okay?

Well, Mr. Finney, I don't think anybody's gonna get saved then. Oh no, no, no! You make yourself a new heart. You make yourself a new heart when when you decide to do that, and you make yourself completely holy by deciding to be completely for God, and that's the power of your will, it's the power of your choice, that you make yourself completely holy when you decide, and that clears it all up.

That's right, yeah, revival is, in order to have revival, you need excitement. In order to have excitement, you have to have something new, and there's a formula for it. It's a scientific formula, and if you don't use it, then you don't really care about lost people.

So anyway, that's just an example of presuppositions. Now he comes to the Bible and then looks at the text, and he reads everything through his grid he's already got in place, you see? So I've sat down with a Church of Christ preacher and had this conversation, okay?

He has a false gospel because he's already dialed in on works of obedience are absolutely essential for your salvation, okay? So he's dialed in on that, so everything he reads is interpreted through that grid, okay?

Now that's a false gospel. The stuff that he was proposing, like, you know, proper church membership in a right church and baptism and so on and so forth, that was a heck of a lot more added to the gospel than what was added to the gospel in the book of Galatians, which is circumcision.

That's a whole lot less than what he was proposing, and yet Paul calls that another gospel, and those who preach it are anathema, cut off from God. So in that case, yes. Now in the Church of Christ model, yes of course, because it's about good works, then you can definitely lose your salvation.

That's what I asked him, you know, diagnostic questions are like these, you know, if you're sitting next to a person on their deathbed in the hospital and they're looking to you for some kind of assurance of salvation, what are you going to tell them?

They could die in a week. What are you going to tell them? How will they know that they're saved or not? And that's a good diagnostic question to ask anybody when it comes to matters of the soul, you know, and matters of the gospel.

Well, he said, well, you have to believe in Jesus, I agree, you know, confess your sins, okay, ask for forgiveness, okay, you need to be baptized in Church of Christ Church and continue in obedience. I said, well, what if this guy had a rough time, what if his wife died and he got depressed and sick because he was depressed, and he hadn't been to church in a year, but he did everything else that you said.

It's like, oh no, he's not going to heaven. He didn't keep up his works. He didn't keep up his works, and the works are essential to be saved, right? It's not about the work of Christ, it's about when people start talking about Jesus made it possible, Jesus opened up a way, they're already confused about the gospel.

One of the hymns said Jesus paid it all. So, you know, this isn't potentiality, this is actuality, what Christ has done. He's already done it in his full and perfect obedience. So, in that case, yes, we have a different gospel.

So, some people believe you can lose your salvation because they have another gospel, not the real gospel, and then some people believe they can lose their salvation just because they're just living by experience, you know, or they just don't, they haven't been discipled, they haven't been trained.

So, it's kind of a, it can be either one, you just got to kind of probe a little bit and see where they're at. This is a good question. You know, when Jesus, before he died on the cross, he says, it is finished.

It is finished. And Paul said in Acts, he purchased the church with his own blood, you know? So, when the Scriptures speak about the atoning work of Christ, there is something that is, it's always a matter of what has happened in truth, in actuality, and definite, not potentiality.

I was in a seminary class and the professor said, just because Jesus Christ died on the cross and shed his blood doesn't mean that anyone ever will be saved. And he got a few amens, because it's all potentiality.

It's entirely based on whether or not you work yourself up to it, not based on Christ did it or not. And the good news is that Acts drones on and on and on about repentance and faith being the gifts of Christ that he has already won through his death on the cross.

What do you need to become a Christian? Do you need repentance? Do you need brokenness over your sin? Christ won that for you on the cross. Do you need faith to believe in Christ and hold fast to him?

He won that for you on the cross. What do you need? It's all there. It's all there. And that's why it's good news. Yes, yes, the wave offering. The wave offering is interesting. I guess we're in Leviticus, I'm guessing.

829, there we go. Leviticus chapter 8. Well, it does talk about a wave offering in 829. Well, let's see here. I'm going to see if we've got a more thorough description of it. Okay, Ryan found the answer.

The Wave Offering, Peace Offering, and Priestly Mediation

So, okay, in Leviticus 7, in Leviticus 7, let's start with verse 28. Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the sons of Israel saying, he who offers the sacrifice of his peace offerings to the Lord shall bring his offering to the Lord from the sacrifice of his peace offerings.

His own hands are to bring the offerings by fire to the Lord, shall bring the fat with the breast that the breast may be presented as a wave offering for the Lord. Do you see how the wave offering is under the heading of a peace offering?

Under the heading of proper relationship, of shalom, of being in right relationship with God, okay? Verse 31, the priest shall offer up the fat and smoke on the altar, but the breast shall belong to Aaron and his sons.

Well, it also says you should give the right thigh to the priest as a contribution from the sacrifices of your peace offerings. But the wave offering goes to who? The breast goes to who? Aaron and his sons, the priests who stand between God and the people, the mediators, okay?

So they've got the breast for the wave offering, which is a kind of peace offering, that we are in good relationship with one another, with God. So, verse 33, the one among the sons of Aaron who offers the blood of the peace offering and the fat, the right thigh shall be his as his portion.

This again is talking about the Levites received no land, they received some cities in the in the farmable areas around those cities, but they did not receive an inheritance of land among Israel. They received this, portions of the offerings to sustain them.

Verse 34, for I have taken the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of, what I've got, contribution, heave offering, from the sons of Israel, from the sacrifices of their peace offerings, and I give them to Aaron the priest and to his sons as they're due forever from the sons of Israel.

The thigh is given to one of the priests, that's part of that inheritance, that which sustains the priests, and then is later labeled as this heave offering, okay? But again, the heave and the wave are both, it says, both from the peace offerings, okay?

This is a more specific portion of a peace offering. Now, the way in which this is conducted is indeed the wave, it's the taking the offering, the piece of the meat, the breast, and going like this. Why?

The priests are mediating between God and man. There is this sense that in this offering, both God and his people are sharing in this offering. That there is this fellowship, there is this even meal fellowship between God and his people, and this is being facilitated and mediated by the priests, who, by the way, the Levites themselves are called a wave offering.

They are sanctified as a wave offering, and I think the the intention of this odd kind of thing is to emphasize the communion, the connection that God has with his people through the proper mediation and the proper sacrifice, which tells us what?

That our fellowship with God can be understood as as intimate and as close as a meal, sitting down with God. How can we ever sit down at God's table when we have the proper sacrifice and the proper mediator?

Which is why John talks about the marriage supper of the Lamb, that we're sitting at the table at a meal because we have the sacrifice and we have the proper mediator. And then, of course, the Levites themselves offer it as a wave offering to God.

Christ himself is the Lamb of God who was suspended between heaven and earth, our sacrifice and our mediator. Alright, enjoy the fellowship, enjoy the questions and the discussion. Let's go ahead, and before we sing the doxology, I want to remind those who are here for Truth Group, we'll meet over in Miss Jill's classroom and then we'll come back here for the meal afterwards.

But let's go ahead and sing the doxology together.