Going to Heaven...Old Testament Style

The full and final payment of sin was the Messiah. He summarized, he finalized, he confirmed, he completed the system of substitutionary atonement. You can understand it this way.

Let me say it this way. Old Testament saints went to heaven by faith in the forgiveness that was yet to come. New Testament saints go to heaven by faith in forgiveness that has come. In that light, ladies and gentlemen, the plan of salvation has never changed. God did not change the rules.

The crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pivotal event in all human history. So what about faithful people who lived prior to that? How were people in the Old Testament saved? Many people have the false belief that salvation in the Old Testament was different from salvation in the New Testament. salvation has always been by faith. We're going to explore all of this and answer it from God's Word today.

This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen continues through his series called Sola Fide with this message that he's entitled, Going to Heaven, Old Testament Style. How was an Old Testament person saved? How was an Old Testament person granted forgiveness? Upon what basis did an Old Testament saint go to paradise?

Paradise, of course, was the holding place until after the crucifixion where Christ emptied it and created heaven and took them there. Well, how did an Old Testament believer go to paradise? Abraham never asked Jesus into his heart, nor did Moses or Jacob or Joshua. None of the prophets ever got down on their knees and said, Father, I come to you now in the name of our Lord and I know I'm a sinner and I place my faith in your son, the Lord Jesus, to save me and forgive me and cleanse me. They never prayed anything like that. You say, but I thought you had to do that to go to heaven. Well then if they didn't pray that, how'd they go to heaven? How does an Old Testament person live before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, before the burial and resurrection of our Lord find forgiveness? Did they need forgiveness in the same way we need forgiveness after the cross? Did God change the rules for certain Old Testament saints?

Did he play favorites with them and treat them differently than he treats us? Those are the questions. Now you go home and find the answers. Come back next week.

It's easy. Have you ever wondered though how Abraham could be called the friend of God? How does a lying coward get called the friend of God? A man who, who risked the virtue and safety and protection of his wife by telling her to make sure that when they arrived in the city and Egypt initially, that she was his sister and that would of course keep him alive if anybody wanted her. She was a beautiful woman and sure enough Pharaoh spots her and adds her to his harem and Abraham stays silent.

She was his half-sister, but she evidently was told to tell people she was unmarried. It took plagues from God to cause Pharaoh to know that something was amiss. Can you imagine how Sarah acted toward Abraham and what did Abraham do?

Hang his head and say, well, I'm sorry. Well, he did it again eight chapters later, this time with a pagan king, Abimelech. He told her, look, tell everybody you're unmarried because you're beautiful.

They're going to want you and I want to live. So she did. Abimelech added her to his harem until God came to this pagan king in a vision and said, you are a dead man.

Literally. I don't understand that. I would have come to Abraham and said, you are a dead man for doing this. That would probably was Sarah's prayer. What kind of husband would do that? How can he be the friend of God? What about Jacob? How do you take a deceiving, manipulating, self-centered man and give him a name change that means the prince of God?

What kind of standard is there for a prince? Evidently a prince of God. Furthermore, how does a man independently of his wonderful name, how does he get into heaven?

What about Moses, the great leader of Israel? How do you take a man like him and allow him to be the dispenser of the law? How do you place into his blood stained hands the tablets of law that declare thou shalt not what?

Kill. How do you allow a man like that to deliver the message of the law? Consider David. Did God change the rules for this man? I mean, how can you commit some of the most repulsive sins recorded in the Old Testament? He committed adultery. Then after he found out the woman was pregnant, he had her husband abandoned on the battlefield so he would die.

And then after the death of her husband, he brings her into the palace and goes through the charade of a wedding and announces to people later there's a baby on the way. How do you do that and be called a man after God's own heart? What kind of heart does God have? How do you call murderers and adulterers and deceivers and manipulators and liars, friends and servants and kindred spirits of God? Donald Gray Barnhouse asked that same question in his volume in Romans. If God is holy, these Old Testament men should be separated from God forever.

Would not a holy God dirty himself in holding such sinful men to his bosom in love? See, back to my original question, how does an Old Testament man or woman living and dying prior to the cross of Jesus Christ find cleansing and forgiveness? Maybe you would say, well, through animal sacrifices.

Well, listen to what the writer of Hebrews writes in Chapter 10, for the law that is the system of animal sacrifices that which God taught them to approach him by those sacrifices since it is only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things can never by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year after year make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, they would not have ceased to be offered because the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have the consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins year after year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. The Greek verb aphereo could be translated, it is impossible to permanently remove.

They were certainly covered. They experienced a form of temporary forgiveness, as it were, through these animal sacrifices, but not permanently removed, not permanently forgiven. It's impossible for animal sacrifices to completely remove sins. If that's true, then that would mean that it's impossible for any Old Testament believer to go to heaven because none of their sins were completely removed. And there isn't any way that a holy God can be in the presence of those stained in any way, shape, or form with sin. John was given a tour of heaven and in the book of Revelation, he recorded what he saw.

He described the throne of God and he described the winged creatures that hover even to this day around the throne of God, continually chanting, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come, Revelation 4-8. Nobody fellowships around that throne who is dirtied with lingering sin. No one with sin to their account could ever hope to be in the presence of that holy God. Furthermore, John goes on to describe the citizens of heaven as those who have been washed clean and pure. He even states in chapter 21 that no unclean person can inhabit the holy city. Well, then how does an Old Testament believer go to paradise if God kept the rules the same?

Unless he changed the rules, there's no way that any sinful person, no matter if it happens to be Abraham or David or Jacob, could ever hope to live forever with a holy God when they never had had their sins permanently removed. So back to my question, how does an Old Testament believer go to heaven? Well, the answer is found, believe it or not, in Romans chapter three. You're probably saying, Stephen, you think the answer to everything is in Romans chapter three.

Well, lately it has been. Romans chapter three, let's go to verse 23 and start there and then we'll get to the phrase that I want to deal with this morning. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. That word propitiation, satisfaction in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness. That is, the cross was to demonstrate God's righteousness.

Here it is. Because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time. That is the cross that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. In other words, the cross of Christ was a demonstration of God's righteousness to prove that God had not changed the rules to prove that sin had to be punished. The demonstration was needed because God could have been viewed as unrighteous, as partial, as inconsistent. Sometimes his wrath was felt by a nation or a family or a person and other times, people that did worse things were allowed to live. In fact, they were called the friend of God or they were called the man after God's own heart.

What was going on? Well, it tells us here that the cross was the demonstration that he in fact had a holy standard. But it does tell us that he passed over.

What does it mean he passed over? In the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed. That word passed over, paresis, refers to the temporary passing over, the temporary withholding of full judgment against sin for a certain period of time. Did God do that? Paul said he did it. Does it seem to make sense with what you read out of the Old Testament?

Makes perfect sense. Adam and Eve sinned. Did God demonstrate his full wrath against unrighteousness and wipe him off the face of the earth?

No. He killed some animals, didn't he? And he covered them. He made atonement for them. He temporarily brought, at least within their lifetime, and those sacrifices would continue throughout their lives, that sense of forgiveness. So he dealt with it in that way.

In fact, at that very moment, he pointed to a coming substitutionary atonement, someone who would shed his blood that would permanently cleanse sin. In the book of Leviticus, where God formalized the approach to his holiness, in the form of that tabernacle and that holy place, and then the Holy of Holies, and of course, in the Holy of Holies, you remember, was the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark was simply a wooden box, about a foot long, or a yard long, excuse me. It was covered over with gold and inside were a number of things and the most significant, as it relates to atonement, was the tablets of stone upon which God had written the law with his finger. They were placed in that ark.

The first set, you remember, had been broken in a hundred pieces by Moses and his anger. And God again withheld the full expression of his wrath and he graciously inscribed on fresh tablets his law. And those tablets were placed into this ark. And a person who wanted to approach God would approach through the priesthood and that high priest once a year, you remember, would kill a bull and a goat and take their blood in a bowl and come in and sprinkle it on that mercy seat, which is simply the lid of the box.

The mercy seat is a wonderful picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so God instituted that his justice, as it were, would be enacted against this animal. And the animal would serve as the substitute for the sinful man. The interesting thing is to consider the fact that the animal could be used temporarily because the animal had never committed sin.

The animal would sin less. It's interesting when you consider the fact that animals are not immortal beings. They do not have immortal souls. They do not share the nature of man.

They do not worship God in the way we worship him, of course. Once that animal has lived his life, he's lived it. There is no future heaven. There is no future worship around the throne. There is no redemption.

I'm sorry if that's bad news to you. But that horse or that cow or that dog or cat or whale or giraffe lives their one life following the instinct that God has created in them. We can do some amazing things by changing their instincts but we cannot give them cognizance of will and thereby sin, rebellion against God.

And that's the good news because that sinless animal can serve as a substitute for sinful human. So you remember in the system where that high priest would come in with the blood of that bull and the blood of the goat and sprinkle it on the mercy seat in this holy of holies. And then after that, smoke and fire would descend symbolizing the presence of God who'd come down, as it were, to again view his people. He would view the tablets of law.

He would see that everybody had broken the law but he saw the law through the mercy seat, that is through the blood that had been sprinkled on the lid. God was temporarily satisfied that there had been a substitute for the sin of the people. Now something still had to be done permanently.

This was temporary. Remember Hebrews 10 says it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to permanently remove sin. So how did the Old Testament believer experience full and final forgiveness during his lifetime?

Follow me carefully. How did an Old Testament saint experience full and final forgiveness during his lifetime? The answer is he didn't. Not until the crucifixion of Jesus Christ were the sins of the Old Testament and the New Testament. In fact, the sins of all of mankind from all time and for all time were placed on Christ, as it were, who became sin. Were they permanently atoned for? That means that the Old Testament believer prior to the cross was in effect saved on credit.

There's something Americans understand. In fact, one author wrote that if Christ had not died on the cross to pay the penalty for their sin, they would have had to have been brought out of paradise and, as it were, sent to Hades or the penalizing side of Hades we think of as hell. The full and final payment of sin was the Messiah. He summarized, he finalized, he confirmed, he completed the system of substitutionary atonement. You can understand it this way.

Let me say it this way. Old Testament saints went to heaven by faith in the forgiveness that was yet to come. New Testament saints go to heaven by faith and forgiveness that has come.

In that light, ladies and gentlemen, the plan of salvation has never changed. God did not change the rules. He simply changed the sacrifice.

The Old Testament believer knew that the dying animal was his substitute so that he could avoid judgment and live. In fact, David's classic psalm of confession in Psalm 51, the song he wrote after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and after he had her husband killed, he wrote this to God. He said, oh, cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean. What does it mean to be cleansed with hyssop?

Doesn't sound like anything I'd like to do. We need to understand that hyssop was the plant that the priest used to dip into the bowl of blood and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. In other words, David was pleading for forgiveness on the basis of being cleansed by the blood of God's appointed sacrifice.

Sound familiar? The Old Testament believer knew the dying animal was his substitute so that he could avoid judgment and be forgiven. The New Testament believer knows that the dying lamb of God is the final substitute so that he can be permanently forgiven, avoiding judgment and live forever. Let me say it another way. For the Old Testament believer, the sinless animal foretold redemption.

It's a great picture. For all believers, the sinless Savior fulfilled redemption. Now, for this to be true, for the Old Testament saint to be looking forward, he would have to have known that there was a coming Redeemer, right? Did they know that there would be a person, a Redeemer who would die for them? Well, listen with fresh ears to this prophecy by Isaiah.

And then answer the question, did they know that a person was going to be taken as their substitute? He was pierced through, Isaiah wrote, for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him. By his scourging, we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us have turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like that lamb that has led to slaughter and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers.

So he did not open his mouth. Verse 11, he says, as a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied by his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, will justify the many and he will bear their iniquities.

Interesting. You see, ladies and gentlemen, it was on the cross that God the Father placed on God the Son, the sins of David, the sins of Moses, the sins of Abraham. And every Old Testament believer that had placed their faith in God's substitutionary atonement, he placed their sins on Christ and every New Testament believer. So they knew a coming Redeemer was on his way.

Let me say it this way. Old Testament saints were saved by faith in the future death of Christ. New Testament saints are saved by faith in the past death of Christ. In other words, if you forget everything I've said, I've got a good feeling you will. But if you forget everything, remember this. Everybody, Old Testament believer and New Testament believer are all the same in that they all go to heaven because of Jesus.

Remember that. God didn't change the rules. He just withheld his judgment until Christ upon whom he vented full wrath and his holy standard. So you can forget everything else but remember the Old Testament saint gets into heaven, his sins permanently atoned for because of Jesus Christ. You say, I could have said that earlier.

We could have quit early and gone to lunch. Well, not so fast. I'm not done yet. I want you to notice the point Paul makes in verse 26. He says of the cross, this is the demonstration I say of his righteousness at the present time so that God would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In other words, for God to be just and at the same time justify the sinner, something dramatic has to happen. And so God did remain just. The penalty for sin is paid in Christ.

He didn't change the penalty, eternal separation from God, but because Jesus was God the Son, not just a good man or a good teacher, but because he was deity incarnate. He was an infinite being. He was capable of paying for an infinite amount of sins over an infinite amount of time at one moment. God then was able to retain his justice, his full wrath being vented against his son.

And yet at the same time, he is able to justify horrible sinners like us. It isn't that he goes, well, I just won't look at that one. Oh, I can't believe he did that.

I'll forget it. It isn't that he said, well, I just like Abraham. I like David's music.

We need him up here. No, the full wrath would be against the son. And he says here who gets into heaven, verse 26, the last part, the one who has faith in whom? In Jesus. For the Old Testament saint, all of those animal sacrifices pointed toward the final substitute who was God incarnate, the Messiah, Emmanuel, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer. And we, by virtue of having the completed record of scripture, Noah's Greek name, Iesus, Jesus. If you've placed your faith in his substitutionary death for your sin, you will be saved as well.

Here's how it works. The Old Testament believer looked forward to Christ through the eyes of prophecy. The New Testament believer looks back at the cross of Christ through the eyes of history. But the vision for both is the same.

The object of our faith is the same. It is the vision of a dying substitute who took our penalty and paid the price for our sins. I came across an interesting story that Cliff Barrows used to tell. I found it in one of the books I was reading.

Cliff Barrows was the longtime song leader for Billy Graham Crusades. He tells a story about how his children learned to appreciate the price that Jesus paid for their sins. When they were fairly young, they were getting into trouble, as you can well imagine, if you have young children. They had done something that they weren't supposed to do. He sat them down and gave them a good talking to and he said, look, when I come home, if Mommy says you've done the same thing again, you're going to get a spanking. And he went to work, came home, found out that his children had done the very same thing that he had told them not to do. And he wrote that the thought of spanking them for some reason at this particular point just seemed to overwhelm me.

He said, I called Bobby and Betty Ruth into my room. I took off my belt. They knew what was coming and were already beginning to whimper.

But then I took off my shirt and with a bare back, I knelt down at the bed. I handed them the belt and then told them that I was going to take their punishment for them. I made them give me 10 licks with the belt. You should have heard the crying. It was from them. They didn't want to do it. But I told them the penalty had to be paid. And so through their sobs and tears, they administrated the penalty.

And after it was over, we talked about the lesson learned, hugged and kissed and then knelt together and prayed. You see, he was able to be just and justify the sinner. He was able to enact the penalty for that sin. He just chose to enact it upon himself and then turn to the sinner and say, you don't have to pay the penalty. He can go free.

Isn't that amazing? Are you like Abraham, a liar and a coward? You like Moses, a murderer, an angry man? You like David, adulterous, immoral?

Like Jacob, manipulative, deceptive, self-centered? John MacArthur wrote in his commentary on this text, this interesting sentence. He said, because of God's justice, no sin will ever go unpunished. Yet because of God's grace, no sin is beyond forgiveness.

I like that. The incredible story of the cross is not only that it is a demonstration of justice, but it is a demonstration of love and grace for our holy, righteous God chose not to punish the sinner, but chose instead to punish his son. He suffered the horrible consequences of our sin.

The only way we can ever escape hell is by placing our hope and faith alone in that son. And when we do, we're assured of complete and permanent and final and full forgiveness. And we will one day meet those Old Testament saints for whom Christ also died, whose sin Christ also paid in full for and celebrate around the throne of the one who took our penalty, died our death.

We will do nothing but praise him forever. Sola Fide, by faith alone. In the Old Testament, people were saved by faith in the future death of Jesus Christ. We're now saved by faith in the accomplished death and resurrection of Christ. But salvation is always by faith in the Messiah. It's always on the basis of what Christ accomplished. I hope this time in God's word has made that clear to you today.

You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today's message is called Going to Heaven, Old Testament Style. Here at Wisdom International, we have some resources that can help you study the lives of some of the Old Testament saints. For example, Stephen has a Bible study guide called God Meant It for Good. This study is on the life of Joseph and is perfect for personal study or to use with a group or class. You can also browse the archives of Stephen's Bible teaching ministry and find hundreds of lessons that you can listen to. That's all available to you free of charge. Visit wisdomonline.org for information and join us tomorrow for more wisdom for the hearts.