Book: Hebrews

Full Transcript:

We will be continuing with Hebrews 10, a great book of the Word of God in the Bible. The title of my message is Holding Fast Together. We have just moved through a large doctrinal section, and now we come to this practical outworking of doctrine, which is called the Lettuce Bowl of Scripture. It links doctrine with deeds. Up until this point, Hebrews insists on correct teaching.

The exhortation, in this part of the Bible, is on consistent behavior that comes from correct teaching. Doctrine always comes before there could be proper practice, which has the right manner, motive, and reasons as to why you do something. In other words, the teaching of Scripture not only needs to be received by us, but also appropriated by us.

As mentioned, Hebrews 10 is broken into two parts: encouragement and warning. It gives appropriate responses to the proceeding nine and a half chapters. Believers are exhorted and encouraged to action. Reason being that they possess something new, and they are new. They have received the Holy Spirit of God, they have received the Gospel, and they are changed. God transformed their lives, and they’re no longer what they used to be. Because of that, they are now desirous to do something about what God has already been working in them. Now, they have something in their possession that they did not have before.

The great and grand truth: based on that one-time sacrifice of Jesus Christ and when someone comes to faith in Christ, God forgets their sins, He forgets all their violations of His law, and He drives sin away, not only covers sin. Therefore, it will never come up against them again. Hebrews 10:18:

Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

By Christ’s full and final expiation of all sin for all time, believers are made right before a holy and just God, and now have continual access to their God. This is all based on doctrine, which gives us the basis to have confidence. Everything we embrace in Christ is to be worked out in our life. That objective truth enables us to enter God’s presence with confidence, which in turn informs our feelings enabling us to feel assured of the realities of our faith. Then, it causes us not to waver, remain faithful in Christ, and to live the next day in Christ. In turn, that gives us evidence that we are truly members of God’s household and visible church on earth. When we press-on based on the church of the Word of God, then it works out.

Before the holidays, I mentioned two things that must accompany our approach to God. First, followers of Jesus Christ are to enter God’s holy place with confidence. True believers already have confidence and are exhorted to go directly into the presence of God. The last two messages included a challenge for prayer. Going into the presence of God has everything to do with Christians praying together, which is an expression of the Christian’s lifestyle of faith. There is no greater way to express faith than by prayer and depending on God together as a body.

Second, followers of Jesus Christ are to draw near with sincerity. Drawing near with sincerity includes coming to God with an honest and open heart and being an open book before God. God knows everything going on in your life, so there is no sense in hiding anything from Him. You cannot do that, so don’t even convince yourself that it can be done. Everything you do is in front of the eyes of God no matter when or where. Therefore, when you come to God in prayer, come with an honest and cleansed heart.

Remember, your heart is already cleansed, but we are to confess our sins so that the cleansing process of the blood of Christ and the affectional power of the Cross continues daily. We need the Cross every day. Even though we have been eternally saved, we need the Cross every single day. Another way of us depending on God is asking for Him to cleanse the sin in our life and for victory over sin.

In that way, we grow in our confidence to come before God, not coming to Him afraid. We’re coming with reverence, but not afraid. Now, God is our Father. The relationship has changed from being our judge to our Father. Therefore, we have a family relationship to God, and now we are in Christ, which gives us great confidence.

Coupled with an understanding that we are to regularly draw near to God with a cleansed and honest heart, real believers actively show their confidence in what and in whom they believe by two things. First, by entering in, Hebrews 10:19:

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus

Secondly, by drawing near, Hebrews 10:22:

let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Dipping back in to the “Lettuce Bowl,” we will examine several other vital practices to the Christian life style of faith. This is a lifestyle of faith, which is building up to Hebrews 11, the chapter on faith. When we get to Hebrews 11, we will find that their lives were in such despair, yet the lived by faith. They obtained the promise and held onto the promise. Though, they knew they would not have the fullness of the promise until they died and went into the presence of God. By faith, they held it because they knew God was true and could not lie.

Thirdly, followers of Jesus Christ are to hold fast their confession. Hebrews 10:23:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

Holding fast to our confession, with Jesus, comes with two responsibilities. First, to hold fast for ourselves. In this verse, he is talking in a plural way, not in the way that it is just you alone. He is talking in an assembling way where it is all about us, not you or me, but interestingly, it starts with you. The responsibility to hold fast starts with you and me, but first, individually. Proverbs 4:13:

Take hold of instruction; do not let go.
Guard her, for she is your life.

He is talking about wisdom. When you get wisdom, don’t let it go. Meaning, you could lose wisdom. In the sense that someone can take it from you, some event can remove it from you, or something can cause you to lay it down. Don’t do that but hold it fast and close to you. Usually, the things we hold fast and close to us are dear and important to us. Also, things we understand we don’t want to let it go. 1 Corinthians 15:2:

by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

Once you become a Christian, you hold fast to the Gospel the rest of your life, so that you may live in a way where you don’t believe in vain, you know what you believe, and that you are holding it fast every single day since you live it out every day. Every day, your faith is a reality. Holding fast gives this sense: if you believe in Christ, what He has done, and what He is doing on your behalf right now, then you would hold these convictions with endearment and not want to let them go.

These convictions are the most important thing in your life; in fact, you grow to the point where they are more important than anything. You can die with convictions like this, and you will go to the grave with these convictions. Again, what is interesting about the phrase, “let us hold fast our confession,” is that the Scripture uses it in a specific verbal mood.

In having to do with yourself first, the verbal mood is that of a subjunctive mood, which represents a verbal action. Often, it’s called the mood of probability. Since he is not giving a command, it is not an imperative. Do Christians really need a command for something they desire to already do? They don’t, and that’s why it doesn’t command. When you are real believer, you desire to do the things you’ve been talking about, and you don’t have to be commanded to do them.

Here, he is using it in an exhortative way where the whole body of believers are to be exhorted, which starts with the individuals. Individually, we are to take hold our confession of Christ for the sake of the rest of the believers. In other words, the way we live our life and the way we believe what we believe affects everyone else around us in the body. If we’re wavering and doubting all the time, then will it not affect everyone around you?

Hence, the subjunctive mood is used to urge someone to unite with the speaker, in a course of action upon which that speaker has already decided. Therefore, you decide to hold fast to your faith and the next person decides to hold fast to their faith based on what the Word of God is saying. The use of the subjunctive is an exhortation in the first-person plural, and the typical translation would be, “we should.” However, that is not the translation here. Here, the translation is “let us.” It is not, “we should do this,” it is more, “let us do this.”

I believe the difference is in the understanding of the value of what we have and what God has done for us in our salvation. We understand that so well that we are saying, individually to everyone else, let us do this as a body. God has already given us the desire, so let us do it. Its coupled with corporate unity to do it together. Why should an exhortation to hold fast to our initial confession of faith, in Christ, be given anyway to a group of people?

Pastor from England, Ramon Brown, said:

In a society like ours, where Christ is not loved, His standards are not honored, where God’s word is widely ignored, and the Christian faith often dismissed as either incredible or unattractive, believers must be firm. They must hold fast, unwaveringly in the confession of their hope. The world is trying to take it away from you.

In fact, that is the scheme of the devil. Once you become a believer, let us not abandon the precious hope that we have, or allow someone or something to rob us from it because these are all trying to get your faith. Don’t let anything induce you to abandon faith in Christ or what God has already given you.

Not worldliness where people will try to lure you to love something other than God. Not materialism, which will tempt you and ultimately get you to forget God because it makes people self-sufficient. Because they have everything, it makes people think that they don’t need God, which causes people to lay aside the most important convictions of their life. Also, not family, friends, peers, or social pressures. These may be factors of a shaky and questionable faith. Cynical voices around us, always testing doubt over the things God has said and done. It’s the old satanic twist from the garden: “has God really said that?” or “do you really know you are saved?”

We must hold fast of something that everyone is trying to take away, and God is giving it to you. Also, in this passage of Scripture, the real problem for them was suffering, affliction, and persecution. Hebrews 10:32-34:

But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, ³³partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. ³⁴For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.

These people were really under persecution. They had their home and what they worked so hard for taken from them because of their faith, yet they took it with joy. At this point, they are second guessing if they should have taken it with joy, or maybe this whole Christian thing isn’t something they want to give their whole life to. Those doubts come in, and that’s why we must hold fast.

We are going to have times of doubt and times where affliction and persecution may tempt you to grumble, complain, and despise God, and some to abandon Him altogether. Because of persecution, tribulation, or trial they leave the faith. Don’t abandon the faith for those things. Even if these things come in your life, hold fast and don’t abandon the faith for the unpredictable events of life. These may work out in a way that will test your faith, and it will cause your faith to shake a bit by being challenged.

Don’t ever be surprised by tests and trials of your faith. All our faith in Christ must be tested as to its genuineness, which is when you really know you are a believer. When you have gone through a trail, suffering, or persecution, and however it may have come to you either through family, friends, peers, work, or loss of something, and you are still holding fast to the truth. The smoke clears and you’re still standing.

In Hebrews 10:23, you will find the way we are to hold fast and the motive. The manner, in which you are to hold fast, is without wavering. It means to be firm, unmovable, and not leaning. In other words, never letting your confession bend like a sickly sunflower plant that droops down toward the ground instead of a brightly colored, vigorous plant strongly following the movements of the sun, which soaks up every needed ounce of strength to maintain its vivaciousness.

Illustrating a distinguishing characteristic of a sunflower and its flowering head that tracts the suns movement, which is called heliotropism. Thus, holding fast your confession of faith in Christ and all that He has said and done will keep you from drooping into coldness of heart, flipping into sin, and false doctrines. Christians should be heliotropic. Also, to keep carefully tracking with the Son, and as the Son teaches us, we move with Him. Therefore, our manner of holding fast must be without wavering.

Secondly, Hebrews 10:23 states the motive in which we are to hold fast, so the motive is the character of God. We understand and believe that God cannot lie or deny Himself. Today, making promises doesn’t seem to have the same weight as it once did. Usually, when a promise is made, a promise is only as good as the character and integrity of the person who makes the promise. Scripture often affirms the character of God. Numbers 23:19:

God is not a man, that He should lie

Titus 1:2:

in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago

If God’s character is not behind our salvation, we are all doomed. It’s God’s character that causes us to hold fast, and that is the motive that we have in our heart. Because God said He saved us in that manner, we know we are saved and believe this by faith. Therefore, we are walking in it every day. Remember, in Hebrews 6, God backed up His promise with an oath. God swore by the greatest authority in the universe Himself, putting His own integrity, reputation, and honor on the line to guarantee the fulfillment of what He had promised.

God didn’t need to make an oath since His word was good enough, yet God wanted to make sure that the doubt was cleared out in the minds of His children. When God makes promises, you can trust that, and you can die with that truth knowing that He will take care of everything. Hebrews 6:17-18:

In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, ¹⁸so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

Therefore, we have a hope. In Christ Jesus, we will live in the Kingdom of God with Him, which is the hope we have. In some ways, we are experiencing the Kingdom right now in the body of the church, and the worship of God that we are learning to do here. However, someday we are going to be with God and with a resurrected body. That’s the hope He laid in front of us, and if God said it, it will happen. It will happen just as it is said in the Word of God. You don’t have to read in between the lines, especially since there is nothing there but white spaces.

In addition to the Word of promise as a confirmation and legal guarantee, an oath was added to remove all doubt and argument from the mind of His children. God cannot renege on His promise. If He were to renege, He would deny His own character and God cannot do that. For example, Sarah believed God, and she had Isaac. In Isaac, all the promises of God come true. Hebrews 11:11:

By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised.

Considering the faithfulness of the One making the promise is the principle means of strengthened faith in the promise. God made the promise, and it strengthens our faith in that promise because of who made the promise. God will not change His mind or take a left turn on us. He will not and cannot because that is His character, and we must base our faith on that. We cannot see it all with our eyes yet, but we see it by faith.

Faith is holding to something, and we hold to the character of God and what He says. Because of God’s character, He must bring to pass the very things He has promised. This is how we can hold fast, but this starts individually. Then, it strengthens the whole body as you have a bunch of individuals in Christ holding fast to the confession they have in Jesus Christ, and the hope and promise that he made. That group of people becomes stronger as they work and minister together to do the work God wants them to do in the world.

We have a problem, and the problem is that we’re Americans. Americans have a real huge problem when it comes to the Christian faith. We are too individualistic. It’s not about us, but about me. It’s not about the world, but it’s about America. If you go into another part of the world, they see our arrogance in that kind of attitude.

In an interview with Chuck Colson, the head of Prison Fellowship, concerning the church as a community of believers said, “We live in a therapeutic age where everything is measured by ‘how much I get out of it,’” he continues, “the church ought to be measured by what we put into it for God and others, and we live in an era of ramped individualism. In a very individualistic culture, the whole idea of being part of a community is counter-cultural, and it fits perfectly in the ‘what’s in it for me’ narcissistic attitudes prevalent in the American Culture.”

You are to hold fast to your confession of Christ for the sake of the rest of the believers. You cannot live your Christian life alone, and God never intended that. It is impossible to do, and you will drop out so fast that you won’t know it hit you. The flesh, the world, and Satan are all against you. When you come into the body of believers, you have protection, the Word of God, and each other holding fast to your confession of faith. That is why the church becomes so vitally important, especially in persecution, affliction, and doubt. It is not for you individually, but for us corporately. Together, we grow strong as a body.

The second responsibility is to encourage others to the same thing we’re doing and to believe the same things we’re believing. We have a responsibility of mutual encouragement. Hebrews 10:24:

and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.

Again, there is “let us” consider. We must not forget, we are Christians not only for our own sake, but also for the sake of others. In this passage, the word “consider” means to be attentive to fix one’s eyes and mind upon the task of taking thought of others. Get out of yourself and look at the needs of others in the body.

Christians are exhorted to have a proper concern for other Christians and to be continuously attentive to the welfare of other believers, which is spiritually, morally, and physically. Then, we are to find suitable assistance to give them such as advice, word of caution, admonition, or some consolation that we can give them so that they don’t let go of their confession and continue strong in the faith.

Another strong word, in our passage, is “to stimulate” them. In other places, it is to incite them. When we use the word incite, it means that a person instigated something, and some translations say to poke, provoke, or stick them like you stick a horse to get it going.

Sometimes I’m having a good day, week, or year, and sometimes I’m not, but you are. I look like I’m going down for the count, you come alongside of me, and you stimulate me. You consider what I’m going through, and you stimulate me to do something in two areas: to love and to good works. Only the body could do this, and this is how God designed the body. We are to provoke and excite each other, so that our brothers and sisters, in Christ, would be encouraged to be involved with labors of love and good works.

In other words, love is the motive behind everything we do, and good deeds in the practice of the love. Doing good deeds adorns the gospel and glorifies the Father, who is in heaven. Titus 3:8:

This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.

We are to stimulate others to practice their confession of Christ by working out what God has worked in them, which is done by good deeds. I have found that many people are confused about what exactly are good deeds. Remember, good deeds come after conversion, not before conversion. After conversion, I can love because I understand love that proceeds from the Cross of Christ and what Christ did for me. Now, I can love God, which in turn causes me to love people, which in turn causes me to do something about what I see people are going through. Therefore, there are some specific about good deeds that I will address.

One, the vessels of good deeds are cleansed vessels. 2 Timothy 2:21:

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.

Also, the motive for good deeds is from Matthew 5:16:

Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven

If you want to show people about the faith that you have in Christ, do something. From Matthew 5:16, the object of good deeds are people, but, in Scripture, those of the household of faith first; then, everyone else such as neighbors, strangers, relatives, or enemies. Because of Christ, we are to do good works to everyone.

The purpose of good deeds is to provide and meet needs. Titus 3:14:

Our people must also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs, so that they will not be unfruitful.

Part of the fruit of a Christian is good deeds. The realm of good deeds are you and the church. In other words, Paul told the Ephesian Church in Ephesians 2:10:

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

The way God created you physically and gifted you spiritually is the realm in which you will use your good gifts, works, and deeds. The preparation of good deeds is the Scriptures. The Scriptures will completely outfit us for everything that God has for us. 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; ¹⁷so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Also, there are two directions for good works: prayer corporately and baring fruit. Colossians 1:10:

so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God

As we learn doctrine and we are provoked to love in good works, it causes us to grow in Christ and increase in the knowledge of God. In increasing in the knowledge of God, we bare fruit of our conversion. The specifics of good works are everything that believers do out of the love for God and the building up of the church, which can mean our understanding of giving to the poor, the less fortunate, the sick, the weak, the widow, the elderly, the missionaries, and the young married man and woman in the church. Of course, to pray with them, and if need be, to invite them to Christ if you detect they don’t know the Lord.

Whatever they need, find out what it is and do good works before the Father, and He is glorified when you do so. The affirmation of good works simply shows that you have been changed by God, through Christ. James gives the argument in James 2:18:

But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

A Christian who is alive and has the Spirit of God has a desire to hold fast their faith. In doing so, it encourages the whole body. Then, they have eyes now to see the needs of the others in the body. Also, they have a desire to do good works, not out of a motive for getting something, but out of a motive for love. If we do it out of a motive for love to our Lord and Savior, we will never want anything in return. God has given us so much that we don’t deserve anything else. Therefore, we’re not looking for something because we’re giving something. We’re looking to glorify God, use our gifts so that we may grow, and looking to see the body flourish and become healthy.

Brethren, how is this mutual encouragement going to take place? Hebrews 10:25:

not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near

For the word assembling, he uses the word episunagoge, which means synagogue. Simply, synagogue meant a gathering of believers in one place, or an assembling together to meet. The Jews understood that synagogue was a common term used for religious buildings or places, where they would gather together with other Jews, to worship God and hear the reading of the Torah.

Remember, it starts with you, but when you hold fast to your faith, it has to do with the whole body and meeting together with other believers. Thinking like this is still very much alive. It is still possible for a person to think they can be a Christian yet abandon the habit of worshiping with God and His’s people, in God’s house, and on God’s day.

John Stein, a long-time pastor in the United Kingdom, wrote a recent book called, The Living Church Convictions of a Life Long Pastor, and said on the unchurch Christian:

I trust that none of my readers is an unchurch Christian. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. That the gathering of believers is an essential to the encouragement of other believers.

Believe me, when you are not here, I’m saying, “where are they? Did they let go of the faith? What’s happening in their life?” However, when you’re here, I’m encouraged to see you every time. I may not tell you personally every day, but I’m encouraged when I see you. Hopefully, you’re encouraged when you see me.

While it is true, we can worship everywhere we go, and only in the gathered assembly I get to worship Him with you. Here, I get the Word of God read, taught, sung, recited, and prayed with you. Together, we partake of the Lords table, which reminds us of why we are here, the death of Christ and what He did on the cross. We never let go of this essential, vital truth, which is something we do together. The Lord’s table is not something you do privately and on your own. The Lord’s table is always a gathered assembly event, especially since we are all together proclaiming the death of Christ and that He is coming again.

Every Lord’s day, we celebrate His resurrection, not just during Easter time. Every Lord’s day, Christ is risen. I’m alive man! You’re alive in Christ! We have a hope, a destination, we’re going somewhere, and we’re going to do something while we are here on earth because we have the Spirit of God and the Word of God. This is what the church is, and the church makes a difference. You will know them by their love.

We love Christ, Christ loved us, and it is working out of our life in all kinds of ways. I get to greet you every Sunday, and you’re my family. In fact, when you become a Christian, the Christian family becomes closer than even your blood family. Hopefully, your blood family comes to know Christ; then, you’re tight. Romans 16:16:

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.

We don’t practice that like the day of the romans, but we do shake hands and give man hugs, which is the shoulder-to-shoulder, half hug. We have a common faith that we share, and we meet to worship our God and Savior. We get to hear the Word of God.

If you are not practicing the very things the Holy Spirit of God has given to sanctify you, then you are, by your actions, denying the very things you say that you are believing. If your believing leads in the other direction to what the Scriptures point, then isn’t that a clear denial of Scripture?

It shows that you don’t really believe what Jesus has done on the cross, that God is faithful to His promise, that center of God’s program is God’s gathered assembly, that the Spirit has been given to you with gifts to minister, in the body, to provoke one another to love in good works, and you’re not concerned or expecting the Lord’s coming that is drawing near every day. Another motivator for the body of Christ, is the coming of Christ.

The gathered assembly holds fast to their confession of faith. Together, they do this just like it says in Acts 2:42:

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

This is the admonition that we have. I love that hymn, The Church’s One Foundation:

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly,
In love may dwell with Thee.

The church on earth becomes the church in heaven, which is our hope. Gabe had recently given me a book titled, Why We Love the Church, written by two young guys: Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. At the end of the book, they said:

If I can leave you with one thought, it is this: go to church. Don’t go for the coffee, the presentations, the music, the amenities. Don’t even go for the feelings you may or may not get when you go there. No offense, these feelings may not be trustworthy most of the time anyway. Go for the Gospel. Go for the preaching. Go to be near God’s word, and with God’s people. You know that’s God’s plan for you.

That’s how God sanctifies us. In fact, the church is about making you ready for heaven. We start here, imperfectly, but we end up there perfect. However, we must make our mark on the world. I pray, for you, that you would consider and bring to the top of your list the assembling of yourself together with believers. Let nothing prevent you from that happening, so you don’t slip into the passage of Scripture, in Hebrews 10:25.

In the end, if someone leaves the church and doesn’t come back or if they go from one church to another, it shows that they don’t understand much, or they weren’t a believer in the first place. Believers stick together through thick and thin and through persecution and affliction. Even in times of conflict with one another, they work it out. They stick together, and do not leave, which results them to grow and become effective for Christ. Let’s pray:

Lord, I Thank You. I Thank You, Lord, for the Word of God. As always, it does make things very clear, Lord. So, Lord, I pray that we would learn how to confidentially approach You, hold fast our faith, and corporately encourage each other to hold fast our faith. I pray, Lord, then we would provoke and insight each other to love into good work. Use us, Lord, for how You designed us. Use us, Lord, to accomplish Your will in this world. Use us as a church body to become strong and healthy, so we can do the outreach and evangelism. Lord, cause us to come together regularly as a gathered assembly to cast out the things that please You and make us strong. I pray, Lord, through all this, You may receive the glory and us someday into Your presence, where we drop off these bodies, get new ones, and enjoy eternity with our great God and Savior. I pray, Lord, that you would make us ready for the Lords table. In these elements we partake of, Lord, would again remind us that it was Christ who accomplished so great a salvation. Because of His shed blood, taking the penalty of sin upon His own body, and satisfying the justice of God, that we may come to you by faith, and be set free. Thank You, Lord, that we can enjoy these things as a gathered assembly. Lord, remove us from our individualistic, secure, and American mindset. Allow us to be more thinking about the other person, seeing what they need, and praying about them and for them. I pray, Lord Jesus, that You would free us more in this area than ever before this coming year. I Thank You, Lord, for all that You will do in our midst. I pray this, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Full Transcript:

This morning let’s take our bible and turn our bibles to Hebrews 10. Last week I looked at where the scripture tells us to enter in. This morning I’m going to look at drawing near. Entering into God’s presence, now drawing near to God’s presence. Remember I had moved from a large doctrinal section from Hebrews 1 to chapter 10. And now we’ve come to this place in scripture where doctrine fleshes out in deeds. I’ve been insisting on, and Hebrews actually has been insisting on, correct teaching. Now we look at consistent behavior. In other words, the teaching of scripture not only needs to be received by us, that’s where it starts, but it needs to be appropriated by us. Not just sitting there, getting a big, old, fat head of knowledge but doing something with what God is teaching you.

How do we do that? Well, scripture does not leave us alone on that matter. It doesn’t leave us guessing on that matter. In chapter 10 we have a section here of exhortation and encouragement and then a section of warning. That is always the pattern of the one who is preaching Hebrews.

In the first part we are given four appropriate responses to the preceding doctrine. Everything from the 10 and a half chapters of Hebrews that have gone before. And believers are exhorted into action because they possess something, they have something that they did not have before. They have something that they didn’t earn. Something that they didn’t deserve. They have been given something by God because of His divine mercy and grace towards sinners. It says in verse 19:

¹⁹Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence…

And then in verse 21:

²¹and since we have a great priest…

The bible is indicating to us that we have in our possession already something quite unique and very important for us. The great and grand truth which is for all of God’s children is that based on this one-time sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God forgets our sins. He forgets all our violations of His law and He purges them forever.

There is no longer a need for any other sacrificial system. There is no need for a ritual and ceremony at all whatsoever. But because of Christ’s full and final death for sins. For all time, believers are made right before a holy and just God and given access to God. That is awesome. That is an awesome thought.

And last week I said that there are two things we need to accompany our approach to God. The first one was that followers of Jesus Christ have to enter the Holy Place with confidence. With boldness. With assurance. But not based on anything. Based on truth. Based on doctrine. Based on what Christ has already done. In fact, if we do not come based on our understanding of what Christ has done, we come wrongly.

I was studying this scripture and I’m leading to prayer again this morning. And I began to think to myself, “I don’t know if I really ever prayed in my life”. Now, what I mean is that I need to rethink this whole thing, from a scriptural standpoint, how important it is to come into the presence of God. That true believers already have a confidence they are given by an establishment of truth in their mind and heart.

And they are exhorted to go directly into God’s presence with boldness. Meaning freedom of speech and courage to express their personal needs before God. The last time the message ended with the challenge for prayer. I don’t know if too many people heeded that message. Hopefully you did and were thinking about it.

I am going to go back to that great practice of the Christian’s lifestyle of faith which has to do with prayer. Before I do that, there is something else, a second thing that needs to accompany us in our approach to God. It is this, that followers of Jesus Christ are to draw near with sincerity. I am going to take a long time to get to that. I’m going to take some time to get to it because I really want you to get it.

Once again, what the Word of God is telling the believer is that they already have something in their possession. In Hebrews 10:21 it says:

²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God

It is in that passage of scripture, it comes from verse 19, that we have something. Not too many people can say that they have a High Priest that can take them the whole way into the presence of God. Not many people can say that because our High Priest has authority over the whole House of God. He determines who can enter.

Someone who lives in Washington DC can point a bunch of people to the White House, but how many people can actually take them into the presence of the President? A few. They must have security clearances to get there, you don’t just walk into the door. How much more with God?

People think they know God and have a relationship with Him because they are religious, go to church or are good people, but they are wrong. If you think on those grounds you can enter into presence of God, you are mistaken. Only those that God has given the authority can enter into His presence. The Lord has given us the authority to become the children of God. The right to come into presence of a holy God. That is quite awesome.

We can trust God for His greatness and His power as the High Priest. As our High Priest, for those who know Christ. And then press on in our Christian pilgrimage no matter what befalls us on the way to the celestial city as pilgrims.

While we are moving and while we’re growing in Christ-likeness, we should be practicing going to Christ in prayer for necessary strength, for grace because of our weaknesses. We need the High Priest’s assistance. All the purposes of His office of High Priest are for our benefit. Every single purpose of His office of High Priest is for our benefit.

Now, Hebrews has sufficiently covered that in chapter 4. It says about our High Priest. Our High Priest is the compassionate One in this way: He knows exactly how we feel. He knows exactly what we are going through. He knows the pressures of life, the testing of life in a Godless world. He knows all that and He knows it to a further extent than any one of us can ever experience.

It says in Hebrews 4:15 that Jesus our great High Priest is deeply concerned about our weaknesses. It says:

¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses…

This means that the Lord, in His affections, is moved inwardly toward us while we suffer and go through trials. With a sense of empathy, He knows what we are going through further than we do.

Also in Hebrews 4:15, it shows that Jesus understand us. It says:

¹⁵…but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus, in His perfect humanity, is familiar with our temptations and our problems. He was tempted. Not only that, He was tempted by every means, by all instruments and by all directions as we are. And, in fact, to a deeper extent because Jesus is aware of our needs to the fullest and has gone to a place we could never have gone. C.S. Lewis says that “we never find out the strength of evil impulse inside of us until we fight it”.

Because Christ was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the fullest what temptation really means. He becomes the only realist when it comes to temptation. We give up way too soon in our temptation. We give in too soon. We throw in the towel too soon. Jesus never threw in the towel. In a sense He went the whole 16 rounds and beyond. Being in a ring with a fighter going 16 rounds is an awesome task whether you win or lose. If you’re still standing at the end, you’ve done something! It’s saying here that Christ went way passed that and never gave in, never dropped for us. He understands what we are going through.

Jesus Christ, our High Priest, knows all about sin without having sinned. And because He passed through the heavens, into God’s presence, Jesus now has broken down all the obstacles that could hinder a sinful human being from coming into God’s holy and perfect presence. And now He welcomes all who comes through Jesus Christ to come boldly. It says in Hebrews 4:16:

¹⁶Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace…

In chapter 10 he says the same thing but with more doctrine behind it, more truth and teaching behind it. Confidence is that freedom to come before God. The obstacle is removed. The free right to approach God with bold frankness was given because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And that is the only way we can come into the presence of God.

That means that the believers have daily access to God for grace and assistance. All the formalities have been fulfilled and removed in Christ. So all we need is to come and receive continual help. Now that was a big problem because His audience was basically Jewish. Everything about Judaism was pomp, ceremony, ritual, preparation, consecrations, and all those things. The writer of Hebrews is saying all those things are done. Come to Christ. We don’t need the priesthood. You don’t need all those things. Come to Your High Priest and call upon the name of the Lord.

This is why we cannot be prayerless as believers. We cannot be prayerless. Do not think that you can cope with life without divine help. Do not think that you can live this impossible Christian life without divine help. You cannot do it. We must accept the invitation to follow our Lord Jesus boldly into the holy place. One man, maybe rightfully so, he actually insisted that prayerlessness is the root of sin.

Jesus knew He had to pray and did so gladly, necessarily, and effectively. It is one thing to talk about prayer. It’s quite another thing to pray. We talk about prayer all day. We can read books on prayer all month, all year. Prayer is the most difficult discipline in the Christian life. Tell me it’s not! Going to prayer on a regular, daily basis is difficult.

There is a difficulty in prayer. As a matter of fact, there are many difficulties in prayer. Prayer, brethren, is not an easy thing to practice. In fact, it is extremely difficult. However, we are being taught here, in this scripture, that we are to know exactly how to pray. We are to approach God with confidence, boldness and assurance in prayer. Do you pray like that? Do I pray like that? The question is for me too.

In fact, Our Lord helps us to see the difficulty and struggles in prayer. Just look at his life when you follow Him in the gospels. That when Jesus was in the days of His flesh, what did He do? He prayed. Look in Hebrews 5:7, it says:

⁷In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death

What does it say in that passage? Does this passage say that prayer is easy, that you just go in and do it? No, in that passage if Jesus Christ struggled with prayer in the flesh and He was not a sinner, how much more us? We do not think that prayer is that serious. Sometimes we do not think seriously on it. Jesus was under the full pressure of humanity and, therefore, He became a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

He became a man of prayer, where it says He offered up both prayers and supplication with loud crying. Meaning His soul was being ripped apart as He came before the Father anticipating what was going to take place. Remember when He knelt in the garden that night when He was arrested. He was faced with a humanly terrifying death. Such a divinely necessary sacrifice that only the Father could rescue Him and save Him from that death. He could go to One who could save Him and rescue Him and that was His Father because His Father set out the plan of salvation.

How much should we pray in the days of our flesh? In fact, the Lord right now is exalted to the right hand of God and what is He doing? He is interceding for the saints. Why? He is praying for us while we are in the flesh. Someday the intercessory ministry of Christ is going to end. He will not have to pray for us because we will no longer be in the flesh. We are going to be glorified in new bodies with Him, before Him.

I am saying all that for this reason, there are obstacles to prayer. If we can identify those obstacles and remove them, then we are going to be better equipped to understand how to approach God and do it with confidence, assurance, boldness – all the same meaning – but they give the sense that I am coming before God assured of something. Of something I have. Of something that has happened to me. Of something in my possession. Of something that God has done for me and I did not contribute to it at all. But here, in the practical part of doctrine, I am contributing to something. Because God asks me to do something. He asked me to come. After I have been a believer, to come.

I want to look at some of the obstacles found here in scripture and lift them out of here in a little bit of a different way and come back to them. Our text helps us to identify some real obstacles to prayer. There are at least 3 that we can glean this morning. Hebrews 10:21 says that the first obstacle is entering the House of God. Why is that a problem? We are entering the holiest place in the universe. Prayer means that we are entering in the very presence of God. We are not taking to ourselves, even though we may think that sometimes. We are not talking to anyone else when we are praying. We are talking to God when we pray. That must be clear in our mind when we come to prayer. We must come in a certain way to God. We must approach Him in a certain way. Why? Because how can we dwell in the presence that Isaiah describes as a burning light? How can we, like Moses, come before the burning bush without taking off our shoes, knowing that where I am standing is holy ground, because God is present.

I do not respond to God like I respond to human beings. I respond to God in a totally different way. I understand Him based on what scripture tells me about Him. The prophet Isaiah says: that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

Hebrews 12:28-29 says:

²⁸Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; ²⁹for our God is a consuming fire.

We are coming into a presence of a God who is holy. So, no one can enter. No one can just roll in there. People who say that they pray all the time and do not come the right way, they are deceiving themselves. Prayer is not an easy thing, it is an impossible thing. Remember, in the new covenant you have the Holy Spirit and you have the Word of God that aids you in prayer. It is the only aid you are going to get in prayer. You are not going to get much aid from your flesh. You are not going to get aid from the world or Satan. He is not going to encourage you.

In fact, Satan laughs when we do not pray, but he trembles when we do. When God’s people are serious about coming into the presence of God in this way, he trembles. We are mindful that we are approaching a God who is a consuming fire, therefore, we should do it with reverence and awe. That means with a certain weight that goes with His name. That goes with no other name is the universe. That is on my mind when I approach God.

In doing so, we realize if that difficulty is moved out the way then I am understand prayer more. When I understand who God is in my mind and heart then I am understanding how to approach Him.

There is a second difficulty in Hebrews 10:22. Here is the second obstacle: an insincere heart. I am reversing it, but I want you to know how it says it here in the passage. It says:

²²let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience…

So here is our second obstacle – an evil conscience. Would you say that you have ever experienced in your own life that you have an evil conscience? This scripture is talking generally. All men and women have evil consciences. Here’s our obstacle to prayer, I’m coming to God with an evil conscience. All of us can justify our behavior before other people and do it pretty well. “Oh, this is why I did this. This is why I went here. This is why I did not do that”. We go along and we justify our actions. But the moment we come before the God who is a consuming fire with our prayers, our consciences begin to rattle. They begin to shake.

They begin to speak to us and say to us, you justified yourself before someone, but you cannot do that before God. In fact, you have to tell God the way you really are. What you really did this past week. How you really thought about that person this past week. So, you come to God with an evil conscience and your conscience begins to move around when you pray. If you come into the presence of a Holy God and you are coming with awe and reverence, then unless a person deals with the conscience, he/she doesn’t pray. He/she cannot pray unless the conscience is dealt with. Doesn’t it say in Psalms 66:18?

¹⁸If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear;

Our insincere hearts and evil consciences are a problem when to comes to prayer. Have you ever experienced that?

Here’s the third obstacle in Hebrews 10:22

²² let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

The third obstacle is a sense of uncleanness before a Holy God. You ever feel unclean before God in prayer? “I feel dirty Lord” or “I know I am coming before You and I am understanding in the Word of God who you are and I want to come in reverence and fear but I feel so dirty.” You want to know why you feel dirty? Because you sinned. You feel dirty, too, because your evil conscience has not been dealt with.

When you come to prayer, you sense your pollution. Sin pollutes us and gives the sense of not feeling clean. We feel dirty and have a sense of total unworthiness often before God. A great example of this is David. In fact, David uses these words very clearly about feeling dirty because of his sin. What is he going to do, wash 25, 000 so he gets the dirt off? What is he going to do? He knows he cannot clean the dirt off his conscience. He cannot clean the pollution out of his life, so what does he do?

One thing that made David a man after God’s heart is that he did not run away from God. He ran towards God. He understood the character of God.

In Psalms 51:2 lets pick up some of the passages and get a sense of what David felt when He sinned before God. David committed adultery. He should have been at war but he was not. He committed adultery with Bathsheeba. Bathsheeba was married to Uriah. Uriah was a captain in David’s army, so David sent him to the hottest part of the battle and Uriah got killed.

David was an adulterer and a murderer.

Now, Nathan the prophet comes to David and acting like, in a sense the Holy Spirit, points his finger in David’s face and gave him a little story about a little lamb. David says, “It was a terrible story. I’ll get that man who took that lamb!” And Nathan says, “You’re the man”. David begins to feel convicted, and he begins to feel dirty. And he begins to melt before the consuming fire who is God. He cries out and says in Psalms 51:2

²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity…

He uses different words for sin. Iniquity is like crookedness. My crooked dealings. My trying to hide everything and manipulate circumstances so I can get my way. So, it would look like I didn’t commit the sin and someone else committed the sin or maybe no one will notice. Psalms 51:3, 4 says:

²…And cleanse me from my sin.

³For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

⁴Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge.

We cannot wiggle out of the judgment of God. God knows exactly what is going on. Psalms 51:5:

⁵Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.

David was realizing that it is not the actions that was the problem. He realized it was his heart that was the problem. By the time it gets to the actions, it is already done. Sin is conceived in your heart. That is where God sees it.

Matthew 5: 28 says:

²⁸but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

That means that God sees the sin in your heart before you act it out. And even if you never act it out it is still sin. That is where God is going to judge. If you look at it like that, we are all guilty. We are in big trouble. In this sense, David understood who God is and he’s coming to God feeling dirty. In psalms 51:7, it says:

⁷Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Purifying with hyssop is when they used to deep the hyssop branch in the blood and sprinkle it. Meaning that was the covering of sin by the blood sacrifice. David says, “The only way my sin can be washed away is by the blood. And then when it is, I will be whiter than snow before God. Then I will realize that my dirt and pollution will id gone.” God sees the heart.

In Psalms 51:10:

¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

David understood the inward complications of the heart and knew it was a heart problem before God. So, how in the world can a person riddled with an evil conscience come into the presence of a God who is a consuming fire? How can that ever happen? We need to realize that these obstacles can be overcome. That is the point of the scripture in Hebrews 10. That is what the rest of our text is saying.

Our text is saying in Hebrews 10, how to approach God in the way that He requires. In looking at that there are some essentials, at least 2, that will aid us to remove the obstacles so that we can pray with confidence. How can we go on to the next thing if we have not resolved to take care of our conscience? To take care of the dirt we have gathered on ourselves through life. How can we approach God?

I am headed to describe the kind of heart we are to have when we draw near to God. I’ll tell you what, it is not a proud heart. It is not a self-sufficient heart. It is not an insincere heart that God delights in to approach him. No, it’s none of those or any other one we can add on there. So, what kind of heart are we to have when we approach a Holy God? Hebrews 10:22 says:

²²let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith…

If you have a King James, New King James, or ESV it says a true heart. Maybe that is a better way to say it. The NAS ’95, ’77, and then the NIV say, “let us draw near with a sincere heart”. The word in the Greek is the literal word for true. The definition is a little fuzzy but will be clear once I look at the opposite of it. It is defined in this way: that which has not only the name a semblance but the real nature corresponding to the name.

In other words, the opposite of pure gold is adulterated metal. The word may be better understood when it is put up against it opposite. The words true and sincere is a heart that is not fictitious. It is real. It is a heart that is not counterfeit but it is authentic. It is a heart that is not imaginary so that it is without fakery. It is a heart that is not simulated but it is a heart that is the real thing. It is a heart that does not pretend and without hypocrisy.

Another way to put it is we approach God with an honest heart. It is the only way to approach God. Believers, according to our text, we are to draw near to God with a true, sincere, honest heart which assumes that we are aware of the kind of heart we are coming near to God with. We have a certain amount of understanding with our own heart. We are to have a level of discernment, ever growing, of our own heart and our own tendency to sin in certain areas. And of the weaknesses we have in our life that may pull us away from prayer. So, therefore, remove those things so we can continue to pray.

You cannot meet with God with an insincere heart. You can fool people some of the time, but you can never fool God. This is the issue. This is the main issue that he brings up when it comes to the obstacle of prayer. Are you coming to God with an absolutely honest heart about everything that is going on in your life and in your thoughts?

You do not have to sugar-coat things with God. Tell it like it is. If you are sinning in a certain way, tell God. Be blatantly honest with Him. “This is who I am Lord. This is the way I am sinning. This is what makes me feel dirty. This is what keeps me from You and prayer. This is what stops me from proclaiming Your name. This is what stops me from being a loving husband or a loving wife. This very thing. I want to be honest with You. This sin is preventing me from approaching you. I want to get rid of it. I want it done for good. I want to come before You as the scriptures tell me, with full assurance of faith. That is the way I want to come. Because Lord I know, and I am not even going to try to fool You or manipulate You or sugar-coat what is going on in my life. I’m going to tell it like it is. I am going to be honest. Finally, Lord, I am going to be honest.”

You know what, you do that, I do that, it changes everything. It changes whether I am in the Holy Place or not. It changes my approach to a holy and a consuming God. It changes everything and not only does it change everything with my relationship with God, it changes everything with my relationship with people. Both changes. God can never be fooled. In Hebrews 4:12

¹²For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

How can you try to fool God if that is the case? It says Hebrews 4:13:

¹³And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

How do I approach God? With an honest heart. You know what? If you’re a believer, you know Christ, you can do it. By the power of the Holy Spirit, you can do it. That is what the scripture is saying. You can remove this obstacle and do it. That may be some painful prayer times for you. It may be some restitution that you may have to do after you get off your knees in prayer. It may mean that you may need to go to someone and tell them something because of the sin you committed against them.

It may be a lot of things after you get off your knees in prayer. But believe me, you won’t want to do it any other way because it is God’s way. This is the way you have power in your life. This is the way you have victory over sin. This is the way you can be used in your spiritual gift in the church. This is God’s way.

That is not all. You can’t be sincere and not come with a heart fully trusting God. That comes next. In Hebrews 10:22 it says:

²²let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith…

Knowing truth and growing in doctrine will give you a clear understanding of what the sacrifice of Christ has already done for you. And what kind of heart the Holy Spirit is creating in you. In other words, if I come to God with my conscience riddled with pollution and I come to God feeling dirty, well, that is already taken care of on the cross. 1 John 1:9 says:

⁹If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

He will make me whiter than snow. Why? So, I do not go along, keep living my life with this weighed down conscience and feeling dirty when I do not have to. That is the point of what Christ has taken care of completely, forever. But, the approach must be made in the right way and we understand the doctrine of what Christ has done to take care of the obstacle. Then, what do we do?

Knowing the truth and growing in doctrine will give you a clear understanding of what the sacrifice of Christ has done for you and what kind of heart the Holy Spirit is creating in you. You the believer, He is creating an open heart that fully trusts in God. That is what He is creating in you. That is where the boldness comes from. That is where the confidence come from. I understand what happens to me in salvation. I understand what the bible says that Christ accomplished on the cross. I understand what it means practically in my life. Therefore, I will implement those things and live the way I ought to live. I am going to do that, and I am going to want to do that.

Remember, the Lord kept saying in Hebrew that it is the new and living way. It is a new way. This is not an old, dead religious system. This is not the old rituals and ceremonies of Judaism or any other religious system that is based on work. No, this is a new way. This is a living way. When you come this way, you have life. The new way is the way God has planned from all eternity.

That is the only way you have access to the presence of God. The only way. Through Christ and coming with an honest heart. There is no real access to God but by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. I said in my prayer this morning that God is not about what we do. The Gospel is about what God has already done. There is no way we can add to something God has already done. What we do is we believe it and follow it. That is what we do. This is what You have done Lord? Then that is what I am going to do” “This is what You say? Then that is what I am going to do”.

That is what happens in a believer’s life. When a person actually comes to Christ for the first time, do you know what they are saying to God? “Lord, Your way is the only way. So, I am giving up all my ways to try to get saved and I am going to follow your way”. That is the prayer that God hears. Until that point, you are not on praying ground. So, a rock singer that gets up and says, “I pray to the Lord that I would have a successful season and I give praise God.” And all their songs are about sin and corruption and sex, they are just deceiving themselves. They do not even know who God is. If they did, they would not be doing that.

There is a certain fear and reverence that comes into our lives that we do not do certain things. Not because there is a list of things not to do but because God is holy, and I live before His eyes. It does not matter what people are saying or who is looking because God sees and if I am going to come before God with an open heart, then we are already prepared to go before Him because we are living everyday before His piercing eyes. We go before Him as our Father and not our Judge.

There is a second thing in Hebrews 10:22, it says:

²²…having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

It is the heart that has been cleansed so we must have a cleansed heart. But brethren, we do not clean our own heart. We pray and confess our sin and Christ cleans your heart. As a matter of fact, the cleansing power has already been established in the cross. If Christ is the end of the law and the law convicts and condemns of sin, we no longer live according to the Mosaic law, we live according to the Law of Christ.

The Spirit of God living in me enables me to live according to the Law of Christ. And, you know what? The Law of Christ is above the law of Moses. That is why Jesus said in the sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:27-28

²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; ²⁸ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Christ is putting Himself above the law and the standard is way higher. That is why you can only live by the power of the Spirit of God. You cannot live it any other way.

You come before the Lord with an open heart and when you come before the Lord you must have a cleansed heart. If the law is satisfied because Christ bore our sin and guilt, well, then my conscience is clean. And my conscience is satisfied. And my feeling of being dirty and unclean is overcome by the blood of the Lamb. Isn’t that what it says in scripture? When it comes to the great Tribulation what was their cry in Revelation 12:11?

¹¹And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.

For my heart has been comprehensively cleansed, inside out by the blood of Christ.

If you notice the end of Hebrews 10:22 it says:

²²…and our bodies washed with pure water

That is not necessarily referring to baptism in the sense of the consecrations that the priests used in washing their bodies to approach God. That has been taken care of, too, in another way that God has comprehensively cleansed us. He cleansed us from the inside out and the Spirit of God constantly is cleansing us. Outward cleansing cannot cleanse from the pollution of sin. Jesus, in justification, cleanses a person so they can enter in and the Holy Spirit continues to cleanse the disciple of Christ. He cleanses their innermost thoughts and desires through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit and the sanctification of the Word of God.

We are ever-growing to put off sin. We are ever-growing in our mind to understand more of who God is and more of what God requires of us. We are growing more in the direction of delighting and enjoying God.We know that we are no longer under condemnation. We are no longer under the judgment of God, but we have received the grace, and the mercy, and the love of God and therefore I have learned to enjoy it. Have you learned to enjoy your Christian life yet? Enjoy yourself. Enjoy the providences of God every day.

Learn from the trials and tribulations that He providentially sends your way for your good and my good. You do not have to moan and groan in prayers and saying, “Lord, take this from me!” You may pray to the point, “Lord, Thank you for it. I needed it. It is sanctifying me. It is drawing me near to You. It is getting my mind off the world and my eyes off the things I ought not to be spending time on”. It gets you sober and clear-thinking. That’s what it does.

I love that passage of scripture in John 13. Do you remember when Jesus came to his disciples and he washed their feet? It is a strange passage of scripture, isn’t it? Jesus was really saying something very important in that passage. He wanted His disciples to know that what He was going to do on the cross was going to cleanse them completely. He shows them in humility. In John:13:3-11:

³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, ⁴got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. ⁵Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. ⁶So He came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, "Lord, do You wash my feet?" ⁷Jesus answered and said to him, "What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter." ⁸Peter said to Him, "Never shall You wash my feet!" Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me." ⁹Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head." ¹⁰Jesus said to him, "He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you." ¹¹For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, "Not all of you are clean."

In other words, the one that was not clean was Judas and he was going to betray Him. However, Christ was relaying before the cross, how the cross was going to completely cleanse them and make them acceptable to God. They would not understand when He was speaking but they understood afterwards what the Lord was saying.

The Lord wanted them to know, “Listen, what I’m going to is going to so cleanse you and make you clean before God that you will be able to approach God at anytime, anywhere, with boldness and confidence based on the work of God. Not anything you can ever do.”

And in prayer, when the accuser comes to you, the devil, Satan, and his demons and they begin to point out things in your conscience. When he begins to point out things you are supposed to be doing that you are not doing. Whenever he begins to point out certain sins that are blatant in your life and begins to accuse you. You need to point the devil to your Lord Jesus Christ.

You need to point him to the One who was crucified. The one who was risen. The one who was exalted. The one who is coming again. And you need to proclaim to him the confidence that God gave us to enter the presence of God based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You can tell the devil, “I don’t need to fear you. I don’t need to fear you because of my Lord and what He has accomplished on my behalf. I don’t need to fear you.”

The bottom line is that true believers with their doctrine and understanding of who God is and what God has done come before Him with confidence and come with freedom of speech, encouraged to express their needs. And they come regularly with an honest heart. And a heart that has been cleansed, but is dirtied daily by sin, but confession takes care of it because all my sins have been taken care of on the cross. When I understand that I can come to God with all our needs, and all my prayers, and all my intercessions on a regular basis and know that God has heard me. And anticipate answers to those prayers. That is the only way to come. So, if you individually and we as a church begin to understand this and come in this way, then let us pray prayers that only God could do. Do not pray prayers that you could do. Do not pray prayers within the limits of human power and ingenuity. Let us pray prayers that only God can do. That people would say, “That’s impossible!” Exactly.

But I’m coming to a God who has a unique way of dealing within the realm of the impossible. He is able to save people who others would say, “No way, God would never save that person!” Oh yes, he will. Why? Because people have been seeking God’s face for that person’s soul. “God would never heal that marriage!” Oh, wait a minute, come before God in prayer and see what God can do. God works in the realm of the impossible and when you have people who understand prayer then that realm is open to us. Let us think through this again and let us practice is and not talk about it.

Full Transcript:

The title of my message is The Lettuce Bowl of Scripture. The reason being that in Hebrews 10:22-24, each verse begins with “Let us,” and that’s the “lettuce” part. Also, it indicates a shift in this section of Hebrews. In other words, I completed moving through a large doctrinal section of Hebrews. Not that there were no practical things in there, but now we are shifting to the practice of the doctrine.

He took ten and a half chapters to get to the practice. He laid the theological foundation before you could ever do anything. When you do something, you ought to do it with a correct understanding of what the Bible says about it, so that you may do it correctly and consistently. All the teaching is related to our daily lives as followers of Christ.

Acknowledging Jesus’ Lordship with our lips alone is not useful if the practice of such truth is not evident in our life. This is not just a professing faith, but a doing faith. If you have faith, show me your faith and that you are redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb. Here, in what is called The Lettuce Bowl of Scripture, links doctrine with deeds. So far, in Hebrews, there has been an insistence on correct thinking and teaching, and now there is an exhortation on consistent behavior.

The teaching of Scripture not only needs to be received by us, but also needs to be appropriated by us. This is important in all the books of the Bible, especially in the epistles that gives an admonition of applying what you know. Thanks to the Lord, Scripture doesn’t leave us alone guessing on how to apply what we know, and the rest of Hebrews 10 is broken up into two parts.

The first part is an exhortation and encouragement; second, it is a warning, which is the last major warning in the book of Hebrews. In the first part, we are giving four appropriate responses to the proceeding doctrines in the last ten and a half chapters of Hebrews. Therefore, believers are exhorted and encouraged to action.

For this reason: they possess something they did not possess before. They do not possess it because they earned it, nor do they have it because they deserve it. Rather, they possess it by divine favor and grace. Hebrews 10:19:

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus

In this passage, “we have,” simply means that we have something, which is something we didn’t have before. We have the great and grand truth, which is for all of God’s children. Based on the one-time sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God forgets our sins and violations of His law. He doesn’t just cover them, but He purges them from us forever. Hebrews 10:18:

Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

By Christ’s full and final expiation of all sins for all time, believers are made right before a holy and just God, and given continual access to God, which we never had before. Remember, expiation means something done in view of the believer. In other words, sin exits and is removed from the believer, and the punishment is removed from the believer and given to Christ. Therefore, Christ removes the sin forever, and He pays the price for your sin for you to be set free. Because of that, all the dynamics of your life should change. Now, you can live for God, be a believer, and a follower of Christ.

If you are going to carry out the exhortation, these objective truths must be firmly imbedded in your mind and heart. To carry out the exhortations, you must have confidence in the doctrines taught about Jesus Christ. The confidence we have is based on objective truth. If someone asks how you know you are a Christian, what would you say to them?

Some respond by saying, “well, I feel like I am a Christian. I know in my heart that I am a believer.” This isn’t a bad answer, but it’s not the whole answer. That is a subjective answer, and in a very real sense, our faith does have and must have a subjective nature. However, our feelings must be constantly fed and challenged by the objective foundation, which informs our confidence.

As we go through Hebrews, confidence means faith-in, which is what he is working up to Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter. Before they ever did anything for God, all these people had confidence in what they believed first. Without having the fulfillment of the promise, they even died for God knowing it would be there once they died and went into God’s presence, especially since they understood the character and nature of God and the promises He made in the New Covenant.

For our consistent walk with the Lord, this is vital. It is hard to hold fast to something subjective, especially if your feelings are being compromised all the time. In Hebrews, they are under the attack of being ostracized from their home, they’re suffering, and some are losing their lives. Our feelings are not a reliable guide. They are often fickle and wavering. Sometimes it just depends on how the weather is, and some people are not here this morning because it is raining outside. The bed was awfully warm and cozy, so their mind began to come up with reasons why they should convince themselves to not go to a place that God says they ought to be. In fact, that’s where he is going in Hebrews 10:25:

not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Part of believing the truth is doing the simple things God asks. When you have church meetings, be there. I don’t say that, but God does. It cannot be what a person says, but it must be what God says through His word. The Holy Spirit wrote this, but we don’t always take seriously what’s written in the Word of God. For instance, simple things like being present, and not making excuses why you shouldn’t be there. When you put God first, God takes care of the things that often cause you anxiety and worry. Matthew 6:33:

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

He will add onto you all the things gentiles worry about such as clothing, food, bills, etc. Often, we worry about those since we’re not putting God first. Instead, you are first, your job is first, money is first, but not God. Faith is about trusting God and His word. When we do that, we find out that we cannot trust our feelings. Therefore, there must be that objective ground and basis on which our confidence rests, which embraces all that we have in Christ.

Doctrine will inform our thoughts, which informs our feelings and emotions, which then informs our doing. “Follow your heart” is bad theology, and following your feelings is worse. Unfortunately, that’s what you get in movies, Hollywood, and all over the place. Thus, follow truth that comes from God and it will never steer you wrong. If you stay on the path of truth, then the path of truth will make you strong, discerning, and courageous.

In the King James Bible, confidence is translated as boldness, so the truth will give you boldness in your faith. Because the truth is in your heart, no one will be able to move you. The truth guides your mind, glorifies God, and helps you to know what God wants you to do. Because of that, you grow strong. Already, Hebrews taught us that Christ is the author of our salvation, and He will bring us many sons to glory. Concluding, Jesus Christ has been crowned with glory and honor.

Christ is the heir and, as co-heirs in Christ, we’re about to inherit salvation. In Christ’s expiation and incarnation, He joined us and made us His brothers. By His death, He has freed us from the devil, the might of death, and fear of death. In time of temptation, He brings us help. In Scripture, Christ is said to be our Apostle and High Priest. When we confess, He fills us with assurance, hope, and glory that awaits us at the end, which is seen by faith. When we are in the presence of God and drop off these bodies, it will be completely given to us.

As you can see, these are some of the unchanging, rock-solid objective realities that enable us to enter God’s presence with confidence. We can form our feelings to enable us to feel firmly confident and assured of the realities of our faith, which causes us not to waver or bend with every wind of doctrine. Those who profess faith in Christ will remain faithful. Thus, giving evidence that they are members of Christ’s household.

The question God is answering in your life: are you faithful? Such as being faithful to the truth, to what you know that you have learned in the Word of God, to your profession of faith in Christ, to assembling together with believers, to the study of the Word of God, to the practice of what you do know in your life, to discern good and evil, to pray, to love Christ, and to walk with Him daily.

These things are always done imperfectly, but that is the direction of life. That is what He is calling us to and it will be all about that in the next chapters until the end of the book. Once you know it, do these things. It starts in your heart and mind, so do it there. In addition, it starts because you know you are saved and that Christ has done this for you, so that is what gives you confidence. In saying that, there are two things that need to accompany our approach to God, but I will only be covering the first one this morning.

First, followers of Jesus Christ are to enter the Holy place with confidence. Again, Hebrews 10:19-20:

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh

True believers have confidence. In Greek, confidence means to have freedom of speech, and to be fearless and cheerful in your courage. The true believers in Jesus Christ are exhorted to go directly into the presence of God with free speaking. Meaning, our confidence has something to do with us having courage before God and expressing not only intercessions for other people and adoration to God, but your own personal need and struggle with sin before God. We have confidence to come before God and lay out the whole mess and dysfunction in our life. Lay out the sins, hopes, dreams, anxieties, and needs you have before Him. Therefore, this word does mean, and includes, to come fearlessly in that way before God.

There is a contrast here with the way the people of the Old Covenant approached God versus the way people of the New Covenant approach God. In the New Covenant, people approached God with a joyous and confident heart. In the Old Covenant, people were cautious and fearful. In the New Covenant, people are to draw near always while Old Covenant people were frequently exhorted to keep their distance lest they’d be killed. In any moment of trial, all followers of Christ are urged to come at any time before the Throne of Grace. In the Old Covenant, only the high priest could enter the holiest place only once a year.

God has taken this Old Covenant, where one high priest can enter in before His presence once a year, to now, where it’s open, come anytime you want, and with no priest. Of course, your priest is Christ. You must have a priest, but it cannot be a priest of your choice. It must be Christ himself, who is the Melchizedekian high priest. So, how do we really show confidence?

We show confidence in five ways. First, we show confidence by entering. Secondly, we show confidence by drawing near. Hebrews 10:22:

let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

We show confidence by holding fast. Hebrews 10:23:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;

We show confidence by keeping near. Hebrews 10:35:

Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

We show confidence by pressing on. Hebrews 10:36:

For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

All shows confidence that you believe the Doctrines about Christ in the Word of God. As you do that, there are three aspects of redemptive love that should always be on our heart when we approach God. Hebrews 10:19 is telling us how we enter, and never forget that this is how we enter. Followers of Christ are entering the Holy of holies, which, under the Old Covenant, people were forbidden to enter. Therefore, we enter not ignorantly, flippantly, carelessly, but mindfully.

We have an understanding in our mind of the cost it took God to give us this awesome privilege to come into His presence anytime we want, anywhere, and any place. What are those redemptive thoughts?

First, it should enter your mind of the blood He shed. Meaning, what happened in the blood of Jesus, how He bought us, and paid our huge sin-debt. Because of Christ’s blood, we belong to Him. Secondly, we enter mindful of the way He opened, and that we are accepted by Him. All the obstacles to come to Christ has been removed, so there is no person, no church, no sacrament, and no routine we must go through to enter His presence aside from being mindful of what Christ did for us to get there.

Thirdly, redemptive thought should enter our mind of the work He has done and continues to do. As the High Priest, His work is to intercede for us and help us in our time of need. Meaning, God understands our weakness as human beings, He understands the painfulness we experience as human beings, and He understands what your sin and the sins of others does in your life. Therefore, there is nothing that can come to your mind by thinking, “I don’t have to bother God with this,” or, “God doesn’t understand my situation.” In fact, doctrine has said in Scripture that God understands all your needs way deeper than you do. Because of His suffering and death, He has experienced them himself.

Scripture is saying to never back off God because of what He has taught you. God has removed all these obstacles, so you can come for help. When we come before God, these three aspects of redemption may stir us to be full of adoration, confession, and thanksgiving, which all equals worship that is pleasing to the Father. Under the Old Covenant, this is what the Father was desiring all the time. However, He has it under the New Covenant.

In Hebrews 10:20, there are two key words: new and living. It is new because no one could directly enter God’s presence under the Old Mosaic Law. In Greek, this rich word new means to be freshly slaughtered. Also, it means one that retains its freshness and cannot grow old. Meaning, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ retains its freshness and could never grow old. Although His sacrifice for our sins was offered over two-thousand years ago once and for all, it never grows old and is always fresh and current for all who come to receive. For believers, His shed blood is a continual fountain of cleansing to all who appropriated for their sins.

Also, in Hebrews 10:20, it is living because the way provides life for believers and continual access to God. Meaning, all other ways are dead ways. This is the only living way, and all other ways are dead ends. The exclusive nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ makes it a dead end to go any other way. This is the only fresh and living way.

In the last part of Hebrews 10:20, everything ended for the Old Covenant, and everything begins for the New Covenant people. At the exact time of Jesus’ death on the cross and at the ninth hour, which is three o’clock in the afternoon, the heavy temple veil was rent in two. That afternoon, hundreds of people were in the temple area, and the priests were busy preparing for the evening sacrifice. It must have been amazing to have been there when God tore the huge veil from top to bottom. The empty room of the holy of holies stood wide open before the priests.

When thinking about the holy of holies, there was the holy place, which was the first place you entered in the tabernacle. However, it was the holy of holies the high priest could go once a year. In this passage of Hebrews, he is talking about the holy of holies. Mark 15:33-39:

When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. ³⁴At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” which is translated, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?” ³⁵When some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, “Behold, He is calling for Elijah.” ³⁶Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink, saying, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to take Him down.” ³⁷And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last. ³⁸And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. ³⁹When the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

This is where God ended it all. In one message, I said that in 70 A.D. the whole sacrificial system ended, but this is where it really ended. On the Cross, everything ended for the old system. In the new system, everything began. Therefore, we have the privilege to know that through the atoning Blood of Jesus, the true High Priest had opened the way into God’s presence. In Hebrews 10:20, the “veil” is His flesh. The torn veil is a picture of the torn body of Christ, who made it possible for us to worship Him at the throne of God. The same hand that tore the veil in the temple, from top to bottom, tore Jesus’ body on our behalf. Isaiah 53:10:

But the LORD was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

Through Christ’s body, God tore that opening between us and God. It is done now forever because He was the final sacrifice and our High Priest, who accomplished everything so that we could come into God’s presence. Bottom line, we must enter the holy place of prayer. Christ is in heaven interceding, so while we’re on this side of eternity, we enter the presence of God through prayer.

Prayer is the entry way, and that’s why we come confidentially talking. Prayer means we can enter God’s presence. Truly, we must know that prayer is permission to enter His presence because we are forgiven. Having believed in Jesus Christ for salvation, believers have a new standing before God because Jesus Christ had died in their place and was sacrificed on their behalf. It is a standing they didn’t have before since they are now able to approach God. They have repented, believed, and were granted forgiveness of sins.

One of the components of the New Covenant is that you’re forgiven of your sins; therefore, you have permission to come. Secondly, prayer is confidence. It is to come to the mercy seat at any time, in any posture, and in any place. Also, it is confidence that you don’t have to wonder if God hears or if He is there. You don’t have to wonder if you have the right to pray. You don’t have to wonder if God is stooping down and listening to you.

When the Old Testament passages of Scriptures talk about God listening, it means, in Hebrew, to stoop down and listen, so God is coming close to hear what you have to say. This is a picture of intimacy. We are no longer an enemy of God, but a child and a friend of God. Therefore, if you are a believer, God is never against you. He is with you, for you, listening to your prayer, and waiting to meet your need.

Prayer ought to be persistent, so never ceasing. The Bible says that even in weakness of our flesh, when we feel empty, and when we feel cold, we are to keep coming and persist in prayer as an expression of our complete dependency on God for all aspects of our existences. Persistence flows from the certainty, confidence, and boldness of our creaturely helplessness and logical conviction from Scripture that God alone can help us. Psalms 73:25-26:

Whom have I in heaven but You?
And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.

²⁶My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Have you ever felt like that? Like your flesh, emotions, feelings, friends, family, education, experience, and job has failed you. However, as said in Psalms 73:26, “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” You don’t have to worry about anything else. Without persistent prayer, we have no offense in the battle against evil. Remember, Christ defeated Satan and death. In Hebrews, it tells us that everything is done.

As a Pastor, I have found to get people to gather for prayer is the hardest thing and most discouraging thing for me. If there is no prayer, there is no power. If we are not vigilant, we will be ensnared by temptation, by worldliness, by fleshliness, by satanic influence, and the enemies of our life. Our defense and offense are active, persistent, earnest, and believing prayer. As believers, this is what we ought to do.

Regular and continual prayer show one’s priorities, concerns, and passions. I implore you to remember that prayer is always first and should always be regular. We have this great privilege before us to come into God’s presence by talking, meeting, walking, and pouring out our heart to our Lord. Yet, we don’t take advantage of this. We think we have all these priorities in our life, yet the most important priority, we neglect. By the time you get to it, you are so tired, you fall asleep, and decide to pray. That is not prayer. That is your priorities all screwed up.

If the church doesn’t get this priority corrected, that’s a real bad thing. Sinful interruptions, satanic attempts to distract your mind, and good things derail your prayers such as sports, work, hobbies, studies, and families. These are all one hundred thousand excuses.

In Hebrews 25, it is mainly talking about corporate prayer. We forget corporate prayer, which is the church and the body meeting together to seek God out. We must rethink how we do prayer in our church. I know other things must be done, but if we are not praying for Sunday School, the preaching, and other struggling individuals, then where is the power behind that?

Prayer must be offered in faith that God is a hearer and an answerer of prayer, and that He will fulfill His word. Matthew 7:8:

For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

We are to have a continuous inner channel of communication with God. Prayer is worship to the Lord, in which He deserves our adoration coupled with a thankful heart. Prayer means we remain keenly aware of our constant need of Jesus Christ, our High Priest. Hebrews 4:14-15:

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus understands our deepest needs. Also, we need to come with humility. James 4:6:

But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.

If you are not praying, it means you are not humble and do not need help. You realize that we have spiritual wickedness against us, so we need help every second of every day before God. Also, we need mercy and forgiveness. Hebrews 4:16:

Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Brethren, we are battling forces greater than ourselves. Therefore, we need to be praying. As believers, it is our primary duty. After all that doctrine, this is the first point of practice: confidence to come before the Lord in prayer. Not many deny that prayer is important, but practically, many have been atheists when it comes to prayer. We think that we should do it, but we don’t seek God’s face on normal days for everything. Believe me, I’m preaching to myself too, not just to you.

When Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple, he called the place where God’s people met together the place of prayer, especially since prayer is the most important, holy duty of the gathered assembly. Matthew 21:13:

And He said to them, “It is written, ‘MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER’; but you are making it a ROBBERS’ DEN.”

We can take a place where God’s people are supposed to gather and make it something other than what God intended it to be. We can do a lot of things as a church, but if we don’t pray, we’re in trouble. The life, power, and glory of the church is prayer. It shows that we are all together, depending on our God. We know we cannot do it without Him. We need this spiritual strength: the life of it’s members is dependent on prayer, the presence of God is secured and retained by prayer, and the very place in which we meet is sanctified when we pray. Without it, the church is lifeless and powerless. Without it, even the building itself is nothing more than a structure.

With prayer, in the house of God, which is anywhere people gather to meet, the house of God lacks nothing. When people come to pray, it has all the beauty that you could ever imagine. Without prayer, the church is like a body without spirit; therefore, it is dead. A church with prayer in it has God in it and has a bunch of people in it who believes what the bible teaches and is doing what it says.

Accordingly, the first point of doing is to come confidentially into the presence of God to pray together. Some of the things that are happening in your life and in my life have been a result of not praying, especially when we try to do it ourselves or get other people to try to help us. Yet, we never bring it before the Lord. The Lord allows us to do things like that, and then we get ourselves tied in all kinds of knots. Everything breaks down around us, and then we wonder what is going on. You haven’t even prayed about it, you haven’t brought it to your brethren, or brought your prayers and intercessions before the Lord.

When prayer is set aside, God is outlawed. When prayer becomes an unfamiliar exercise, then God is a stranger in that place, especially since prayer is about talking to God. Prayer is about a bunch of people who can know why they can come into the presence of God at any time, any place, and anywhere. They are filled with adoration and praise to the Lord, and they are filled with things to talk about with the Lord.

As God’s house becomes a house of prayer, the divine intention is that people should leave their homes to go to meet Him in His house with His gathered people. The building itself is set apart for prayer, especially as God has made a special promise to meet His people there. God is delighted when we meet, and He is filled with joy when we meet for prayer. Therefore, it is our duty to go there.

Prayer should be the chief attraction for all spiritually minded church goers. As a church body, this is one thing we must work on. No one is exempt or has an excuse higher than this priority. We must find ways to come together on a regular basis and all the time to pray. This coming year, we must have a plan to do it, so that everybody is involved. I know people live distances away, but there is a way to do this.

When we haven’t prayed about something that we should have, I feel very nervous about that, and I should be. I want to be so prayed up and overflowing in this area where we’re just boldly doing things because we know God is going to bless it already. After we understand our conversion to Christ and what He has done for us, we have a great gift and privilege and we often don’t use it as we should.

Now, we need to change that, put our priorities back in order, and start implementing this practice of our faith. To come confidentially, boldly, and assuredly into the presence of God as a body. Let’s pray:

Lord, Thank You, for the Word of God. Lord, forgive us of the sin of not being prayerful as a body. Forgive us, Lord, of the sin of not being prayerful as individuals in Your body. Lord, I pray, that whatever anyone is going through today in their life, including myself, that You would help us to reexamine the area of prayer, especially as to where it is in our priorities. I pray that we would put it where it ought to be first. As we do that, Lord, help us to adjust our schedules and our calendars to reflect that priority. Lord, You know our heart and the motives of our heart. You know our weakness and our tendencies to go in directions that we ought not to go. Lord, please enable us to be able to prioritize prayer, especially corporate payer, and implement it this year to bring all our needs, intercessions, and petitions before You, Lord. I pray that we would learn to enjoy coming before You. That we would learn to put all other things aside to come before You. Lord, I pray that we would see great things happen. That we know only You could do because we are seeking You out, and we’re praying humbly before Your face because we know our great need, and we need to be in Your presence, Lord. That is why we are saved. O, Lord, that is going to be our future. We know, Lord, that’s the greatest thing we have. So, help us, Lord. Give us wisdom, as a body, to be able to put this first major point of practice into being, and that it’d be a regular part of our routine. Thank You, Lord, for challenging us and rebuking us in this way. Help us, Lord, now to do what you say. In Christ, I pray, Amen.

Full Transcript:

We are going to read into Hebrews 10, but before, let’s have a word of prayer:

Lord, thank You for another opportunity and privilege to study about You. Even in these last verses, the doctrinal section of Hebrews, Lord, to know that Your love for us is an action word – You don’t just say it, You do it. Because you have done it, we can be set free, purified, be made right with you, and enter your Holy presence because of what the Lord, Jesus Christ, fully and finally completed on behalf of His children. We praise You for that, Lord. We ask You to continually help us to understand even more about the great sacrifice You have accomplished on our behalf, and we will give You the praise, the glory, and the honor for all that is due Your name. Thank you, Lord. I pray this, in Christ name, Amen.

In Hebrews 10, this is the last section of doctrine, at least of formal doctrine, on this whole topic of The Old and New Covenant before he gets to the practical. He took ten chapters to then tell you what you ought to do, so don’t ever think that doctrine is not important. Doctrine lays the foundation on why we do what we do, and the motives we have behind what we do. When we are doing something, we will not be doing for anyone else than the Lord. If we do it for Him, then He must get the credit and we won’t have to look for accolades, pats on the back, or any reward. Though you may get that, and those things are fine in their place, but doctrine, nonetheless, always is the foundation on why we do what we do and who we do it for, which is our Lord.

In approaching this passage, we have already been occupied with some of the great shadows of the Old Testament like the law and priestly sacrifices. Remember, the law was the shadow of good things to come, and we have seen all of them fulfilled in Christ. You can never have a shadow without a substance, and our Lord Jesus is that great substance, which down through the ages has cast His shadow. You see the true and detailed picture of the sacrifice that God would provide is Jesus Christ. Everything in the Old Testament pointed to Him, and even while Jesus was walking with those on the road to Emmaus, after His resurrection, He proclaimed directly to those walking with Him. He says in Luke 24:25-27

And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶“Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

Basically, the Lord is saying all of it is about Him, and all of it focuses on Him. Jesus is the substance of all the types and shadows in Scripture. He is the substance and reality, so to cling to a shadow or a type in its incompleteness, not to the substance to which it points, is to miss Christ. As a result, many people missed Christ because they didn’t go all the way, nor did they understand the full Revelation of God on where it was all pointing to. Remember, these shadows and types were not able to perfect the worshipper.

There is seen the necessity of fresh victims, fresh blood shedding year by year, and the reason being that it was given by God. Hebrews 10:3-4:

But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. ⁴For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

This whole sacrificial system was just to remind people they are sinners. In fact, when we use the law in evangelism, isn’t that what the law does? The moral aspect of the law reminds us, even now, that we are sinners. It reminds the unsaved person that they are sinners, and that they have broken God’s standard and are responsible for every word, thought, or deed that they would commit. This is something that the law and its whole system of sacrifice reminds the one who comes to worship that they are not purified, that they are still in their sins, that their sins separate them from God, and that they could never get farther than the next sacrifice. They could never get farther than the day of atonement, which brings them to the next big event in the system. Therefore, animal sacrifices could only cover sin, and it did not remove it or make one perfect before God. Meaning, a far different and vastly superior sacrifice is needed to take care of the sins of men and women.

When we come to a passage like this in Scripture, he begins to quote from Psalm 40 and the Septuagint, which is finished in 270 BC and it is a section where the writer of Hebrews often quotes. Psalm 40:6-9:

Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired; My ears You have opened; Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. ⁷Then I said, “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me. ⁸I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.” ⁹I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation; Behold, I will not restrain my lips, O LORD, you know.

Really, this passage of Scripture is referring to Christ. This is what Christ would be and what He would do. Christ would satisfy the Father when it came to the one and final offering for sin. Up to that point, the Father was not satisfied, and He didn’t desire it anymore. Matter of fact, if often slipped into a ritualistic religion in serving God by reputation, habit, and with no heart, real passion, or desire to do God’s will. The Lord was sickened by this, and He is still sickened by religiosity and hypocrisy. God, the Father, delighted in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ becomes the perfect man, the perfect servant of God, the perfect, unblemished sacrifice, and He becomes perfect in obedience. It was not just the death of Christ that was important, but it was the life of Christ.

Remember, Christ lived His life perfectly before God and did all the will of God. Therefore, Jesus Christ was the only, perfectly righteous man who ever lived, and these two things are very important for us or else we could not get saved if Jesus Christ did not do God’s will perfectly. We know that the one grand and supreme act of obedience was the Cross of Calvary. Philippians 2:6-8:

who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. ⁸Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

There is the extent of the obedience of Jesus Christ that pleased the Father completely, especially since He obeyed to the point of death. We see the agony of Christ’s humanistic in the Garden of Gethsemane where He was agonizing in prayer. As the Bible says in the Gospels, He was sweating great drops of blood. Even Christ prayed, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Don’t forget, Christ was going to bare the sins of every human being that would be one of His children. On that cross, sins are innumerable, and it’s unimaginable what Christ did on the cross – to the extent He went on the cross and what He paid for eternally. He did an eternal death. Personally, I don’t understand that, nor can I wrap my mind around that, but I know that if He did that, the grace of God must be awesome.

Now, there are consequences because of what Chris did. Philippians 2:9-11:

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth. ¹¹and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In this passage, under the earth refers to hell. Those in hell are going to bow their knees to Christ. They are going to say, “You are Lord,” but it’s too late. The reality is true. Jesus Christ is an awesome personage in the Word of God. The Father is pleased with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross because it was the only effective, sufficient, complete, and final sacrifice for the sin of humanity, and it accomplished God’s intended goal.

Three great truths are accomplished by the Lord, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10:2:

Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?

Hebrews 10:10

By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Hebrews 10:14:

For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

Therefore, purged, sanctified, and perfected forever by God. For this to happen, for us to be brought into a position where we are purged, sanctified, and perfected, the Son’s sacrifice would have to be final and for all time. It would have to be a sacrifice that topped all sacrifices and one that could never be competed with or repeated. For Christ’s sacrifice to be final, four essential things need to take place.

First, for Christ’s sacrifice to be final, all priestly work need to be finished for all time. That all the sacrificial system needed to be brought to end. Hebrews 10:11:

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins;

If you notice, he is not talking about the high priest, but the everyday priest, the one who goes to the tabernacle every day to offer all the sacrifices from morning to evening for the sins of the people. The people keep sinning, so the sacrifices are constant. Therefore, repetitious sacrifices are a wearying routine. Personally, I like to work out, but I hate the treadmill since it feels like you’re going nowhere. It really takes a lot of motivation to get on a treadmill, especially since you’re going and going for a half hour. However, it’s a routine, and these sacrificial routines would be like a treadmill. It keeps going and going, and it never accomplishes the intended goal. After that happens for a while, you begin to think something else must happen here.

The constant sacrifice left the worshippers conscious still guilty, conscious of their sin, and alienated from God. This type of priestly service could never remove sins. This theme is repeated throughout Hebrews because he is driving home his point, that the law was weak, useless, and unable to make anything perfect. Hebrews 7:19:

(for the Law made nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.

The priest was weak, imperfect, sinful themselves, they had to offer sacrifices for their own sin, and then they died, which was probably from exhaustion. Then, the sacrificial system couldn’t make anyone perfect. Bottom line, the law, the priesthood, and the sacrificial system could not give a person continual access to God and make one right before God.

Now, you looked at the finality of Christ’s sacrifice. Hebrews 10:12:

but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD.

In other words, the priest’s stand, and no Levitical priest ever sat down. Whether they were the regular daily priest or the high priest, they never sat down. In fact, there was no place to sit. The earthly tabernacle had no chairs or a place to rest. For this reason, the Levitical priest were required to stand, that their work was never done or complete. That’s what God’s intention was, and that is the picture it ought to give you. If there was never a one-time sacrifice for sin, we would be in trouble, and we would still have the sacrificial system if you wanted to be made right with God. However, Christ’s sits. He bore all the sins of His people, in a single cosmic sacrifice, and He sits down. Therefore, He is done, and there is nothing else that must be done to save one who comes to Christ.

To think you can come to the Lord with some good works, or come to God and negotiate with Him about something you have to offer, is not biblical. Rather, that is something we make up as humans, and we think that we can negotiate with God. Somehow, we think that God is going to accept our good works. However, this passage of Scripture gives us a sense that Christ did it all. When He finished, He sat down. By faith, we can believe in Jesus Christ and be saved by His one time, for all sacrifice, and be made perfect, sanctified, and purified before God. Christ sitting down indicates the need for further sacrifice has ended since His sacrifice was final.

Second, for Christ’s sacrifice to be final, all of God’s enemies will need to be subjugated to Him for all time. Hebrews 10:13:

waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET.

Today, He rules with the Father in heaven until all His enemies are under His feet, so He is waiting, right now, at the right hand of the father in an exalted place of honor. He is waiting for the consummation of all things, for all things to be restored, which includes subduing every hostile force in the universe that is against Him and us. He takes care of it all, but it had to be by the death of Christ.

By the death of Christ, He not only saves people, but He defeats the enemy, or Satan. Satan thinks that in the sacrifice of Christ, he won, but Jesus Christ got up three days later. He defeated death and He rose from the grave, and Satan, now is freaking out because he lost. All of Christ’s enemies are everybody, throughout the centuries, that have rejected Him. We didn’t know it, but we started out as enemies of God. However, when we came to Christ, we realized we were, and now we are friends of Christ.

In Scripture, the anti-Christ and false prophet are enemies of God, but the culprit is the devil. The devil is the major enemy of God, and the Lord is going to put him under His feet. This whole picture of his enemies be made a footstool is really a picture of kings, standing with one foot on the neck of a vanquished foe. As kings did centuries ago, to show total victory over their enemies, the king would stand, in front of everybody, on the neck of their enemy, the other king, and says, “I’ve won.”

By His atoning death, Christ defeats Satan and death, our enemy. Hebrews 2:14:

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,

Therefore, the power of Satan has been rendered by God in operative to prevent someone from being saved and to take your salvation away from you, that Christ has made an atonement for sin, satisfying to God, and the fear of dying has long plagued humanity. However, Christ has settled that problem by His own death and resurrection. Satan’s power of death has been annulled for those who are united to Christ, in His representative death. Also, Satan’s authority to condemn and punish the forgiven sinner has been void. Satan is the greatest one who wants to come against you and accuse you of sin, but God has already judged, condemned, and punished all our sins in Christ. When Satan comes against you, you must understand that he cannot do that because of the death of Christ.

Another passage of Scripture says judgement is upon the world, and the ruler of this world is cast out. Colossians 2:13-15:

When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, ¹⁴having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. ¹⁵When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

Even to defeat the enemy of Satan, Christ had to die to vanquish and remove his ability to keep people in bondage through fear and death. Satan still does this, but it’s when you become a Christian, you feel free from that. The fear of death is connected to the sinner’s guilty conscious since the sinner doesn’t know what’s next. If there is a God, he will hold us responsible for a lot of stuff, especially stuff you don’t remember doing. However, the stuff you do remember produces guilt, and Satan uses that to make people afraid of death. Many times, in making them afraid, he never gives them the answer of what happens after death, or how they could be rescued from death. Instead, Satan keeps them in darkness and blindness, so the guilty conscious senses that God’s wrath and punishment is deserved.

Now, there is a healthy guilt, which brings someone to understand the truth, but there is also a guilt that Satan brings where he doesn’t want you to know the truth. Satan only wants you to feel guilty, fearful, and so whittled with torment in your conscious that you are in chains and crippled. However, for him to come against the believer, who knows the Lord, Jesus Christ, and try to condemn you and make you guilty in areas where you are already forgiven, he cannot do. However, you must know the truth, and remind him that Jesus Christ died in your place, and remind him of passages of Scripture such as Hebrews 9:14:

how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Hebrews 10:22:

let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

For Christ’s sacrifice to be final, all God’s enemies need to be subjugated to Him for all time. Christ reigns over all His enemies, indicating that the days of the kingdom of darkness are short lived and in line for final collapse. This hasn’t happened yet, and that’s why Satan is still manipulated, spinning his webs, coming against the King of Glory, attacking the saints, attacking the church, keeping the world in blindness, and keeping people at bay so they cannot know the truth nor the light of the gospel. Because of the Cross, his days are numbered, and he’s done.

If we’re in Christ, we’re on the victorious side, behind the King, who has His foot on the neck of Satan, who really wasn’t a real enemy to God anyway. However, Satan wants you to think that he is that powerful. For most of the time, he doesn’t want you to know who he is. Today, we are, like Greg says, so comfortable. We have so much materialism and so many things in the United States, so Satan has got you. You’re comfortable and nice, so you don’t need anything, and we must watch out and be careful about that.

Remember, when His enemies become a footstool for His feet, then when His work is complete, and Jesus comes back. When He does that, He will deliver the kingdom to the Father. Thus, God will be all and all. 1 Corinthians 15:26-28:

The last enemy that will be abolished is death. ²⁷For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. ²⁸When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

Jesus Christ is going to take it all, and offer it back to the father. The father has given the gift of His children to Jesus Christ. Then, Christ takes it all and gives it back to the father. This is when God’s plan is all finished.

Third, for Christ’s sacrifice to be final, all worshippers must be set apart and perfected for all times. One, perfect sacrifice, the offering of Himself, the unblemished lamb being offered before God, not offering a sacrifice for His own sin, but offering a sacrifice for our sin. Unlike any other priest before Him, Christ was sinless and in perfect obedience. The only way we can be saved is by the perfect obedient life of Christ.

We have double imputation, where God accounts something to your account. Christ takes His righteousness and puts it on our account; then, He transfers your sin to the cross. Therefore, He cancels that sin on the cross, and becomes double imputation – your sin goes to Him and His righteousness goes to you. When the Father looks down upon you, when you trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior, He does not see your sin. Rather, He sees you clean and purified with the righteousness of Christ on your account. Clean and purified by His death, and the righteousness of Christ on your account because of His perfect life. God does this to make a people that’s clean and pure to come into His presence, so that He can have eternal fellowship with us. Titus 2:14:

who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

The Lord is doing this for Himself. He takes a people for Himself, and dying in the place of those people that He takes for himself. He makes us, who have come to know Christ as Lord and Savior, as His own possession, His treasure, and His precious ones. While we are left here on this earth, we would be zealous of good deeds. Meaning, once the Spirit of God is in us, we want to do right and please God. We cannot do right unless the Spirit of God lives in us, unless we have been purified, and unless we have the righteousness of Christ imputed into our account. Only after we trust in Christ, can we be zealous for good deeds. Christians are zealous to do what is right, and zealous to do what honor, please, and give delight to God. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, you able to become a possession of God, and to become to God His own people.

We are citizens of heaven and a child of the King of kings, and that is awesome. To know these things is so incredibly awesome. Christ perfected and set apart those who believe, indicating that His sacrifice was powerful enough to remove sin, not cover sin. The Old Testament, Yom Kippur, means to cover, and that’s not the word here. Rather, it is to purge, to remove completely the stain, and to make clean. That’s what God does to us. The sacrifice was powerful enough to remove the sin and the guilt that goes with the sin. Therefore, making us clean, purified, and able to go into the presence of God, and no other sacrifice was able to do what Christ did. So, Christ pleases the father by accomplishing the goal to take a people for Himself, purify them, and bring them into His kingdom.

Last, for Christ’s sacrifice to be final, all promises, and provisions of the New Covenant must be fulfilled. Everyone under the New Covenant will have the permanent, indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God. Ezekiel 36:27:

“I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

Hebrews 10:15-16:

And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying, 16“THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,”

At this point, the writer of Hebrews is saying, “Listen, here is something that the Holy Spirit testifies to us.” Therefore, Everybody, who becomes a believer, has the Spirit of God permanently indwelled in them. Secondly, everyone in the New Covenant, will have a new heart, and a third thing, everyone in the New Covenant will have the law inside their heart, and God will write His law in your mind, on the thinking part of you. The Holy Spirit of God will give believers the capacity to know God’s righteousness and live in holiness, zealous for good deeds – to know what pleases and honors God. Then, New Covenant people obey God willingly. They know how they are obeying, they love His word, and know what His mind is since they have been given the ability, desire, and power to obey.

Once a person professes Christ, becomes a believer, and the Spirit of God is in you, God is changing you from the inside out, and He is giving you the desire to obey and follow him like you have never had before. This is real conversion. Therefore, real conversion is not just profession of faith, but following Christ. Not because you must follow, because some religious system tells you to follow, nor because mom, dad, or some you like says to follow, but because you want to follow since you know who you are following. You know what He has done for you, and you follow with a gracious and grateful heart.

Christ set aside the Old Covenant to establish the New Covenant, indicating that true worshippers can finally experience the peace of God since they have peace with God. Then, come before God with a guilt free conscious. Only the Lord can do that, and it’s only because Christ’s sacrifice was final.

In conclusion, in this passage of Scripture, Hebrews 10, which ends the doctrinal section of Hebrews, the one-time sacrifice of Jesus Christ causes God the Father to forget our sins and transgressions. Not just to cover them, but to purge them from your account forever. Hebrews 10:18:

Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

You have just ended, right there in that passage, a ten-chapter, sermon series on the final sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is what the writer of Hebrews has done. What enables God to forget? Literally, God forgets. How can God forget? God can only forget unless He purges His own mind of remembrance of our sin. His intention is to purge His own mind of any remembrance of your sin. That’s an awesome thought. It is only because of the full, final expiation of the all-time sacrifice for all sins of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the gracious forgiveness of God is not limited pardon, but when God forgives a person, He draws the mark through every single sin, which is every single sin the sinner has committed or will commit. However many or however monstrous their sins may have been, the moment you believe in Jesus Christ, they are forever blotted out – they are all gone. When God pardons the sins of His children, there is not even one left, not even a half of one. When God forgives there is never punishment afterward. He is taking the full punishment for it, and there is never punishment afterwards. God chastises us, spanks us to get in line as a father would discipline his child, but not as a judge who sends you to prison or hell.

By one sacrifice, there is full remission of all sin that ever was against or will be against the believer. There is no believer who shall be condemned about their sin on the day of judgement. On the day of judgment, it will not be about sin for God’s children. It will be about their works, and what they have done for the Lord. It will be about if they have been zealous for good deeds and serving God. If you receive this grace, the free grace of God, there are privileges that follow understanding such grace.

First, to have peace of conscious. There is nothing to condemn you anymore to have access to God. There is nothing to prevent from enjoying God’s presence anymore. There is no fear of hell, and there is nothing, any longer, that can send you there. Christ has been punished in your place. Therefore, justice cannot touch you any longer.

Then, it’s the expectation of heaven. Sudden death is sudden glory. Heaven is an open door, and it is home for the believer. Hence, all of this because of the final sacrifice of Jesus Christ. If you have not received God’s grace, you are still in your sins, unpurified, still trying to offer God dead works, and still under God’s condemnation. What are you doing? Just come to Christ. Christ will answer all the questions you have, and even questions you didn’t know you had. He solves issues and problems where you don’t even know where to go with your thoughts, and He answers them. By looking at the Scripture, and finding out the mind of God, He has set us free.

Therefore, my admonition to you is to accept God’s invitation, and come and call upon the Lord, Jesus Christ, to be save if you are not saved. If you are saved, take this great gift that God has given you, and to live for God as a person who is known to be zealous of good work. In this world, we need Christians who are zealous for God, and unashamed of the name of Christ, what Christ has done for them, to go and tell anyone, in any place, or anywhere, and unashamed to live a holy life. In addition, to be unashamed to not go to places you used to go or unashamed not to say or converse about things you used to converse about. This will get the attention of the world.

So, I pray this morning that these very things would direct your heart and your life to be an offering that is pleasing to God, so that you may know the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God in your life. Also, that God may continue to transform your mind, in which the Spirit of God dwells, to make you more and more like Him. Let’s pray:

Lord, I thank You this morning. Again, for the gospel of Jesus Christ. For the things and the details contained within the Gospel, that help me understand it better, that help us to be set free from wrong thinking concerning it. To help us, Lord, to know that Satan is up to no good with the children of God, and that we know when he comes against us, and we know the truth enough to tell him, “Christ has defeated you, has died in my place, and there is no longer condemnation to those in Christ.” I pray, Lord, that you may continue to free us up, so we can think in a way that honors you. To live in a way that pleases you, so that even our very thoughts may be pleasing in your sight. O, Lord, set us apart as your people of your own possession and own children. I pray, Lord, you would continue to work on us, and continue to set us apart until the day you take us home. Until the day, Lord, that we are in your presence, let us be faithful to live with you with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength. I pray this, in Christ name. Amen.

Full Transcript:

Alright let us have a word of prayer as you take your Bibles and turn in Hebrews 10. Let us pray.

This morning as I approach the Word of God and preach Your Word, I pray that Your Word would be met by the power of the Spirit and that You would drive home to our hearts the truths contained therein. You put it there for us and You want us to know it. I do thank You, Lord, that in Scripture it tells us that one would hardly die for a righteous man but perhaps for a good man someone would dare to die. But Lord you demonstrated Your own love for us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us. Thank You, Lord, that You died for the unjust, ungodly, unholy, and the sinner. We all qualify. We praise You for that. Help us to grow deeply in our faith so that we would not waver or doubt for too long before the Word of God clears things up. I pray that You would establish us again in the truth for the great sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ both now and forever. I pray this in Your Name, Amen.

Let us take our Bibles and turn to Hebrews 10. I want to set up where I left off. It has been a little bit of time since I have been in Hebrews, and last time I was there I ended with the thought that Christ’s sacrifice was necessary and superior because it is the only sacrifice that consummates everything. It is the only sacrifice that brings everything to a conclusion. It is like when you start a book, you want to finish it and come to the end. The Lord’s sacrifice did that. A very significant phrase is found in Hebrews 9:26, which is:

Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

The consummation of the ages means the completion of the age. It meant that the past ages of world history have come to their joint goal to which God intended them to come in light of the Person of Jesus Christ. The Scripture goes on to explain that more because it says that the Lord came once the first time. But He is also coming a second time. God had a goal for the first coming, and that is found in Hebrews 9:26. It is that the purpose of His appearing the first time is to put away sin. That is why He came. The verse again says:

He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

He appeared in heaven seated face to face with the Father for us. He said He would go and prepare a place for us and come again. The Lord promised that for His disciples. He was preparing for the second coming and He is still preparing for the second coming even now. Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven and He is preparing to come again. Between the first and second comings we still experience the effects of sin because we are born in this world and we will eventually go the way of death. But of course the Lord has taken care of and defeated death for us. The greatest enemy we have is Satan and of course He has taken care of those things.

In Hebrews 9:27 it says:

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.

We are appointed to die once but when we think about that comes judgment right after. God’s verdict of acquittal could be heaven or His verdict of condemnation could be hell. The Bible never speaks about a place called purgatory ever. There are only two options. It is specific here in Scripture for those who have been bought by the blood of Christ. The throne of judgment has been changed to the throne of mercy. Is that not great when you come to the Lord and believe in Him that His throne of judgment, what was against you has now changed, it has been reversed. God has nothing but mercy and grace on His kids. He lavishes grace on His kid, that is how the Bible describes it. For those who have not and do not come to Christ, after they die, are ushered into the throne of judgment. The first coming has taken care of everything. I am preaching the effects and the purpose of the first coming for God to take away your sin, nail it to the cross, and for God Himself to give you not your righteousness, but His righteousness which makes you acceptable to the Father. Now you become the beloved of God and can enter into the presence of God based one everything Christ did for you on the cross.

The Bible speaks of something else in Hebrews 9:28, it says:

Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.

Hebrews brings up the second coming. He did it the first time, why would He not come a second time? We can rest assured that God tells us the truth about coming again. Here is the purpose: He is coming for salvation. Look at what it says, without reference to sin. It is not in reference to shedding blood or sacrificial death as a substitute for sinners. He will appear a second time to fulfill His new covenant promise to come and get us, to finish our salvation, and to glorify us. All He foreknew, He predestined, and all He predestined, He called, and all He called, He justified and all He justified, He glorified.

Christ comes a second time for His children to utterly complete their salvation. We have a promise of the resurrection. What is really keeping us from God’s presence is our own bodies and mortality. We are held back here by our bodies. Someday we are going to have a new body to spend time with the Lord forever and ever. This is when our salvation will be forever completed by God. God brings everything to consummation. It is interesting how the preacher of Hebrews mentions in Hebrews 9:28 where he says that Christ comes to those who eagerly await Him. This is all part of the covenant promise that God’s people desire His presence. God’s people who are living on the earth are living in anticipation of His coming.

We should be wanting in our hearts for the Lord to come. Jeremiah 31:33 tells us:

I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

The new covenant people will obey God because they want to and because they have been given the ability and power to obey by the Spirit of God. They want Christ to come and they want to be with Him. I do not know many Christians who have that eagerness and maybe it is because they do not learn what it says in the Bible. They are not learning what God says about Himself in Scripture. When you do that, God sanctifies you and it sets you apart from your old ways of thinking. It makes you think in a way like God wants you to think. You can know God’s will, His plan, and what He is going to do. I am not in doubt because it says it in Scripture.

These verses lead up to Hebrews 10 which now emphasize the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. This means that everything else was and is and will forever be deficient, subpar when compared to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for salvation. If you did not get it by now, Hebrews is a Christo centered book. It is about Christ and He is right in the middle. If you miss the point that Christ is the One that you must come to for salvation, then you have missed it.

There are two things that help us understand the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. Here is the first one found in Hebrews 10:1-3. In verse 1, it says that Jesus’ sacrifice is sufficient because it is the reality of the shadow. What do you mean by that? The law was never able to bring someone to the goal of saving them completely and bring them into a right relationship with God. It was never designed by God to do that. Look at Hebrews 10:1:

For the Law, since it has 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 by year, make perfect those who draw near.

It is the Mosaic law with the sacrificial system and it was only a nebulous shadow, a mere silhouette, a form without reality. That is what it is telling us here in Scripture that the law was only a shadow, a pale outline cast by an object which is the reality.

Now the recommended cure to provide people’s sin was deficient. That is what the Bible is saying. It was deficient to bring a person in close fellowship with God. The only thing it could do was to offer a distant relationship with God. Look at the Old Testament, you had to have the camp set up, the tabernacle with the fence around it, and the two rooms the Holy and the Holy of Holies. The only one that could go in that room was the high priest. The people were on the outside and could not get close to God.

That was always the picture in the Old Testament, they could only have a distant and irregular contact with the Lord. Yet, the sacrificial system was no valueless and for this reason. If there is a shadow, then there is a real object which cast the shadow. If I see a shadow on the wall, the shadow itself cannot hurt me but I know that the light is being shined on that object which is casting that shadow. There is a real object and form when there is a shadow. A real object which casts that shadow means that the reality is not very far away. The shadow has value because it is connected with substance and with promise.

Not only it is the substance that casts the shadow but the promise that goes with it from the Old Testament that the Lord would do this thing. When the shadow drops away, the substance or reality will be revealed. Then you see the true and detailed picture of the sacrifice that God would provide is Jesus Christ. In other words, Jesus Christ is the reality. He is the One who casts the shadow. When it came to the law and the sacrificial system, that was the shadow of the reality which was always Christ. We saw that dimly in the Old Testament though the prophets kept prophesying. The law was never able to bring someone to full salvation, to the goal. It was never designed to do that.

God did not start John 1 or 3:16, He started with Genesis 1. He built His revelation historically. Everything is established. The whole plan of redemption is unfolded as you read through the Old Testament. By the way, if you have been reading your Bible, you should be coming to the end soon. You can see every year as you read through it that God has revealed His plan for us. He did not keep anything back. We just have to read it and study it.

The sacrificial system was never able to bring it to completeness either. It says in Hebrews 10:1:

It can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.

This is what it is saying here. These sacrifices that the people brought, and those sacrifices were required by God to bring so they can approach God. But these sacrifices had no ability or effectiveness to bring someone to complete salvation. A genuinely effective thing does not need to be repeated. Repetition is proof that there remains a deficiency. That is why the offerings had to come day by day and month by month. We had the burnt offerings and the peace offerings and the voluntary offerings and the sin offerings which had to be brought to God over and over again. The repetition showed that it was not designed to bring someone to a complete relationship with God.

In Hebrews 10:1 it also says that it had no ability to:

Make perfect those who draw near.

Everyone who came to worship God could never get their souls purified. Here is an interesting point in Scripture. If the law and its sacrificial systems were able to do that and purify people’s souls, two things would have happened.

In Hebrews 10:2, it says:

Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?

If they were designed to do what people hoped, then all the sacrifices would have stopped and we would not have had to have priests offer sacrifice after sacrifice. A second thing that would happen if these were effective is that the worshippers, those who came continually to worship, would have no more consciousness of sin. If these practices were effective, then the people would not have been guilty of their sins.

Every time the Israelites went and offered sacrifices to worship God, they walked away with guilt still in their hearts, knowing they were not completely purified. All they were made was ceremonially clean to approach God at that point, not to be able to live with God forever in His holy presence. These sacrifices had a particular ability, and it tell us in Hebrews 10:3 that:

But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year.

This is what the law and the sacrificial system had the ability to do for people, remind you that you are a sinner. All they do is remind of sin and the worshiper that he or she is not purified. His or her sins still stand between him or her and God. They could never get farther than the next year’s sacrifice. The day of Atonement brings the constant reminder of sin. Scripture has just established for us the inability of the law and it has prescribed sacrifices to reach God’s intended goal for all His children.

That has to be clear for people, and for the Jews. Especially for those still involved in the sacrificial system. It means that there must be a far different and vastly superior sacrifice that will be needed to make someone walk away knowing that they are purified in their hearts from all their sin and that the sacrificial system will stop forever. Those things have to happen if it is what the Bible teaches.

Animal sacrifices could only cover the Israelites’ sin which gave them the ceremonial cleansing needed to worship. But Israel’s sin remained because there is a great impossibility. I just said to you that Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient because it is the reality of the shadow but the second thing that helps us understand the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice is this, that it is sufficient. It moves the impossible to the possible.

Look at Hebrews 10:4:

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

That word impossible is one of those final words. There is not much you can do with it except to say that something is impossible! It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. If it was possible, we would not have a problem. These cannot take as serious and deadly a thing as sin before a holy God. They cannot completely appease and atone for sin. All they can do and this is all they are meant to do is to cast a shadow. The reality of the shadow is better blood that connects the worshiper to the Messiah’s blood through faith in Christ.

Here is something to think about especially when you think of this word, impossible. If God’s Old Testament prescribed system for approaching Him in the law and in the offering of sacrifices could not take away sins, then it is more so impossible for any other man made invented religious system to save or provide any value or to point definitively and clearly to God’s distinct revelation in Christ and His single sacrifice for sins in which men and women can be saved immediately and forever. In other words, eternal life cannot be found outside of Christ.

What does that have to do for us today besides the theological stuff? I have to warn you that there is an ever growing mindset that we all live in called pluralism. Theologian Don Carson defines pluralism as “the view that all religious have the same moral and spiritual value and offer the same potential for achieving salvation however salvation be construed.” In other words, however salvation would be defined by that particular system.

The pluralist question is whether the work of Christ necessary for salvation, or are there other bases. The pluralist believes that Jesus is the provision God has made for Christians. But that there are other ways to getting right with God and gaining eternal bliss in other religions. The problem is that part of evangelicalism is believing that and they are already embracing people who do not have a clear testimony of their salvation and who are setting aside the sufficiency of Christ in order to gain approval of men. The work of Christ, they say, is useful for Christians, but not necessary for non Christians. That is why it is important to study a book like Hebrews. Scripture strongly impresses on us the impossibility of eternal salvation outside of Christ.

It is just as impossible for a Muslim to achieve salvation by the five pillars of Islam, for a Hindu by the resolutions of renunciation, or by Buddhist ethics, Sikhs patterns of self-salvation, or Catholicism’s system of obtaining inherent righteousness by keeping the sacraments.

Then it cannot possibly be that those His death was necessary for the salvation of some, most could equally attain it by other means. May that never be for us as believers that all Scripture affirms that the work of Christ is the only necessary means provided by God for eternal salvation for all people in all religions for all time and in all cultures. There is no other way but Christ and that is what this book is establishing.

For the Jew who wanted to go back to the system of Judaism, there was something they thought was provided in that religious system that could save them. It says in Hebrews that that is not true! Christ is the only way to be saved for Jews but for Gentiles and for every other person that lives on the face of this earth. There is no other way, and yet students go into college and high school classrooms and hear that all religions are the same and all lead to the same path to God. There is only one that leads to God, and that is Christ Jesus. And that is not a religion, but a relationship. Is that exclusive and narrow? But it is the truth and the only thing that can save people.

For your information, this next section of Scripture in Hebrews 10:6-9, the author is quoting from the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The author quotes Isaiah 40:6-9 and he stresses this very point. The point he is making here in Isaiah 40 is that the only effective sacrifice is Jesus Christ and from Scripture this has always been God’s plan and purpose. From this passage of Scripture which is quoted in Hebrews 10, it was never God’s will for animal sacrifices to remove sin. Look at what it says in Hebrews 10:5-6, 8:

Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have taken no pleasure. After saying above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have not desired, nor have you taken pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the Law).

So the Word of God is saying here: it was never God the Father’s will for animal sacrifices to remove sin. He never had pleasure in them. In this sense, they did not bring people to a full realization of Him. That is why He had no desire or pleasure in them. Scripture says that sacrifices often degenerate into something that God never intended or wanted.

There is a great passage of Scripture in Isaiah 1:11-14, turn there for a minute. Let me even mention David in Psalm 51, when he sinned the sin against God and sent Uriah to the hottest part of battle, killed him, and committed adultery with Bathsheba. He says this in Psalm 51:16-17:

For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; you are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

But look at Isaiah 1:11-14:

“What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” Says the Lord. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle; and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of My courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer, incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies—

I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, they have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.

Why? Because the people went through the ritual of the system without obedience in their hearts to love God. God hates that, He hates fakes and hypocrites. He hates when people just go through the motions and talk the talk, but who never desire in their hearts to obey God and love Him. That is what He is looking for. That is what these things could not do for the human heart. It took Someone greater to cleanse the heart completely and put the Spirit of God in us, so that we can worship God with heart, desire, will, obedience, and sincerity. We can approach God.

Why then did God establish the elaborate sacrificial system if animal sacrifices could not remove sin? That is the question I had. Well there are several things that David Levy, a converted Messianic Jew, brought up that are very good. He said that blood sacrifices made the Israelites acknowledge their need of atonement before God. They always had that understanding. Whatever happens, there has to be a sacrifice.

Secondly, sacrifices force them to admit that someone else has to make substitutionary atonement for them. They could not atone for their own sins or save themselves. This idea of substitution was in their minds all throughout the Scriptures.

Thirdly, sacrifices which originated in the mind of God enables people to have their sins covered before approaching Him in worship, at least temporarily.

Fourthly, sacrifices pointed to the day when Christ would once for all atone for sin. These sacrifices and the law were a shadow of what was to come, the reality that was coming. The realty is Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, we can have full and final salvation.

I said first of all that it was never the Father’s will for animal sacrifices to remove sin. But secondly in this Psalm, it was always the Father’s will that the Son would become the true sacrifice for sin. Look at Hebrews 10:7, 5b:

Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come (in the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do your will, O God.’ But a body you have prepared for me.

Now if you notice in the Word of God, this is one of those Messianic psalms. Jesus is talking about the Word of God being written about Himself. The Psalms, the Old Testament, the books Moses wrote, are all written about Him.

What I am saying that it is the Father’s will that the Son will always be the sacrifice. Read again verse 5b:

But a body you have prepared for me.

Jesus was being prepared to be the sacrifice for sins. It has always been in Scripture that way. A third and final thing is that Christ was willing to do all the Father’s will. This is what others were never able to do: completely obey the Father in every single detail. Christ was willing to do all the Father’s will. Hebrews 10:9 says:

Then He said, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second.

That is referring to the demise of the Levitical system. He sets the shadows aside because Jesus Christ becomes the reality by dying on the cross, having completely obeyed the Father in every single detail in order to bring about your and my salvation.

Now that means if Jesus’ sacrifice was what the Word of God said it would be, two things would happen. One, sacrifices must stop. And two, the removal of guilt of the worshipers of God. Do you not have both of those things happening? There is no sacrificial system today. It stopped in 70 A.D. and never came back again because it cannot. It cannot in the sense of Scripture because it says something in Hebrews 10:10:

By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

That once for all means an end to all the sacrifices, but at the same time it is able to sanctify the worshiper and set him apart. Loving, willful obedience is the only true sacrifice. When Jesus was the perfect sacrifice because He perfectly did the Father’s will and by it brought purified sinners into a continual relationship with God as it says in our Scripture here in verse 10. He fulfilled all the types and shadows and pictures of the sacrificial system and ended it. It was not needed anymore.

It does say something about you and I. When we look at the cross, we should not linger thinking about our sins. We ought to confess our sins but not linger on our sins for this reason. We should linger upon Christ and His substitute on our behalf. We should linger on the fact that He made you and I righteous by His death. We need to be thinking on those things. You think too long on your own sin and it drags you down to the pit. But if I take my sin and give it to Christ, I can walk away with my conscience purified. That is why Paul freaked the Jews out when he said that his conscience is clear. He understood the sacrifice of Christ, that He cleanses you from every bit of sin. Yesterday, today, and the sin I will commit tomorrow is all under Christ.

In Scripture it says that if you think you can go on and sin and think that everything is alright, it means you are not a sinner. A habitual sinner shows that the seed of God is not in them. But a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, Isa, the Messiah can every day of their life walk knowing they are purified in their conscience. Guilt free. Do you live like that? I know there are enough things to make us guilty in the world.

The Holy Spirit of God truly makes us feel the guilt of sin. But we do not stay there, we live in light of the cross. It says in 1 John 1:9:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

There may be some things that you miss and the blood of Christ takes care of those too. We cannot retain anything the older we get. I ask the Lord to help me remember and not forget. I also ask for the ability to share that truth with people.

There was a one time sacrifice by Jesus Christ for sins on the cross. I can live a life of guiltlessness and I will not have to walk around with the conscience of my sin all day and night. But I do have the thought that I am a great sinner, but that Christ is a great Savior.

How do you want to live? Christ’s sacrifice is definitely sufficient now and forever. If you have not yet received Christ, just the opposite is true for you. You have no sacrificial substitute, the consciousness of your sin and guilt remain, and you will be responsible for bearing the penalty of your own sin. And why would you want to do that when Christ died for you?

Christ demonstrated His love for you on the cross and died for the ungodly. If you fit that category, then come and believe and be freed in your conscience and soul. Know that you have a relationship with God and that there is nothing you could do to improve it or make it better. It is finished and complete and forever. I come humbly with gratitude because of what He has done for a sinner like me. That is the only way to serve. Christ’s obedience is worked in us by the Spirit of God. We are then obedient to Him and want to be. The more you grow in Christ, the more you will want heaven and the more eager you are for Him to come. The more you grow in Christ, the more you see how sin abounds in the world and how dark the world is when it comes to sin. The more you think about that, the more you are compelled in your heart to tell the people around you that they need Jesus Christ.

This morning in Scripture it establishes for us that there is no place to go but Christ. There is no other place you should want to go. If you have not come to Christ, then come. Serve Him with a loving obedience heart and do it all the time. Confess your sin, repent of your sin, do not got stuck in your sin but get stuck on the sacrifice of Christ on your behalf and all the implications that has for your personal life every day. If you live there, you will maintain your joy and your boldness for Christ. It is not about you but about God.

Let us pray. Lord, I thank You for Your people and gospel. In it is contained everything for life and godliness. With a passage of Scripture like this we see again the awesomeness of Your plan of redemption. Thank You, Lord, that many of us have become the recipients of that sacrifice and that we feel its benefits every day. I pray that You would continue to give us strength to be sanctified by Your Word and that You would continue to enable us to serve You with a willful, joyful heart. And for those that do not know You, that they would come soon even today and confess You as their own Lord and Savior and believe in You. I pray this in Christ’s Name, Amen.

Full Transcript:

Alright let us take our Bibles this morning and turn to Hebrews 9. We are looking at verses 23 to 28. This will be the last part of this message about pulling back the curtain from the old and the new. It finishes up in Hebrews 9 but it is significant before getting into chapters 10 to the end of the book where it gets more practical. After the doctrine is laid, the practice happens. Today we are going to look at the necessity and superiority of Christ’s sacrifice. By way of reminder, I want to let you know that the new covenant that I have been talking about offers a superlative plan for the salvation of humanity. In other words, there is no greater plan that can replace it. If you remember, the basic idea of a covenant is a relationship between God and man. How can a sinful man have a relationship with a holy and just God and escape His judgment.

Remember the old covenant was dependent upon man keeping the law. As soon as that person broke the law, the covenant because ineffective and the access to God was broken and shut down and they were not able to get to God. The new covenant is basically that Jesus inaugurated it with His blood. All that are called by the gospel and receive Jesus as their substitute sacrifice, have access to God and fellowship with Him forever. We are still in imperfect bodies and in an imperfect environment. But someday we will be ushered into heaven, have resurrected bodies and enjoy all the promises that God has promised in the Word of God. In this section that I am looking at this morning in Hebrews, we are addressing the importance of blood shedding. This once again highlights the superiority and necessity of the sacrifice of God. Blood is used to cleanse everything unclean in the Old Testament. It makes things and people clean. But when it comes to remitting sin, there is no remission apart from bloodshed.

Look at Hebrews 9:22 it says:

According to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Your translation might say that there is no remission of sin rather than forgiveness. The word remission is a good word because it means to send away. It is all the blood of the Old Testament and the sacrifices which were only pointing to the one Great Sacrifice in Jesus Christ where He would shed His blood. Jesus could not have died in any other way than the manner in which He died. It is blood unto death that saves us. He had to not only bleed in His sufferings because He represented all the sufferings of the Old Testament, because the animal had to be killed, but also for someone to have their sins remitted or sent away. In Jesus Christ, our sins and guilt are taken care of. He takes our just punishment. The reason for this is because our sin and punishment sticks so close to sinners and we cannot get away from it. There is no place we can go to run from it. It is only the holy, precious, and all-sufficient blood of Christ that the sins of the children could ever be wiped away.

It is this remission of the penalty of sin that God takes care of in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This blood shedding, with respect to heaven and earth, is typical of pointing to the original sanctuary and the far better blood that is Christ Himself. On the earthly tabernacle there is the sacrificial system with all the blood that was offered. Blood is necessary. For the old covenant to be put into force, and also for the new covenant for it to be put into force. Sacrificial blood shedding is necessary. Without the shedding of blood, there is no salvation or approach to God or way to come into His presence.

There is a vast difference between the blood of sacrificial animals and the blood of the Lamb Jesus Christ. His blood was better, it says in Scripture. It was better because it was the blood of the Messiah. It was the blood of the anointed One, the prophesied One. It was the blood of the innocent Lamb. He did not die because He was a sinner, He was innocent. It was the blood that only needed to be shed once, so He is the unrepeatable One. It was the blood that was original of all the copies, and He has come to us to earth to make sure that our salvation is complete and that nothing needs to be added to it or to be done. You need to know that you are a believer and a Christian and that you have come to be saved by the Lord. It does not just happen to you when you are sitting in church. It happens when the Lord convicts you of your own sin. The only way you are going to be rescued is by the blood of Christ. Someone has to pay for your sin and all of your offenses that you committed against God. It is either going to be you in the Lake of Fire or it is going to be Christ on the cross.

When you come to Christ, your whole position before God changes and God wants us to know that and He wants us to know that now. We do not want to wait for death to find out. These are the things that he takes up in this section of Scripture. Today I want you to see how necessary Christ’s sacrifice is and how it is superior to secure the salvation of all His children.

There are three simple points that I want to make. The first one is that Christ’s sacrifice was necessary and superior because it purified everything. It made everything clean before God. Look at Hebrews 9 23, it says:

Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

In other words, why the necessity of the blood here? The answer should be obvious, it is sin. The defilement of sin must be removed and the only thing that can be possibly remove that defilement is the sacrificial blood of Christ. That is the point being made here. The entire cleaning power of sacrifice lies in the washing away and sending away of the covering of our sin. As was said already, God does not see you in your sin when He looks at you. He sees Christ in His blood and the sacrifice offered on your behalf. Because these sacrifices serve sinners then both the earthly and heavenly tabernacles require the necessity of sacrificial blood. It says in Hebrews 9:24:

For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands.

He did not enter the earthly tabernacle or temple that was represented all through the ages. The earthly tabernacle needed to be cleansed because sinful hands ministered in it. The original tabernacle that was given to Moses was not made with hands and did not need to be cleansed. What needed to be cleansed were those who would enter into the heavenly tabernacle later on. Sinners needed to be cleansed in order to enter into God’s presence. He cannot let you in unless you are covered with the blood of Jesus Christ. In the hand made tabernacle, the priest entered once a year to offer blood to cover sin for a year’s period. The high priest was the only one allowed to go into the presence of God but he could not go into heaven because he was a sinner. He needed an offering and to be cleansed himself.

Notice in Hebrews 9:24 that Christ enters into the true holy place. The last part of the verse says that no mere man can enter into the sanctuary on his own for he has no way to get in. He needs someone to take him there and to cleanse him. Hebrews calls the genuine, original sanctuary heaven. He enters into heaven itself! That becomes very important for you and I because this is where Jesus appeared after His atoning sacrifice and His earthly ministry finished on earth. He appeared face to face with God. No high priest was able to do that. Jesus goes there and you would think that he went there for Himself. But if you look again at the text, He did not. The verse says:

He appear[ed] in the presence of God for us.

He was there on our behalf and on behalf of those who are cleansed by His blood. He goes and blazes a trail, look back at Hebrews 6:20. It says:

Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

A forerunner is someone who runs before. It was especially said of soldiers who were sent to explore before an army would advance. They were to explore and go ahead to give the reconnaissance so that an army could go in. Somewhat in a position where they know what they are getting into. Jesus does all the reconnaissance for us so that we do not have to be concerned about it. He has blazed His way into the presence of God with all of our names in mind. He does it for us. That is the love of Christ!He has entered heaven and is finished with the work of redemption. Through Jesus we are washed from our sin. Our lives have been muddied and stained by sin but dead sinners have no way to remove that stain. The sinner is unclean, polluted and full of the filth of sin. Only Jesus has the power to cleanse you and to make you ready and prepared to enter into God’s presence and stay there forever.

Does that change your life if you consider those things? As it says in the book of Acts, why do you delay? Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins! What precedes washing away sins is the sacrifice of Christ that washes away the sins. The baptism is an identification of you believing that and making it public for those to hear the testimony of what changed in your life.

The finished work of Christ, now that we are cleansed, gives us access to God, that is his point. That Christ’s atoning sacrifice brings worshippers that are purged to God. He expands that a little more in Hebrews 10:2, it says:

Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?

Once you have realized that the blood of Jesus Christ makes you clean, then the whole sense of the guilt that comes and the consciousness of the sins that come is gone because of the realization that Christ takes care of every sin ever committed. He takes care of every action, word, deed, and thought! There is no way we could ever identify every sin ever committed. It is impossible.

We come with the great sin of unbelief and rejection of Christ and He forgives you all the rest of it, past, present, and future sin that you commit. He takes care of it all!

Look at Hebrews 10:22, this is called the lettuce bowl of Scripture. Get it? The “Let us” bowl of Scripture? It says:

Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

You are the person with the evil conscience! I am riddled with guilt even though I try to suppress that truth. Here he says that bodies are all washed pure. He purifies everything! He purifies things that have anything that prevents us from getting into God’s presence. Christ’s sacrifice is necessary for your salvation and entry into heaven because it completely purifies you so that you can remain in the presence of God. What person can offer that? Nobody except Jesus Christ. Christianity is exclusive, there is no other way to be saved and enter into the presence of God. Here is a second point in Hebrews 9.

Christ’s sacrifice was necessary and superior because it finished everything. In Hebrews 9:25 it says:

Nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.

In other words, Jesus Christ takes care of everything. He put away sin. In verse 26 it says:

Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

How does He finish everything? By putting away sin by means of the sacrifice. The point here is the unrepeatable event. He is finished unlike the high priests that were never finished. They had to get ready for the next sacrifice as soon as they were done. Theres was a very repetitious work month after month, day after day, day of Atonement after day of Atonement. But Christ in the fullness of time, comes to earth and finishes it. He comes as the High Priest and finishes it with one sacrifice. That is why Jesus Christ is so different than the Jewish high priest. It will never be necessary for Christ to suffer again and again.

He has been saying that and will continue to say it so we get it through our minds. This was a Jewish audience that he was writing to and the sacrificial system was still in place. He was driving home to them that they were going to see those sacrificed animals but Christ has finished it. He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Depend on Christ and not on the old religious system.

Jesus does not need to leave and reenter heaven often. He does not need to shed His blood often, or die often. He does not need to offer the sacrifice often or come into this world as a man often. It would be absurd to make Christ do what the Scriptures say He did once and for and all, and that was to die. Any form of re-sacrificing of Jesus Christ whether real or symbolic is against Scripture. We need to get that out of our minds. We need to be thinking about what the Bible says about the sacrifice, which purifies and finishes everything. The repetition is done. Our religion is not one of repetition. It is a relationship with Christ in which it is done.

Go back to Hebrews 7:27, it says:

Who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

Now look at Hebrews 10:10:

By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

This is being repeated so that we do not repeat the sacrifice again or think that Jesus did not finish it all and that He is the Old Testament priest that has to go back and finish taking care of something. Christ’s sacrifice is necessary for your salvation because it finished everything needed to give you entryway into the presence of God and keep you there.

A last thing I want you to consider in Hebrews 9:26 is that Christ’s sacrifice is necessary and superior because it consummated everything. This is a very interning thing he says in this passage of Scripture. This verse says:

Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

A very interesting term and significant phrase he uses here because it gives us a timeframe. It says once at the consummation of the ages, eons is the Greek word for “ages” here. What does this mean? It means that all the past ages of the world, all of world history have come to their joint goal to which God intended them to come in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is everything with pointing to Him. The consummation of the ages all come together in Christ. All of world history comes together in Christ. In fact, in His first appearance in Hebrews 9:26, He comes to take away sin. He has been made to appear the first time as a man who comes into the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. The consummation of the ages has always pointed to this one final Lamb of God who dies in the place of sinners to put away sin forever by His own death on the cross. After that He appears in heaven face to face with the Father on our behalf. He prepares for the second advent. John 14:3 says:

If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

Jesus right now, while we are considering the consummation of the ages, is sitting at the right hand of the Father and He is preparing for His second advent or coming. Jesus is coming again, for you who have never heard that. In between the first and the second coming, we still experience the effects of sin because we are born into a world that will eventually go the way of death. The reality of it is that you and I are going to die, unless Christ comes while you and I are alive.

In this point in Scripture, He wanted to remind the people not only of the oneness of Christ dying but the oneness of us dying. The oneness of us dying brings the next event that happens in the Word of God. Look in Hebrews 9:27:

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.

I think the best thing that proves Scripture is that we all die. Death has come into the world and sin has come with us. We die because it is part of the judgment of God on our sin. People die of heart attacks and cancer but that is not the reason why we die. Those things bring about your death.

Here it is saying that it is reserved for people to die once and that Christ died once like men but not because of His sin. But because of your and my sin. One thing that Jesus Christ did on the cross is that He defeated death. He rose triumphantly over death and over the grave. He defeated our greatest enemy at the cross. This becomes an incentive now to say that I die. Christ died. But in my death what do I face next? What do you face when you die? You need to think about what awaits you at your death. The second part of Hebrews 9:27 talks about the leveler that is greater than physical death. It is judgment. God’s verdict in Scripture is either acquittal which gives you entryway and access to God, or condemnation, which is hell and separation from God which is permanent and eternal. You never get a second chance after death. It is in this life that God begins to speak to us and convinces us that we need Christ and believe Him.

When He saves us, we learn to live for Him. There is no purgatory in Scripture or limbos or second places where you get your sins burned off and make it to heaven. Scripture is clear that there is the broad way or the narrow way. We all think that we can be merciful that God will give second chances, but there are no seconds in Scripture.

For those who have been brought forward and bought literally by the blood of Christ, the throne of judgment has been changed to the throne of mercy. But those who do not come to Christ are ushered to the throne of judgment after they die. There is no mercy, only justice. A just God has to hold a person responsible for His sin. If you do not have Christ, then God’s justice still must be satisfied, that is why there is a place called hell. The separation it brings to those who do not know Christ come to those who do not know Christ. God is a just Judge, He sees things clearly and accurately. He must judge that way because of who He is as God revealed in Scripture, holy and righteous. That is why the great plan of salvation is the cross of Jesus Christ. That is where you get rescued from God’s justice and eternal damnation at the cross of Jesus Christ. Wherever you are at today, do not put this off.

Most are concerned about the physical part of death, the mode of death and how someone is actually going to die whether it is in a crash or disease or in war. People are interested in the inconsequential things and remain ignorant about the vital issues. People are not very interested in that vital issue at death, the vital issues is that death is a spiritual thing. What you think about God in your life when it comes to death is so important. You should be thinking about how you will die and be ready for dying. You might say that you are too young and cannot think about those kinds of things. But the thing is that death is no respecter of age or color or creed. Death takes babies as well as teenagers and old people.

I have been in ministry long enough to have buried all of them. Death did not come knocking at the door asking if people wanted more time. It just comes and swoops down. Before you know it, that person is wrong. I do not know if you have been to funerals as have seen people but they have deadpan faces. You wonder if you have gone through but you just go and hurl the gospel at them and pray that God will show them that death is a wise thing to think about. Funerals bring you to reality.

Do you know that what you think about on the matter of death is either a matter of wisdom or folly. Only fools live lives of pleasure denying and ignoring the reality of death at every point. But the wise live every day aware of the reality of death. Jesus says in the gospels that there are only two ways that you can die. They include dying in the Lord or in your sin. You have to ask yourself how you are going to die, in your sin by rejecting the implications of Jesus Christ? Everyone dies, including you and me.

This is true of all of us but we cannot evade it. You will keep your appointment and you will not be late. The other side is unknown. I do not know what is on the other side apart from what is there. I know the Person on the other side and He has me covered as my Lord and Savior. It is not just a profession of faith but it is my every day following and loving of the Lord that is part of salvation. Just as the Scriptures say that we have only one shot at dying, how about you die well. Let us die knowing where we are going, proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ. We are sinners but we are dying in Christ who took care of sin and purified us and finished it all.

Do not die with guilt and grudges and hatred and not knowing what is going to happen. You hear stories of people feeling a great warm light. That is a bunch of hogwash. Satan creates people to trust and depend on that rather that on Christ. They are going to be greatly deceived. This warm place will instead be separation from Christ for all eternity. Everyone needs to seriously consider the consequences of the way they die. I love what it says in Scripture in John 8:24:

Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.

If you believe in Jesus Christ as the Resurrection and the Life, then He is the One who rescues. The way you die has everything to do with how you respond to Jesus as to whether you have believed in Him or not. This very thing will alter the way in which you die. Let me ask you a question, do you consider things in that way? Do you wake up in the morning and consider that you will die.

Psychologists will tell you that you should not be thinking of those things but instead happy thoughts. But the Scriptures say that when you wake up tomorrow, to ask yourself how you are going to die. It is going to happen and if you were ready, what you think about God is going to matter at that point. But it matters all throughout your life. Death is going to take on the picture of you dying in Christ. Most have not considered the fact that death is a supremely spiritual matter and that this question of Jesus Christ will be the most important issue there when one dies.

The Bible says that after death is judgment. Who is the Judge? Jesus. The point in Scripture being made is that if Christ is my Savior, Lord and sacrifice here, He will not be my Judge there. If He is not your Savior here and has given you access to God, He will be your Judge there. You cannot get away from that. Either you will meet Jesus Christ here or there. But He will be the most important Person on your mind at death.

These are sobering thoughts but so also much needed for the health and well-being of believers and the church. We would be much more serious about life if we considered death every day. It would be a helpful thing to do because you would be ready every day and watch you live and think because you love the Lord and you do not want to do something that displeases your Father but instead something that shows you love your Father.

Here is the real issue, that most do not think about death in the right way. A failure to realize the spiritual part of death and that the condition of a person’s soul is the most important matter at one’s death. When I go to a funeral somewhere and do not know the person, but am asked to go down by the funeral director, I cannot preach them into heaven or hell. So I forget about that and just give the gospel. People do not really get for death in that way to realize the condition of their souls.

Here is the most important thing for God’s children to grasp. You can know God’s verdict right now. It is wise to ponder your death and if you get once chance to die, do not be foolish but do it well. Know that you are going to die in the Lord and not in your sin. Men do not die again and again, but once. Know where you are going and know what your verdict is now. This brings me to the last thing that we want to consider in Hebrews 9:28. This is the point that the author is making about the second coming of Jesus Christ. Here is what it says:

Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.

Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father and is waiting to come again. He is waiting for the second part of His program. He died once to bear the sins of many. He bore the entire penalty of our guilt and achieved the eternal putting away of sin and defilement and made us clean to enter into the presence of God. He makes an obstacle free way to enter into heaven. Through the cross I go into God’s presence. Look at the last part of the verse: Jesus will appear a second time for salvation.

He will appear a second time but what is the difference from the first coming? The purpose is that Jesus is coming for salvation. This means that it is not in reference to shedding blood or as a substitute of sinners or a fulfillment of the shadows and types again. All these have reference to sin and are finished? No, He will appear a second time to fulfill His new covenant promise. And what is that? To come and get us and to finish our salvation. All He foreknew, He predestined, and all He predestined, He called, and all He called, He justified and all He justified, He glorified. He is going to finish that chain of salvation. That is what He is doing the second time He comes. He is going to finish salvation and complete it totally. What is interesting about this passage of Scripture is that He is coming to those who are expecting Him.

Here is a person who trusts Jesus Christ, knows they are cleansed by the blood of Christ, and are eagerly waiting for the coming of their Lord and their Savior. That is part of the new covenant when it says that He will put His law within His people on their hearts. God will give us the desire to eagerly await Him. We cannot wait to get out of these bodies and get into His presence. But we are working for the Lord until that time, expecting our Lord to come. I am going into the presence of God. When I die in Christ, I am expecting to see Christ. I am expecting to see if He tarries and I die before Him, but I am also living with expectancy every day. That is what every believer should do.

Christ’s sacrifice is necessary because it consummates all things that God could carry out until His intended goal. Turn to Revelation 21:3:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them.

That is the fulfillment of the new covenant. Everything is done and now we have each other in all eternity. Look at the next verse, verse 4-6:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.

That is an invitation to come. If God has caused in you a thirst to come and be saved, then go! It is not going to cost you a thing. God is not requiring you any good works or deeds. He says come with all your sin and He will take care of it. You are going to walk away in Christ purified with the finished work of Christ and looking forward and expecting Christ to come because He has consummated everything. You cannot bypass or ignore the finished work of Christ. It is necessary for your salvation and superior to any other thing. Amen? Let us pray.

Lord, this morning, I thank You again for the Word of God. I thank You, Lord, that You did not keep these things for Yourself. You have not been silent concerning the most serious matters of life. I pray and thank You that we are able to listen to these things and see them with our own eyes and Scripture. But I pray that it would not be a matter of seeing and hearing and being exposed to them, but that it would be a matter of committing ourselves to them. I pray that if someone does not know You as their Lord and Savior, that today would be the day they call upon You. Open their eyes to see and grant them faith and repentance. Come and be their Savior, their substitute sacrifice and take care of everything for them so they can have access to God. For us who know those things and how we are going to die, let us live each day with expectancy and being ready for Your coming and let us live in the light of our Lord coming back to get us that we may see You face to face. Thank You for revealing Your first coming and its purpose and Your second coming and its purpose. Let us live for You all with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. I pray this in Christ’s Name, Amen.

Full Transcript:

In ending Hebrews 9, Pulling Back the Curtain of the Old and the New, we will be looking at the eternal legacy that Jesus Christ has obtained for us. Everybody wants to have a legacy that they leave when they leave the earth. Hopefully, the legacy is a good name, a fortune, possessions, or simply leaving something to someone. Then, hopefully, that one who inherits the legacy passes it on, and it continues to get passed on. The Lord has given us a legacy. However, it is an interesting kind of legacy where we don’t pass it on, but we keep it.

As I get into Hebrews 9, the New Covenant offers a superlative plan for the salvation of sinful humanity. Nothing comes close to it or equals it, and it is the only way to be saved. The basic idea of a covenant, a testament or a will, is a relationship between God and man. God makes a covenant to have a relationship with himself and humanity. The Old Covenant, or the first covenant, was depending on man keeping the law. As soon as a person broke the law, the covenant became ineffective and access to God was lost. The New Covenant, or second and last covenant, is where Jesus inaugurated a new covenant with His blood, and people who are called by the gospel and receive Jesus as their substitute sacrifice, have access to God and fellowship with Him forever. Therefore, Jesus has left us an eternal legacy that is never-ending or passed on, and it is a legacy we can enjoy with God forever.

In this portion of Scripture, the author is dealing with that topic, which will lead to a point of rejoicing. Furthermore, the book of Hebrews contains the plan of salvation and how you are included. God has put us in His will and we have become the benefactor of what God is giving us. I want you to note the graciousness of the benefactor of how God has been incredibly gracious to his children. Hebrews 9:15:

For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

A mediator is someone who mediates between two parties to remove a disagreement, a problem, or to reach a common goal. In Scripture, Jesus comes to us as God’s mediator. 1 Timothy 2:5:

For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

So, it is between God, the Father and humanity, and right in the middle is Jesus Christ, the mediator. Now, the Mediator has work to do to make sure that His mediation between God and man is done completely or perfectly, so that we may have a relationship with God that could never be broken. Also, a Mediator is to bring a righteous God and disobedient children together, and to break down the huge barrier that sin has directed between us and God. Remember, it is your sin that separates you from God., and sin is the primary target of the Mediator, which is to remove and break down the barrier so that person can be forgiven and have a relationship with God. The very things that cause separation between God and man are transgressions.

Not often used as a word for sin, but the term transgressions, used purposefully by the Holy Spirit, means the acknowledgment of the fact that you cannot get to God because of your own sin. Therefore, transgressions bring to your mind the consciousness of sin, so you are made conscious of the fact that you have offended a Holy God. As the law comes to you, the consciousness is intensified where you start to feel convicted of your sin. You realize that you have sinned against God, and that is the very thing that separates you from God and keeps you from His presence, out of heaven, and keeps you bonded in slavery. Transgressions brings a person to a desire, in their heart, that redemption would be aroused. Remember, redemption is God purchasing you from the slave market of sin. Therefore, there is a desire in your heart to claim to the Lord that you acknowledge that you have sinned against Him and cannot do anything to remove the sin. However, the Lord can, and, as said in His word, He redeems those who believe in Him, and He buys you from the slave market of sin. So, the term transgression intensifies the desire for redemption. In other words, you want to be saved and be made right with God, and this takes over the mind.

A Mediator opens the way to God’s holy presence, and He frees a person from the slave market of sin through releasing them by paying a price. We know the price of our souls is the very Blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary. On the cross, He was purchasing you from the slave market of sin, and He was paying the Father for you by His own sacrificial death. This is the only way you can be made right with God and saved.

Though, in this passage of Scripture, there is something problematic: How does Moses, Abraham, or any of the Old Testament saints get saved? If the law and sacrificial system could not save or redeem a soul for eternity, then how does one, before the cross, become saved? Well, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is retroactive, which means relating or apply to things that have happened in the past as well as in the present. For example, it is like receiving a raise offered in June, but it was retroactive pay to the beginning of the year. Basically, you get a raise in June, but the pay goes back to January, so you are getting a raise all those months. Therefore, all the saints in the Old Testament are saved by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, so everybody in the Old Testament was looking to the cross. Wherever you look in Scripture, you either look forward to the cross or backward to the cross, but wherever you go, you must look to the cross for salvation.

Jesus’ sacrifice being retroactive means that the sacrifice is effective to wipe out the sins of people committed under the Old Covenant and give permanent access to God. If there was no cross, Moses, Abraham, or no one could be saved, so, the cross, becomes central to how someone becomes a believer. In other words, until Christ, all people in the past, present, and future were and are slaves to sin, but through Christ’s work, we are released from sins mastery and set free to serve and worship God as righteous slaves. We are saved to serve and, now, worship God without guilt or condemnation from the law since that has been removed by Christ, and this frees us up to worship God because we are redeemed. See, it is the generous purpose of the Mediators work to save you completely.

Secondly, not only is God gracious in the purpose of the Mediator’s work, but He is gracious in His call. In other words, God must call you to salvation. Not everybody receives such grace, but only those who respond to heaven’s call receive the grace. Those who have been called may receive what God has to offer them. Meaning, to be called out, invited by God, or summoned by God. Its not a wedding invitation where you either say yes or no, but it’s a gracious invitation from the municipality saying that you must appear. In other words, there is obedience involved in accepting an invitation. In fact, a call to the Gospel is a call to obedience. Will you accept and believe God’s gospel of Jesus Christ, or will you not? Either you’re on your way and not believe it, or you come under the call of God and sense this summoning from God that you must respond. Hebrews 3:1:

Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.

Again, it’s the one who is called to consider or think about this gospel that God has offered to us, which is the good news in Jesus Christ. Those who respond to the heavenly call know, only too well, that God does not call them as a reward for, or in response to, their special merit, good works, religious devotion to going to church all the time, doing religious things, or their moral achievement. That is not how people get saved, nor is it the gospel. It is all of God’s grace, and it is a gift offered to the undeserving sinner. Let’s consider: how does God call His children? Romans 8:30:

and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

God calls us to salvation. For us, the operative word is called. In this calling, all that are called are justified. To understand the word called, there are two distinct call. One is the outward call of the gospel. Matthew 22:14:

“For many are called, but few are chosen.”

While heard by the ears, the gospel call can be rejected many times. People will come in and out of church to hear the word of Christ, but they do not respond to the Word nor do they feel the summon that it is for them. So, they hear the Word, but that is all they do. By our experience, we know that not everybody who receives the call of the gospel are justified since not all believe the gospel when they hear it. I don’t know about you, but it was about three or four times that I heard the gospel before I responded in the second way. Why don’t people come to the gospel when they hear it?

Looking back at Acts 7, he gave a few reasons why people don’t come to the gospel when it is heard. One, people are stubborn because they think they have the answer in front of them, or their own philosophy. Another reason why is because they are uncircumcised of heart, a label given specifically to Jews, religious people, or legalistic people. It was an offensive term since at the time they thought they were obeying the law, but never realized the law was really convicting them of their sin. They weren’t responding to it, so they were disobeying part of the law, which demanded a response of heart to God’s fuller revelation, the cross. Third, people don’t respond because they are hard of hearing. Acts 7:51:

You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.

The word resisting, the old word meaning to fall against or to rush against. In other words, putting up a wall and saying, “Stop! I don’t want to hear it,” is resistance against God. What great sin is committed when people resist the Holy Spirit by refusing to believe the summons that God gives them to come to Christ for salvation, forgiveness of your sins, cleansing of your soul, legacy that God gives you, and eternal redemption. What a grand and great call! Yet, people say they don’t need it. Another thing, it is not just slow comprehension that people don’t hear and respond to the gospel, but it’s inability.

The prophet, Jerimiah, was right when he diagnosed the people’s spiritual condition. Jerimiah 6:10:

To whom shall I speak and give warning
That they may hear?
Behold, their ears are closed
And they cannot listen.
Behold, the word of the LORD has become
a reproach to them;
They have no delight in it.

When God’s word comes to them, they have no delight in it nor do they want to hear. It irks them and goes against what the world tells them they ought to do, what the flesh tells them to do, their desires, and passions. This is something that is old fashioned, or something that people feel they don’t need. Yet, that’s the outward call. The general call to salvation is made to everyone who hears. In fact, the Holy Spirit extends that call to people all the time.

However, there is the second call in Scripture, the inward call. Usually, it takes place when the outward call of the Gospel is happening. How will they hear without a preacher, or how will they understand unless the word is taught and preached? It’s when the Holy Spirit calls His people effectually by working a miracle in their hearts, and bringing them from spiritual death to life, which is what the term “Born Again” means. You were dead, and you had to be born again, made alive, or regenerated. So, the Holy Spirit transforms the heart, the mind, and the will. John 6:63:

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

The outward, general call to salvation is made to everyone who hears the gospel of God’s grace. Then, the Holy Spirit extends to the elect a special inward call, and it brings that person to salvation. The external call, which is made to all without distinctions, can be, and often is, rejected. The internal call, which is made only to the elect, cannot be rejected. In fact, how do you know when people are alive? They respond to the gospel, and accept the invitation that God is offering them. Then, they continue in it since it’s not a passing religious fad. It’s not like saying, “Oh, I’ll try Jesus,” rather a deep conviction that they have offended God in their sin, and they realize that they are in trouble and need salvation, which is Jesus. So, God extends to them an inward call, which could not be rejected and always results in conversion because it is God’s work.

By means of this special effectual call, the spirit irresistibly draws sinners to Christ. Remember, Chris is not limited in His work of applying salvation by man’s will. One thing that is so great about God’s spirit is that He overcomes your will, your stubbornness, and your ability to resist. In fact, He does more than that by resurrecting you from death. A dead person cannot respond anyway. The spirit graciously causes the elect sinner to cooperate, believe, repent, and to come freely and willingly with a desire to be saved. John 1:12-13:

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, ¹³who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

For anyone to be saved, have their sins forgiven, and to be made right with God, it is God’s will that it happens. Then, the spirit of God convicts that person, calls them inwardly, and they are summoned and obey the summons delightfully and gladly. In other words, salvation is all God, not of us. The flesh profits nothing when it comes to salvation.

Because of the graciousness of the mediators work and God’s call to salvation, it brings us to the graciousness of God’s promise to those who are called. Right now, anyone who believes in Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirit of God in them, and that is for a very important reason. It is to sanctify you to make you more like Christ, but it is for another reason that is connected to your inheritance. You’re in God’s will as a believer, you get an eternal inheritance.

Really, the believer, in this life, has been given a pledge or a down payment for their inheritance. In other words, God is saying that there is a down payment for what will come like when a guy gives a woman an engagement ring. He becomes engaged and what comes is the wedding day. Basically, he is promising to be faithful, before people, and on that day, he fulfills his down payment by adding a ring to the other ring. The wedding seals the promise of the down payment. If we do that, in weakness, then what about God when he makes that kind of promise? Ephesians 1:13-14:

In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, ¹⁴who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

God is saying, in other words, that He is going to give His people a down payment for what will come in their full inheritance, which is the Holy Spirit of God. Of course, a connection with the Spirit of God is the Word of God. The Holy Spirit wrote the word and doesn’t leave us out there to flounder and wonder what God wants us to do. As believers remain true to their call, or persevere in their faith, at death, you receive the eternal inheritance in heaven. At death, which is not the end for a believer but rather a doorway into God’s presence, you realize you have an eternal inheritance that could never be taken away.

That is the difference between this inheritance and inheritances that we are used to hearing about as human beings. Normal inheritances pass from one family to the next, and somebody must die for it to be passed on. However, in this case, an eternal inheritance you don’t pass on, but you keep forever, and that is God’s grace. However, an inheritance of this magnitude cannot be distributed unless someone dies. A testator is a will-maker, and for the will to go into effect, you must die. Therefore, the will that Christ has made on our behalf is His death, and that is the mediation on how we get our inheritance. Hebrews 9:16-17:

For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. ¹⁷For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives.

Here is given the very nature of a will or testament. A death must occur for the inheritance to be received, but it is not your death rather Christ’s death. In our text, there is an important fact that cannot be missed concerning the death of Christ. The very death of Christ enables us to receive our eternal inheritance, and His death makes the inheritance accessible to all who are heirs irrespective of when you lived on this earth. If you were on the Old Covenant, it is about the cross, your heirs, and having internal inheritance because of the cross. If you are on the other side of the cross, we look back to the cross, and we get our inheritance by the death of Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the testator who dies for the beneficiaries of the will, which is us.

Normally, this isn’t how it works, but that’s how it works with God. The great thing about it is that Christ is the heir of all things. What does Christ own if He is the creator of all things? He owns everything. If Christ owns everything, and we become joint heirs with Christ, what do we own as believers? We own everything. Hebrews 1:2:

in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

Right in the beginning, he is letting us know that the heir of all things is Christ. An heir signifies a person who, on the death of another, becomes the possessor of their father’s property. Also, an heir is a person who is lord of all the inherits, and he takes full possession of all that he inherits. Because our inheritance will not pass on from us to someone else, Christ makes us joints heirs, a unique phrase. Romans 8:17:

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

Brethren, He makes us fellow heirs because He lives. He arose from the grave and He lives. Because He lives, we, as His heirs, live and never die. If you never die, you can never pass your inheritance on to someone else. You never die since Christ never died, so our internal inheritance cannot be lost to someone. It will always be yours, so there is no insecurity in this will.

Lastly, all this has happened based on the sacrificial death on the One who makes the will. If you have been following, and I know that you must work to follow, then you may know that for a Jew, a dead messiah is no messiah. Then again, for a gentile, a dead messiah is no messiah either. So, the author begins to show us that the death of the Messiah, the testator and maker of the will, must die. It is necessary for him to die, so that we may be the beneficiary of the will. Without the sacrificial death, no testament or will could be enforced, and no sins could be forgiven. When God inaugurated the first covenant, he did it with the shedding of blood, so the Mosaic testament was inaugurated with the death and blood of sacrificial victims. The Old Covenant was put into force by blood, which means the New Covenant must be put into force by blood. Hebrews 9:18-21:

Therefore even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood. ¹⁹For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the Law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, ²⁰saying, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT WHICH GOD COMMANDED YOU.” ²¹And in the same way he sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood.

Everything that was defiled, or become unholy, had to be sprinkled with the blood of the sacrificial victims. The blood washes away the uncleanness so that the person may approach God. In this case, the people, the book of the law, the tabernacle, and all the vessels were sprinkled, and there is only one place, in Scripture, that this type of ceremony is mentioned in addition to Exodus 34. Half the blood that Moses sprinkled on the alter signifying God’s part, and half the blood was sprinkled on the people signifying the people’s part. God’s part was to keep the promise of the covenant, and the people’s part was to obey the covenant. However, the problem in the Old Testament is that the people could not obey.

To differentiate, the covenant that is inaugurated with the blood of Christ cannot be broken on either person’s side. The reason being that it is a will. When a believer is saved by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, which makes their past election a present reality, then they are brought into a covenant of obedience sealed by the blood of Christ. Don’t forget, in Hebrews, a different word is used for covenant. It is a word that does not mean agreement, but it means will. The conditions of the will are not made on equal terms, but they are made entirely by one person, the testator of the will. The other party cannot alter the terms, but they can only accept or refuse the inheritance offered. That is why our relationship to God is a relationship where only one person is responsible, and that the relationship is offered solely on the initiative and grace of God. Again, salvation is all of God.

When we use the word covenant, we must always remember that it does not mean that man makes a bargain with God on equal terms, but it always means that the whole initiative is with God. The terms are His, and man cannot alter them in the slightest. Under the Old Covenant, God offered the people a unique relationship with Himself, but the whole relationship was entirely dependent on keeping the law. Because of Jesus Christ, in the New Covenant, we respond to the gospel call. When Jesus shed His blood, He brought redeemed man and God into a covenant of willful obedience. Christ’s blood, applied, sprinkled, or shed on us, in a spiritual sense, wiping out all our sins, making us completely clean, and eternally forgiving us for everything we have ever done. The gospel of Jesus Christ is proactive in every respect, covers all people, all of time, and by God’s spirit, we will obey.

Jesus takes care of the covenant, ratifies the will, supplies eternal redemption to us, cleanses us completely, and forgives us of our sin, so it will never come up against us again. Therefore, blood is used to cleanse everything unclean, and make things and people ceremonially clean. When it comes to remitting of sins, there is no remission apart from blood shedding. Hebrews 9:22:

And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Remission means to wipe away and remit the penalty. Only the holy, precious, and all-sufficient blood of the testator, Jesus Christ, can forever wipe away the sin of His children. Psalms tells us to send away the sin from the sinner as far as the east is from the west. Micah 7:19:

He will again have compassion on us;
He will tread our iniquities under foot.
Yes, You will cast all their sins
Into the depths of the sea

It is humanly impossible to dive into the depth of the ocean, but the Lord sends out sin to the deepest part of the ocean, never to be brought up. In Isaiah, He sends away the sin from the sinner; thus, blotting out the sins even from their memory, and He sends the sin away from the sinner as a cloud is blotted out and vanishes. As Christians, Christ leaves us an eternal inheritance that will never be passed on to another, taken from us, or lost in anyway. Truly, how wealthy all believers are. We ought to live according to our wealth. We ought to live according to our high calling, and that means to live as the children of God to live in the Kingdom of God forever. Therefore, we are wealthy.

We are privileged and have an awesome responsibility as believers. The Spirit of God is bringing you to live like Christ. I pray that you get a sense of the grandness and whole scope of salvation that God did for us, so we can be saved and have an inheritance that no one can touch. Our inheritance is imperishable, and that is how grand the Grace of God is and how much He loves us. So, let’s not lay it aside, think lightly of it, or minimize it since God is good to us, and we should give him praise and glory. Let’s pray:

Lord, I thank you so much. I pray, Lord, today, that if someone does not know you as their Lord and Savior, I pray, Lord, today they would sense your summoning. They would sense that they have never heard such a message in which they were presented with the gospel of Christ, the one who dies in the place of sinners to offer them a salvation that is eternal, forgiveness of sins, a wiping away of sin that could never be brought back up in any kind of court of law, to have a relationship with the God who has created the heaven and the earth. Lord, I pray that you would draw them to yourself, and that the call would be eternal. I pray all those who know you, Lord, would take their Christian life real serious, and that they would not only be sober about it, but, Lord, that you would make us joyful about what you have given us and how wealthy we are. Lord, thank you for the down payment of the Spirit of God. We know that you are a God who doesn’t lie, so you must give us the inheritance. We know that our Testator has already died, so our inheritance is waiting to be given out. I pray, Lord, that we persevere in the faith until that day when we will see you face to face where we can drop off faith and see you with our eyes. Lord, we praise you, and let us now lift our voices to worship in this last song. In Christ, I pray, Amen.

Full Transcript:

On Pulling Back the Curtain of The Old and New: The Old Covenant and the coming of the New Covenant, we will look at the effects of Christ’s superior ministry. What Christ had done for us has effects in our personal lives, and we need to know the effects. When you are evangelizing people by discussing the gospel, and you ask them if they know where they are going if they were to die today. Often, they will respond by saying, “I don’t think anyone could really know where they are going when they die.” Therefore, there is this great cloud of doubt over most systems of religion in the world, and, of course, they are basing their “getting to God” on what they have done – the good works and the bad works. When you come to Hebrews 9, it boasters our confidence to know that our salvation is based on solid foundation, especially since it is all of God, not of us.

The New Covenant offers a superlative plan of salvation for sinful humanity. By way of reminder, the Old Covenant and its system of sacrifices and priestly order were powerless to take away sin, the worshipers were continually plagued by guilty conscience, they lacked peace, the old system gave restricted access to God, partial external cleansing, and limited pardon. The old system was incapable of bringing the Israelites into a permanent, right-standing before God. The Old Covenant was unable to take the blame-worthy sinner, who is usually overwhelmed by remorse and longing to be relieved by the oppression and tyranny of unrelieved guilt, and completely free them.

At this very thought, the Christian realizes how superior, to anything else, is this great salvation the Lord has given to us. No design of man could have accomplished, or designed, what God had done in this plan of salvation. A Christian can stand and declare, “I’ve been saved and my whole position has changed before God. I have gone from being unsaved to saved, from one of being condemned to being free of God’s condemnation.” In other words, we can know that we have been moved from one place to another place, and really say, “I am a Christian and when I die, I know where I am going.” We can say this with assurance, not based on our good works, religiosity, moralism, ethics, or anything but Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf.

When we realize that God did this, we realize that it isn’t simply the best solution to the human dilemma, but the only solution to the human dilemma. There are not many ways, paths, or religions to God. There is only one way, and it is a narrow way. Acts 4:12:

“And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

We are saved from the just penalty of our sins against God that incurs His wrath. By reading Hebrews 9, you will get a fresh appreciation for the redemption that God has provided, and to see the practical effects of the New Covenant that comes into your daily life. There are four vital effects of Christ’s superior ministry, which He incurred on our behalf.

The first effect that Christ’s superior ministry acquires for us is a secure and good future, which is what most people are looking for. Hebrews 9:11:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands not of this creation;

Hebrews 10:1:

For the Law, since it has 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 by year, make perfect those who draw near.

In other words, our future in Christ is a good one, and in Christ, we have one. Jesus, the God-Man, acquired what no priest could, and that was to appear in the very presence of God. The high priest could do it once a year for a short period of time, but Jesus comes into the presence of God for good. He does it on His own power by His own will on our behalf, not His own. So, the tabernacle Jesus entered was not a physical or a created tabernacle made from any materials on earth visible to the human eye. The heavenly tent is far greater than that which housed the earthly holy of holies.

Because Jesus entered the presence of the Father, it was all done, finished, and complete, and our future is filled with good things, not the fires of hell or the wrath of God because of our sin. It is filled with the good things that God is going to offer and give us, and the number of those things are innumerable. Though, one is a secured future.

Also, Christ entered an uncreated place. The old, earthly sanctuary was God’s prescribed method of approaching Him, so it did have glory and beauty. However, it was only temporary and operated until the time of reformation, or the time that Christ would set things straight by replacing the Old Covenant with the New Covenant. Hebrews 9:10:

since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.

Some have called it a season of reformation or the perfecting of things, and it was connected to the time of Messiah. The Lord’s plan is still going on and it will culminate with His presence as King of kings and Lord of Lords in Jerusalem, which He will bring peace to this present world. Then, the Kingdom of God will come to earth completely, and the Lord will consummate all things, deliver the kingdom back up to the Father, and God will be All in all. Jesus passed through the created heavens in the incarnation, but this heaven is the uncreated place where God dwells. Now, the way into the Glory and Majesty of the heavenly sanctuary has been made known, or manifest.

We know the way, as believers, into the heavenly sanctuary – we know how to get there and how to enter there, which is the greatest news we could ever have. So, the question really is: how can I know the way to God and enter God’s presence? Jesus said to the disciples, specifically in Thomas’ response, John 14:1-6:

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. ²“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. ³“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴“And you know the way where I am going.” ⁵Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

You want to know the way? Come to Christ. Again, this is the effect of good things for a believer to know, with confidence, where you are going when you pass from this world. This is a great gift that God gives us, and it opens the door to all good things to come for His children. Our identity is totally changed in Christ since we are now Kingdom kids, have royal blood running through our veins, and we have the authority to be called sons of God. We are somebody in Christ, and He makes us a somebody by virtue and by being connected to Him as our Lord and Savior. Now, being born into His family and His kingdom, He makes us something, so this gives us great confidence. Today, we need that kind of confidence and assurance.

The second effect that Christ’s superior sacrifice acquires for us is our eternal redemption, which is the greatest one in all of Scripture. Hebrews 9:12:

and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

The author states that it is not by the blood of goats and calves. Meaning, Christ did not need two kinds of blood. The blood of goats was offered for the people’s sin, and when the high priest got ready for the sacrifice on the day of atonement, he first brought in the blood for the people. Leviticus 16:9:

Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot for the LORD fell, and make it a sin offering.

Then, there was a second set of blood, and that was the blood of calves. Leviticus 16:11:

Then Aaron shall offer the bull of the sin offering which is for himself and make atonement for himself and for his household, and he shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering which is for himself.

In this passage, the term “himself” is used three times to emphasis that he was a sinner. He was to offer a sacrifice for himself before he could ever go into the presence of God. Symbolically, he would lay his hands on the goat, and transfer his sin to the goat and then send that goat away. The point is: Christ did not need blood for His own sins and then enter a second sacrifice with the blood for the sins of the people since He was sinless. Christ did not die for himself, but for us.

Some theologians have said, “Did Christ actually present his blood in heaven?” It doesn’t say in Hebrews 9:12 that he entered with blood, but by, or through, His blood, which is by the virtue of His atoning work at His death. Several reputable commutators have said that Jesus did not carry his poured-out blood to heaven, but used it as a means of expiation, or the sending-away of sin and then ransoming, or purchasing, us who were caught in the slave market of sin. He offered His own blood for us, not for Himself. Unlike the Levitical high priest who entered each year to offer animals blood, Christ entered once, there to remain and advocate for all believers. He did not enter there to leave and do it again, but He entered once, and it was complete and forever. Not only did Christ enter through His own blood, but He entered the most holy place once for all.

Remember, the day of atonement, or Yom Kippur for the Jews, reminded them of their sins. Therefore, everyday of the year led up to that day of atonement, and everyday reminded them that they were sinners. However, the fact that Jesus entered the holy place once for all screams for the once-for-all promise of God’s will to forget your sin, not to remember your sin. It is God’s will to forget your sin, and to put it behind you completely and forever so that our fellowship would be pure and clean with Christ. So, Christ entered the presence of the father and stayed there, never to return for another sacrifice since it is done once forever.

When Christ entered heaven, He had already obtained it, so it was done and complete. The Greek word, redemption, is the idea of buying something. For example, when we buy a shirt, we redeem that shirt. Of course, this isn’t in the same context as the Bible, but we are paying for it to set it free from that store so that it may adorn our body. Therefore, the understanding of this word is to buy something. The word lutro, another Greek term that biblically means redemption from the penalty of sin, depicts the release or liberation of a captive slave. In other words, the blood is the Lutron, or the ransom paid by Christ to effect release for sin and from sin and guilt. Romans 3:23-24:

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

It is Jesus who is part of the process of buying, redeeming, or purchasing you from something. This word in Romans means a release effective by payment or ransom. Ephesians 1:7:

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.

It was the Psalmists who said, “No man can, by any means, redeem his brother or give to God a ransom for him. For the redemption of his soul is costly, and he should seize from trying forever.” In a very real way, no man could pay for the soul of someone else. That cost is too great and too large, and no church or religious system could do that. It is beyond the scope of any human being to be able to pull that one off, but that is exactly what had to be pulled off for our salvation. When you come to the New Testament and you read the beginning parts of the Gospels, you find words like in Luke 1:68:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people.

That becomes a very key element to what the Word of God says. Now, here is the question: Who was the ransom paid to? Two major views say that the ransom was paid to Satan because he held fallen man under bondage. In other words, Satan was the kidnapper, who snatched us away from the Father’s house, and Christ came and paid a ransom to the devil to set us free. However, if that is the case, it would be the kidnapper who has the upper hand since it would be the kidnapper who set the ransom price, so if it was paid to Satan, then Satan would be the victor, not Christ. Therefore, that cannot be the correct answer, especially since there are specific passages of Scripture that tip that idea right on its head. 1 John 3:5:

You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.

The Lord came to lift away, remove, or carry from us our sin, and to send it from us. Now, the ironic thing is why do we wish to retain what Christ came to remove? We love our sin, and the very thing that Christ came to remove, we want to hold onto. However, the Bible is clear on stating that Christ’s mission was to come and to take away sin and remove it completely from you forever. Essentially, that was Christ’s job for us on our behalf. 1 John 3:8:

the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

So, who is the victor? By looking at the passage, the victor is clearly, Jesus Christ. The devil is the originator and instigator of sin. He brought sin into the world, his works include opposing the work of God, he tempts people to sin, and enslaves them until death. He wants to build people from the truth, keeping people in darkness, and binding them so that they cannot get free. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, which means to render his work inoperative and powerless. Jesus breaks the devil’s control by dying in the place of a sinner, becoming the satisfaction for the Father and the propitiation for their sins. Basically, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice dealt with the problem of human sin, and in doing so, destroyed the work of the devil forever. Again, Jesus paying the ransom to Satan is an incorrect answer or view.

In fact, the ransom was paid to God. God is the one who needed to be satisfied. When the Bible speaks of ransom, it speaks of that ransom being paid, not to a criminal, but to the one who is owed the price of redemption or the one who is offended, and the offended party in the complex of sin is the Father. Therefore, Jesus paid the ransom to the Father by offering Himself as a payment for us, and in doing so, made redemption for His people, redeeming them from their captivity or slavery.

This rich Word of God has a picture of redemption, or what the Bible calls in the Old Testament, the kinsman redeemer, a relative within the blood family that can redeem somebody or some property that a person lost most likely because they became poor. However, the concept is that of purchasing something for someone that could not purchase it for themselves. Leviticus 25:23-27:

‘The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. ²⁴‘Thus for every piece of your property, you are to provide for the redemption of the land. ²⁵‘If a fellow countryman of yours becomes so poor he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman is to come and buy back what his relative has sold. ²⁶‘Or in case a man has no kinsman, but so recovers his means as to find sufficient for its redemption, ²⁷then he shall calculate the years since its sale and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and so return to his property.

In ancient Israel, it was the custom for a family to take care of the debts of their relative members. If any member of the family became poor and that piece of property was to stay in the family, but that person had to sell it, his kinsmen redeemed it by buying it back for the person who had to sell the property. So, the kinsmen could come and pay the price that was owed to redeem the property back. Then, at the end of the year of jubilee, they would give the properties back to the supposed owners.

On an interesting note, the kinsmen redeemer had to qualify to buy it back. It was not about having good intentions. For one, you had to be a relative. Secondly, you had to be able to pay the ransom price, so that if you bought this for your relative, it would not put you in jeopardy. Thirdly, you had to be willing to pay the ransom price. In the Old Testament, Boaz acts as a kinsmen redeemer for Naomi and Ruth since they lost what they had when their husbands all died, so Boaz realizes their plight and he redeems them by buying it all back for them. Of course, all these examples in the Old Testament could be applied to the work of the Messiah in His atonement.

In the ransom that Christ pays, He works as a kinsmen redeemer for his people and purchases, for us, our salvation. We are so in debt to God with our sins that we could never pay it off, and that’s why hell is eternal. Then, our Elder Brother, as mentioned in Hebrews, pays the indebtedness that we have incurred before God, an unpayable debt, He buys us out of indentured servitude. By paying the price for our freedom, He restores us to our inheritance in the Fathers kingdom. Therefore, Christ came and paid the ransom to secure the release of His people, who are held captive to sin; then, Christ purchased eternal redemption to those who have been called to salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our kinsmen redeemer, and He can pull off what no man could do – buy souls back – because He is God and He is willing. Christ was assigned to do it, and He did it for us, and completed it forever on our behalf.

Personally, this is the kind of theology that frees you on the inside, in your conscience, in the places where Satan wants to condemn you, from your history, and from the fear of the future. It lays you bare and open in the present to be able to say, “This is what my Lord did on my behalf because I would never be able to do it.” That is the love, mercy, and grace of God that is lavished upon us. A love that is overabundant and overflows for His children, so that we could have a relationship with him.

The third thing that Christ acquires on our behalf is a purified conscience, the inside of us. Hebrews 9:13-14:

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, ¹⁴how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Under the Old Covenant, the worshipers were benefited in a very personal way when they followed the procedures for cleansing and offered the correct sacrifices for their sin. The sacrificial blood of animals removed their defilement and set them apart as holy unto the Lord, but only for the flesh. It did not free the conscious from the deadly guilt and all evil deeds. The conscious needs a far greater cleansing to put it at rest than the blood of animals. Though it cleaned the outside and set a person aside for that year period to have a relationship with God, it did nothing more. The problem is we sin so much that as soon as you stepped away from the sacrifice of the one atonement, you are already guilty. Regardless of the sacrifice for the constant sin, the person was guilt-written in their conscious all the time. Remember, it is the heart that needs to be cleansed and softened. God needs to remove that heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Therefore, the conscious needs a far greater cleansing to put it to rest.

So, we go from a lesser sacrifice to a greater sacrifice. The lesser sacrifice being the blood of bulls and goats, which was limited, but the greater sacrifice was a complete and total sacrifice, in fact, the solution to an inner-defiled conscious. It is the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all external and internal uncleanness and defilement, which incurs guilt. He cleanses the conscious, and the blood of Christ is God’s answer to man’s disturbed conscious.

People are guilty and rightly condemned by God because of sin and they don’t know where to go, so they start a religious system where they start doing good works and forming God in their own mind, a God they could control, would be pleased with them, and listen to them. Yet, it is no different than what Israel did. In Jerimiah, he says, in other words, every man is stupid and devoid of knowledge. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols for his molting images are deceitful and there is no breath in them.

Isn’t that what we do? We make up another way that could sooth our conscious, and keep it down a bit so we don’t feel so guilty, empty, and lost. However, it’s the blood of Christ that is the answer to man’s disturbed conscious. A person who comes to Christ can know that he is forgiven, and that is what soothes the conscious. You know you are forgiven because of what Christ has done by redeeming us from the market of sin, and took our sin and sent it away. Instead of remembering our sin, He forgets our sin, and we are forgiven by God. That is what calms your conscious down. Thank you, Lord, the God who created the heaven and the earth, that we can be right with you. Acts 15:9:

and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.

The cleansing of the mind, emotion, and will that taunt us because of our sin, dirtiness, and defilement we have acquired while in this world. Titus 2:14:

who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

That is what the Lord does, in fact, He must purify and cleanse you to allow you in to His holy presence. You cannot come in otherwise.

The fourth effect of Christ’s superior ministry acquires for us is a sanctified service. Thus, a purified consciousness leads to a sanctified service. In other words, you are saved and freed up from a guilty conscious to serve God. Looking back at Hebrews 9:14, dead works are all the formal, empty, false, legal observances, the self-invented works, and the religious system where men would seek to stand before God. God cleanses you from that and dead works too. All the dead works and things you try to do to appease God in your own mind, doing, and works, God will cleanse you from those things too since they could have never brought salvation but only damnation.

The road to religion is marked “heaven this way”, but ends in hell. Therefore, dead works further defiles a person, provides no ability to cleanse the conscious, and give no power to enable a person to serve God rightly and willingly from their heart. Some people hope that having done such things, that their good deeds will outweigh their bad, and that they would be accepted before God based on their merit. Isn’t that where all systems end up? People have in their mind that somehow God has these divine scales in heaven, and that their good works will outweigh their bad. However, that is all vanity, grasping after the wind, and none of those things could make you right with God. That is why they could never be assured of their foundation, but Biblical Christians can know.

We are cleansed to serve the living God. We go from one slavery, the slavery of sin, to a slavery of serving God. As mentioned before, slavery has to do with your master, and the Lord is a good master. We have received a new life that restores our fellowship with God so that we can engage in energetic services to Him. Meaning, services that counts for eternity. When you become a Christian, after conversion, your good works start. So, people are not saved by not being sincere about their own faith. They can be sincerely wrong, and most of the time, they are. God has appointed one way of salvation. Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and this is what is at stake for us: the eternal salvation of perishing people. If God rescued you from that, you must worship and serve Him. In fact, you have been created to serve Him – your ears to hear the word of God and your heart and will to serve God with all your might. In this world, the Bible tells us, that we will have tribulation and suffering, but the good things are ahead for those who know the Lord. We have a good future, eternal redemption, a purified conscious, and sanctified service. How great a salvation God has given us! There is nothing that comes near it, and that is why there is only one way, not many ways. Let’s pray:

Lord, Thank You again for the word of God. I pray, Lord, that you will continue to use it in our life to encourage us, teach us, and, Lord, to build us up in Your faith. Lord, I pray, that we not walk out this building today if we have not dealt with what your word says. Lord, let us be the kind of people that can know that we have eternal life because of what is written in the word of God. Lord, let us not just talk about it, but let us put it into action and service, and live for you, Lord, with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength. Just like the great commandments in the Old Testament ad recorded in the New, first to love You and then to love people. Lord, use us in that manner, and give us the confidence and boldness to live with gusto for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray this, in Your name. Amen.

Full Transcript:

Let us take our Bibles this morning and turn to Hebrews 9. I am continuing in the book of Hebrews and it is turning out to be a tremendous study in the Word of God. We have been pulling back the curtain on the old and new covenant. The old covenant has the priesthood, laws, and leaders. This morning I will look at the glory and beauty of the earthly tabernacle. Every passage of Scripture has one major point and we are especially going to see that in the first ten verses of Hebrews 9.

The last time that we met together I was talking about the new covenant and that was the first time it was introduced. We saw that the new covenant was unrestricted in its power, eternal in duration, and complete in its effects. In contrast to the old covenant which was limited, temporary, and partial. If you look at Hebrews 8:13, it says:

When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

The whole Old Testament system was ready to disappear off the scene. This was prior to 70 A.D. and the destruction of the Herodian temple in Jerusalem. That was the final end of the whole sacrificial system. The priesthood was turned upside down and this new thing was happening which people did not fully understand. God was doing something new, which was providing the complete and ultimate way into His presence and into complete and perfect salvation. It was necessary that the old system ended.

The new covenant as it is written in Jeremiah and Hebrews 8, promise several different things. Number one, everyone in the new covenant will have a new heart. Your mind, emotions, and will is focused in on Christ and God. Jeremiah 24:7 says:

I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.

Imagine that! A second thing in the new covenant is that everyone will have final forgiveness of sins. Jeremiah 31:34 says:

“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

When God finally does not remember a thing about your sinfulness, wickedness, and wretchedness, that is a grand day, right? A third thing is that everyone in the new covenant will have a permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. remember that under the old law, people could not keep it because they had no power or ability. When God gives you His Spirit, He enables you to obey what He says and you do it with delight. In Ezekiel 36:27, it says:

I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

It is a desire to want to glorify and worship the Lord. Then of course a fourth thing is that everyone in the new covenant will have the law inside their heart. It tell us in Jeremiah 31:33:

But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

The last one indicates that the new covenant people will obey not because they have to, but because they want to and have been given the ability and power to obey. That is the difference between the old and the new. The old was never designed to do that, do not get it wrong. God was not going to send a law but a person, full of grace and truth. That was Jesus Christ.

This all means that the new covenant has replaced the old covenant and we know exactly when it came to an end. God clearly indicated that it was no longer in existence when the great veil was torn from the top to the bottom. Matthew 27:51 records that when it says:

And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.

God was making a statement that day that He has torn open the very thing that blocks the common person from coming to Him and has ripped it apart so that it can no longer be put back together. It is at that very juncture that the writer of Hebrews looks back, not to the temple, but all the way back to the tabernacle in the wilderness, to the original blueprints given to Moses on the mountain. He tells Moses to be careful about making the tabernacle in the wilderness and to make it exactly the way God says. It represents how people will approach God, His holiness, glory, and how a holy God cannot be in the presence or have fellowship with sinful men unless that sin is taken care of.

Here is a little historical perspective. The latest temple was the Herodian temple that was destroyed in 70 A.D. Before that was Solomon’s temple in 586 B.C. We are going back to before the first tabernacle before an actual building was built, back to the tent in the wilderness. That is what he points us to right now and is saying to us that Scripture does not want us to forget the tabernacle in the wilderness under the Mosaic covenant, because it was divinely established by God. It was not the whim of men or someone who says what he thinks we should do. It came directly from Heaven. God says that if we are going to worship Him, we should do so exactly as He says. Otherwise, we will die and be separated from Him forever. Look at Hebrews 9:1, it says:

Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary.

We are not so familiar today with the tabernacle in the wilderness but we should be because it is in the Word of God. It is filled with great symbols that point to the work of Christ. Let us take a few minutes and glance at the tabernacle, because that is what the Scriptures do. They give a description of the earthly tabernacle from Hebrews 9:1-5. Verse 1 calls it an earthly sanctuary and he stresses that right here. That means that God among men gives the ability to the people to come to Him. In Hebrews 9:2 says:

For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread; this is called the holy place.

He is saying basically that there are two rooms in the tabernacle. You have a curtain first and right before that there is the priest ministering outside in the courtyard. He does not mention the courtyard here but he mentions the two curtains and two rooms. The first room had a lamp stand in it that was meant to provide light perpetually. It was the responsibility of the priest to make sure that lamp was constantly burning and that it never went out. When we come to the New Testament, we see that Jesus Christ is the light of the world. And then he says that there is a table with twelve loaves of sacred bread. Each loaf represents each of the tribes of Israel. The Hebrew word means “bread of the face,” which means that the bread is placed before the face of God. God is very much involved in what is going on in the tabernacle and that bread is found as the bread of life when we come to the New Testament.

In Hebrews 9:3 we find more about the tabernacle. Behind the second veil there was a tabernacle which was called the Holy of Holies. The first room is the holy place, the second room is the Holy of Holies. In Hebrews 9:4, it says:

Having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant.

We have a golden jar holding the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded when he went before Pharaoh, and also the tablets of the covenant which were the Old Testament Ten Commandments. There is no discrepancy in the Bible when you get to where it describes Solomon’s temple. When they opened the ark, it only had the tablets of the covenant in it. That is because it is the original and this is what was in the ark. Those things have great representation for the nation of Israel. In Hebrews 9:5 says:

And above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat; but of these things we cannot now speak in detail.

The high priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies one time a year and he went in there not without blood but with blood. He poured it over the mercy seat. God had mercy on the people in relationship to their sins and He forgave them. That was the picture there, and this is how he ends: “of these things, I cannot speak in detail.”

Obviously he did not want to go into detail because he was speaking to Jews. It was still going on right around them. He wanted to at least mention it to them because it had great significance, this tabernacle. Now he goes to the description of the service of the sanctuary and the Holy of Holies in Hebrews 9:6, where he says:

Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship.

This is all in preparation of that one day so the priests were male descendants of Aaron, who was a Levite. The Levites were other male members of the tribe of Levi. The priest and the Levites were servants of God in the Old Testament Israel and they had certain responsibilities. For example the function of a priest was to look after the vessels during the special ceremonies when they were to approach God. The priest also performed the offerings and sacrifices. In doing their duties they dressed in special clothing, symbolic garments as they approached God. The Levites assisted the priests and served the congregation of the temple. They sang psalms and kept the courts clean and helped prepare certain sacrifices and offerings. They also had a teaching function, it was a very busy job. That was all in preparation of the special function of the high priest. There was one high priest, who was the spiritual head of Israel. That special function was the entering in the Holy of Holies, which was the very presence of God, on the day of atonement.

Kids know that day because they get the day off. It is in the beginning of September, and is called Yom Kippur. Yom is the Hebrew word for “day,” and Kippur means “to cover.” It is a day of covering over sin. The day of atonement was one day that the act of atonement took place over the mercy seat. It was atonement for all the sins of the people, which includes millions of Israelites. All their sins were atoned for on that one day. The high priest alone entered the second room, which was the Holy of Holies, once a year. Look at Hebrews 9:7, it says:

But into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.

He is going in and he is making the sacrifice even for the sins people commit in ignorance. That means that God is going to take care of every single last one of them. If He does not, you cannot have fellowship with Him. Men cannot come into His presence. On that day, people were cleansed so they could have a relationship with God, which would go hopefully unbroken until the next year, the next day of Atonement. If the high priest came out from the second curtain and before the people and he emerged alive, the people cheered and sang psalms and hymns because they were delivered from the wrath of God on that day. It must have been an incredible sound to hear them worship God when they saw the high priest emerging. What a picture of Christ, emerging alive from the cross. He says that God accepted the sacrifice when the priest emerges.

They were in relationship with God. I wish people would think like that today, we ought to be that excited. But here is the significance of this tabernacle. In Hebrews 9:8-10, he is saying that some things are significant. Look at what it says:

The Holy Spirit is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.

He is saying that the Holy Spirit signifies that the way to God is not disclosed until this inner veil between the two rooms was torn at Christ’s crucifixion. I could not go in there, into God’s presence. No one can! Except for one guy once a year. If he did not do it the right way, he would be in grave danger and trouble. This is the picture, all these priests were in some way responsible for key offerings. But this tabernacle really was a symbol, a parable, and an illustrated spiritual truth. That spiritual truth is that regular people could not come to God. We had to go through this whole system to come to God. What happens after the day of Atonement? We sin again. Sin brings a thing called guilt, ever feel that because you sinned?

Guilt is a funny thing. But this becomes the very thing that he talks about in this passage of Scripture. The high priest was really in charge of five key offerings. One of these was a required, not a free-will, offering and it was called the guilt offering. It was offered to make payment for sin against God or others. That means that if I sin against someone, I was make to restitution and pay them back. But it incurred guilt on my part. Therefore, how do you get rid of guilt even after the day of Atonement? How do you get rid of guilt for the next 364 days?

Turn over to Leviticus 4:1-3 says:

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘If a person sins unintentionally in any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and commits any of them, if the anointed priest sins so as to bring guilt on the people, then let him offer to the Lord a bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed.

Leviticus 4:13-14 say this:

Now if the whole congregation of Israel commits error and the matter escapes the notice of the assembly, and they commit any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and they become guilty; when the sin which they have committed becomes known, then the assembly shall offer a bull of the herd for a sin offering and bring it before the tent of meeting.

I want you to see something here. We cannot become guilty really until the offense is known and the law rears its head and says that you did this wrong and sinned against God. Only then is the guilt heaped on. Look at Leviticus 4:22-31:

When a leader sins and unintentionally does any one of all the things which the Lord his God has commanded not to be done, and he becomes guilty, if his sin which he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring for his offering a goat, a male without defect. ‘He shall lay his hand on the head of the male goat and slay it in the place where they slay the burnt offering before the Lord; it is a sin offering. ‘Then the priest is to take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering; and the rest of its blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering. ‘All its fat he shall offer up in smoke on the altar as in the case of the fat of the sacrifice of peace offerings. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him in regard to his sin, and he will be forgiven. ‘Now if anyone of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and becomes guilty, if his sin which he has committed is made known to him, then he shall bring for his offering a goat, a female without defect, for his sin which he has committed. ‘He shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and slay the sin offering at the place of the burnt offering. ‘The priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering; and all the rest of its blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar. ‘Then he shall remove all its fat, just as the fat was removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall offer it up in smoke on the altar for a soothing aroma to the Lord. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven.

There is a great problem with the old system. It cannot perfect and cleanse and remove forever the guilt that is incurred by sin. It lacked something. The second significance that he talks about is in Hebrews 9:9, which says:

Which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience.

Where is your conscience? That is your inner heart inside of you. In the Old Testament, you were able to purify the outside, but not the inside. That was the great lack in it. Even though the people went through everything God asked them to go through, they still could not be made perfect and the sacrifices were powerless to remove sin and guilt. The worshippers experienced no peace and continually had a guilty conscience. I do not know if you know how that feels to be guilt ridden over a sin issue. You cannot do anything about that. You confess and it still seems like the guilt lingers. The very word used here is that he cannot make, which when translated gives us the word power. It is saying here that the Old Testament law does not give you the power that you need so the conscience can be clean. It uses another word there. You cannot make the worshipper perfect, and this means carrying something through to completion. It could never bring to an end the sin that is committed that brings with it guilt. It is a vicious cycle.

He also says this that it cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience. This refers to the conscience of sin. Who gives us our conscience anyway? Can you surgically remove the conscience? Can you identify it on an X-Ray screen or MRI? No, but I will tell you what does. When you do something and when you sin against God and you are guilty. That comes from our God and Savior Jesus Christ, from the Holy Spirit, who is convicting you of that particular sin. I am talking about the stuff God does in our hearts. It is to help you feel the weight and to remind you every day that there is something wrong inside of you. Guilt makes you feel like there is something wrong with you. What is wrong is that you sinned against God, who is your Creator. When you sin and break His law, that guilt or sin is laid on you because you have a conscience. That is a good thing.

The soul has distinguished between what is morally good and bad by way of definition, prompting you to do the former and shun the latter. Commending the one and condemning the other. It is like the umpire of your soul. It is an interesting thing. In Hebrews 10 it says something else. He talks about the conscience a little more in Hebrews 10:2, which says:

Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?

He is saying something there that is very important, that God in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, gives us the solution to ongoing guilt. In order to know that you are cleansed by His blood which brings you to think that you do not have a conscience of sin. You may know what sin is, but you do not live under its guilt, dominion, or power. Why? Because of Christ and what He did on the cross. I understand that and I do not have to go around with a guilty conscience twenty-four hours a day. I do not offer sacrifices, but have one sacrifice who stood in my place and was the substitute there on the cross, and that was Jesus Christ.

Let us think about that for a moment, sin is a word often used in Scripture to give the picture of a prisoner that has been taken captive and is dominated by the power of sin. Sin, as said in Romans 7, dwells in us. So basic is the hold of sin over man that sin can hold you in bondage and still you will think you are free. It has a very deceptive nature to it. Sin is not merely, though, an external power, which just exercises a sway over a person’s soul. It has gotten into our fiber and in the center of our hearts, until it occupies us and masters and controls us. Why is it that some people just cannot get out from their sin? Because it is dominating and it occupies like territory. It has taken the hilt and if you let it, it will do that.

Romans 3 though, shows us that there is a close connection between the law and between sin. In fact the law and sin go together. Listen to what it says in Romans 3:20:

Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

Let us put the equation together here a little bit. God gives the law, which says not to do something. The law says not to commit adultery, bear false witness, not lie, not to covet, to have something of someone else. The law tells us that if we do something, then we are going to break the law and with that comes the knowledge of sinning against God, who is the lawmaker. That brings guilt to my conscience. Until sin is defined, a person cannot know what sin is. Until there is a law of sin, a person cannot become guilty of sin. However, once there is a law there is a knowledge of sin. Paul says this referring to Gentiles in Romans 2:15:

In that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.

In other words, you cannot get away from the law of God. God has established it in the fiber of His creation. If you sin against God, you will incur guilt on your conscience. Unfortunately, most people do not know what to do with it so they go to the medicine cabinet, doctor, the psychologist, the guru sessions, etc. in order to try and soothe what is going on in their hearts. They do all of this instead of going to God.

The law has two defects. It can define sin, but it cannot cure sin. It is like a doctor who can diagnose disease, but has no power to eradicate or even help us to stop a disease.

A second defect of the law is to prohibit a thing that is made attractive. Have you ever had to make a turn around in New Jersey and see a big sign that has a circle and a message that says do not turn around. You wonder why because there are no cars coming or anyone behind you. If you go to other states, they do not have those signs. It seems dumb to me but if you get stopped by a policeman even if there is no one around, he has every right to give you a ticket for making an illegal turn. You broke the law. There is something about when someone says to not step on the grass, that makes you want to step on the grass. The law has a weakness to it. By forbidding a thing, it actually makes it attractive to us.

I was reading through Augustine’s Confessions and they are about his confessions of sins. It is a tremendous book. He confesses to the Lord and puts it in print. Get an abridged version so you can understand it. I came across one little article about him stealing pears as a kid. This is what he writes: “There was a pear tree near our vineyard filled with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took a huge load of pears, not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs. Though we did eat enough to also be pleasurable and fill our stomachs with that forbidden fruit. They were nice pears. But it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted. For I had plenty of pears at home, even better ones. I picked them simply in order to be a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and I enjoyed it in its full. I liked sin. What was it I loved in the theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law in order that I, a prisoner under rules, might have some counterfeit freedom? By doing with impunity what was forbidden with a dim similitude of omnipotence.”

For once second, he felt like he had power to do whatever he wanted. But what was it? Augustine’s words simply say the desire to steal was aroused simply by the prohibition not to steal. It is at this very point that the law is weak. It is at this very point that in regard to sin, it emerges before us because every single one of us has experienced this very thing. I should not sin but I like to sin! I should not do this particular thing but no one is going to know! I will just do it, get over it, and confess it. I will get it out there and that will be it.

The cure for sin in our passage of Scripture cannot depend on the old sacrificial system and the priesthood. In accordance of the parabolic significance of the tabernacle and its arrangements and its gifts and sacrifices that were offered because it could only purge the flesh, not the conscience. It could not clean the conscience. It could only remove the external defilement. It could not restore the man, the person to a right relationship with God. The believer, who is given the ability, when they believe by the Spirit of God, in Jesus by faith then they are set free from the slavery of the dominion of sin and cleansed internally of their guilty conscience. We do not have to be guilty of any sin we have ever committed because of Jesus Christ.

Now, that does not give me liberty to go on sinning. It gives me liberty to become a slave of Christ and love Him. I get the power to say no to my sin. Yes, my flesh wants to walk on the grass but I am not going to do it because it does not honor my Lord and does not please Him. The Spirit of God gives me the strength to do it and I walk away. Each time I do that I become stronger and stronger and the temptations become more fierce and complicated. Satan is very skilled at tempting you to sin. You cannot trick him, but you can put on the whole armor of God. You put on Christ so that you can stand up against what he is doing and have victory. You can stand up and speak the mysteries of the gospel as you have been living with Christ. He has been giving you the victories over sin.

Where does this bring us? Look at Hebrews 9:10:

Since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.

This word reformation means that there is going to come a time when Christ sets it all right. The word reformation in the physical sense means to make something straight. It is the example of restoring a broken bone or twisted limb and making it straight. In other words, there will be a season of reformation when Christ makes everything right. Is that not hope? That is what he is saying here.

What does Jesus set right? I do not have time for that. But I do have time to tell you that Jesus Christ in relation to sin and our circumstances here concerning a guilty conscience. The Bible tells us in Matthew 1:21 that Jesus saves us from sin. We are a people in a position who need to be rescued and that rescue is carried out by Jesus Christ at the cost of His life. Dead sinners have no capacity to rescue themselves. They are dead. Jesus also wipes out sin, as it says in Acts 19. It tells us that He wipes it out. It is a picture of ancient ink that had no acid in it. It could be sponged off the surface of the vellum or papyrus paper that a scribe was using. Sinners had no means to sponge away their sin. In their case, their sin is written with indelible permanent ink. But because of the work of Jesus Christ, the record of our sin is obliterated and sponged away. Acts 3:19 says:

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

Through Jesus we are washed from sin. Our lives had been stained and muddied by sin but dead sinners have no way to remove their stain for the sinner is unclean and polluted by filth of their own sin. It is Jesus Christ who has the power to cleans it. Acts 22:16 says:

Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.

In God’s mercy a veil is drawn across our sins where it says in Romans 4:7:

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.

It is as if God in His mercy and grace drew a veil over our sorry record over our past sins and never looked at them again. In God’s mercy, our sins are not reckoned to us again. In Romans 4:8 it says:

Blessed is the main whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

It means that God does not set it down in your account. The idea is that because of our sins we are completely in God’s debt. The debt is so huge because of our sin that we cannot pay it. God says that He is not going to reckon our sin to our legal account. As far as I am concerned, it looks pretty clean to me because of the blood and perfect righteousness of Christ.

We are set free from sin because of the work of Jesus on the cross. Often when some start learning Koine Greek, the first set of vocabulary words has the word luo which means “to loose.” It is the word Paul uses in Romans 6:18:

Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

You have been set free to be a slave of Jesus Christ, and that is the kind of slavery you want. If you have a good and loving Master, you will want to serve Him! That is the thought here. We are not saved to live anyway we want. We are saved to love and serve and follow Christ and you are going to find that when you do that, your heart will be so full of overflowing joy that you can never replace with anything else.

Jesus in turn also in Hebrews 9:26 cancels our sin. It says:

Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

He puts away sin and through Jesus Christ we are forgiven of the great offenses we have committed against Him. When Christ puts away sin, He cancels out this huge debt that we owe Him. Our debt is gone and we are forgiven. The essence of the word forgiven is the undeserved release of a person of which he or she is guilty. That it would be right to exact justice on a person and administer judgment on a person who is due that penalty. but through Jesus Christ a person is released from the punishment and penalty that God had every right to inflict.

Can you say that about yourself today? Can you say this morning that you do not walk around a guilty person because you know how to deal with your sin in Christ? Can you say that Christ blots out your sin and reckons you free forever? If you are walking around like that, then you understand the truth. You understand that you also take care of your sin and understand temptation and its design. You are keenly aware that you have armor on because you are in a spiritual battle and do not want to be swept away by the schemes of Satan and be dragged back down into the cess pool of guilt. You do not need to be there as a Christian and only Christ will deliver you and keep you from that.

He is saying that they have to give up all there ceremonies and rituals in the tabernacle because the fulfillment of all those were brought to an end and found their complete fulfillment in the lamb of God Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ made these unnecessary. Because of His death, our sins were completely forgiven and fellowship with God has been completely restored.

Let me just mention this, for a Christian your relationship with God could never be broken by sin. That is why the Word of God uses another word, fellowship. Your fellowship with God can be broken, but your relationship with God as His child cannot. If I want to have fellowship with God, then I take care of my sin. Christ promises me that when I confess my sin, He is faithful and just to forgive me of my sin and all my righteousness. Our identity now is in Christ Jesus, and with that we can walk around boldly praying, ministering for the Lord, and doing everything that God intends you to do with the gifts and abilities and talents and opportunities and time that He has given you.

When all of the shadow fades away and they have served their purpose, the Levitical priesthood and the law that guided it and the sacrifices that were offered were forever set aside because of a better sacrifice and hope. It was the finished work of Jesus Christ so that He could do what no old system could ever do: tear the veil so that we could have complete and unbroken access to God because of Christ’s sacrifice. We go to Him. Amen.

Let us pray. Lord, thank You this morning for the grandness of the Word of God. Lord if I did not know these things, I could not be set free from some very simple things that happened in my daily life. I want to serve You with my whole heart and I know that people want to serve You with their whole heart. That is the promise of the new covenant, that You are going to give us the power to do that. I know that someone who does not have the Holy Spirit cannot have the power to obey, serve, and love You. That means that they never became a believer and asked You to save them. They never came and repented or called out on Your Name and ask you to be their Lord and Savior. I pray that if someone was here like that, they would call out for You and that today would be the last day that they go live their life the way they think they ought to. For all that do know You, I pray that we would realize the magnificent extent Your sacrifice accomplished on our behalf even in dealing with the guilt that we still have because of sin. But we do not have to live there, I pray that we would always be running to the cross and ask Christ to cleanse us for a sin that He has already died for. I pray that our fellowship would be sweet and ongoing and deep and intimate. When it is not, we know it is sin. Help us to see what it is and get back to walking with You. Thank You that when we are adopted into Your family, no one could sever us from having a relationship with You. We give You praise and glory for that.

This morning please do Your work in our heart as You see fit. I pray that Your Name would be exalted. I pray in Christ’s Name, Amen.

Full Transcript:

Let us take our Bibles this morning and turn to Hebrews 8. We’re still looking at pulling back the curtain on the old and the new and this morning we are going to look at the better covenant in Hebrews 8:6-13.

Now that is what I want to look at this morning. We sung about it and we got over our technical difficulties and everything that happened. If I was over there we would not have anything on the screen, but those guys those techies know all that stuff. So they do what they have to do.

But this morning I really want to look at something that as I was growing as a Christian in theological thought I really didn’t have a grasp on and it wasn’t for a while that I began to get a grasp on that and it’s the very idea of the great biblical idea of the Covenant the covenant our text here in Hebrews begins to deal with that very important thought.

This morning with some time here let us get right to Hebrews 8:6 and see what it says:

But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

Now ordinarily a covenant is an agreement. That’s how we basically understand it. It is agreement entered into by two people. It is usually dependent on conditions and usually the two parties then mutually agree.

People say that they are going to make a covenant, an agreement and if either break the conditions then the covenant would be void. That is how we usually think of covenants.

In fact when you come to the Word of God it is used in that way. However there are several places where it is not used in that way.

For example if you go to the Bible and if you and look for the word, there are three words for covenant. One is in the Old Testament and two in the New Testament. But when the Old Testament translates the word it uses a particular word. The Old Testament word for covenant is berit. It is used for clan alliances. We see that in Genesis. It is used for personal agreements and for legal contracts. It is also used for oil contracts and the one we are most familiar with is when it is used for marriage agreements.

Look quickly over at Malachi, which is the last book in the Old Testament. It gives us a sense there on how the word is used. It says in Malachi 2:14:

Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’ Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

With God usually a contract brings witnesses. The witness here see the marriage contract and of course the Bible says God hates divorce. He hates the breaking up of this loyalty to a contract to an arrangement made between two parties in which God is always the witness.

Because marriage is not a Christian ordinance it is a creation ordinance. So God the Creator is witness at every wedding, when two people who come together. Most importantly, this word covenant is used to denote a close relationship which God entered into with his people. First it happened with Noah, then with Abraham, Isaac , and Jacob. You remember Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. So it would be after Jacob’s prosperity, but especially Abraham. Now let us look again at this in Leviticus 26:42-45 in the Old Testament just to get some sense of it:

Then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. For the land will be abandoned by them, and will make up for its sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and their soul abhorred My statutes. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.

So in the Old Testament we see that disagreement that God made was an agreement between himself and people and nations. Of course after Jacob, God made a covenant with Moses and the people of Israel. Now that was of course the Mosaic covenant. And by this last covenant that the Israelites have or this old covenant that God had given him. It was a covenant of agreement.

The people were bound to obey God’s will as expressed in the Mosaic Law. They were bound by that. He promises them as God, His protection and blessing on them if they obey him. If they do not obey Him, He threatens the transgressors the severest of punishments and instead of bringing blessing on them He brings cursing.

So it was this agreement that God says what He wants the people to do. And of course when when God brings that before the people then the people would affirm that, agree to it, and then do what God says. That is how it was designed. That is how the Mosaic law was designed.

Now when you get to the New Testament in the book of Hebrews there also is a word for covenant and it is the word diatheke. The regular word used in the New Testament for covenant is sunatheke. We get the word sunagogue, or synagogue. Or synonym, which is a word that is like another word.

So again the Greek use of the word there is the word agreement. So if this word sunatheke means that in that word two parties agreed together. In fact this term always describes an agreement entered in on equal terms, that the parties to the sunatheke are at the same level and each bargain with each other as to what the terms would be.

But here in Hebrews, this is how amazing the Lord is in using language to steer away from any kind of wrong thought that anyone would have when it comes to this better covenant. God uses a another word and that is diatheke and it does not mean agreement. What it means is a will. Like last will and testimony like the wills you and I are supposed to have. We always say we are going to get one but we never do and then it is too late.

A will is is an important document, no doubt about it. The conditions of a will are not made on equal terms. They are made entirely by one person. By legal terms that person is the testator and the other party cannot alter the terms but can only accept or refuse the terms which usually includes inheritance. To get a sense look at Hebrews chapter 9:15, it says this:

For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it.

He is making a will here. Someone has to die in order for the will to be effective and to go into effect and that is exactly what happened and that is why Hebrews 9 is all going to be about the death of Christ because the covenant or the will has to be ratified by the blood. Not the blood of bulls and goats but the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of Man, the Son of God, who ascended to heaven, and is seated at the right hand the Father.

It must be done by Him. So this word is a word that says to us why our relationship to God is described as a diatheke or this covenant were for the terms of which only one person is responsible that a relationship is offered to us. Solely on the initiative and grace of God.

In other words, when we as Christians use the Word for this new, this better covenant, we must always remember that it does not mean that man made a bargain with God on equal terms, or any terms, or even made a bargain at all!

It always means that the whole initiative is with God. The terms are his terms and man cannot alter them in the slightest. That is why this covenant is the final and new covenant. That is why it is a better covenant. Nobody can mess with it.

So for someone to say, “Lord if I do enough good works then you have to honor our agreement,” that is false and not even in there. It does not even come into the equation. It is not about you! It is about God’s grace.

You see what He is doing here. He is eliminating any thought in the Jewish mind to add anything to His will. Get out of your mind that it was even an agreement where you had something to do with it because you did not. It i all the initiative of God. So see the point being made by the author of Hebrews is that under the old covenant, God offered the people of Israel a unique relationship to himself. It is all over the Old Testament and in the Old Covenant. But the whole relationship was entirely dependent on keeping the law. Now the problem with that is that people could not keep the law.

In fact let us turn back to Exodus and I want you to see when God gave the terms of the Old Testament agreement and how the people accepted the conditions that God offered them. It is recorded in Exodus 24. This is why it is amazing because it is so clear that the people understood clearly what God was saying. But of course they had no ability to keep it even if they desired to in their hearts. They had no ability inside of themselves to keep it. They could not keep the law the law kept condemning them and condemning them.

And they kept offering sacrifices and they would be made right with God and then they kept sinning and offering sacrifices and it was that cycle going on. Look at Exodus 24:1-7, it says:

Then He said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall worship at a distance. “Moses alone, however, shall come near to the Lord, but they shall not come near, nor shall the people come up with him.” Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do!” Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. Then he arose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young men of the sons of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord. 6Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and the other half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!” 8So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

Even the Old Testament covenant had to be ratified by blood and this is the only time in Scripture that you see the people being sprinkled on, the book being sprinkled with the blood, and everything being sealed because if there are conditions in the contract and in the covenant and the people break them, they break the covenant. If they break the agreement cursing comes.

Here the argument that the Old Covenant is done away with in Hebrews 8 because Jesus has brought in the New Covenant, which is a better one one that can provide for the people a permanent relationship with God.

Look at Hebrews 8:7:

For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.

If the first covenant did what it was supposed to do, and if people could obey the law and they had the ability to obey the law, you would not need a second covenant. Christ would not have to come into the world to die on the cross. The first covenant would have made people right with God and ushered them into God’s presence. It would have been done.

But that did not happen because the people broke the covenant. And if the people break the covenant then the covenant is broken. The conditions now are put in place and the condition was that of of cursing.

That is why when you see God raising up the Assyrian nation in the Old Testament and coming against Israel. It was because they broke the covenant, slipped into idolatry, and God raised up this nation to discipline them. Then He raises up the nation of Babylon, the Babylonian nation come up against them, the same thing happens, and all the Jews are scattered all over the place for the reason that they broke the covenant. They had no more relationship with God.

This word makes sure that we do not miss that point. Let me just give you some more information about the covenants. Covenants can be distinguished in several different ways in the Word of God. It can be distinguished first by participation. For example there are minor covenants in Scripture between men but there are also major covenants in the Word of God which was a covenant between God and the nations or the peoples. There were five major covenants in the Old Testament.

The first one was the Abrahamic covenant. That covenant was before the law and before Moses and it was a covenant of promise. That is very important and we will look at that again later in Hebrews.

The second major covenant was the Mosaic covenant or the Scianic covenant. This covenant was one of law and works. The Abrahamic covenant was one of promise and faith.

Then there was the Palestinian covenant that was the land covenant which they are still fighting over today with the problem of who is the owner of the land. It is probably not going to end until the Lord comes back again.

Then there’s the Davidic covenant. Then we have the new covenant which is in the Old Testament. Take your bibles and turn to Jeremiah 31: 31-34 because this is the new covenant. Remember this covenant comes from the mouth of a prophet. When Jeremiah spoke this covenant, the people were in bondage. They were scattered. God spoke to the needs of the people through the mouth of the prophet. The people needed to know that God was going to do something great. They knew that they were in bondage for the reason that they did not keep God’s agreement. They broke it and now they are suffering for it because God is a just God. The justice of God has to be poured down on people who break His covenant. Now they are in exile, they are being persecuted and scattered all over the place by other nations.

Then Jeremiah steps up and he gives the people hope and he tells them that God is going to do something great over here and and that they are included in it. They may not live to see it but they are included in it.

And look what it says in Jeremiah 31:31:

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.”

Remember at this time, Israel and Judah were a divided kingdom, they were actually enemies. Jeremiah 31:32-34 says:

Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Brethren, that is a message of encouragement. But that is not the only places mentioned in the Old Testament. It is not mentioned in that much detail, but other prophets mention the covenant as being an everlasting covenant.

Ezekiel mentions that some day God is going to give you a new heart and a new spirit. Isaiah says that it is going to be “my covenant.” Other than the covenant agreement that He had with the people, it is going to be God’s covenant alone where no human beings are going to be able to mess with it.

It is going to be the will of God and the testament of God that this is a better covenant than any coming in because no one ever messed with it on the human level. So what God brings to pass will come to pass.

In fact this new covenant has parties connected to it. The parties of the Covenant are always Israel and Judah as right here in the passage I just read.

The prophets even mentioned in that covenant that the geography of Israel and the land of the city of Jerusalem would be the recipients of the new covenant.

On the other hand it also mentions the other nations. Isaiah says that this new covenant has a trickle down effect that benefits the Gentiles. Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 56:8.

Yet others will gather them to those already gathered.

Those already gathered are going to be of course under the covenant. The Gentiles and then the Jews will be gathered again and vice versa. In that covenant, God includes both the Jew and the gentile which makes the population of the world are going to be included in that covenant. The provisions of the covenant, all throughout scripture, will include a new heart. God is going to give them a new heart. He is going to take away a heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

He is also going to give them a permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Ezekiel mentions that in Ezekiel 36:27 and He is going to write the law inside their heart. This is what was not in the Old Covenant. This becomes completely important and the fulfillment of the New Covenant.

From an Old Testament perspective it involves two parties, God and Israel and Judah as already mentioned and according to the Old Testament, the fulfillment of the new covenant will take place when Israel is spiritually alive. Ezekiel 37 talks about the coming of the Messiah when Israel’s regathered to the land and the messianic kingdom is established. The other nations will also receive the trickle down blessing from Isaiah.

Now the problem is this that when it comes to the church and what I mean by that is this there is nothing in the New Covenant passage about the church in the Old Testament. The Jew and Gentile together in one body on equal footing is explained in the New Testament. That is what Paul came on the scene for when remember Paul was the apostle to the gentiles and Peter was the apostle to the Jews. Paul preached to the Gentiles and told them a mystery that they did not know about in old times.

The mystery is that God is going to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and give them a new heart, give them the permanent dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and to write the law of God on their hearts. That was the promise.

As a matter of fact, that promise is not connected to the Mosaic covenant, but it is connected to the promise that God gave Abraham before the law and before Moses, where God said to Abraham, “In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” That includes us, gentiles, and that is really exciting to know. We can take the gospel to Gentiles all around the world and say that they included in God’s plan.

Let me show you. It is right here in Ephesians 3:1-12. There is not time to read it this morning but you can glance at it yourself and take notes and write it down.

That brings me to a fourth thing that I wanted to mention this morning. The first one was that of the explanation of the two words. The second was a description of the new covenant in the Old Testament. A third would be the covenants being distinguished by two things. And the fourth would be the purpose of the covenants. Why do we have a covenant anyway?

This is the reason why God made covenants, it is because God is basically unknown apart from creation. How do I know that God could ever tell the truth or could ever make an agreement with men or that God can make a will that includes me? How would I ever know that unless God told us? God is basically unknown and for this reason, mankind cannot enter into a relationship with Him.

However God has undertaken a program of self-revelation, which is called the Bible. The Bible is a book about God and what God has done and who God is and what He is like and requires. We are not speaking of a God who is way out there and who we do not know or cannot figure out. He is a God who is near to us and who has written a book to us. He tells us that if we want to know who He is in specific detail, we are to read His revelation. He will tell us everything we need to know in that book. The most important thing He could tell us is that we sinful, unholy, ungodly, people who are heading to hell can be accepted into His Kingdom and be accepted as one of His children.

God has undertaken a program of self-revelation, thus the purpose of the covenant is to reveal God so that there may be a relationship. That is the whole reason. The instrument of self-revelation began with Israel where God told Israel that He will take them for His people and that He will be their God and that they will know that He is the Lord and has brought them out from under the burden of the Egyptians. That is what God told the people, that He will have a relationship with them and this is how it will happen. He tells them the conditions of the relationship and what to expect since He is a just God.

Remember, that the Israelites kept breaking the conditions of the covenant and severed their relationship with God. Now a man today still cannot have a relationship with God. The reason why is because of sin. The Mosaic legislation could not achieve the completion of what God intended. The Levitical priesthood was lacking and that is what necessitates a different and greater priesthood. But it did serve the priesthood of the old covenant as a picture that looked forward to the reality. But when the reality to which the shadow was pointing came, and we find out that the reality is Christ, and when Christ’s blood was finally shed, the shadow that faded away and the law that guided it and the sacrifices that were daily offered was set aside because there was a better hope to come because there was a better covenant because of the finished work of Christ. Jesus could do what the old priesthood could never do, give us access to God by faith through His grace. Is that not what it says in Ephesians? It includes those thoughts in Ephesians 2:10:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves so that no one may boast.”

You cannot add to this will, you cannot add your works and there is nothing you can give whatsoever. It is a gift of God, not a result of works so that no one will boast. When we do boast, we only boast of God’s initiative alone to save His people. They could have added nothing to it but to believe by faith. That is God’s gift to them and to us.

We look at our text this morning in Hebrews 8:8. I want to give you exactly what Jeremiah said, that this becomes a foundation of a better covenant. This better covenant is better first of all in quality. It says in Hebrews 8:8:

Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

There are two words used for new. One means new in point of time, but the second word is kanos ]which means new in the point of quality. This new covenant is so different in its quality than the old. The old could no longer stand up to it when alongside of it. The old covenant was imperfect and powerless to provide men with the power to meet the requirements. Look now at Hebrews 8:9:

Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my covenant, and I did not care for them, says the Lord.

It was a better covenant also in its quality, in what it was able to accomplish for those who believed by faith. Secondly, it was better by capacity. Look at what it says in Hebrews 8:8:

With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

These two houses were enemies, but in this covenant, God unites old enemies. If Gentiles were included in this covenant, than those who are enemies of Christ are also forgiven of their sin and are made right with God to be brought into a relationship with Him.

A third thing in Hebrews 8:10, it is better in its ability:

For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

God is not only going to make it a will but He is going to give yo the ability to obey the instructions of God and have an inward desire to follow Him along with the power to do so. This did not happen in the old covenant. The old covenant says do this and if you did not, then you had it coming for you.

This covenant says to come by faith through the grace of God, free unmerited favor of God because He has done it all for you. Jesus Christ has established a better covenant for you, dies in your place, sheds His blood once and for all, and goes before you into Heaven. You have to stay believing and continue in grace.

As a believer when I fall into sin, I confess my sin because of God’s grace. He promised me that if I confess my sin, He will forgive me and cleanse me. But if I die with sin, that sin is taken care of because of the extent of the death of Christ on my behalf. It is not about me, I cannot save myself or keep myself saved. It could never happen, so that brings me to the next thing.

It is also better in its universality. Look at Hebrews 8:11:

They shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, saying, ‘know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from the least to the greatest of them.

This means that all color, race, and other distinguishing factors are gone. God saves people based on one thing, His grace alone. Not who you know, what you have done, or your race. It is completely universal, and God knows even the most obscure person on the planet. He has a covenant even with that person if he is in Christ.

It is also better in its generosity. In reality, a covenant with God will also affect forgiveness! Look at Hebrews 8:12:

For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

The God who created the Heavens and the earth sent Christ, our Lord and Savior and God Himself, so that He will not remember your sins! He will not check through it in His book of sins. He cancels it out by the blood of Christ and nails your sins to the cross while giving you the righteousness of Jesus Christ!

It is a better covenant because of His incredible generosity towards us. Do we deserve it? No, we never have. But that is not the point. The point is that this new covenant is unrestricted in its power, it is eternal in its duration and complete in its effects.

The old covenant was limited, temporary, and partial. And if you disobeyed, you were condemned under it. Even if you bring a sacrifice, it does not end. So this is good news for us.

How could you ever believe or say that there are many other ways to God? Christ is the only way. All the other religious systems are based on works. You have to do something to get something. You are saved by grace alone through faith alone by Christ alone.

In Luke 22:20 it says:

And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.”

I hope this takes on a better meaning for you before the Lord’s Table. The inauguration of this new covenant is with the death of Christ, forgiveness of sins, and outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. All of that was included there.

The main feature of the new covenant is the promise of the Holy Spirit. It says it all over the book of Acts. We see even here with the writer of Hebrews convincing the Jews that through the new covenant, they had a better Mediator than Moses, namely Christ Jesus!

He also plainly explains that the new covenant has replaced the old covenant. That is why it says in Hebrews 8:13:

When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

This could be most likely because it was written in 66-67 A.D., prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. He is saying here that something is ready to disappear, and it will be their whole sacrificial system and priesthood. That happened when Jesus died on the cross. The curtain ripped in two in the Holy of Holies. The thing that blocked the priests from going into the presence of God once a year on behalf of the people now was ripped open by God when Christ died on the cross, because that was the ratification of the covenant. No longer did a man have to go through a priest and bring sacrifices. Now he can go directly to Jesus Christ, who plows right into the presence of God.

Well it says in Scripture that the Mosaic law came to an end. And if anybody tries to resurrect it again, they do not understand what is going on here. The New Testament is actually a manual on how to live a Christian life under the new covenant, which includes the law of Christ.

Christians have a better covenant solely based on God’s grace. We did not make an arrangement with God in which we bargained with God on equal terms. The new covenant always means that the whole initiative is with God. The terms are His and we cannot alter them in the slightest. Jesus brought in a new covenant and a final one. There are no other covenants that are coming. He provided a new and permanent relationship with us and God. He ratified it with His own death and the shedding of His blood. Now we have complete forgiveness of sins and access to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. All I can say is Amen, and thank You, Jesus.

Let us pray. Lord, You are awesome. There is no one like You. The Word of God itself is awesome. Who could have thought of this or written these things down? What man could have such a plan? Only You, Lord, because You transcend time and eternity. You are greater than all things. You removed the old as the old pointed to the new in the Person of Christ. Now we know because of God’s grace to us, offering salvation to us as a free gift, received by faith alone which does not at all include works. It is in itself an amazing message. It is truly good news. I pray that if we know You as Lord and Savior, that we would rejoice because of it and worship You because of it. If there are those that do not know this, I pray that You would grant them faith and repentance so that they can come to You and see what You have allowed many others to see, that they can have a relationship with God because of what Jesus Christ has accomplished in this better covenant. Lord, we will praise You and give You all the honor that is due Your Name. I pray this in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.