Paying the Debt (HC 12-15)

Exodus 21:33 - 22:15 “Paying the Debt” September 16, 2007

Heidelberg 12-15

Matthew 18

Hebrews 9

One of the nice features about the Heidelberg Catechism

is the way that the questions often summarize the previous answers!

So for instance question 12 summarizes what has come previously by asking,

12. Since, according to God’s righteous judgment we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, how can we escape this punishment and be again received into favor?

The answer is simple:

God demands that his justice be satisfied.

Therefore full payment must be made either by ourselves or by another.

You might think that Exodus 21-22 is a strange place to begin a sermon

on why we must seek a mediator who is both God and man.

But if you look at what God is doing in Exodus 21-22, it is not nearly so strange.

The verses that we read are a part of the Book of the Covenant.

The Book of the Covenant consists of Exodus 20-23.

This is what Moses reads in Exodus 24 during Israel’s first covenant worship service.

Let’s remember what we are doing here at Mt Sinai.

God delivered Israel from bondage to slavery in Egypt.

He said to Moses, say to Pharaoh, Israel is my son, my firstborn,

let my son go that he may serve (worship) me.

If you will not let my son go, then I will kill your firstborn son. (Ex 4)

And then came the negotiations as Pharaoh tried to guarantee

that Israel would come back from the wilderness.

Pharaoh wanted Israel to serve him.

Yahweh wanted Israel to serve him.

Thus began the power struggle between God and Pharaoh.

It wasn’t much of a struggle.

God sent ten plagues that devastated the land of Egypt.

After each plague Pharaoh relented,

but then he hardened his heart

(and at times God hardened Pharaoh’s heart),

and would not let Israel go.

In the end, God destroyed the firstborn of all Egypt,

and called his firstborn across the Red Sea and into the wilderness.

He had called them to go into the wilderness and worship him at Mt Sinai.

And in Exodus 19, that is where they come.

And at Mt Sinai, God establishes his covenant with Israel.

Last time we saw that one purpose this covenant was to focus the curse of Adam onto Israel.

Israel, the firstborn son of God, will be blessed by God (like Adam was).

They will enjoy a special relationship to God as his son.

They will receive the inheritance of the Promised Land – a land like Eden.

And in the later chapters of Exodus God will give them the tabernacle –

a place where Eden is restored (in a sense),

because there at the tabernacle, man can have fellowship with God.

So the Mosaic Covenant consists of many great and glorious blessings.

But the people of Israel did not immediately perceive this.

Indeed, their experience of the presence of God on Mt Sinai was terrifying.

(As it says in 20:18-19)

Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning

and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking,

the people were afraid and trembled,

and they stood far off and said to Moses,

‘You speak to us, and we will listen;

but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.’

God had warned in chapter 19 that if even an animal touched the mountain,

it was to be put to death.

And the people recognize that God is holy, and they are not.

And so they stood far off while Moses – the mediator – drew near to God.

Moses drew near and received the book of the covenant (Ex 20-23)

and in Exodus 24, he reads the book of the covenant to the people,

as a reading of the stipulations – the conditions that God has given to Israel

that they must fulfill if they are to live as his people.

These verses focus on various laws related to restitution.

It establishes a basic principle of justice:

If you willfully seek to defraud your neighbor,

then you should not only make restitution,

but double restitution.

You sought to defraud your neighbor,

but in the end, you will enrich him

as much as you had sought to impoverish him.

If the penalty for embezzling a million dollars

was that you had to pay the company two million dollars,

you might think twice before trying to embezzle!

That’s interesting, I’m sure.

But what does it have to do with paying our debts to God?

It establishes a basic principle:

God is just, and his justice is satisfied only by full payment.

And full payment does not just mean “restoring what you took.”

Restitution includes a “how much more” principle.

Not only did you steal a hundred dollars,

but you also deprived that person of that hundred dollars for a while.

If you all you is restore the hundred dollars,

then theft works out to a no-interest loan!

But we owe God our lives and service,

and yet we have robbed him of his due.

If you apply the principle of Exodus 22 to humanity,

then it is not enough for humanity to return to faithful service,

because that would not account for the years—the millennia—of our rebellion.

13. Can we ourselves make this payment?

Certainly not. On the contrary, we daily increase our debt.

Every time we sin we only make it worse.

And especially if you think of the double restitution principle,

every time we sin, our debt piles up twice as high!

14. Can any mere creature pay for us?

By now, the answer to this ought to obvious!

No.

But the Heidelberg gives us two thoughtful reasons for this:

In the first place, God will not punish another creature for the sin which man has committed.

You might say, “what about all those animal sacrifices in the Old Testament?”

Certainly those sacrifices were commanded because of man’s sins,

but animal sacrifices could not truly substitute for man.

They were instituted temporarily in order to demonstrate that there must be a substitute.

Hebrews 9:9 tells us about the futility of these sacrifices, because in the temple,

gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper.

Indeed, Hebrews 10:2 says that the futility of the OT sacrifices are demonstrated

in the very fact that they had to be repeated every year.

If the OT sacrifices actually removed sin,

then there would have been no need for continual sacrifices.

But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin every year.

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Heb 10:2)

The Heidelberg Catechism explains this in part two of answer 14:

Furthermore, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God’s eternal wrath against sin

and deliver others from it.

So if we are incapable of paying our own debt,

we need a mediator;

we need a deliverer.

This was something else that the Book of the Covenant made clear in Exodus 20-23.

Immediately after giving the Ten Commandments,

as God established his holy law,

what was the very next thing that he commanded?

He told them how to build altars.

You are going to fail.

And when you fail, here is how you are to make it right.

You need a mediator.

You need someone else to deliver you from your sins.

15. What kind of mediator and deliverer must we seek?

One who is a true and righteous man, and yet more powerful than all creatures;

that is, one who is at the same time true God.

16. Why must he be a true and righteous man?

He must be a true man because the justice of God requires

that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin.

He must be a righteous man because one who himself is a sinner cannot pay for others.

It is what Hebrews 2:14-17 says,

“Since the children share in flesh and blood,

he himself likewise partook of the same things,

that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death,

that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death

were subject to lifelong slavery….

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect,

so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God,

to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

He had to be like us – a true man.

Only Adam’s flesh and blood could pay for Adam’s error.

But it was not enough for him to be a true man.

He must also be a righteous man.

That is why he must be “one who In every respect has been tempted as we are,

yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Only a true and righteous man could be a fitting, unblemished sacrifice.

But that’s where we have to remember our “double restitution” principle.

Because a true and righteous man may be good.

He may be perfect.

But when a true and righteous man dies for his friend,

what does that really accomplish?

A true and righteous man could possibly die for one person –

but that would only cover half of what one person owed.

Because we not only owe God for all of our sins,

we also owe him the penalty for all those years we wasted!

Even a true and righteous man cannot bear all that!

17. Why must he at the same time be true God?

He must be true God so that by the power of his divine nature

he might bear in his human nature the burden of God’s wrath,

and might obtain for us and restore to us righteousness and life.

Calvin has a beautiful way of explaining why Christ had to be both God and man:

“His task was so to restore us to God’s grace as to make of the children of men, children of God;

of the heirs of Gehenna, heirs of the heavenly kingdom.

Who could have done this had not the selfsame Son of God become the Son of man,

and had not so taken what was ours as to impart what was his to us,

and to make what was his by nature ours by grace?...

It was his task to swallow up death.

Who but the Life could do this?

It was his task to conquer sin.

Who but very Righteousness could do this?

It was his task to rout the powers of world and air.

Who but a power higher than world and air could do this?

Now where does life or righteousness or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone?

Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed,

made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only-begotten Son.”

(Inst. II.xii.2)

It must be a son of Adam who would repair Adam’s fault.

But no son of Adam could survive the wrath and curse of God.

We see this in Isaiah 59.

Remember what we’ve been seeing –

1) Adam’s sin brought God’s wrath and curse upon all humanity

2) God’s purpose with Israel was to focus his curse upon one nation

(remember that Moses prophesied Israel’s failure in Deuteronomy)

so that through that one nation he could bring blessing to the nations.

In Isaiah 59:1-15, Isaiah goes into great detail to describe how far short Israel has fallen.

then in verse 15 Isaiah says:

The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.

He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede;

then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him

He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head

And Isaiah declares that “a Redeemer will come to Zion,

to those in Jacob who turn away from transgression.” (59:20)

God narrows his curse from all humanity in Adam, to Israel, and finally to one man, Jesus

So that in Jesus, the blessing of God might now extend to the new humanity.

So then, let me ask you: