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Now let's jump in. If God truly understands my heart, if he knows that I'm doing everything I can to live a holy life for him, surely he can just sweep my sin under the rug, right? It's not quite that easy, and we'll talk about why. I'm gonna brighten out in the Clearview Today Show. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr.
Abadan Shah, a daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. Welcome to the Clearview Today Studio. We're coming at you live right here in Henderson, North Carolina, with our host, Dr.
Abadan Shah. Dr. Shah, it's good to see you. You as well. I'm looking forward to this show as we As we wrap up the whole idea of God's holiness, it's been a very, I would say, Heavy subject, but I think it's one that we need, it's one that helps us in our daily sin life.
And one that doesn't get talked about much, right? I love this deep dive because we often just stop at God is holy.
Okay, yeah, of course he is. Why wouldn't he be? But when we really understand the implications of God's holiness, what that means in our understanding of who God is and our understanding of salvation, our relationship with God, that has wide-reaching implications that we've been privileged to talk about. We're going to continue to talk about today. We understand synonyms, right?
Like, what does it mean that God is holy? Oh, like, he's perfect. He's pure. He's all those things. Yeah, sure.
But what does that really mean? Ah, well. I've never really thought about it. Yeah. And maybe you've never thought about it, especially if today is your very first time ever tuning into the show.
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Dr. Shaw, we've been talking about holiness and it's the central attribute of God. It's the core of who he is and everything kind of draws itself from God's holiness. But what does that mean for our relationship with God, how we approach God and how we understand our relationship to him as our Heavenly Father? Yeah, one of the things to understand that we've been trying to communicate in the past couple of episodes is that we cannot approach God.
Yep. On our standards, God holds a standard of righteousness, He gets to decide the rules. This is not a game where the players come together and they come up with the rules and then they appoint the referee. No. He is the one, and he is much more than just a referee.
He he owns the team. He owns the stadium. He owns the life of the players. Everything belongs to him.
So when it comes to God, really, there's no good Metaphor to help us understand. But God holds a standard of righteousness. God cannot tolerate sin. God will punish sin. And we can approach God only on His terms.
And what is the term? The term is a simple word. Blood. What does that mean? It means someone has to die.
You know, when we talk about God will punish sin. Uh it says right here in Psalm five verses four through six for you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness. Nor shall evil dwell With you? The boastful shall not stand in your sight, you hate all workers of iniquity, you shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
abhors you will destroy. Ye no one can stand in your sight. I mean that those words communicate to us that You cannot just saunter your way up to God and just stick your hand out and say, Here it is, shake my hand or give me a fist bump. It's not going to be like that. That's right.
That's right. You know, maybe you can help us to understand why this is the case. Because when I hear something, and I think when a lot of Christians hear something like God will destroy sin. We think he's God. Snaps his fingers, it ceases to exist.
Everything can go back to the way it was pre-fall in the Garden of Eden. But for some reason, he's not doing that. There has to be a blood sacrifice. That's a good point. I've heard a lot of people raise that argument.
Why is that necessary? Why does someone have to die? Isn't God powerful enough that he can just forgive our sins?
Well, that's Islam. Mm-hmm. Muslim apologists or even people who have some basic understanding of Islam will tell you that, no, no, no, this whole idea that God has to send his son, right there, there's a problem. Where if he's sending his son, who is his wife? Who is God's wife that he can have a child with that?
w with that consort or that that mistress and then have a child. Oh, that's not true. God is spirit. Don't you say God is spirit? And where is he going to get a son from?
And then they will mock that and say, Well, and then he's going to make his son die? What kind of a father is that? He's gonna kill his son?
So they will make all kinds of these arguments, And they will bypass the idea that sin deserves judgment.
Now they will talk about judgment, but they will say, Well, if you ask God to forgive you, He does. But you see. That is a costless. Sacrifice. There is no price to be paid.
It's just Oh, just ask God. and he'll just do it for you. But who pays for it? It's like for me to say You know what, Ryan? I really think a lot of you.
Here's this pen. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. I have have depended.
Oh, well, guess what? John, you want this water bottle? Yeah, you can have that too. Thank you. David, what would you like?
You want a microphone? That's your microphone.
Well You will not ask anything, but someone standing who is an objective person will say, Well, wait a minute. Does that pin belong to you? No. Then what right do you have to give it away? The water bottle?
No, it doesn't belong to me. Uh the microphone, I didn't pay a dime for it.
So you're just giving this away? And it's not costing anybody anything. Oh, it's costing the church something. Yeah. Yeah.
It's easy to be freely generous when it's no cost to you. And maybe we can talk about that because I know God's mercy is one of the attributes we're going to cover. But that's something that you've said all the time, Dr. Shah, is that mercy is really cheap when it doesn't cost you anything. Yeah.
It's easy to show mercy when I someone else's dime. Yeah, on someone else's dime. I don't have to pay for it. I don't have to forgive. Look, you did a really wrong by someone else, but I forgive you.
God forgives you. It's all good. Yeah. And that's what people do. But.
when you understand There All Of our life, everything material, immaterial, is proceeding from God. It's a gift of God, it is something that God. Through his power. and His Being His Essence has created. Then when you send It is costing God.
It is it is taking something that belongs to God and twisting it. Mm. I don't think I've ever thought about it that way. When you sin, it's costing God. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah, i if if let's say this pen is mine.
Okay. Ryan, you take this pen and you Give it to John.
Okay. But before you give it to him, you break it. You break it apart. And then you give it to him. And then John's like, oh, that's kind of funny the way you broke that.
Oh, that is so funny. And I cannot write with it, but it's going to be something I can laugh about and joke about. And I'm looking at you the whole time like, hey, that cost me something. That pen was mine. Yeah.
And you broke it. and you give it to him and he's enjoying it and you both of you think this is great. It's mine, I own it. Pay up. Yeah.
pay up. You know, that in in sense is uh is Sin, yeah, it belongs to God. That's a great then that payment must be made. Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. You break it, you bought it.
Exactly. You know, Dr. Show, we talk about this, right? We talk about our sin, like, this is my personal struggle, this is what I'm going through, God's helping me through it. But we don't think about the fact that God, there's a reckoning coming.
You know, there's a reckoning coming for those of us who aren't in Jesus. Do you want to kind of introduce the cross, introduce the blood? And maybe there's, I mean, we're on Christian radio, of course, but maybe there's someone who's like, I'm bought into this and I haven't accepted Jesus. Yeah. Maybe kind of introduce the cross and how this playing out.
Yeah, you cannot decide who God is. You cannot say, well, you know, God can just forgive me, or if God is infinite, you know, any cost is nothing to him. No, no, no. It doesn't work like that. You have to come to God on His terms.
He said, Well, how about this religion and that religion that just freely forgives? They are no different than Ryan taking a pen that belongs to me, breaking it in half, and giving it to John. Just because he did that doesn't mean now that he is the owner of that pen. You never were, you never will be. I am.
So also with the living true God. Who has revealed himself since the creation, and he has revealed himself in the word, in the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, who he is. That's what we're studying about God is from the Bible. And what does he say about himself? He says that he is holy, he is And that's sin.
is something that goes directly contrary to His Holiness. His principal attribute. And it says in Leviticus seventeen, verse eleven. For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I this is God saying I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls.
For it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Blood represents death. It also represents life.
So, when that soul, when that blood is shed, it's like. Life for life. is happening. You sin and now This is the payment. And so throughout the Bible, we had the sacrificial system that's been established where there's blood being shed for the people's sins, but it's, of course, an imperfect system.
Right. It's incomplete. It points towards something greater. It is just a... temporary Kind of a holding place, I guess you can say.
You know, there's something just there until the real thing happens. Until the real thing happens. Uh so like like you you go to a A shoe store. Right. And and there is one shoe sitting there.
And it's just there. That that's just a temporary thing. You cannot, or let me give you an even better example. You go to an Apple store. And sometimes they will have these These watches or phones are sitting there, but some of them are not really working.
They're just temporarily there. You have to ask for them, and then they'll give you the real deal and be there as you're opening it. Those sacrifices and offerings there were in the Old Testament. Especially the blood sacrifice. They were only there until.
the real one would be done.
So God says That sacrifice, the blood sacrifice. Is Until the Real One comes. And who is the Real One? It says in Hebrews 9, verse 22, And according to the law, almost all things are purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. There is no remission.
And so Peter says in 1 Peter 3:18, for Christ also suffered once for sins. The just for the unjust. that He might bring us to God, Being put to death in the flesh, but being made be but made alive by the spirit. The idea of sacrifice, Dr. Shaw, that's present in other religions.
I mean, you find that in different religions from around the world, from different traditions and different places. What makes Christianity different? Oh yeah. You the thing is, again, I'm so glad you brought that up. I would say Almost all ancient Peoples Yeah.
Had some form of Human sacrifice. You talk about the Aztecs, they did. Egyptians did. Mesopotamians did. I hit tides dead.
Come into more of the Modern day European Nations. the the Scandinavians didn't. The Irish did. Did you know the Irish had Human sacrifice. I didn't know that.
Oh, yeah, yeah. The Irish you know, when I was in Dublin, One of the places I wanted to go was the museum there, because in the museum you had the you have the bog bodies. Have you heard of the bog bodies? Right? I mean, the so.
these bodies that were kind of almost fished out of the bog. And the bog is like with all these trees sort of falling in there.
So all the chemicals, the acids and whatever, this sort of it's not like just like a little stagnated water. It's almost like a preservative. It becomes a preservative.
So when you drop a or throw a body in there, It preserves a body, kind of like a mummy.
Now, these are bodies that were thrown in there like purposely for preservation.
Well, not for preservation. Oh, they were thrown in there after human sacrifices. Oh, I got you, gotcha. Yeah. So, when you see these bodies, and I wanted to see them, I was like, I wanted to see.
And there are several other museums in Europe that have these bog bodies. But the museum in Dublin, I think, is. Museum of Dublin, I think it is, or Museum of Ireland. I don't know. But I It's there.
Right. I wanted to go there because they have they've had this exhibition for a long ti oh this this this exhibit for a long time and I think they were like all together five maybe four or five maybe six I don't know And That was the highlight of my trip.
So, you did get to see the bodies? Oh, absolutely. Wow. What is amazing about it is that you see that they were not struggling. They were not struggling.
which means some of them were willing to die, or maybe they were drugged, we don't know. But they were killed. Yeah. And then their bodies were put in the in the bog. That's human sacrifice.
Right? So, National Museum of Ireland, our engineer, just told us that.
So, yeah. And Mm-hmm. means all these cultures understood this. It's us in the past, I would say. thousand, fifteen hundred years who say, Oh, human sacrifice is all evil, evil, at least in the Western world.
But in other parts of the world, this was understood.
Somebody has to die for us.
Somebody has to die for our people. Who's going to?
Well we're going to pick this person.
Sometimes reluctantly, sometimes willingly. They're like, Yeah, I'll do it. Yeah. So the idea that's that Life for Life Was there.
Now, how does Christianity because Christianity is human sacrifice in the sense that Jesus is human, but it's also God sacrificing Himself. Yeah, and this is not just Christianity. You know, I usually say, Believers. Sure. Yeah.
Because you have people who are coming from a Judeo-Christian background where they are more Messianic. And so I I never want anybody to feel like, hey, you're not part of this discussion because you are the first peoples in that discussion. Right. Hmm. We understood.
Our people understood that Jesus became that substitute for us. Why? Because the Bible The Bible has the idea of substitution. Substitutionary debt that we call it the penal. Substitutionary atonement right from the beginning.
You see Abraham. Told by God to take his son his only son, and sacrifice him. Why was that being done? uh w it was being done to teach him and to teach us. that some one will have to die.
For us, and it'll be someone's son.
So Abraham takes his son thinking Isaac is the one. It was not just that you're taking my son away, and this is a test of my faith. He thought this is the one. This is the plan of salvation come to fruition. Yeah, and God.
Allowed him to go up until the point where the knife was raised, and then God stopped him and said, No. But did you understand what just happened, Abraham? That's what's coming. Not that Jesus was knife to death on a on a on you know on s stone altar But In time God gave more information. that it would be a cross.
Like David talks about In Psalm twenty two, that he talks about him hanging up there and his bones are gaping, and people are making faces. And and saying all kinds of things against him like like dogs. and barking against him. You know, little by little, God began to give more information. You come to Isaiah.
Isaiah fifty three is so powerful. I mean, It is incredibly powerful. No wonder. When The Ethiopian eunuch is going back to his home country. And he's reading.
He's reading from Isaiah 53. Yeah. He's not reading just any Old Testament passage, although. God could have used any part to Yeah. To the gospel?
But he uses Isaiah fifty three. If you ever sit down and read Isaiah 53, it is mind-blowing. In fact, that's one of the points where a lot of Jewish background people. Come to know Christ. Yeah.
When they read Isaiah, it's like. Oh. Oh, whoa, sort of fits. Yeah, yeah. This is it.
This was written in there all along. Yeah, this is always there. In fact, if we have a moment, let's go there just to. get an idea on this because this is so powerful. And I want our listeners, our viewers, to really understand this.
So I'm going to jump right in: Isaiah 53. And Starting right here. It says in verse 2, He shall grow up before him as a tender plant. And as a root out of dry ground, there he has no form of comliness. And when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.
He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We hid it we hid, as it were, our faces with him from him he was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs How else can you? Translate that. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Yet we esteemed him Stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgression. See, in time, God began to give more information. No different than when a child goes to school, We don't teach them calculus and trigonometry and and and chemistry. We start them with ABCs and shapes. And colors.
But In those ABCs and shapes and colors, you have the ingredients of everything that they will need when they. Let's take uh honors English or or or just normal High school subject. That's right. Yeah. So right here.
This is more like high school. He was wounded for our transgression, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by His stripes, His stripes, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him.
The iniquity of us all. I mean, how in the world can you read that and not go?
Okay, so tell me again about this Jesus person. Right. I love reading through this because there's some places in the Bible where you read and you point out that this person or this thing or this event is a type of Christ and you're like, oh, wow, I didn't see that. I could sort it. I see it now.
Okay, I understand that. This is... Not Isaiah. This is obviously about Jesus. This is blatantly pointing to the Messiah.
I think it also shows the tremendous depth that the Jewish people had that this was coming. We like to paint this picture that they just didn't understand. They couldn't see it. They had this veil over their eyes. And it almost makes the story worse that they knew that Jesus was the Messiah.
They knew. Yeah, absolutely. And and Sacrificed him anyway or killed him anyway. You know what I'm saying? That's the much more uncomfortable and powerful truth is that they understood what they were doing and they still sacrificed Jesus.
Well, let's be careful about how we say that because the person who did do the sacrificing was ultimately. Pilate, the Roman Empire. He's the one who was given plenty of opportunity, and all he said was glibly, What is truth? And then walked away before the answer was given.
So. In Pilate it was not just the Jewish people, Who did the sacrificing, it was. All of us, the entire Gentile world was there. Because Rome represents the rest of the Gentile world. Absolutely.
So right here, if you want to go back here for a quick second, verse 7. He was oppressed and was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to his to the slaughter, and as a sheep before a shearer silent, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. And who will declare his generation?
For he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgressions of my people. He was stricken. You see, all this is connected to the holiness of God. And they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death. I mean, if you want to.
Momentarily deviate from our discussion about the holiness and how Jesus took our sins upon himself. Let's just focus on the he made his grave with the wicked. Of course, When he went to the cross He was killed between two thieves. But when he was put in the grave, he was put in the grave of Joseph of Arimathea, who was a very rich man. They made his grave with the wicked.
But with the rich at his death. Both of those things are coming through. Because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, he has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin.
His soul, an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his day, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. You see that? He, God, will see the labor of his son's soul and be satisfied by his knowledge. My righteous servant shall justify many.
For he shall bear their iniquities, therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, which is us. means Jesus in the book of Ephesians where heading there in our s in our uh s uh weekend preaching. Where are we going to focus on the book of Ephesians? It starts right there about the riches of Christ. He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death.
And he was numbered with the transgressors. And he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. You know, sometimes our English translations are not as good and they need to be updated every generation. And he bore the sin of many. I mean I would like to say, and he bore the sin of all.
Right. Well, many should be all. Mm-hmm. When they translated this, you know, King James and then revised into New King James, saying many was. Like all, like the collective, the collective, yeah, yeah.
But now we need a bit more specific. Like, no, he bore the sin of all and made intercession for the transgressors, all this. I read just to help us understand that this was not a foreign concept. Yeah. Well, so bring that home for us, Dr.
Shah, that we know that this isn't a foreign concept. And we get the idea that Jesus had to die for us. God couldn't sweep our sin under the rug. Jesus had to pay the price for us. But for me, right now, the Christian on my way to work, Washing my dishes, heading to some class or heading somewhere listening to this episode.
What do I do with this today? Place to begin is humility. There's nothing in you, nothing in your being without God or with God that you can take credit for. It's all by His grace.
So let every day begin with a sense of gratefulness, a sense of humility, and a sense of giving yourself to God. It's through Him. And so it needs to go back to him. My life should be lived for him. You know, Romans 6:19 says, Present your members as slaves of righteousness for Holiness.
Jesus died. To take my sin f sin and sinfulness, and to exchange that for His Holiness.
So, I need to present my members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. daily living my life in a way that pleases him. And Hebrews chel tells us in Hebrews 12, 14, pursue peace with all people and holiness. Without which? No one will see the Lord.
So daily desiring to Be holy by giving yourself to God. Amen. That's right. That's the pursuit of the Christian life: daily desiring that holiness and pursuing it with your actions, with the time that you spend in God's word, with the time that you spend doing things like listening to the Clearview Today Show to help you in your journey in obeying God and sharing that message with the world around you. You spending a simple 30 minutes a day with us here on this couch is going to do so much more for your desire for God than if you were just finding some random thing on YouTube.
Because these are men on this couch, and I can say this from the bottom of my heart who truly desire to see you grow and to see you understand God better. That's what all of us are trying to do. It's not just that we're teaching you, we are daily growing in our understanding of God, especially me. And so, I just want to say I appreciate these two men. I appreciate you guys listening.
Man, this is a show that is going to change your life if you allow it every single day. That's right. And you can help this show change other people's lives as well by becoming a partner with the Clearview Today Show. You can do that by visiting Abhadanshah.com forward slash give. For any monthly amount, we're going to give you a free gift for you for your ministry.
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