If you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Hebrews, chapter 9. As we return to our study in Hebrews, chapter 9, it's been a few weeks since we studied verses 15 to 18. And so after the reading, I want us to do a brief review of those verses and then press forward in verses 18 to 22. This entire passage is about the new covenant mediator.
We have a gracious relationship with God because of the new covenant mediator. A mediator is a go-between who reconciles two or more parties at odds with one another. The Christ is the mediator of the covenant. And a covenant is a binding relationship with mutual blessings and responsibilities.
And a covenant has life and death consequences. It's a relationship with God that is binding. You can't just walk away from it. And God just doesn't walk away from it.
And there are consequences of either life or death, depending upon faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the relationship. And in the relationship, there are benefits and there are blessings as well as responsibilities. And the writer of Hebrews is saying Christ is the mediator of the new covenant. He brings us into a binding relationship with God, a relationship of grace based on his finished work for us in which our unfaithfulness to God is covered by his faithfulness.
And the death we deserve is taken on by Christ upon the cross that we might have life. And so let's hear about this new covenant mediator from Hebrews chapter 9 verses 15 to 22 and pay attention to the necessity of the death of the new covenant mediator. Let me invite you to hear God's word beginning in verse 15. Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.
Since the death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant for where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death since it is not enforced as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hiss and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.
And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood, both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Amen. This is God's Word.
He write it on our hearts, let's pray. Father, we ask that you would be our teacher, that you would lift high Christ before our eyes and draw all hearts to him. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
Well, here in the passage we have three big things, the blessings and beneficiaries of the new covenant mediators work. That's verse 15. And then the death of the new covenant mediator verses 16 and 17. And then the blood of the new covenant mediator verses 18 to 22.
The first two points will take very briefly as by way of review from three or four weeks ago and then we'll press on into the third point. So here's the first point. The blessings and beneficiaries of the new covenant mediators work, verse 15. Notice, therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant.
So that those who are called may receive the promise eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. So the writing here mentions two huge blessings. First redemption from transgressions committed under the first covenant. What does that mean?
Well, Jesus death redeems. That is, he purchases people for God by paying the debt that they owe for their sins. And who does he redeem? The author says those who committed sins under the first covenant.
That is the covenant God made with Israel through Moses. I think of most of your book of Exodus and Leviticus and so on. So, so if you ask then, did the first covenant that God made with Israel through Moses, did it in of itself redeem people, the writer of Hebrews answers, no. They were not redeemed from their transgressions committed under the first covenant.
So how were people in the days of the first covenant, or they were not redeemed from those sins by the first covenant? That's what the author's saying. How were the people then in the days of the first covenant, the old covenant, the covenant God made with Israel and Moses? How were they redeemed?
They were redeemed not by their obedience to the Ten Commandments, if some have falsely asserted. They were redeemed by Jesus, fulfilling the righteous requirements of the Ten Commandments for them and suffering the judgment due to them for their breaking of the Ten Commandments by his life of obedience and by his suffering death upon the cross. He provided a sacrifice of atonement that redeemed anyone who was ever redeemed in the days before his coming. So what the writer is saying is that the cross, the work of Christ upon the cross, works not only forward to our days at his death covers the sins we committed long after Jesus actually died for them, but the cross work of Christ actually works backward and covers as well the sins of people who lived before him and trusted in the Messiah.
The cross of Christ looks backward and forward just as people before Christ look forward to his coming, even as we who live after his coming look back upon it and find it him our salvation. So all those who were saved under the old covenant, or we might just simply say anybody who has ever been saved from their sins has been saved by the redemption of Christ. So the others say, and the second blessing briefly here is the reception of the promised eternal inheritance. Therefore verse 15 he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive what the promised eternal inheritance.
They are not simply rescued from their failures, but they have a future and a hope, a promised inheritance in well as the rest of the Bible smells it out, the new heavens and the new earth as co-heirs with Christ of all things. And who are the beneficiaries of these benefits? The writer says, and we noted this last time as well. Those who are called, he says, called that is by God.
As Paul in Romans 8, 30 says, those who got predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's the golden chain of salvation. The only people who are glorified and enjoy life in the promised new heavens and new earth are those who are justified. Now through faith in Christ, by God pardoning all of their sins and accepting them as righteous in his sight because of Christ's righteousness accounted to them and our sin accounted to him.
And the only people who are justified are those who are called, that is effectively called by God, into union with Christ, by faith in Christ. And those who are effectively called are those who God predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the first born among many brothers. So we see the twofold blessing here of the new covenant mediators work and those who benefit are those who trust in him, and they do so because of God. Now that's the first point in very brief review.
And the second is in verses 16 and 17 where he speaks of the death of the new covenant mediator. Notice that language for where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established for a will takes effect only at death, since it is not before as long as the one who made it is alive. Very briefly, we noted that the death of Jesus is explained either in the language of a will or of a covenant. That is the word translated in verses 16 and 17 as will is the same word translated in verse 15 and verse 18 as covenant.
And that's because the word can legitimately be translated either way and many frankly, even the reform tradition understand as the ESV does, the author to be saying the word will here, who benefits, who inherits. Well, a will tells you who receives and what they receive. And so understand it that way. The new American standard version actually translates it consistently as the word covenant.
And many other fine-reformed and other interpreters understand it that way because again as we saw previously in verse 17 more literally translated, a covenant is valid or made firm or secured only over dead bodies. That is when you see covenants made in the Old Testament scriptures, and this was often true even outside of the Bible in the ancient area of society, when you made some kind of binding committed relationship between saying a big king and a little king, they made vows to one another, they made promises to one another, and they often did that over dead bodies. We saw that in the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. And God wanted to reassure Abraham that God was utterly serious about his covenant relationship and all its blessings.
Remember you put Abraham to sleep after telling Abraham to cut the animals in half and lay them on either side of a kind of aisle and then God as it were in symbolic form walked between the pieces while Abraham slept. And that was a picture of what would ordinarily happen. The one in between the pieces would be saying, may it be done to me what was done to these animals if I'm not faithful to this covenant relationship. It was calling upon oneself a curse, the covenant curse.
And the glorious thing about the gracious covenant with Abraham is that Abraham as it were slept from the whole thing. I mean, he saw it in a vision, but he didn't actually have to pass through the pieces. God didn't require of him to walk and take that vow. God took that vow on both God's behalf, which he didn't have to do because God never lies and God never fails.
I mean, he did it for our benefit that he would take that kind of vow. But he also did it on behalf of Abraham. If you fail me, which Abraham will go on to do time and again, how will you not be cursed on account of your failure? Well, God was saying, I will take the curse for you.
And you go right from Genesis 15 to the cross, whereupon the cross, the son of God is cursed on our behalf because that's what we deserve. And so the writer here probably in my view has in mind that a covenant is valid over dead bodies. And he's saying that the mediator that of the covenant had to die for the benefits and the blessings of the covenant to come to us. And so the covenant of grace is in effect over the dead body of Christ.
Well, in any case, that's by way of review. Now let's press on to the last one a little bit longer, but not a ton. Versus 18 to 22, he turns our attention to the blood of the new covenant mediator. Of course, he's died and his blood has been spilled, so to speak.
Verse 18, therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. Again, the Mosaic covenant, the old covenant, was inaugurated. With the shedding of blood. It's a double negative.
It wasn't inaugurated without blood. And what he's doing is reminding us, of course, of Exodus chapter 24, which if you recall, is where Moses spills blood and splatters the people and the book of the covenant. Verse 19, he remarks on it, for when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and charlotte woolen his. And sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.
That blood was thrown on the altar of sacrifice, that blood was sprinkled on the people. And when Moses confirms that God has brought his people into a saving gracious covenant relationship in Exodus 24, 8, he says, behold, as he sprinkles this blood on the people, this is the blood of the covenant. It's the blood that seals the covenant that inaugurates it, that secures it. It's the blood that spares your judgment.
It's the blood that unites you with God. Now why did Moses use blood mixed with water and use scarlet wool and hisseth? What's all that about? Well, perhaps the water thinned the blood and expanded its quantity so that it could be readily splattered or flung.
The wool of the hisseth, which is a plant, it's a shrub, it's in the mint family, it grows one or two feet tall. Well, that was used to be dipped into the blood to then fling it. That's why in Psalm 51, after David commits his sin with Bathsheba and has basically her husband essentially murdered and finally is brought to repentance and he acknowledges his sin to the Lord and he cries out, part of his prayer in Psalm 51, 7, is purge me with hisseth and I shall be clean, wash me and I will be wider than snow. What's he doing?
He's calling on God to cleanse him from his sin by the application of the blood of the atoning sacrifice. And he's imagining it just as Moses did it in the temple and with the people. I want you to take hisseth and dip it in the blood and splatter me with it that I might be clean. Now let me know a few things about this with regard to sprinkling.
I think it's a helpful observation to note that first with regard to the mode of cleansing in the Old Testament and then with regard to the agent of cleansing. So two things, first the mode, it's clear that the writer of Hebrews has been thinking of Old Testament washings that bring cleansing. In fact, he used that language of washing or more literally baptism in Hebrews chapter 9 verse 10 when he spoke of food and drink in various washings regulations for the body. That word washings is the word baptism.
He's thinking of Old Testament, Hebrews 9, he's thinking of Old Testament, baptismal rights, various baptisms. And then he illustrates the cleansing that comes by these baptisms by noting the application of the cleansing agent is how? Spice wrinkling. Verse 13 speaks of the blood of goats and bulls in the sprinkling of the vile verses with the ashes of a heifer.
It's an obscure text from numbers we looked at previously. In verse 13, he speaks of a baptism in which the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of the vile persons sanctified for the purification of the flesh. That's numbers 19, a clean person who takes hissip, dips it in a vessel filled with water and the ashes of ever. And it's used to make a person ceremonially clean and allow them to come into the presence of God with the people of God even at the temple.
And it's applied by sprinkling. In verse 19 here, the writer, as we already read, speaks of sprinkling the book and all the people. That's a reference as we noted, Exodus 24, where that Old Testament baptismal right was to dip the hissip and splatter. And in verse 21, he speaks of the process by which Moses sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry.
And that picks up on Leviticus 8, chapter 16, which provides the background. The priest was to dip, you remember his finger in the blood of the bull used for sacrifice. And then the high priest one time a year could go into the most holy place and sprinkle or fling upon the mercy seat, the blood. So this was all a ceremonial means of cleansing the children of Israel by which they could know that God considered them clean from their sin.
And the application was by sprinkling. And so it's not too far afield to appreciate that when the Bible speaks of baptism, it doesn't merely speak of baptism as immersion or immersion only. Sometimes you'll hear from our dear brothers and sisters who hold an immersion only perspective that baptism means immersion and that's all it ever means. And that is a use of the word that you can find in the dictionary.
But it's far more important to look at all the uses of a word and how the Bible actually uses the word and here in Hebrews 9 we have a case where the Bible speaks of washings or baptisms by means of sprinkling. You shouldn't be surprised then when Ezekiel in chapter 36, he announces the coming new covenant in this glorious language. He says, God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules and I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. This the outward visible sign of applying water to a person in Christian baptism symbolizes the inward invisible reality of being cleansed from moral filth and idolatry and that is symbolized properly by sprinkling which Christian baptism in which case Christian baptism is a symbol the water is a symbol for the blood of Christ.
And so that's one important implication of the passage concerning the mode of application of the cleansing agent. But then also notice here in verses 19 and 22 the agent of cleansing is blood and I don't think I need to reiterate all those verses to you for you to hear again that it is by blood and without the shedding of blood verse 22. Indeed he says under the law almost everything is purified with blood but without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. And again part of his point is that the Old Testament blood ritual did not in and of itself forgive sins it pictured the need for the forgiveness of sins and it pictured God's provision for the forgiveness of sins but it was not God's ultimate solution for the forgiveness of sins the blood of bulls and goats which cannot take away sin but the true lamb of God his blood cleanses us even we've sown.
And so it's also interesting when you consider this language from Exodus 24 where Moses says this is the blood of the covenant when you get to the Lord's Supper in the New Testament and Jesus is celebrating the Passover with his people with his disciples he speaks of the blood of the covenant but in that case he speaks of my blood of the covenant or this is the this cup is the new covenant in my blood because that's truly the blood because his death is truly the death that brings about our redemption and our cleansing. Let me just close with a few points of application then first the exception that proves the rule what do you mean by that. Well verse 22 mentions that again almost everything is purified with blood. It's an interesting language almost everything but not everything and that's because in Leviticus chapter 5 we find the rules for various kinds of offerings most of which were blood offerings but within the rules for the sin offering if you brought for a sin offering well you would bring a lamb but if you couldn't afford a lamb you could bring two turtle doves or two pigeons and they would die and their blood would be spilled but if you couldn't afford two turtle loves or two pigeons then Leviticus 5 said you shall bring for yourself you're offering for the sin that you've committed a tenth of an ephah that is about two courts of fine flower for a sin offering which of course isn't a bloody offering at all it's an unbloody offering it's an inexpensive offering it's the exception to the bloody offerings it was ultimately acceptable though unbloody because it like all the rest were ultimately signs and symbols of the greater reality of Christ himself and so Leviticus isn't setting aside the principle that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins but it was a gracious concession of God to the needs of people in extreme poverty and it's the exception that proves the rule without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins but of course what this means is God was saying to his people that my work for you isn't based on your ability to pay for it yes if you have the wealth to do it you bring a lamb and if you're lower you know income you bring a pigeon or you bring a couple pigeons and if you can't even afford that a little bit of flower we'll take that too because my forgiveness is for everybody across every socioeconomic class and I will not have them denied the assurance of my pardon ultimately through Christ himself so that's the first application the exception that proves the rule and so none of us here should write off any of the lowest of means then secondly the effectiveness of his blood by way of application a legend says that during a serious illness the devil came to Martin Luther's sick room and looked at him with a triumphant smile and rolled a big scroll which unlound by itself it's hard to know if this is a dream that Luther had or or something like that but Luther read from the scroll the long and fearful record of his own sin one by one and one after another and at first he reeled in despair but then suddenly Luther cried out one thing you have forgotten one thing you've forgotten devil the rest is all true but one thing you left out the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanses us from all sin as Luther said I mean the accuser of the brethren has a long scroll and he and that scroll disappeared when Luther remembered the truth because of the blood of Christ we are invited well to confess our sins and first John says if we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness through Christ and the second application here's the third and final how does it change you then to believe well let's put it this way if some have in criticism of the gospel put it God did violence to his son and that some have said makes Christianity a violent religion and actually encourages violence by its adherents what would you say to that how does it change you to believe that God did violence well let's put it this way to himself upon the cross when God the son shed his own blood so he could be forgiven it doesn't make you violent it makes you forgiven people leave that message it makes you forgiven a widow of a one of the Egyptian martyrs who were martyred for their testimony of faith in Christ before the Isis terrorists on Palm Sunday 2017 the widow of Amnesim who was martyred she was interviewed on TV and she gave her testimony saying this I'm not angry at the one who did this I am telling him may God forgive you and we also forgive you I forgive you you put my husband in a place that I couldn't have dreamed of heaven and I wish I was there beside him and I thank you well the I mean that's that would be stunning to hear from a young widow a new winner the news commentator was Florida and said this Egyptian Christians are made of steel and oh how great is the amount of forgiveness you have if your enemy knew how much forgiveness you have for them he would not believe it if it was my father I could never say this these people have so much forgiveness this is their faith and religious conviction these people are made from a different substance well we're not made from a different substance we're needy people who have found God to have supplied all that we need in the blood of his son by which we have been forgiven freely at cost of Christ and so we can forgive others freely in light of him let's pray father make it so grant that in our own hearts we would really again believe even on a new day a new evening another week in month and year of of piling up our failures and our sins our our failure to love you and love others as we ought and are crossing the boundaries you have said are trespassing against your law the ways that we have sin we thank you for the gift of Christ we confess them all and say we need them thank you for that hope we have in him and grant than that we would be forgiving people likewise like you in Jesus name I pray Amen Amen