Bible Reading Part 2, Substitution

So let's turn to the last one, 1 John chapter 4, verse 10. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. What a wonder.

There was absolutely no cause, but He did. And in order to display that love, we have to have a righteous ground, and that ground is propitiation. Here again, God comes out to us.

So in effect, in man's sin shows man's contempt of God, and showing how much man loves himself. But God's love and propitiation is His contempt of sin, which is contrary to His nature and character, and how much He loved His Son and us. Not that we love God, but that He loved us.

God is satisfied with His Son. That's the beautiful thing. And so, when a person, when you preach the gospel, or you're speaking with someone about their soul, they say, well, I do good to my neighbor, isn't God satisfied with that? How do we reply to that? No, He's not.

I'm saying, I'm just being very, very practical here. I'm a good person, I do good to my neighbor, isn't God satisfied with that? Isn't that a... You're a gospel preacher, what do you tell them? So you say, no, that is not, then what do you say? No, you don't understand. God is satisfied with Christ, and nothing is nothing.

Sure, right. But what about all those other things that you've done that are not good? God has to be satisfied with those as well. So then we go back to a works-based acceptance again.

See, we're religious creatures, we want to do something to satisfy God. We can't. I thought Brother Vethke was going to say what I was going to say, and I'll just say this before we sing.

That is that the different contexts of these are very important, and they're very helpful. In Romans, there's a context of God being able to justify the guilty. And in Romans, we find the Lord Jesus becomes the Savior.

He's the one who has actuated that. In Hebrews, it's the work of Christ in propitiation to sanctify, and to set his people apart. And there, Christ is the high priest.

In 1 John, it's the work of Christ to affect the relationship that we enjoy with God. And there, he's the advocate for God. In Romans, it answers to the sin offering.

In Hebrews, it answers to the burnt offering. In 1 John, it's the peace offering, the fellowship. So we can think about them a little bit after Father is over.

I have one quote here. This is from a man by the name of Berdick. Because God is a God of justice, he must demand the payment of sin's penalty.

However, the God of justice is at the same time the God of love. And thus, he himself provided payment in the propitiatory sacrifice of his son. So that's where we have the God of justice, the just God, and the God of love meeting.

In the propitiatory sacrifice of his son. The second doctrine we're looking at this afternoon is the doctrine of substitution. Now, you won't turn to any verses because it isn't in the Bible.

But it is defined as the putting of one in the place of another. And we can think of Old Testament scriptures. We can think of Genesis chapter 22.

The lamb caught in the thicket was substituted for Isaac. We can think of Exodus 14. The ass that's cold was to die.

The purse that opened the matrix of the female donkey would be God's. And either a lamb was sacrificed in the substitute for the fold of the ass. And then, let's just turn to Isaiah 53.

See if you can find any substitution in these verses. Verse 1. Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of our Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He hath no form, nor comeliness.

And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him.

He was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, and we have turned everyone to his own way.

And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shears is done, so he opened not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. Because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief, when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see his seed, and he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied by his knowledge. By knowing him shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.

Because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. I think you can see a lot of verses there that show us the substitution of the Lord Jesus for the sinner for us. There's some scriptures I've written here that show a difference in pronouns, which is important for us to understand.

We've kind of looked at that in 1 John chapter 2, in the, when he was a propitiation, not for our sins only, but for the whole world. There's a difference between for all, on behalf of, and there's a difference for many, instead of. So it's important that we understand on behalf of, and instead of.

There's also a difference between the all and the many. There are other verses that show this in the New Testament besides 1 Peter 2.24, Galatians 3.13. He was being made a curse for us, 2 Corinthians 5.14. One died for all. There was some words here that I did get out of the book that William gave me.

And they, I mean, I didn't want, I wanted something for everyone here. And I think by the time we're done with this section, we should understand this. These three words are representative substitution, retributive justice, and redeeming love.

Okay? They're not that hard. But I want you to think of those two things as we speak through here. When we've talked about representative substitution already in the Old Testament, retributive justice, we already talked about that.

We received the soul that sinned, that shall die. And redeeming love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son and so on. So what is the difference? We've been skirting talking about substitution.

Now's the time to do so. What is the difference between substitution that we've been speaking of and propitiation? Clearly, substitution has to do with the sinner. We've been talking about God being satisfied in propitiation.

Substitution is the sinner being satisfied with what God is satisfied with. There's more than that. It would be the thought, Brother Henderson, of the personal apprehension of what Christ has done on my behalf.

Recognition that it was not for all, in just a general sense of the word, but personally accomplished. Godwardly, but also for my benefit. My blessings.

Propitiation could be made and no one could be saved on that basis. They are saved on that basis, but it saves no one in itself. But once substitution is apprehended, that is salvation.

And no one who is not saved has the right to take the language of substitution. Unless they really have grasped its truth and why it's necessary. So, to illustrate in John 3.16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, gave Him to the death of the cross, that whosoever He made it possible by the work of propitiation, that whosoever the offer is made good, or the offer is in good faith to the whosoever.

Right? It doesn't stop there. Whosoever believeth that substitution, that's where the sinner as an individual appropriates for himself the good of what Christ has done upon the cross. Whosoever believeth, now he's mine, should not perish, but have everlasting life.

So, it brings the full package of salvation to appreciate that Christ took my place in life. One illustration, I don't know if it reveals perfectly or not, but I often times have appreciated the fact that on Mount Carmel when Elijah stood before the multitude of Israel, that there was a bullet offered upon the altar, and the fire of God that should have fallen upon the people fell upon the sacrifice. It was there receiving the full blow of God's judgment in their place, and as a result, they went away free.

They weren't consumed. You come to 2 Kings chapter 1, and you have a similar situation, Elijah, on the mountain. There's no sacrifice.

The fire of God fell upon the rebellious sinners. So, it's the idea and the truth that because of what God has provided, he has taken the full force of God's judgment in my place. And I'm delivered from it, but if there is none, there is no deliverance.

Much has been said about the day of Atonement, and so our brethren have been exploring there, make some applications there as to the distinction between propitiation and substitution. Verse 11 that we just read, Isaiah 53, He shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. That would be propitiation.

And by his knowledge shall my righteousness be justified. And another would be substitution. The day of Atonement, you have two goads.

And we've been thinking of the one, its blood was shed, buried within the holiest of all, sprinkled before and upon the mercy seat, the covering. Atonement day. But then, there was the other goad, the second part of the sin offering, and upon its head was confessed all the sins, all the iniquities, all the transgressions of the people.

And then it was taken by the hand of a pit man into the wilderness to the land inhabited, never to return again, symbolically carrying away all the sins, the transgressions, and the iniquities of the people. And then for the people of Israel, on the basis of those two goads, it was a done deal. Their transgressions, sins, and iniquities were taken care of.

They were gone. Bring that to the work of Christ in the New Testament, propitiation. It's like the blood sprinkled upon the mercy seat.

The potential of the work for all. It's available. God is satisfied.

But when I, as a sinner, trust Christ as my Savior, appreciate that that work was for me, that's like the second goat. And the sins are all taken away. And never to be called into the classroom again.

So there is the head of that very metaphor. The precious substitution is that it is all personal for me, in my place, in my step, that you know that that just one was given to me. A devotional thought on the goats.

We mentioned the goats a lot today. But a careful reading in Leviticus 16 will tell us it's the kid of the goats. It was a goat, I believe, that was dependent on his mother's milk.

Tender. It speaks of our Lord Jesus and his dependence upon his Father. Didn't we have in other of the sacrifices in the Old Testament that the man who brought the offering laid his hand on the head of the offering? And so we have representative substitution.

That animal might have been a bull. Different sacrifices. But I am identifying with him and he is taking my place.

Faith is a widely linked reputation, as we call it. Faith is widely linked with substitution. Faith is what makes, I don't know the word, but makes substitution happen, if you will.

And it's practically said it's faith that lays hold on a provision that Christ has made, that God has made through Christ. Faith lays hold on that. And at that moment, Christ becomes my substitute.

Back in Romans 3 verses 21 to 26, we have all these other words that even the righteousness of God, which is by faith in Jesus Christ, and then on down it says in verse 26, the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. So even though we were speaking about the judicial aspect of propitiation, we have here the link with the believer to that through faith, and through believing and through faith. So we have the link that a person is justified by believing what God has accomplished in his son.

So even though you said we do not have the English word substitution in our things in the Bible, yet certainly with all these prepositions you've been making reference to, you have the exact thought of it. That's it. And our hymns are loaded with it.

The Apostle Paul believed in substitution when he could say that the Son of God gave himself for me. That's a personal apprehension and appropriation of the work of Christ. I didn't look up, I have the two differences, or the differences in the two, it's both translated for in our language.

Super and anti. On behalf of. Gave himself a ransom for all.

On behalf of all. Available to all. And to give his life a ransom for many.

Instead of. So when it's instead of, it's substitution. Do you have it in your handout in the section called New Capitalist Scriptures? Yeah, well I... Yes.

1 Timothy 2, verse 6 is a vital verse in the understanding of that. Speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, one God, one mediator between God and man, man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. Now.

That is a verse, there's many, but that is one verse at least that would, should give help to anyone that was confused with the idea of a limited atonement. Because the ransom that was given was himself. And to limit the atonement, you would have to limit him.

And there was no limit to him. So he gave himself without limit. An antelutrim, that is, an instead of payment.

An instead of ransom, instead of. That's the character of it. On the behalf of all.

That is, it's available to all. So the work of Christ was substitutionally in its character, and it is made available to all. There's no limit to it.

Because if you limit that, you limit him. Maybe, Brother William, you can explain, define a limited atonement, which some in the world would put out. What do you mean by limited atonement, Paul? Some would try to say that Christ only died for those that would believe.

But there is a sense in which you can go to any man and tell him, Christ died for you. Understanding the truth of propitiation. Right? But he must, by faith, appreciate that was for me.

That's substitution. But we have no right to go to someone and say, Christ died instead of you. They would have to appreciate that as well.

So that's our presentation. That Christ died instead of you is a misuse of the word for. So what I'm saying is we have to be careful on understanding on behalf of or instead of.

We couldn't say, Christ died as your substitute in a preaching of our gospel. Could we? Would they recognize their sinnership before a holy angel of God? Well, that's to them. Because for us to say that, we can't say that.

The best way is to stick to the language of scripture. And faith will take it in. Christ died for our sins.

Christ died for the ungodly. That's who I am. So he died for me.

Substitution is a work of Christ. Propitiation was forged by God to satisfy the throne. But Christ, it says, it pleads God to bruise it.

God got tremendous delight in sending this unto Calvary, letting him suffer to propitiate the throne of God, the mercy seat. So he might come out. But in substitution, the Lord Jesus Christ was willing not only to do the father's will, but that he might bring many sons of the same back to his father.

And his father might get tremendous delight in the work of Calvary and coming out in the missionary. There is sometimes I, in listening to people preach the gospel, and maybe I've said it too and didn't want to say it. But I think we need to be careful.

Christ died for your sins. And to explain what for your sins means there. You know, so that you might be saved.

Because if you say, I'm going to die for your sins, if you say, well, Christ died for my sins, well, I'm done. It's a done deal. I'm already saved.

Without explaining what the two differences in the word for. What do you say, brother, about the statement, since Christ died for the sins of the whole world, that's in 1 John 2 that we read, therefore the only sin that a person is going to be judged for is the sin of unbelief. Is that scriptural? Is that accurate? Why not? I'll let somebody else answer the second question.

You might ask the question, why are the books open to the great white throne? That's the sin that will condemn them to the lake of fire for unbelief. But at the judgments of the great white throne, the books are open. They will suffer for every sin.

They are judged, every man, according to their works. The judgment of God is according to their works. They will be judged for their sins, including the sin of unbelief.

It's one of them. Ephesians 5, verse 6, after listing a number of things, no longer than three persons, idolaters, for which things sake, because of these things come up the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. So it is because of these things, not just unbelief.

But every sin brings down the wrath of God. That's why we need to be cautious. I'll say this, we also need to be cautious today.

Don't dry up your gospel preaching or your personal witnessing because you aren't sure you've got the theory all right down to the word. It's amazing what God has blessed sometimes, but we do need to be clear. I mean, a thinking person, if you say that Christ died for the sins of the world and Christ took away the sins of the world, a logical person says, well, then I'll eat, drink and be merry because it's all taken care of.

We would have told them that by our misstatement. But if we tell them plainly that Christ died because we were sinners who died that we might be saved, then we have told the truth. We need to not go to the one side that seems like we're limiting our gospel preaching to only those who lack it.

We need to make it cover the whole world. When Paul preached in Antioch in Acts 13, he said, He hath known of you men brethren, that through this man has preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. That's the availability of it.

By him all that believe are justified. That's the personal appropriation of it. In one sense you can say, I don't have any difficulty that Christ died for sinners.

And the word of God certainly declares we're all sinners, so we ought to individually take that in. We have to be very careful how we express that, but not to be bound with legalistic concerns about possibly making a mistake. And that's what we're talking about.

As we learn more of these things that we're talking about, we'll be better at conveying the gospel, at preaching the gospel. We'll be better at teaching the word of God. We'll be better at explaining to people who maybe oppose themselves, take the new scripture and show them why we believe what we believe.

In the Old Testament they were told, when your son's asking this, to give them an answer. To explain what Passover is about or what these stones were about. That was the purpose of the memorial.

Sometimes when you're talking to particularly religious people in this part of the world, you talk about the work of Christ, the death of Christ. We all believe that. We all know that.

He died for sinners. What are you making a big deal out of that for? As though it was a kind of a blanket insurance coverage for everybody. And there is an element of truth of that in the work of propitiation.

The provision that Christ has made for everyone. Sure. But that's going to save nobody unless by faith they appreciate it was for me.

It was for my sins. It's in Luke's Gospel, the Lord Jesus, when instituting the Lord's Supper, he said in Luke's Gospel, that this blood was shed for you. He's speaking to the disciples.

He's not speaking about everybody. The disciples, for you. When you come to Mark's Gospel, he says that it's the blood of the new covenant which is shed for many.

Where am I? Of course, it's shed for many. That's on behalf of many or concerning many. But it's not particularly identifiable what the individual is for many.

Not for all. But when you come to Mark, Mark's Gospel is for the sins of many. Concerning the sins of many.

So he expressed it very clearly and very accurately in the context of who he's speaking to. When he speaks to the disciples, he speaks about it for you. Of course, I take it that Judas had already gone out, so he couldn't have said that beforehand.

The good of the blood is only applied to the believing sin. The blood is 100% effective for cleansing from all sin. And so, whoever is sheltered by the blood has taken in the truth of substitution.

Substitution is that he has died the just for the unjust. That the righteous son of God has died undeservedly because I deserve to die. And when I take that in by the Spirit of God, I'm saved.

I have entered into the good of substitution. So that the poor old homeless man that hasn't washed for six years, he's brought into the bathroom and there's the bath prepared. The water's all out there, nice temperature and soap's there.

It's all available for him. But it's not going to do him any good until he gets under the water. So it's like the work of Christ.

It's available. It won't do them any good until they appreciate it well for me. And our job is to tell them how comfortable the water is and the benefits of being clean.

And that's where you stop. See, God made us after His own self. He made us spirit.

Because He's spirit. He made us for His joy, His pleasure and His delight. But because of sin, our spirit became dead.

God can get no delight out of it. And so that's why He sent the Lord Jesus Christ with what spirit is mouth and soul and body. And upon Calvary, He gave His life.

At the moment that I would accept that finished work, that He would come in with His life and give my spirit life, eternal life, which is the life of Christ. That now that I can enter in and appreciate all these things that He's laid out for the child of God. It's our spirit that needs life.

Because it's the spirit that dwells in the presence of God. It's the only way that God can get any enjoyment out of me or I can get any enjoyment. When our spirits come together by the Holy Spirit and by the life of Christ.

In so doing, when my spirit becomes a life, I appreciate the substitution of a work. What did it cost Him? It cost Him His own life that I might have eternal life, which is the life of Himself. And that's what God gave me upon accepting the finished work in Calvary.

And so we live by spirit. And if not, we don't appreciate the things of God. Brother Roy Weber one time brought forth a portion of the Gospel of the Kingdom.

He put forth a supper and begged many to come. There was an invitation. He didn't come.

He said, what good is an invitation? Here's an invitation. God put forth. He's given the only remedy for a ruined man.

There was an invitation. And what good is an invitation if you don't accept the invitation to come? Tremendous. As we sit and listen to all this that's been said today, and you think, and you've been asked to preach the Gospel, you think, oh no, how many mistakes am I going to make? Well, God is very gracious because all of us that are talking about this have preached the Gospel a long time and made a lot of mistakes probably in what we said, but God has overruled and still people have been saved.

So don't let... It doesn't say that you have to be at a certain level of maturity in order to go into all the world and preach the Gospel and every preacher. You don't have to wait until you're 50 and you're still to do so. Tell them what Christ has done for you.

You'll see. And if you don't know anything about how you got saved, then nobody can take that away from you. And just stick with the Scriptures.

The Lord Jesus used very simplicity in the Nicodemus when He took him back to the Old Testament about the serpent of brass being lifted up. And He said, those that have been bitten, every one that would look, they could take the message from God and believe it. And then He said, that's why the Son of God is going to be lifted up.

Everyone that will look to Him and believe it, accept it, they shall never perish but have everlasting life. So, the Gospel should go forth in simplicity. In substitution, can we say that Christ's death becomes my death? I am crucified with Christ.

So, He as a representative. Man took my place. He finished before God all that I was and am.

He died today. I have a new standing in Christ. I'm not in my Adam's standing anymore.

Adam was told in the scheme of the substitute, basically. So he took on a different character. So as a believer, we should not live in the attitude of, well, Christ died for my sins.

Now I'm going to take on my own character. I'm going to have the character of the one who died for me. So, the substitution death of Christ is not just some statement that we make in passing that has to do with the person.

When I say, He's my substitute. His death was my death. Now His life is my life.

I'll just read the last quote there from Dr. James Danning. Whosoever says he bore our sins says substitution. And to say substitution is to say something which involves an immeasurable obligation to Christ and is therefore in it an incalculable motive power.

This is the answer to some of the objections which are commonly made to the idea of substitution on moral grounds. They fail to take account of the sinner's sense of debt to Christ for what He has done. A sense of debt which is not too much to designate as the most intimate, intense, and uniform characteristic of the New Testament life.

It is this which bars out all ideas of being saved from the consequences of sin while living on in sin itself. It is so profound that the whole being of the Christian is changed by it. So, when we understand that Christ died for me it changes us.

And really, James, I've been studying the past of James, James makes no bones about it. He says you're saved if you live differently. No wishy-washy.

If you don't have a life that backs up what you're saying, you're saved. Forget it. You're not saved.

James is saved. And if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. That's not maybe.

That's true. And look back to the day you were saved. You were changed.

You were changed. And that change should continue. And it shouldn't be, well, one day I'm this way and one day I'm not.

There's demands. And it's not, it's changes that God makes in us because we are different. We have a different seed in us.

We are the seed of the sons of God. And it gives dignity and purpose. And everything's changed.

And if you don't see that in somebody's life, something's wrong. Something's drastically wrong. But Paul explains in Romans 6 that we died.

We died in Christ and that's why we get baptized by immersion, recognizing that death. And that he rose, so we rose with him. And then it says, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

So, yes, we died. We died in Christ. We've been made alive in him as well.

So substitution is his death for me. Identification is my life with him. So I identify with him in his resurrection.

Well, first of all, I identify with him in his death. That's substitution. That's substitution for me.

But then also in his resurrection, his life. It's my life. That was something we didn't understand the moment we were saved, likely.

But to choose a substitution without putting that term on it is what I recognize. But grabbing my car to work on August 7, 1973, I'm thinking over things, just thinking, well, I deserve to go to hell. But that's why Christ died.

And I was only thinking about me. And that's why he died for me. So we enter into that at the moment of salvation.

We enter into a lot more. And on the part of picking the topics and the order of these Bible readings that was so difficult, there's no necessary right or wrong, but we're getting back now to the new birth and regeneration. At the moment that we took by faith the Lord Jesus as our substitute, we were born again.

We were regenerated. And this is what we've just been speaking about. We received a new life with new desires.

Yeah, we're stepping on other people's toes by what we're talking about. I'm not exhausted. 1 Corinthians 15, 22 says, Even so, in Christ shall all be made alive.

So we're formed in Christ. When we stand before the throne of God, we don't want to be viewed as, I don't want to be viewed as Joshua or Duncan because I'll be, it would be based on my works, but it's based upon how good is Christ himself in him. That's astounding.

This Bible reading was purposed for 430, so it must be non-materialistic. Well, something that's profitable may be going back to more propitiation, but thinking about the cross work of our Lord. If you go to the Day of Atonement again, it's interesting that the goat that the Lord's lapped that on was sacrificed, and the fat only was cut out of that carcass and placed upon the burnt and eel offering.

The blood was taken in, but I wonder when the carcass was carried by a man of clean hands and burned in a clean place outside the camp. So here we have a chronological explanation of the sin offering on the Day of Atonement, but when we come to our blessed Lord Jesus on his sacrifice on the cross, he propitiated God, as we've talked about. But it says in Hebrews 13 that Jesus might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.

So the point of this is, in my own meditations, and I absolutely would love to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems like there is a duration of time in Leviticus 16, but when the Lord Jesus Christ was propitiating God, it was concurrently happening, these steps. Is there any comments on that? The types all fail to give the full picture, don't they? Sometimes you have to take the whole chapter to see the work of Christ in its fullness. Brother Portman's been on the five offerings in the Blue River, and not one of them tells the whole story.

It takes it all. But it was all accomplished by Christ on Calvary. Even though five don't really? Even the five offerings don't know? And then, we don't want to sometimes try and make something out of everything, just as William's already mentioned.

It began with Aaron making a big sin offering for himself and for his house. It's totally unnecessary when you come to the anti-type of fulfillment, but it was necessary that Hebrews points that out. They had to offer sins first for themselves, and not for the sins of the people.

This is Christ. So do we go until the clock says we're finished, or do we finish when we're finished? We finish when we're finished. Is this the place where we want to go further? Imputation.

This is a truth that's linked here. We didn't have time to deal with that separately. Does anyone have a brief statement to make as far as what is imputed to us? Well, maybe I'll just say there is a teaching out there that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us.

That that's one of the things we receive. I don't believe that. There's no teaching which... It's not His righteous life that saved us.

We know that without shedding of blood. So it took His death to save us. And His life would only have condemned us by putting in stark contrast His righteousness and our unrighteousness.

We don't meet Him in life. We meet Him in death. That's our first contact with Christ is His death.

Because that's what we are, dead and trespassed as I once said. So that's where we got to meet Him, and that's where He came to meet us in death. It's the resurrected life of Christ that we share in as believers.

But up until the moment of the work of the cross, we have no contact with Christ. The leaning of the hands of the offerer upon His sacrifice means more than simply identification with, although that's part of it. He's identifying Himself in different aspects.

As a bird offering, He was by faith receiving the benefits of that acceptance that that animal provided for God. In the case of the sin offering, it was a matter of the transferal of His guilt and His sin to the substitute. So the leaning is actually an expression of complete dependence because He's laying His weight upon it.

Essentially saying, I'm only dependent upon this to meet God's requirement. I can't. And so that leaning His weight upon the head of the animal symbolically indicated His absolute confidence that God would accept that in place of Him.

So we have the idea of a substitute for the person in the offerings. And of course the value of it was received by the individual who could go away for the assurance that his sins were forgiven him. So that we have also in the Day of Atonement, I don't want to add, I don't know what Brother William said this morning, so I don't want to add to that.

I don't know. But nevertheless, the full picture of the Day of Atonement isn't complete yet because the coming out in garments of glory and beauty awaits for the coming of the Lord Jesus and His revelation to the nation of Israel. But we have a high priest that has gone in and because of His presence before God today, we have already received the value of what they will receive in the future.

It's wonderful to see that the one who has sacrificed Himself for us is the one that represents us. He is our, in a sense, our substitute in the presence of God as His advocate toward the Father. We're maintained entirely by His work, not by our own virtues.

I was wondering what they're hearing when they have it. They were identifying. It's the thought of leaning the weight upon it.

Identifying there was nothing about or any of this. Isn't the basis, I mean, I like to simplify when I'm talking to somebody, regardless of, you know, we all have different conversions or different times, different things or hang-ups, but in the end, we get to why are you going to be in heaven? Jesus died for me. Every one of us.

Why are we going to be here? Jesus died for me. That's simple. Substitution.

He took my place. And who is He? He is the Son of God. And what did He do? He gave His life.

He satisfied God. I've been satisfied 40 some years with that. It's a done deal.

And regardless of how much more I understand, basically, it goes back. I'm going to be in heaven. Jesus died for me.

As far as Israel is concerned, as a nation, they have not yet come to the Day of Atonement in their experience. That will not happen until the Lord Jesus is manifested in His coming, His second coming. And then they will acknowledge we did esteem Him, stricken, smitten with God, but He was wounded for our transgression, our substitution.

He was bruised for our iniquity. Substitution. And Israel as a nation will enter into the benefit of the work of Christ that took place 2,000 years ago.

Will that be personal, personal, or national? Personal and national. Both. Executor Raleigh indicates that we'll have a personal aspect.

We'll mourn for Him as one mourneth for His only Son, every tribe apart, every individual apart, every class, every category, separately, and besides the individual aspect of it. So for the young... Kent, you mentioned imputation. That's an accounting term, isn't it? And maybe you can express what imputation means.

Well, it's a reckoning. To put to the account. So it's a transferring from one account to the other.

Abraham believed God and it was accounted unto him. Jesus was a righteous man. So we are charged with the righteousness of Christ, you would say? In the sense that that's usually thought of is that Christ being perfect, we are seen as perfect in Christ.

We were proven guilty, vile, helpless. We needed a sacrifice to put away our sins. We're not seen as Christ.

We're seen as justified. Would 2 Corinthians 5 and 21 shed light on this? God made him to be sin for us who know no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. There is no such expression as the righteousness of Christ.

As such, the righteousness of God is what we become because of Christ. And usually in Romans, the article's left out, right? It's not that the righteousness is a divine attribute of God, but it's a righteousness. It's the character of it.

It's a righteousness that's compatible with God's righteousness. It's based on propitiation. We have to be careful not to even fall into any nature of the kind of teaching and belief that is sustained by the Roman Catholic religion.

There are so many merits of Christ in the world, a great big basketball and the church has the ability to dispense them out to individuals as he sees fit. One thing we can appreciate that I think we ought to understand is that we receive no value personally for the life of Christ. Our relationship with him begins entirely at the point of his death.

And also to individually appreciate the fact that it took the entirety of all the sufferings of Christ to save any one of us individually. It's not a matter of dividing them all up into million parts, and we have our little millionth part of the sufferings of Christ. It required every bit of it just to save me.

And the same thing you can save yourself. It was a personal appropriation of the entirety of all that Christ accomplished that has met the need of my soul perfectly before God. There was a song that spoke of one drop of his blood being able to redeem a person.

And it's number one, it's not understanding what the blood of Jesus Christ means. It means his life, not just a drop of blood. And just what you said, it took his death to save one of us.

What is meant by the finished work of Christ? I can hear that term, that expression. What is meant by that? It means that God requires nothing more in order to put away sin and deal with it perfectly. It is finished.

So it is finished. And that's the work of the cross. That's not the work that is ongoing at God's right hand.

That's the work of the cross to put away sin. Well, there are three things in the finished work of Christ. We just covered one in detail, that's propitiation.

God had to be satisfied with every claim that his righteous person could expect. The other thing, there has to be a redemption for sin separate from, or looked at as separate from, that propitiation. And the other part is our own heart had to be reconciled to God.

God is never reconciled to the man, obviously, but we had bad feelings toward God. Everyone hated him without a cause. So the finished work of Christ covers the reconciliation of man, the redemption of our sin, and the propitiation of God.

Those three together, I take it, comprise the finished work of Christ, as we say. It all is lumped in. We need every aspect of him, but those are the three main components.

All that the holy law of God demanded of us was completed in the finished work of Christ and Calvin. The law has no more bearing on those who come to know Christ as their Savior. But God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, so the scope is beyond the individual person.

Just to clear up something my brother told, sometimes I don't quite hear it all, but the life of Christ... Come here, Nate. You mentioned that it has no value when it comes to just the redemption of the soul, right? We don't receive merit from the life of Christ. We receive all our merits from the death of Christ, and what he is now is a risen man in the glory.

So the life of Christ was essential to prove his capability, substantiating his claims as the capable Lamb of God to bear away our sin. To prove who he was. And isn't that verse that says we are saved by the life of Christ? That's his life now as a resurrected man.

Resurrected life. That's what he is now before God. And what does that save mean? Preservation.

Throw him out of the question, brother. That isn't salvation from the punishment of our sins. That's our preservation.

We're preserved and maintained by the continuing work of the Lord Jesus. What he is. What he is doing.

What I have in my mind on that, though, I'm waiting to see. Is that when we look at the life of Christ and his fulfillment of who he was and how he sent his will to the will of God the Father. And he manifested that which would bring joy to the Father.

So when we look at his life, we can see now in our Christian life and what can bring joy to the throne of God is his son was a forerunner in how he lived. He had his own will. We know that.

But he said, it's not my will. And we don't always look tied in with the will of the Father. But even being an individual, he set his will aside to do the will of God.

And we see it all the days of his life, being guided by the Holy Spirit and doing the Father's will. Perhaps you mean in the sense that Paul said, he imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ. He speaks of following his steps.

That's not steps to salvation. The first step is who did no sin. We're already disqualified.

But yes, his life is a pattern of how to live and to please God. But praise God, if that in itself is why we need him as a substitute. The life of Christ actually condemned men.

It didn't make them feel any righteously in themselves in any way. It condemned them. And yet it sets an example of what kind of life truly pleased God.

You have that in Psalm 24. Who shall go into the presence of God and ascend the holy hill? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. So we see that only in Christ.

So we have a pattern that we know that we follow very imperfectly. But he certainly is the example for the believer. Father, we continue in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we thank Thee for the Scriptures that proclaim that we are accepted in the Beloved. And we have unshot our feet today as we consider these most holy things. We bless Thee for our Lord Jesus Christ who propitiated Thee, who brought glory to Thyself and offended God.

Now has peace for those who would believe on Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And not only that for the blessings that we have in Him. The inheritance, the eternal life, the knowledge that we'll be together for all eternity.

With loved ones and ones we do not know yet, with the ones we read about in the Scriptures and the ones that they knew who trusted in the Lord Jesus, we shall all be together of every kindred and tribe and tongue. We look forward to that day, but yet we know that we have this life. We pray that our God would take pleasure in living His life through us.

So Father, we thank Thee for the assembly in Ontario and for the assemblies present here today. For the ability that we could discuss the work of our Lord Jesus Christ and the way that we did. And we are humbled to recognize that there is so much more that we did not understand or talk about.

We thank Thee for the eternity ahead where we should learn more of Him. And now we turn and thank Thee for the food that's been prepared in the basement, to bless the hands that prepared it, to give us strength for these mortal bodies, and that Thou wouldst grant journeying mercies home. And we thank Thee for the fellowship that we have with each other and amongst the assemblies.

As we commend the good word of God to Thee for thanksgiving, to bless it back to our hearts and receive all these requests and thanksgivings in the name of the worthy one, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.