To Encourage You

1 Samuel 10:17-19 “Now Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mizpah. And he said to the people of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you.” But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, ‘Set a king over us.’”

One of the most merciful acts of God is what we call the “substitutionary atonement.”  It’s the act whereby God provided a substitute for us, so that the punishment that we deserved for our sin was borne by someone else, namely, “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).  This provision for our sin is found everywhere we look in the Scriptures.  We see it in the Passover Lamb of the Exodus.  We see it in all the sacrifices of the Old Testament law in which the sacrifice of an innocent animal was accepted by God as the substitutionary atonement for a person’s sin.  We see it in the provision of a scapegoat, where the sins of Israel were transferred to a goat that was then banished to the wilderness outside the camp.  All of these things ultimately pointed to the cross, where “for our sake (God) made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Some call this, “The Great Exchange,” where our sin was passed to Christ and in turn His righteousness is passed to all those who would believe. What an incredible work of substitution God has provided for us. It’s the message of the gospel. It’s the greatest story ever told.

So  what has been man’s primary response?  It has been to engage in his own act of substitution, but in the opposite direction of that provided to us by God. You see, man’s natural mindset is to substitute the lesser for the greater rather than the greater for the lesser.  It’s called idolatry.  It’s an act whereby men create a substitute for the true God by gods that are so much less.  Psalm 115:4-8 puts it this way: “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.” Think of it – rather than serve the living God Who created the universe by His powerful Word, rather than worship the God who made the ear and the eye and Who is called both “the God Who sees” and “the God Who hears” in Genesis 16, we have turned to substitute gods of our own making that can do neither. 

In the passage from 1 Samuel 10 above, we see another act of decrepit substitution taking place. Here, rather than serve the King of kings Who had met their every need, Israel rejected God as king and sought a substitute, i.e., a much lesser king.  Rather than exult in the King Who was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, and Who loved them supremely, they wanted a king like Saul, who had none of these attributes; no, not even close.  It’s all a symptom of minds corrupted by sin that choose evil instead of good, the flawed instead of the perfect, lies instead of truth, and death instead of life.  What a sad twisting of the wonders of substitution that God has provided for us. 

So, what are you seeking?  What is your choice?  Is it the awesome substitutionary atonement that has been provided for us by a loving God, or some other form of substitution, where you exchange what is good for a lesser thing? May God help us to rejoice in the means of substitution by which He has provided the way for forgiveness of sin and the blessings of eternal life, rather than substitutes that bring loss and death for the Lamb of God Who died in our place to take away the sin of the world.