Scripture: Hebrews 10:4-10; Hebrews 10:12-14; Hebrews 2:14; Romans 5:8; 2 Corinthians 5:15; Matthew 4:18-20 Series: 2022
Fourth in a Lenten ‘Rescue’ series on salvation, preached on Hebrews 10:4-10, exploring how Jesus saves us. Pruitt defines sacrifice as giving up something genuinely good and uses the 2018 Thai cave rescue (via the documentary The Rescue) as an extended metaphor for costly, complicated, self-sacrificial rescue. He surveys Old Testament salvation models (Noah, Passover, Joshua) where others bear the cost, then turns to Jesus and atonement (At-One-Ment), walking through three scriptural theories: Christus Victor/ransom, Abelard’s Moral Influence, and Anselm’s satisfaction theory developed into Penal Substitution. He affirms the value of contemplating these models but insists that theories don’t save us, Jesus does, faith is radical because nothing lies beneath Christ. The cross is given to give us life, not meaning. He closes with Jesus’ call to lay down our nets and repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.
Illustrations: thai-cave-rescue-the-rescue, throwaway-couch-not-a-sacrifice, rehearsal-of-concept-roc, noah-ark-salvation-model, passover-exodus-model, joshua-conquest-model, atonement-at-one-ment, trojan-horse-christus-victor, worship-the-series-not-jesus, radical-roots-etymology, lay-down-your-nets
March 27
How we are saved
because it’s impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when he comes into the world he says, You didn’t want a sacrifice or an offering, but you prepared a body for me; you weren’t pleased with entirely burned offerings or a sin offering. So then I said, “Look, I’ve come to do your will, God. This has been written about me in the scroll.” He says above, You didn’t want and you weren’t pleased with a sacrifice or an offering or with entirely burned offerings or a purification offering, which are offered because the Law requires them. Then he said, Look, I’ve come to do your will. He puts an end to the first to establish the second. We have been made holy by God’s will through the offering of Jesus Christ’s body once for all. Hebrews 10:4-10
The word sacrifice has become much more metaphorical today than it used to be. People talk about all the sacrifices they make, but I don’t see a lot of lamb’s blood on doors or turtle doves exchanging hands. Judaism was not the only religion that had sacrifices in the ancient world, but it is one of the few that survived the elimination of animal sacrifices. In the ancient practice, as specified in the Bible, people would take a goat, a turtledove, a lamb, and take them to the temple to be offered to God. They would be killed in a certain way, roasted, prayed over, and then the servants of the temple could eat. Grain offerings functioned in a similar way. A sacrifice is always something good. You can’t ever sacrifice something you don’t like. If you give a couch to the church that you were going to throw away anyway, that isn’t a sacrifice. It may be helpful to the church, but the point of the sacrifice is about what you want and desire, not the object itself. The lamb has no religious value in itself. The turtledove, the goat, the grain offering. They are meaningful because people wanted to keep them. If you offer your best lamb to God, that means you cannot enjoy it. If you offer a grain offering to God, that means you have less grain to live on. It can’t help your family get by another day. To make a sacrifice means to let go of something that matters to you. We see a different kind of sacrifice in them movie, The Rescue, about the 2018 Thai cave disaster, where there were 12 boys and their coach who were stuck In a cave. The floods came that they didn’t know how to get out. Today, we’re going to show a clip of what it took To get one boy out. The boy has already been sedated by the cave-diver anesthesiologist, and now they’re taking them on the final journey. They don’t know what is going to happen, but they are willing to sacrifice themselves to see.
1:21:08 - 1:23:00
My friends, we’re continuing our series on the rescue on looking at how God rescues us, how God saves us. We are trying to understand the language of salvation in a fresh way. How salvation is not a state that we are in. How we are saved from something and how we are saved for something. We began this series talking about what salvation is. Salvation is not just a future thing. It is a present thing. We can live into it now. God is now rescuing us from sin. The next week, we talked about where we are. How if we pretend about where we are, if we lie about where we are, God can’t save us; we’re going to reject Christ’s offering of love. Then, last week, we talked about what we need to do to be saved and how we can’t save ourselves. Even if we’re the smartest and the fastest and the strongest, we cannot save ourself. We need grace. We need Jesus. And sometimes we are our own worst enemies. Today, we’re going to talk about how we are saved. The method in the movie is very complicated. It takes a lot of steps. There’s a lot of logistical support offered by the US Air Force, special ops team, that came in and organized the rescue. Part of the preparetion for getting the kids out is a R.O.C. or Rehearsal of Concept, that the Americans share with the cave divers. It is a military practice that is “a dry walk-through of a plan between a commander and their subordinates ensuring a shared understanding of the plan.” It is a big operation and 6,000 things that could go wrong. You have these cave divers, who are weekend hobbyists, who are sacrificing their time to do this, who have never been in this life or death situation before. There is a doctor who is doing something that seems unnatural, knocking a kid out in a cave, putting a mask on his limp body, putting his face under water and then pushing him out. Once they make it to cave three, there’s a crew that pulls the kids out of the water. And then over 200 folks are ready who bring the unconscious boy on a stretcher out of the cave. It is a complicated endeavor to save these kids.
It is important to realize that throughout the Bible, there are a number of different models of salvation or rescue. In the Old Testament, we start with Noah and the ark. The Noah model is not very good for everyone else. Noah and his family live. Animals survive two by two. They’re doing okay. Everyone else outside of the Ark, sorry. We have the Passover model of the Exodus, of God freeing the Hebrew people from slavery. But that left a lot of other people behind. The Passover itself, the last of the miracles of Moses, caused a lot of Egyptian children to die. The passing through the Red Sea, caused a lot of Egyptian soldiers to die. And then we have the rescue story of Joshua. Joshua, after Moses has died, is tasked with taking the people into the promised land, but it’s already occupied. And so they take away the lives and land of the people who were there. All of these models include sacrifice, but it is usually the other people who are sacrificed. For each of these, there is a remainder. People left out or left over. Next week, we will talk about who deserves to be saved, but these models are important.
And then we get to Jesus. How does Jesus save us? The English language has a wonderful word to describe this called Atonement. It has an ominous ring to it, unless you break it down to its separate parts. Atonement. At-One-Ment. It is a description of how God makes us one.
There are a number of theories about how Jesus saves us. All of them are based in Scripture.
The earliest is known as Christus Victor or the ransom theory. It understands Christ’s sacrifice as a ransom to the devil who is lord of the world. But the sacrifice is almost like a trojan horse. The devil thinks he is getting a holy man to control, and instead gets God made flesh, and in this the devil is defeated. Scriptures like Hebrews 2:14: “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he also shared the same things in the same way. He did this to destroy the one who holds the power over death—the devil—by dying.”
Another theory is known as Moral Influence by the monk, Peter Abelard. Which basically claims that “the cross changes our ethical behaviour because there, in the crucified Christ, we come to understand something of God’s love for us. This love motivates us to change the way we live.”1 Romans 5:8 points to this: “But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” As well as 2 Corinthians: “He died for the sake of all so that those who are alive should live not for themselves but for the one who died for them and was raised.”
Finally, there is the satisfaction theory of the atonement. First introduced by Anselm of Canterbury and then modified into what is known as Penal Substitution. Here is a helpful summary.
“We have all robbed God of the honour that is due to him. For that honour to be fully repaid, something greater than all creation needs to be offered in compensation — our situation is that serious. No one but humans must pay it, but only God has the power to. Only he could offer something so valuable that it is the equivalent to everything in creation. The debt is total; the obligation to pay it is total; the power to pay it is zero. What better solution, then, than that God should become human, and, in that human nature, pay the debt? This is the reason for the God-Man. That he should offer himself is more than enough to satisfy divine justice; so, in fact, it merits a reward. The Son has no need of such a reward; so freely bestows his merit, his reward, on all those who believe in him. In this model, God is fully himself, both in his justice and in his mercy, fully expressing both attributes at the cross, resulting in an all-sufficient solution to the human predicament. Gone are the bargains with the devil…God shows himself to be the sovereign of his world.”2
The main scripture for this view comes right after our reading for today, Hebrews 10:12-14: “But when this priest offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he sat down at the right side of God. Since then, he’s waiting until his enemies are made into a footstool for his feet, because he perfected the people who are being made holy with one offering for all time.”
In seminary, these are often presented as competing notions. It is one of those questions that is often asked for ordination: what is your model of atonement? How does Jesus save us?
I think the questions matter and the thoughts matter. It is incredibly amazing that we are privileged to be able to contemplate God. You don’t need to go to seminary to think about how Jesus saves us. How we are in need and Christ offers himself for us. Contemplating who God is for us can offer us depths of joy and purpose in seeking God more in our life.
But when we come down to the cave of our own lives and our desperation. When we come down to sin and our need for grace, these theories don’t save us, Jesus does.
As one of my teachers said, “Look, if you need a series of truths to assure yourself that Jesus has been raised from the dead, worship that series, don’t worship Jesus.” There is no prior claim and understanding of salvation or life or purpose than Jesus Christ. There is no theory or model or empirical system prior to who God is for us in Christ. It is a radical position in a technical sense. Radical means to get to the roots. A radical change is a change that pulls a thing up, roots and all. The radical faith of Christianity is that there is no substance or idea beneath Jesus Christ that we can stand on. Salvation is not found apart from this.
The point of the cross is not to give your life meaning but to give you life. It is not about finding yourself but getting out of your own way. Getting you out of the cave and into the light of the real world; the light of the kingdom of heaven which is near. Repent. Turn away from the ways of destruction. You don’t have to be a child of night. Christ saves us by ransom, by influence, by satisfaction and substitution. Christ saves us by going all the way to the cross. It is a sacrifice: a giving of something good for something greater.
In this season of Lent, we need not overcomplexify what is already beyond our comprehension. We don’t need to become cave-divers or navy seals for Jesus to save us. The simplest biblical example of salvation, though, is also the hardest. When Jesus comes up to the Peter and Andrew by the seashore. “Lay down your nets and follow me.” Lay down who you were. Lay down who you think you need to be. Lay down your expectations and hang ups. Lay down your guilt and sin. Lay down your peccadillos and little white lies. We compexify things to get around this stark call. We complexity to justify the status quo, but calls us to lay them down. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. Jesus is here for you. Accept him. Accept life. Accept a new world. He will pull you out of the cave. He will turn your mourning into dancing.
Let us pray, God of us all, you are always more ready to listen than we are to pray. Help us in this season to reach out to you, to have faith in you, to lay down our burdens and your feet, and walk freely as children of light. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.