The Significance of Christ’s Death:
Types (Pictures) of Death
Matthew 27:45–49; Mark 15:33–36; Luke 23:44–45a; John 19:25–30a
Matthew Lesson #189
February 25, 2018
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Our Father, we ask that You would illuminate our thinking and enlighten the eyes of our soul to the truth of Your Word, that as we study Your Word we may be encouraged, our faith strengthened, our understanding of Your plan of salvation expanded. That we may be reminded of the complexity of the sin problem and the multifaceted complexity of what took place on the Cross, that it provided everything and more for our salvation.
“And that all that is needed to be saved is to trust in Christ, to believe alone, not believe plus works, but only believe in Christ alone for our salvation. What a fantastic plan You have given us, and it took so long to work it out.
“Help us as we understand the dynamics, the prophecies, and the types of Christ that our faith may be strengthened and that we may understand the plan of salvation, and be even more prepared to witness to those around us.
“We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Slide 2
We’re continuing our study in Matthew, going through the stages of the crucifixion that began with Jesus being led out from the Praetorium where He had been “found guilty” and the death sentence passed by Pilate in the sixth trial, the third trial by the Romans, the second trial by Pilate, as described in numerous passages; that is the first stage.
The last stage is when they seal the tomb. Here we come to the 25th stage and we’re pausing a minute to reflect upon the significance of Christ’s death. Last week we looked at prophecies and types.
Today we’re going to look at more significant types of Christ. A type is a shadow. It is a picture that is portrayed in either an object, or an event, or a person that is designed under the sovereignty of God to depict something about the Person or the work of Christ on the Cross. We’re going to look at some of those.
Slide 3
Just by way of review, we’ve seen in the first five stages the procession of Jesus from the Praetorium to Golgotha before He was crucified.
Slide 4
Then they crucified Him. We looked at the first three hours where we saw the wrath of man: the mocking, the insults, and the ridicule that was hurled at our Lord as He hung on the Cross.
Slide 5
Then we looked at the second three hours when sin was paid for, the spiritual death of Christ on the Cross when God the Father covered the land with darkness, so that His intense suffering could not be seen, when our Lord cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Not that the Trinity was breached, but because in His humanity, Jesus is being judicially condemned and judged for our sin, “He who knew no sin was made sin for us that the righteousness of God might be found in us.”
It is during those three hours He pays the penalty when it was finished, as the Apostle John said, “Jesus said, ‘It is finished’ ”—a term that means paid in full. An economic term, written on bills to indicate that the bill was paid in full, the debt was canceled. There was nothing else needed to fulfill the payment. That is the second three hours.
Slide 6
It was after that that Jesus died physically on the Cross. So there’s a spiritual death on the Cross and there is a physical death on the Cross.
Slide 7
At that point we began this interlude: looking at prophecy and types of the Messiah’s death to understand what happened on the Cross and why it is significant.
To do that we don’t start with the Gospels; we don’t start with the major prophets in the Old Testament. We start by going back to the beginning of sin in Genesis 3 and looking at God’s provision for the sin problem and the pictures that God gave from Genesis through Malachi in the Old Testament, so that when the Messiah came, people should be prepared. They should be able to recognize Him for who He was and understand why He came and what He was to do.
Now though many rejected Him, there were many who accepted Him. There were those like Simeon and Hannah at the temple, when His parents brought Him to dedicate Him in the temple, who understood exactly who that infant was and why He had come. And they praised God for that provision of a Messiah; it was not an accident.
Galatians 4:4 says that it was “in the fullness of time that Jesus came forth.” In other words, God waited 4,000 years before providing the Savior. He waited for a reason. There’s a preparation that is taking place.
What we began to look at last time were three particular incidences that are described by John that relate to a fulfillment of types or pictures or prophecies in the Old Testament.
Slide 8
There is the phrase that John the Baptist used when Jesus came down, John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
I talked about why that was significant and that that related to the Passover event in the Old Testament. We talked about the presentation of the Lamb, His observation and testing to make sure He was without spot or blemish: a picture of the fact that the Savior must be without sin. Then His death and the application of the blood of the Passover lamb to the door post and lintel of the house. Then God would pass over and not take the life of the firstborn.
Slide 9
In John 3:14 we saw the picture of the brazen serpent who was lifted up to heal those who had come under God’s judgment for their bellyaching and for their griping against God for the lack of tasty food, and God sent these fiery serpents among them.
The solution was for Moses to make one, to elevate it on a post, and that if people simply looked at it, they would be healed. Looking at the Savior in faith, trusting that He can do what He promised to do, is the essence of salvation. It’s not what we do, it’s what we believe. That is the issue in the Gospel of John.
Slide 10
That’s also depicted by Jesus’ statement, John 6:51 that He is “the living bread which came down from heaven.” Eating and drinking, as we portray in the Lord’s Table, is a picture of accepting something as our own, taking it into our life. Another picture of the idea of believing or trusting in Christ as Savior.
Slide 11
Today I want to look at four important Old Testament pictures that will help us understand the significant things that happened on the Cross. That’s what we will begin next time in terms of understanding what Christ did: the concept of substitution, the concept of redemption, the concept of forgiveness.
Sometimes the word used is “expiation”—that is the canceling of a debt, the idea of forgiveness, the idea of propitiation or the satisfaction of the Father.
Those key doctrines—those terms that are used to describe the benefits of Christ’s death in the New Testament—are pictured in the Old Testament. I don’t think we can fully grasp what some of these abstract ideas are apart from those pictures that God gave us in the Old Testament, so we’re going to look at those this morning.
1. His sacrificial death was portrayed in the tabernacle: the tabernacle is a tremendous picture of Christ. You have the brazen altar and the laver outside the Holy of Holies, which depict aspects of Christ’s death that can only be accomplished by Christ’s death.
The tabernacle: inside the Holy of Holies you have three pieces of furniture in the holy place: the table of showbread, the menorah, and the altar of incense that depict aspects of Christ’s ministry for the believer. That He is the Bread of Life, that He’s the Light of the world, and that He is our Mediator, our Intercessor with God, pictured by the altar of incense.
Then inside the innermost area, the Holy of Holies, is where the Ark of the Covenant is located, and that comes back to what we will see depicted also in the importance of Christ’s death.
2. The blood sacrifices: the Levitical offerings that are defined in Leviticus 1–6.
3. Yom Kippur. This is when the Ark of the Covenant comes into significance, where cleansing of sin, forgiveness, is depicted through that ritual that we read about in Leviticus 16 this morning.
4. The Kinsman Redeemer.
The Hebrew word is go’el, and it refers to the fact that a person who was a slave could be redeemed by a kinsman and set free. That is the picture that we have of Jesus Christ: He becomes a human being, thus a kinsman, and therefore He can pay the redemption price, so that we can be set free from the penalty of sin.
Slide 12
We begin with the first element—that is Christ’s sacrificial death that is portrayed in the tabernacle itself—the brazen altar, the laver.
The Hebrew term for the tabernacle is mishkan. What consonants do you hear there? You hear the M, the SH, you hear the K and the N. The root word there is shkn or what we think of usually, Shekinah. It is a Hebrew word for a dwelling place.
You convert a verb to a noun in Hebrew by simply adding an M at the beginning, so shkn means to dwell some place, so Mishkan says “the dwelling place.” It is the dwelling place of God.
Slide 13
This is a picture of the outside. Some of you who went with me to Israel in 2014 got to visit. I have some pictures of that place, the tabernacle in the wilderness. It had been there years ago, but they had taken it down and they put it back up several years ago, so we were able to walk through that.
Those who are going on the Israel trip this year, on the Petra extension, we will come back through the Negev, we will get an opportunity to go there, and it’s just a fantastic full-scale model of the tabernacle. You can walk around and see all the different components. And the docents there are very well trained, and they have excellent material. They have a website and they really do a great job.
The emphasis in the Mishkan is that God dwells between the cherubs in the Holy of Holies. Everything surrounding it has something to do with coming into the presence of God.
There is only one entry. As Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” so the entry depicts Jesus as the only way to God.
Then to come into His presence, the first piece of furniture you see is the brazen altar, and it is there that a sacrifice—a blood sacrifice, usually a burnt offering—is made.
The next piece of furniture in the outer courtyard is the laver. The laver depicts the importance of cleansing.
Those are the first two that we’re looking at, because in order to enter into the presence of God there must be a sacrifice, that’s the brazen altar. It pictures that and a death, and ultimate cleansing is also based on the death of Christ. As 1 John 1:7 says, “… the blood of Christ (continually) cleanses us from all sin.”
Slide 14
Always have liked this picture of the tabernacle at night with the pillar of fire above the Ark of the Covenant, where you can see some image of what this must’ve been like with all of the millions of Israelites camped, according to tribe and specific revealed order, around the Mishkan.
Slide 15
Here we have the altar, the brazen altar; this is one depiction of it.
Slide 16
Here is a picture from the Tabernacle of the Wilderness. You can see the tabernacle with the covering of various animal hides. Here is the brazen altar, and here is the laver.
Slides 17 and 18
This is a ramp goes up, so that the sacrifices could be laid upon the grate. In the burnt offering all would be burned up and go to the Lord. The passages for the brazen altar are in Exodus 27:1–8, also Exodus 38:1–7, and Hebrews 13:9–16.
Slide 19
The description is given in Exodus 27:1–2, “And you shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits wide. The altar shall be square, and its height shall be three cubits.”
A cubit was approximately 18 inches. There are different cubits that were used, but that will give you a basic estimate of the size of the altar.
“You shall make it with horns on the four corners, its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze.” It’s made from acacia wood and bronze.
Slide 20
Then there are descriptions in Exodus 27:3–4 of the various tools that went along with it: the pails for removing the ashes shovels and basins, forks and fire pans, “… you shall make all its utensils of bronze …—because it withstands the heat—“You shall make for it a grating of network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings at its four corners.”
Notice how God is detail-oriented here. He doesn’t just give them an abstract concept go build an altar that’s square. He is very specific about how this could be constructed.
Slide 21
Then Exodus 27:5–6 talks about “… the ledge of the altar, so that the net will reach up halfway of the altar.” Further, it gives description of how it should be carried, the poles and the rings that were there, and that is described in the following verses.
Slide 22
All of this is to teach something about Christ. Acacia wood is an extremely hard and dense wood. It is almost impermeable; it will not rot. The insects will not be able to penetrate it; it is going to survive. It is a picture of the humanity of Christ that was without sin. It emphasizes His sinless nature as described in Hebrews 4:15 and Hebrews 7:26.
It is united with the four horns. They are all to be of one piece. The horns were used to bind the sacrifice to the altar. They were also to be sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice. So, the horns and the altar altogether point to the death of the sacrifice, and ultimately, picture the death of the Messiah: that He would have to die in order to make a payment for sin.
What underlies all of this, is that idea of substitution that I’ll talk about next time. From the beginning of these sacrifices in the Old Testament; the first being when God killed the animals to make the animal skins for clothing for Adam and Eve in the garden, you have that initial sacrifice.
Then through progressive revelation more and more is described. The first mention of sacrifice is in Genesis 3. Then the next sacrifice that’s mentioned is in Genesis 4, when Cain and Abel brought sacrifices to the Lord. Cain’s offering was not accepted because it was the product of his own works and producing the fruit of the ground. But Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable because He followed God’s instructions and brought an animal sacrifice.
You see the expansion of the idea of sacrifices and its importance with the patriarchs. One of the first things—not the first thing—that Abraham did when He came into the Promised Land, when he came to Shechem, was to set up an altar.
Then he set up another altar between Bethel and Ai on the road south. He was in the hill country of Samaria, but he was moving south to observe the land that God had promised Him. Then He built another altar at Hebron.
All of this is a description of the centrality of the altar, and the sacrifice is the way in which we come to God—the only way in which we come to God.
Isaac built an altar at Beersheba. Jacob built an altar at Bethel and also at Shechem, Exodus 33:20. It is believed that he rebuilt the altar that Abraham had originally built: there’s a history there.
In the fourth century AD, a Byzantine church was built on that location between Bethel and Ai that’s just about 300 or 400 yards off of the highway. That has been excavated and the mosaics indicate that there was a recognition that this was that site. There’s nothing that I’ve seen over in Israel more thrilling than to be at that site.
You know that you are at least within 50 or 100 yards or so of where Abraham and Sarah camped out and where he built that altar. It just shows that the Scriptures are not just some fairytale story that happened in some country far away that you never heard of, but it has a solid historical, geographical basis.
You see the development of these sacrifices. The important thing to recognize with the brazen altar is that it speaks of the need of a sacrificial payment for sin. It is a substitutionary payment, and it is necessary in order to enter into the presence of God, to worship God, and to serve God. There must be a solution, a payment, for the sin penalty.
Slide 23
The next thing that speaks of this death of Christ and the tabernacle is the laver. The laver primarily emphasizes cleansing that must take place before the priest goes into the Holy of Holies. We have studied that many, many times. But at its foundation is the idea that a death has been accomplished.
This whole concept of cleansing, and that word just runs through all of these different sacrifices. The word that we translate “atonement” in English, actually was coined by early Anglo-Saxons as a way of describing the totality of what took place in the death of Christ. That was a compound word from “at-one-ment.”
So, the idea that early scholars thought of when they were learning Hebrew, that the word kaphar, for atonement, was a word for covering. There are actually two homophones in Hebrew; that is words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings, and kaphar is one of those.
There’s the pitch that Noah used to cover and seal the ark, to waterproof it, and that covering is one word, but that’s not the meaning here. In fact, the rabbis who translated the Septuagint into Greek in the second and third centuries BC frequently translated kaphar with the Greek word KATHARIZO.
KATHARIZO means to cleanse. That’s the word that we have in 1 John 1:9 that “if we confess our sins, He will cleanse us—KATHARIZO—from all unrighteousness.” That concept of cleansing not only applies to the ongoing experience of the believer after salvation, but it applies to the initial results when he is saved: He is cleansed positionally from all sin.
The cleansing at the laver, the picture of the water and water washing away sin, is used as a metaphor and picture of that initial forgiveness and cleansing that takes place positionally when we trust in Christ as Savior.
Slide 24
The laver is described in Exodus 30:17–20, “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base of bronze for washing; and you shall put it between the tent of meeting at meeting and the altar, you shall put water in it.’ ”
Slide 25
Then it goes on to describe how on a regular basis, when Aaron and his sons would go in, they would have to wash their hands and their feet.
When they’re initially inaugurated into the priesthood, they would wash their whole body: that’s positional cleansing. Then each time after that, they would only have to wash their hands and their feet: that is experiential cleansing.
Slide 26
But a failure to do that carried with it the death penalty in Exodus 30:21 because unholy, unsanctified human beings cannot enter into the presence of a holy God on their own terms.
As I was reading at the beginning of Leviticus 16:1, the Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they offered profane fire before the Lord. What happened there? Nadab and Abihu brought their own concept of a fire to the Lord—not according to the specifications of Scripture.
We just can’t come into the presence of God on any basis. We can’t do it because this seems right to us. Proverbs says, “there is a way that seems right to man but the end thereof is death”. We can’t come up with our own concept, “Well, it makes me feel good; it makes me feel closer to God.” That’s inadequate.
We have to do exactly what God prescribed to do. Aaron had two sons; they did it their way and they were immediately executed by God. Aaron was warned that if he even hinted at grief, if he even began to tear up, that God would take his life as well.
Sounds harsh, but God’s teaching a principal and that is that sin separates man from God, and the only solution is His solution, and anything else destroys the possibility of eternal life because we are making it up as we go along.
Slide 27
Here’s a close-up of the laver in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.
Those are the two key elements. We will get to the Ark of the Covenant when we talk about Yom Kippur. Those are the two key elements in the tabernacle.
Slide 28
Then we have the blood sacrifices.
Slide 29
This is a second picture of the blood sacrifices described in Leviticus 1:1–6:7. There are several sacrifices that are listed there: the grain offering, the peace offering; those are not blood sacrifices.
The focus here is on the blood sacrifices because it’s the shedding of blood that pictures death. That is an idiom in Hebrew for death. You go back to Genesis 9:6–7 when God is giving the covenant to Noah, and He says if anyone sheds man’s blood by man his blood shall be shed.
So, shedding of blood is an idiom for being killed, for taking someone’s life in a violent manner. These are blood sacrifices, and it’s the shedding of blood, which really means the death of the sacrifice—that is what is related to the payment of the sin penalty.
Slide 30
Here’s a chart of the five sacrifices mentioned there.
The first one, the burnt offering, which is olah in the Hebrew. That means to go up, and refers to the fact that everything is burnt and consumed by the fire on the brazen altar; everything goes up into smoke and goes up as an offering before God. It is sometimes referred to as a Holocaust offering because that’s the root meaning of that term.
That is why there is great debate that still exists today, even in the Jewish community that Holocaust is not the appropriate term to use to describe the Holocaust events of World War II because—the debate is—it wasn’t an offering to God. It was something much worse. That’s why the Hebrew term is not related to that.
It is the word shoah, which refers to a catastrophe. I think that probably is a better term for it. The burnt offering was a Holocaust offering. Everything is burned up; everything is consumed, and is a picture of substitutionary judgment. It is a payment for sin.
The second and third offerings in the chart do not relate. The fourth is the sin offering, which depicts forgiveness and purification for unintentional sin.
The fifth is the guilt offering, which is also for forgiveness, but it pictures purification for specific sins.
The thing that comes across in these offerings is that they are substitutionary in nature. That it is the death of an animal, so death is necessary for there to be forgiveness for sin.
Slide 31
The burnt offering is consumed completely in the fire, everything goes up. The worshiper has nothing for himself, indicating that the offering is total as Christ completely paid for sin. There’s nothing of the worshiper that is involved whatsoever.
Slide 32
The sin offering, the words that are used here primarily hata, which means to miss the mark, and it is a payment for sin.
Slide 33
We’re reminded of Hebrews 9:22 that “… according to the law almost all things are purified with blood …”
That means death. It’s what the blood pictures that’s important; it’s not the blood itself. It’s a picture of death; and without the shedding of blood, there is no remission or forgiveness of sin.
We see in the tabernacle this picture of death. We see that in the brazen altar, we see it with the laver, and then we see it in the sacrifices that were made on the brazen altar, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.
The blood of bulls and goats, writer of Hebrews says, cannot take away sin. They were limited; they were ritual only. They depicted something. It was only when a perfect sacrifice of infinite value could come and pay the penalty that that would be finished. And that is what happened at the Cross.
As the writer of Hebrews says, “After that there is no more sacrifice.” That is the final sacrifice. It is the complete sacrifice that took away sin.
Slide 34
We have a picture also of the red heifer offering. They would look for a heifer that was to be without defect or blemish, not even a white hair. They would take that heifer and burn it as a complete burnt offering. Then the ashes of the heifer were taken in order to purify the temple.
The main picture in the red heifer offering was to depict purification; it was a sin offering. This is described in Numbers 19:1–22, and that it also indicates that there has to be a death in order for there to be purification from sin.
Slide 35
We’ve looked at the furniture in the outer courtyard in the tabernacle; we’ve looked at the blood sacrifices: all of which picture the necessity of a substitutionary death.
Third, we come to Yom Kippur: what transpired on the Day of Atonement. The focal point on Yom Kippur is on these two goats that are taken for the high priest. One will be sacrificed and one is let go into the wilderness.
Slide 36
When we look at Leviticus 16, ultimately, the application of the blood is on the Ark of the Covenant. We have a model of the whole tabernacle and the furniture that’s up in the front part of the other room. This is a picture of their design of the Ark of the Covenant. You have two cherubs representing the holiness of God, the mercy seat is the lid called the kapporeth, and underneath inside the box was the broken law, which indicates the sinfulness of man.
On the Ark of the Covenant, the high priest would sprinkle the blood, first of the bull that was sacrificed for him and for his family for the priests, then the sacrifice of the goats.
Slide 37
It’s located inside the Holy of Holies. This is a depiction, an artist’s rendering that comes with Logos Bible Software. They have two large cherubim in the tabernacle—but this was from the temple—they did not have the two large cherubim; they just had the ark inside the Holy of Holies.
Outside you had the Table of Shewbread, the Golden Menorahs, and the Altar of Incense. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would enter the veil, and then he would splatter the blood on the Ark of the Covenant.
Slide 38
The center ritual is that he would take two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the Tabernacle of Meeting. He’s at the entryway, he’s observable from those who are outside. Then he would cast lots for the two goats: one is going to survive, one is going to die. The one who would survive is the scapegoat, but he would not survive with any of his previous flock. He would be taken far into the wilderness.
Slide 39
The description in Leviticus 16:9, “Aaron would take the goat on which the Lord’s lot fell and offered as a sin offering.”
Back to what I talked about in the last point: we have a sin offering that’s designed to teach a purification for unintentional sins. This goat is going to be sacrificed, and he makes atonement; that is, he makes cleansing. This is a sacrifice for the nation that will get them through to the next Day of Atonement. It’s temporary: every year it would have to be repeated, unlike the sacrifice of Christ.
The other is going to be the scapegoat. The high priest will place his hand on that goat and recite the sins of the nation, and then that goat would be taken far, far away, deep into the wilderness, so that he could never find its way back.
That is a picture of our forgiveness: God completely removes our sin from us. He doesn’t bring it up later. He doesn’t bring it back. It is paid for, it is taken away, and God forgets it.
Slide 40
This is then described in Leviticus 16:15–16, “He shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil, do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bull—which means he sprinkles it seven times on the Ark of the Covenant—and sprinkle it on the mercy seat …” This is a picture of God’s satisfaction with the sacrifice.
The cherubim—who are associated with God’s justice and righteousness, His holiness—look down, and see that there is blood, the death that pays the penalty for the sin, the broken tablets, and it is satisfied.
The word that is used there in the Hebrew to translate kapporeth, the mercy seat, is picked up in the New Testament, HILASTERION, and is used to depict God’s satisfaction: what we call the doctrine of propitiation. You really can’t understand propitiation if you don’t understand what happens on the Day of Atonement. That is the picture: a death must take place.
Leviticus 16:16, “So he shall make atonement for the Holy Place—of cleansing—because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, for all their sins, and so he shall do so for the tabernacle of meeting.”
Slide 41
You have the one goat that is sacrificed and blood put on the Ark of the Covenant, and then the scapegoat is taken out into the wilderness: a picture of our cleansing and the picture of forgiveness.
Slide 42
The first three all emphasize the necessity of death in order for the sin problem to be taken care of.
Fourth is the Kinsman-Redeemer.
Slide 43
That picture is described in Leviticus 25:47–49. It is depicted in the Book of Ruth. The Book of Ruth revolves around this understanding of the go’el, the Kinsman Redeemer, but this is the foundation passage for it in Leviticus 25:47–49, “Now if a sojourner—that would be a resident alien, a word for an immigrant; someone who is not an Israelite, but is someone who is legally living within the land and is a resident alien, a Gentile—If a sojourner or stranger—that would be just a more temporary alien or immigrant—close to you becomes rich, and one of your brethren who dwells by him becomes poor, and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner close to you, or to a member of the stranger’s family ...”
This is what would happen. It’s the idea of an indentured servant, where if you became so poor because of your bad money management or some crisis or something else, then you could sell yourself as a slave, but it’s not lifelong slavery, it was temporary.
If you wanted to be lifelong, you could do that, but it was temporary, and you would be released from that on the sabbatical year, every seventh year. It was a way out—not anything like the slavery that we had in the United States.
This is a way to indenture himself to pay off his debt, and in Leviticus 16:48 there’s another way to gain that freedom, “… after he is sold he may be redeemed again—that’s ga’al, the Hebrew word for redemption, the payment of a price—one of his brothers may redeem him.” He is to be purchased by a blood relative.
Jesus becomes our blood relative by entering into the human race. We all come from Noah. We all come from Adam, but that funnel narrows with the family of Noah because they’re the only ones who survive. We all trace back to one of Noah’s three sons, so we’re all basically cousins, we’re all part of the same gene pool, and we’re all related.
The idea of Jesus entering in as a man is so that He can pay the penalty for our sin as the Kinsman Redeemer. “One of his brothers may redeem him or his uncle or his uncle’s son may redeem him or anyone who is near kin to him in his family may redeem him; or if he is able he may redeem himself.”
The go’el is the picture of the Kinsman Redeemer, which is fulfilled in Christ. He pays the price to redeem us. What’s the price? The price is death. This is what we see again and again in the Old Testament, that there is the necessity of a substitutionary death in order to pay the penalty for the human race.
Nothing else can do it. Good works can’t do it. Joining a church can’t do it. Repentance can’t do it. Emotion can’t do it. Nothing can do it except the payment of the sin penalty, the redemption price.
That is why, when we come to realize our need for salvation, it is based on simply faith alone in Christ alone. No works are involved whatsoever. In fact, works taint the transaction and destroy it. All that we need to do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and we will be saved.
Closing Prayer
“Father, we thank You for this opportunity to reflect upon the progress of revelation, as we understand the importance of the sacrifice, the way in which the necessity of the death of the Savior is portrayed throughout the Old Testament to prepare the Israelites, to prepare the Jews, for being able to recognize the Savior when He came.
“And to give us confidence that Jesus was not some accident of history, wasn’t just some good guy that showed up on the scene, teaching a new way of life, but that this was planned and prepared and prophesied and promised by You throughout the Old Testament to bring the nation and then the world to understand who exactly Jesus is as our Kinsman-Redeemer, our Savior, who paid the redemption price.
“So that Your justice and righteousness were satisfied and propitiated, so that the sin problem is paid and that the debt is canceled. We have as a race, whether we are all saved or not, everyone has had this forgiveness of sin. The only thing necessary now is to trust in Christ that we might be given new life and new righteousness.
“Father, we pray anyone listening to this message, anyone who is here who’s never recognized that the only thing needed for salvation is trust in You alone, that You would make that clear to them as they hear this message: that Jesus paid it all and as a result of that—just faith in Him alone—we have eternal life.
“Father, we pray that You would challenge each of us with what we’ve studied, that our confidence in the Gospel, our confidence in Jesus as our Savior would be strengthened and that we might continue to mature and especially in our application of the need for evangelism, to explain the gospel to those who are not saved.
“We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”