10. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 through 10 this evening. Now by way of introduction, let me say a few things. You'll know the name Sir Arthur and Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes Detective novels.
And he was a bit of a practical joker. And one time he sent a telegram to 12 famous people in London who he knew and it read. Flea at Wentz all is discovered. And though all 12 were upright citizens, they all quickly left the country, for so it is said.
That story might be fictitious. But it illustrates the fact that a guilty conscience is a common thing in the church among Christians. Many are uncertain about their standing before God because of past sins or because of their present struggles with sin. Many genuine Christians walk around wondering if anyone else knows what they have done.
Fearful that the truth about them will one day leak out, worried that their story will become public knowledge. And behind that concern, which is serious enough in itself, is often the greater concern and fear that perhaps God still remembers these things and will hold them against them. And has it really forgiven them? Not really.
They fear perhaps God doesn't want anything to do with them. Or he doesn't want to be near to them. Or he doesn't want them to have any assurance of his mercy and love. It's a common thing among Christians.
And the letter was written to address just such people and to teach Christians. Not that it's OK to say, of course, but that in Christ Jesus God has taken away our sin. And in Christ Jesus God welcomes us into his presence. And so we want to think about these things from Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 through 10.
Let me invite you to consider God's holy and inspired word. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of the realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw new. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, quote, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired but a body you have prepared for me in burnt offerings and sin offerings. You have taken no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. When he said above, quote, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and in sin offerings, these are offered according to the law, then he added, behold, I have come to do your will, he does away with the first in order to establish the second.
And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all. Amen, this is good news. May the Lord write it on our hearts. Let's pray together.
Father, open the eyes of our hearts and the knowledge of Christ. And grant that we would know what are the glorious riches of your inheritance in the saints. And so help us to know our standing before you in and because of Jesus. In his name I pray, amen.
Well, the writer wants us to ask, what is effective for our forgiveness, for our acceptance with God? What's really effective? And he reminds them in verses one to four of the inadequacy of the old covenant substitutionary sacrifices of animals. They said, we don't give you what you need.
And then in verses five to seven, he says, he speaks of the adequacy of Christ's obedience to the will of God even unto death. And then in verses eight through 10, he speaks of the benefits to all who believe. And so let's think about first the inadequacy of the old covenant substitutionary sacrifices of animals. And we need to think about that because it's the gospel and not the law that provides what we need.
So where does he start? He reminds us once again, familiar territory here, verse one, about shadow, the law he says, verse one. For since the law has been a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near. So that language of shadow, remember.
Again, think of an artist painting on a canvas. And he begins with, well, under the old covenant with Moses, it was like a shadow or it was like a black and white pencil sketch of what was eventually to come, almost like an etch a sketch, an outline, a bit fuzzy, not all the details. But when Christ came, he came in living color. And he's the full color three-dimensional reality that Moses had a, well, etch a sketch as it were in black and white.
And so consequently, at the end of verse one, it says, it, that is this, the law, the law given through Moses is about all the sacrifices. It can never make perfect those who draw near. It simply didn't accomplish the job. In other words, the Old Testament sacrifices could not perfect or atone for it or forgive or reconcile people to God, not in themselves.
The real sacrifice could. And they foreshadowed the real sacrifice. And then in verse two, he explains why all this is. It proves the point in verse one.
Otherwise, would they not cease to be offered since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? The argument, again, is you can know that the Old Testament ceremonial sacrifices did not accomplish forgiveness because they were repeated. And they had to be repeated. But if they had been effective, they would have stopped.
I mean, if they really got you what you needed, you wouldn't need them anymore. You'd have what you needed. But they didn't stop because they didn't fully and finally really do an effective job instead. Well, what did they do?
Well, they continually reminded you of your sins. That's his language in verse three. But in these sacrifices, there's a reminder of sins. Every year, the Old Testament ritual was a continual reminder that your sins had not yet been adequately dealt with.
It was like opening your medicine cabinet and seeing your bottle of doctored prescribed pills and being reminded that you need to keep taking those pills because they have not yet effectively made you well. It constantly reminds you that you've not yet been cured. And so there was this, he says, consciousness of sin. Now, what does he mean by that?
He's not talking about that there was this regular and continual awareness that they had committed sin or that they were sinners. Just as even in the gospel, we don't lose sight of the fact that we still commit sin and we are sinners. I don't know if any of you caught me, but I don't confess a sin right now. I was up there right in front of you while our brother was speaking and I was adjusting my phone to begin to record this sermon when a text came up.
It was a pastoral text, a sectional text. But suddenly, as is my habit, I start scrolling. And I totally missed whatever our brother said at the conclusion of the scripture reading while I was scrolling through a sectional text. And then I realized, well, first of all, I wonder if they were all looking at me while I was doing that.
And then I realized what a chump that I'm about to get up and preach. But it's a reminder, isn't it? I mean, we all, you understand. I trust that many of you face the situation yourself in your own little way.
You even come to worship with all good intentions and then you find yourself distracted and daydreaming and dozing off and everything else. And the author here is not saying that Christians are no longer conscious of our own sins because we're forgiven in Jesus. More is he really saying that his point is not that the Old Testament believer were aware of their sin and their sinfulness as much as that they were aware in their conscience that their sin had not yet been fully atoned for. So that what we're saying is even the most mature believer today is still aware of their sins.
In fact, the more mature in Christ you are, the more you are aware of how far you fall short of the glory of God, how far you fall short of actually loving God and loving one another way that you want, your maturity makes you realize love is comprehensive and you fall short. We're weak in obeying and we continue to need Jesus. This is what mature Christians know. But what the Old Testament believer didn't have was the confidence that we have that the adequate substitute has come and has fully taken away and finally dealt with our sins once for all.
They knew they needed forgiveness, they knew that forgiveness was available from God and the sacrifices pointed them forward to the true Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But that Lamb had not yet come and the sacrifices didn't do what only he can do. So verse four, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. It's impossible.
Nobody has ever had their sins forgiven based on the Old Testament sacrifices. No animal's death could take your sin away. No animal's life was an adequate substitute for your life. Now, does that mean, as we've asked this question before, that believers under the old covenant weren't forgiven by God and they're not gonna see them in heaven and glory, no, no, that's not what it means.
They were forgiven, but they didn't receive that forgiveness through the law but through the gospel. Not through animal sacrifices, but through the sacrifice of Christ. As we noted previously, the author had pointed us to this notion that his death, the death of Jesus redeemed them from the transgressions committed under the old covenant. So that his death works both backwards and forwards.
It works forwards and covers your sins, though it was accomplished 2,000 years ago and it works backwards covering the sins of God's people committed before Christ went to the cross. So the author begins by saying and reminding them, no animals adequate for the task. But then he points them to the adequacy of Christ's obedience to the will of God, even under death in verses five to seven. Christ, he says, came to offer something better than the blood of bulls and goats.
Notice that language of verse five and following. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said and hear the author quotes the psalmist. She understands Jesus to have taken up his own prayer, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. So concerning the sacrifices, he says a couple of things. God did not desire them verse five, and God took no pleasure in them verse six. And of course we wanna ask, well, how could he say that?
Hadn't God himself commanded them? And of course he had, but these were just substitutes in place of what he really wanted. That could be seen in the story of Samuel and King Saul in first Samuel 1522. Let me remind you of the story.
When Samuel confronted the wicked King Saul, Saul had disobeyed an explicit command of God, not to take captive any livestock from his enemies. And when Samuel challenged him on that, Saul offered the sacrifice a few of his contraband animals to God, paying him off as it were, according to the letter of the lit medical system. And Samuel's stinging rebuke to him is famous, and it reads like this, "'Has the Lord as great the light in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fan of Reynolds." So Rick Phillips says this, what God desires from us is obedience, not sacrifices to cover our disobedience.
I mean, if given the choice, what the Lord has always wanted was us, you know, obedience, or consider the language of the prophets. Same idea, both in Micah and Hosea. I mean, it's a very famous passage, Micah 6, 6 to 8. You know this passage, with what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul? He has told you, oh man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you.
But to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. Or Hosea 6, 6, for I desire steadfast love, and not sacrifice the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings. You see the language of the prophets? God's saying to his people, what I really want is for you to have steadfast love.
I want you to know me. I want you then to do justly. I want you to love kindness. I want you to walk humbly before me.
That's what I really want. It's the same idea with Jesus when in March chapter 12, remember he's being questioned by that lawyer about what's most important. And Jesus says, you know, the most important thing, what's the great commandment is to love God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself. And describe, and Jesus had this follow-up discussed it in March chapter 12, described, said to him, you are right teacher.
And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that the man answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. Now, why is he saying that? Because he sees that the man gets, that what God really wants is us wholeheartedly in loving, trusting of ease.
He's always wanted us to say what Adam and he failed to say, and then do, Lord, I'll go where you want me to go, and I'll be what you want me to be, and I'll say what you want me to say, and I'll do what you want me to do, I'll give what you want me to give, and I'm actually gonna do it, I'll do it. Always and forever, perfectly. I'm wholly yours, Lord. He wants all that, because he wants all of you.
And it's not too much for him to ask. I mean, it's his right task that is our creator. He made us, and he owns us, and to refuse to belong to him is the height of gratitude, and it's not too much to ask, because it's the command of our king, and he expects us to follow him, and he refuses his rebellion, and it's not too much to ask. We Christians, well, Jesus is the husband of his bride, the church, and he laid down his life for us, and to refuse him is to scorn his love.
It's not too much to ask. It's not unreasonable. It's not unjust or unfair. It's right for him to ask that we be all in for him, but we haven't been.
Not on one of us, the way that we are. And if you'll see that, Jesus says to the man, the lawyer, well, you're not far from the kingdom, because if you see that about yourself, well, you'll quit trying to waltz your way into God's presence and offer your credentials as a reasonable way, he ought to open the door. You don't meet the qualifications. And if you see that, you might just realize then that you're spiritually bankrupt with nothing to offer him, and then see the good news, that he has everything to offer you freely as a gift.
And so you'll see, you need Jesus to do for you, what you can't do for yourself, to be for you before God, what you can't be in yourself. What will God accept instead of you, a qualified substitute? And the animal wouldn't do it, but Jesus does. And so here at the writer quotes Psalm 40, David speaks prophetically of Christ.
David understood that what God wanted was perfect moral obedience from a heart of love, not perfect sacrifices for moral disobedience. And he understood, as the writer of Hebrews is saying, that an amoral animal, dragged unwillingly to sacrifice, is no adequate substitute for a moral person. Who in the right mind would think that the moral justice of God could be satisfied by the blood of a bull or a goat. But another human being, one who is perfect, who volunteers and chooses to die in the place of another, well that's not only heroic, it is acceptable to God.
And David acknowledges that the sacrificial system couldn't adequately express his devotion to God. And he speaks, David speaks of his self giving as the answer, but of course Christ only has the true self giving that is adequate. And so what's that language for a second? Here I am, O Lord, I have come to do your will.
You don't desire these board offerings and sacrifices and forgive, but a body you have made for me, and here I am I have come to do your will. The writer of Hebrews sees that Christ's purpose, first and foremost was to do his heavenly father's will, to obey his father, to be the obedient son that Israel had never been under the old covenant, and to give to God what God always wanted from mankind, rendering perfect obedience, loving the Lord his God with all of his heart, all of his mind, all of his soul, all of his strength, and loving his neighbor as himself. And so in doing so, satisfying the righteous requirements of the law and substituting him to satisfy the righteous judgment of the law breaker, and in our place. And the father looked upon his son, if you remember what the father said time and again about his son, I like that his baptism.
This is my beloved son, and with him I am well pleased. So God will swap him to get you. He's adequate. And so let's make some applications as we close, just a number of points here.
What God requires, God provides. God requires sinners to be judged, and God judges his son for sinners. God requires his creatures to be perfectly righteous, and God gives his son to be perfectly righteous for us, that we would be righteous before God had him. Second, you need no one else.
You need nothing else. I mean, verses eight and nine here. When he said above, what he had just said, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices in offerings in burnt offerings and sin offerings. These are offered according to the law.
Then he added, behold I have come to be your will, and he does away with the first in order to establish the second. The second replaces the first. He is doing the will of God replaces sacrifices in burnt offerings and sin offerings. Now let's say some more things about this.
So this passage, I hope, as you understand it, because it does, it runs counter to the claims of some dispensationalists. And if you're not sure of that language, you'll ask me about it later. But it's a whole broad spectrum of folks with a particular perspective on, well, all sorts of issues. And certainly this doesn't describe all dispensationalists.
But some hold that there is a coming future time in which a temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem, and animal sacrifices will again be offered to make its own men per sin. And this passage just blows that up, right? It runs counter to that entirely. The perfect sacrifices come.
We need no other. In this passage, runs counter to our own efforts to offer our own sacrifices as an atonement. I mean, some sins that we have committed have so touched us with the sense of how maddening and saddening it is that we have done these sins. It's really hard to let them go.
And what we often try and do in order to deal with those sins is attempt to atone for those sins in some way by ourselves. We hear that in a popular language quite a bit when some sort of public person does something and everybody's against them. Well, then they'll say something like, well, I made a mistake and I'm going to atone for my sin. I'll do better to atone for my sin.
But the writer here said you aren't capable of doing better to atone for your own sin. You can't make up for them. You can't erase them. You can't cover them up by the good that you do in the future.
And he has offered to you. You could just flee to Christ, rest in Christ, trust in Christ, finish work. He makes people right with God. And so then this up ends our pursuit of obedience and holiness, not as an effort to gain God's favor, but because we already have it.
We aim to walk in obedience out of love for the Lord, not because we're trying to gain a right standing with God, but because we already have a right standing with God, graciously given in Christ. And notice the language here as well, the way in application he says, we have been sanctified at first then. And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Now we often speak in the language of we are being sanctified.
We talk about progressive sanctification. God, over time, is progressively making his people more like Jesus. And so one day we go home to glory, and we are made perfectly like Jesus. That's true.
But here the writer uses it in a different sense. He says we have been sanctified, not progressive, but completed. And the idea is that we have been set apart by God and for God to belong to God. And that's not.
So, how should we close? Well, let me tell you a story. I told this many, many years ago, but few things produce insecurity in me, like lining up to be picked for a team. And some years ago, 15 years ago now, at a staff training event for campus pastors like myself, ministers were in from all over the country, and I tasted those, and maybe you've tasted them.
Some of you were jocks and maybe you didn't. But that awkward, panicky feeling you get when there's a pickup game of flag football, and they've picked captains to choose teams. And they're staring at all the young bucks who are 10 years younger than you, and obviously faster and your fat, which is how I felt. It was.
And that's funny. And I was 39 years old at the time. Many of the campus ministers were a decade younger. And I'm sure I stood there, at least in my own heart and mind, kind of like that scared, restless elementary school kid waiting for somebody to realize my better qualifications, hoping they would.
And well, so they went on and on with the pick. And now I can say that I wasn't picked last. That poor soul. I also wasn't picked first.
And then we won. And so I kind of got over it, that awkward feeling. But one way or another, we all are, in various ways, forced to ask, do I have the qualifications that make me desirable and that make me adequate for this situation? Right?
College students, for the girls, sorority beds, until they get one. And then if they don't, what was I missing? Am I qualified? Will these people like me and accept me, choose me?
Maybe it's second dates that we weren't agreed to. I thought the first went well. Well, no. You didn't meet the qualifications.
Or maybe it's job interviews. You got the interview, and then you waited and waited and waited by the phone. And somebody else got the job. What was I missing?
What did I like? These kinds of settings can make us sort of neurotic with questions. What more do I need to be acceptable? What do these people want from me?
And if Hebrews says anything, it says that there are qualifications necessary to be near to God. That qualification is perfection. And I don't have that in myself. But there is perfection found in another, a mediator, by whom I can come to God.
And it must be made mine through being united to him. You need to belong to him and he to you. You need to be in him and he in you. And then you are robed in his righteous robes and acceptable in Christ the righteous one.
And that's a glorious gospel of good news. We need to have status in standing before God. And we have exactly what we need in Jesus. And so think how loved you are.
He loved you and gave himself for you. Think how forgiven you are. He died for you adequately for all you're sin. Think how welcomed you are.
He set you apart for yourself that you would belong to God. So then live and die for him who lived and died for you. The Lord make it so. Let's pray.
Father, bless you and thank you for the goodness of the gospel. Lord Jesus, thank you that you did everything we ought to have done and haven't done. And we are righteous in you. And so we pray that you would help us to know the glory of that, the sweetness of that, the joy of that, the relief of the pressure to measure up that we have, because you measured up all the way.
And so ease our burden, free our conscience from the sins that trouble us knowing that you have paid it all. And so help us to walk with you freely in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen.
Let's stand together and sing. Amen.