Blessing or Curse?

What did Christ accomplish on the cross? Dear friends, on the cross Jesus is in hell, right there, totally bereft of the grace and the presence of God, utterly separated from all blessedness of the Father.

He becomes a curse for you. That sobering thought is our focus today here on Renewing Your Mind, as we continue Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, The Cross of Christ. We'll learn that Jesus was utterly forsaken and cursed by God on the cross. At the same time, Jesus gave to us the blessings of His relationship with the Father.

Here's Dr. Sproul. When we consider the cross of Christ, we see an event in history that stands out with so much importance and so much significance that it's easy to overlook the fact that the cross was not an isolated event in history that sort of sprung up spontaneously in a particular moment in time, sort of being born full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. But the atonement of Christ is the culmination, the climax of centuries of redemptive history where God had set certain things in motion ages and ages before that then reached its acme with the death of Christ. Now, to get a glimpse of one element of the atonement, I want to direct your attention for a moment way back in the Old Testament to the book of Deuteronomy where part of the terms of the covenant that God makes with the people of Israel are spelled out. If we do a study of the elements of a covenant in the ancient world, we see that though the content of covenants may differ from culture to culture, there were certain elements and aspects of a covenant that were virtually universal. Whenever a legal agreement like this was entered into, the sovereign one in the covenant would identify himself and give a historical prologue where he would rehearse the history of his relationship to the subordinates in the covenant.

This would be true among the Sumerians and the Kadians and other peoples of antiquity as it was with the Jews. And so when God would enter into covenant, he would identify himself. He said, I am Yahweh.

I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, did this and did that. He would give this historical prologue, and then the terms of the covenant would be set forth. And with the terms of the covenant, we call those the stipulations. Any covenant has stipulations. When you get married, you enter into a covenant, then you say, I promise to do certain things, to love, honor, obey, and so on. Or when you sign an industrial contract with an employer, you may say, I promise to work eight hours a day, and he promises to give you so much money and so many benefits, so much vacation time. Those are the stipulations. But in the ancient world, every covenant had sanctions.

And we speak of dual sanctions, a twofold sanction, that these would be the rewards and the penalties, rewards for keeping the terms and the stipulations of the agreement, penalties if you violated the terms of the agreement. Now, in the Old Testament, the reward for keeping the covenant was called a blessing, and the penalty for violating the contract was called a curse. Now let me just direct your attention for a second to chapter 28 of the Book of Deuteronomy where God is speaking, and He says, If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all His commands that I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all of the nations of the earth, and all these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God. Now listen to this litany. You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, the crops of your land, the young of your livestock, the calves of your herd, the lambs of your flock, your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you will go out.

And so do you see the litany? It's just like if you keep these terms, if you obey the commandments that God is giving as part of the stipulations of this agreement, if you obey, I'll bless you when you stand up. I'll bless you when you sit down. I'll bless you when you roll over. I'll bless you when you're silent. I'll bless you when you speak. I'll bless you when you're in the city. I'll bless you when you're in the country. I'll bless you when you're on the highway. I'll bless you when you're on the seas.

Everywhere you go, everything you do, you'll get blessed. you'll get blessed, and we turn the page, right, where we get to that scary part that says, However, verse 15, However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all His commands and decrees I am giving you today, all of these curses will come upon you and overtake you. You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed. And the crops of your lands, the calves of your herds, the lands of your flocks, you will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

You see the parallel there, an antithetical parallelism. If you obey, you're blessed. If you disobey when you stand up, you'll be cursed. When you sit down, you'll be cursed. When you go in the city, you'll be cursed, in the country you'll be cursed, in the sea you'll be cursed, you know, your children will be cursed, your sheep will be cursed, your dogs will be cursed, your cattle will be cursed, your baker will be cursed. Curse everywhere, right?

The concept of blessedness is understood in terms of the nearness, the proximity, the presence of God. Conversely, the curse of the covenant is to be cut off from the presence of God, to never see the light of His countenance, to be cast into the outer darkness. That's how the Jew understood the curse. Now, when the Jew would describe the situation of the Gentile in the Old Testament, he would say that the Gentile is a stranger to the covenant.

He is a pilgrim, he's a sojourner, he's foreign to the household of Israel. When the Day of Atonement took place in the Old Testament ceremony, we know that the Lamb was sacrificed on the altar. It was a blood offering. But what happened to the scapegoat? The sins of the nation were ceremonially transferred to the back of the goat, and the significant thing is what happens to the goat? Why isn't the goat killed? That symbolism is taken care of with the lamb.

But the goat is sent outside the camp. He's driven into the wilderness, into the place of darkness, into the place that is removed from the light of God's countenance, into the outer darkness. Now, that, because of the constraints of time, is the tip of the iceberg, you hope you understand, of the dynamic that's going on in the Old Testament symbolism of blessing and curse. But let's turn now quickly to the New Testament, to one of the most extraordinary statements that we read from the Apostle Paul with respect to the cross of Christ that we find in Paul's letter to the Galatians. In the third chapter, he reminds us of the covenant that God made with Abraham and how that when God called Abraham, He called Abraham and blessed Abraham and said, Abraham, you are blessed for what? To be a blessing, so that through you all of the nations of the world will be blessed. That is, through what I do with you, Abraham, and what comes out of this, I'm going to spread out this blessedness from the center, and I'm going to let it pour out and over all of the nations of the world.

Now, all nations will be blessed through you, so those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. All who rely on observing the law, that is trying to achieve a relationship with God by trusting in their own good works and their own performance are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. Paul is thinking back in Deuteronomy.

He's remembering the terms of the covenant. If you don't keep every one of these laws, you're under the curse. And then he says, clearly no one is justified before God by the law, for the just shall live by faith. The law is not based on faith.

On the contrary, the man who does these things will live by them. Now, here it comes, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, as it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung upon the tree. What Paul now says is that in the cross, Christ becomes a curse for us. That all of the sanctions of the penalties of the law are born by Jesus.

And he cites this strange statement, cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree. And if you go back into the Old Testament, there were certain negative sanctions that were imposed for certain kinds of situations that were considered sacrilegious or desecration where a person was becoming unclean. The Gentile was unclean.

He was outside the camp. Now, if you look at the intricacy of the drama of the events of the crucifixion of Jesus, there are some amazing things that take place so that Old Testament prophetic utterances are fulfilled to the minutest detail. In the first instance, the Bible says that the Messiah will be delivered to the Gentiles for judgment. It just so happened in the course of history that Jesus is put on trial during a time of Roman occupation, where the Romans, though they allowed a certain amount of home rule to their conquered vassals, did not permit the death penalty to be imposed by the local rulers. And so the Jews did not have the authority to put Christ to death. The only thing they could do would be to meet in council and deliver Jesus to Pilate and get Pilate to do it. And so Jesus is delivered from His own people to the Gentiles who are where?

Outside the camp. He is delivered into the hands of the pagan, outside of where the face of God shines, outside of where the light of His countenance falls, and He's delivered into their hands for judgment. The Jews didn't kill or execute by crucifixion. They did it by stoning, but the Romans do it by crucifixion. And so the method of Jesus' death is by what? Hanging upon a tree. The Bible doesn't say, cursed be everyone who is stoned.

Cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree. Then where is the site of the actual execution? Outside of Jerusalem. So that Jesus is, first of all, delivered to the Gentiles for judgment, and once He is judged, condemned to be executed, then He is physically led out of the fortress onto the Via Dolorosa outside of the walls of the city. And like the scapegoat is driven outside the camp, outside of Zion, outside of the holy city where the presence of God is concentrated. He is sent into the outer darkness. And think again of the imagery of the cross itself.

When Jesus is put on the cross, we have an astronomical perturbation that takes place. In the middle of the afternoon, it becomes dark, literally, physically dark. Darkness descends upon the land. And in the midst of the intensity of this darkness, which involves some kind of blotting and obscuring or perhaps even an eclipse of the sun, in the midst of that physical, literal darkness, Jesus cries.

And what does He cry? My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? It's one of the most pregnant utterances that ever came from the lips of Jesus. While He's on the cross, there's been all kinds of interpretations of that. Albert Schweitzer looked at that and said, here's proof positive that Jesus died in disillusionment.

He had all kinds of expectations that God was going to deliver Him, and God let Him down in the final moments, and so that Jesus dies as a disillusioned, tragic Shakespearean hero. Or others notice that the words, of course, are found verbatim in Psalm 22. And they say, well, here Jesus is identifying Himself with the suffering servant of Psalm 22 and is reciting poetry on His deathbed. Now, I don't doubt that the origin for the actual words comes from the Psalm, and Jesus was aware of that Psalm, and I'm sure he'd read it many, many times.

Others, in fact, my favorite hymn, my ordination hymn was, "'Tis Midnight and on Olive's Brow," and I love that hymn in spite of the fact that there is a statement in there of heresy. When it talks about Jesus, it says, was not forsaken by His God. And you see theologians say, well, Jesus in His humanity felt forsaken on the cross, but He wasn't really forsaken. Let me say this, if Jesus was not really forsaken on the cross, you are still in your sins.

You have no redemption, you have no salvation, because the whole point of the cross is that if Jesus is going to bear our sins and bear the sanctions of the covenant. Let me ask you this, what was the sign of the old covenant? Circumcision.

Talk about primitive and obscene signs. Why did the Jew cut off the foreskin of his flesh? It had two significances, a positive and a negative for the two sanctions. The symbolic gesture of the cutting of the foreskin was that God is cutting out this group of people from the rest, separating them, setting them apart to be a holy nation, to be a blessing. The negative is that the Jew was saying this, oh God, if I fail to keep every one of the terms of this covenant, may I be cut off from you, cut off from your presence, cut off from the light of your countenance, cut off from your blessedness, just as I have now ritually cut off the foreskin of my flesh.

Do you understand that the cross is the supreme circumcision? Because when Jesus takes the curse upon himself, so identifies with our sin that he becomes a curse, God cuts him off, and justly so, because at the moment that Christ takes upon himself the sin of the world, that figure that is on the cross is the most grotesque, most obscene mass of sin concentrated in the history of the world. And God is too holy to even look at iniquity, and when Christ is hanging on the cross, the Father, as it were, turns his back. He removes his face.

He turns out the light. He cuts off his Son, and so here is Jesus bearing the sin and touching his human nature who has been in perfect, blessed relationship with God throughout his ministry now. God forsakes him. I've heard a million sermons about the nails and the thorns, and granted, the physical agony of crucifixion is a ghastly thing, but there's been thousands of people who have died on the cross, but only one has received the full measure of the curse of God while on that cross.

I doubt if Jesus was even aware of the nails and the spear. He was so overwhelmed by the outer darkness. Dear friends, on the cross, Jesus is in hell, right there, totally bereft of the grace and the presence of God, utterly separated from all blessedness of the Father. He becomes a curse for you so that you someday will be able to see the face of God, so that the light of his countenance will fall on you. God turned his back on his Son. No wonder he screamed. He screamed from the depths of his soul. How long did he have to endure it?

A second of it is of infinite value. It's enough. And finally, he says, it's finished. It's finished. It's over. What? His life?

The pain of the nails? No. The light's come back on. And he says, into thy hands I commend my Spirit.

Incredible. Look for it as you read the Scriptures. Look for the imagery of the curse and the blessing, because again, this is the tip of the iceberg.

And every time I read it, I'm just in awe of what happened there. What an incredible thought, the curse intended for us, fully placed on Christ. Our series this week on Renewing Your Mind is Dr. R.C.

Sproul's The Cross of Christ. We've learned this week about the need for atonement, the ransom that Christ paid to the Father, and justification by faith alone. This is a valuable study for every believer, young and old. So I hope you'll contact us today with a donation of any amount so that we can add this full series digitally to your learning library, along with a study guide for the series.

You'll be able to stream the messages right away. And to help you study further, we'll also send you the hardbound copy of R.C. 's book on the same topic.

It's titled The Truth of the Cross. So contact us today with your gift when you go online to renewingyourmind.org. If you prefer, you can call us.

Our phone number is 800-435-4343. Hard to believe, isn't it, that 2022 is just around the corner? We don't know what lies ahead for our country or for the world, but we do know one thing. People need to understand the gospel. We here at Ligonier Ministries have some ambitious plans for the coming year.

We're excited about those plans, and it's stories like this that motivate us all the more. I started listening to the app and also RefNet several years ago. I go to the gym, I listen to the lectures, and I really fell in love with R.C. 's teaching, and also with some of the other speakers and teachings as well. I felt like I really got a very good handle on the Reformation as a result of the series on church history by Dr. Godfrey. I have a friend in Oregon who also is a Christian wanting to grow in his understanding of the word, and I recommended the Ligonier app to him as well.

He has been going through it and enjoying it tremendously. So the teachings of Dr. Sproul, RefNet, the app have played a very big role in my spiritual growth, in my understanding of Reformation doctrine, the catechisms, how it all fits together, and I continue to refer this app and also RefNet to others as well as the Lord gives me opportunity. Thank you so much, and may God continue to bless this ministry. We appreciate that testimony from Michael, and if you have given to Ligonier Ministries, his thanks are directed to you as well.

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