The Blood of Christ, Hebrews 9:11-28 (January 26, 2014)

Transcription

1 1 The Blood of Christ, Hebrews 9:11-28 (January 26, 2014) 11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 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 hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. 23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. PRAY Before we get into the sermon today, I want to remind you that next week several of the churches in Oxford will do something that, perhaps, has never been done before in this town. The pastors of several local churches First Baptist, Christ Presbyterian, College Hill Presbyterian, the Orchard, the Community Church of Oxford, Burns UMC, and others have met and decided that throughout the month of February we will all teach on the subject of marriage. More than that, the pastors have met and will all preach on marriage from the same passage in the Bible 1 Corinthians 7. We ve even studied the Bible together, put together outlines on that chapter, and collaborated on our individual sermons.

2 2 So for the next four weeks I ll preach on 1 Corinthians 7, which is a chapter devoted to the topic of marriage. I ll preach my sermon, and the other pastors will preach their sermons, but we ve come together, prayed together, studied together, planned together. Each week we ll play a brief video of one of the other pastors in town, and he ll introduce the himself and the sermon topic for the day just as a way for our churches to become familiar with one another. And I hope that over the course of the month a few of you might decide to go visit some of your friends at the other churches participating in this month-long emphasis on marriage, as a way of saying that though our churches do have real and important disagreements on secondary issues, on the main things the gospel, the authority of the Bible, what marriage is we agree and can come together. Then, on the last Sunday night of the month, February 23, all of our churches will gather at FBC they have the largest auditorium we ll sing some songs together and pray and all the pastors will gather on stage for a Q&A session. And the way you can participate is by ing or texting your questions on marriage to the address/phone number in your bulletin. So that starts next Sunday, February 2. Now, today, I had planned to preach on 1 Corinthians 10. But as I studied that passage last week I began to see I needed two weeks to preach it the way I wanted to. But I didn t want to preach the first half this week, then not be able to preach the second half the next week. I ve made this commitment to 1 Corinthians 7 beginning next week. So I called an audible after the bulletin was printed, unfortunately, and am instead preaching from Hebrews 9, and we ll finish 1 Corinthians 10 at a later date. Now this is a very important passage to me personally. On May 7, 2007, I read Hebrews 9 and 10 as a part of my daily Bible reading plan. I d read it several times before, but this time was different, because it was during that particular reading of Hebrews 9 especially that the Lord opened my eyes to something for the first time. I remember setting the Bible back down on my desk in my study, and just sitting there for a minute, and then I wrote these words in that Bible (I still have it): On May 7, 2007 I read Hebrews 9 and 10 and I understood the gospel at a deeper level than ever before. Why? What did I learn that day? Before that date, mind you, I was a Christian, I was a pastor. I understood that we are all sinners, and we need grace, and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but in some important way what was at the heart of the gospel hadn t yet clicked with me. But on that day I became convinced, and I ve had the same conviction every day since then, that at the heart of the gospel you ll find blood. Blood is what s vital to the gospel. That s what we ll talk about this morning. Three points: first, the unavoidability of the blood. Second, the power of the blood. Third, the freedom in the blood.

3 3 First, the unavoidability of blood. Re-read verse 24: 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. What s that about especially this language about the copies of the true things? In the Old Testament, the first 2/3 of your Bible, we read the story of the people of Israel. They were a nation, whom God chose to show special favor to he called them to be his people, and he established a covenant with Israel. And the way this covenant was maintained was that God gave his prophet Moses very detailed instructions about how to build a tent, which would service as a tabernacle, or a sanctuary. You can read about this in the book of Exodus. Inside that tent was a table, on which the bread of presence was to be set out as an act of worship, the lampstand to bring light in the tabernacle, and there was an altar on which incense was to always burn as a fragrant offering to the Lord. But in the innermost room of that tent, Moses was told to place the ark of the covenant which was a box covered in gold and had the stone tablets in it which contained the Ten Commandments. Now the ark of the covenant was the most holy object on the face of the earth to the people of Israel, because the top of the ark, the cover of the ark, was the mercy seat, and it was on the mercy seat, that between two angels, two cherubs, which had been made out of hammered gold, the Shekinah glory of God, the very presence of God, was said to dwell. And the covenant which God made with Israel through Moses 3500 years ago included animal sacrifices which would take place just outside that tent, on an altar. The people would bring animals to the priests of the covenant at the tent calves and goats and lambs and pigeons and the priests would slaughter the animals, they d slit their throats, and spill their blood just outside the tent, and place the animals on the altar to be burned as a sacrifice to God. And on certain holidays, like Passover, many animals would be slaughtered. The historian Josephus says that 250,000 sheep were slaughtered during one first century Passover festival. So, to the extent you think of priests in the Old Testament, don t picture the guys that you might see as illustrations in children s Bibles, in their robes and sandals, all clean and not a spot on them. No if you slaughter even a fraction of 250,000 sheep, you would be absolutely covered in blood. They wore sandals, but they would not have been able to see their feet from all the blood and gore covering them. Those guys on Passover wouldn t have looked like the illustrations in a children s Bible but instead like something out of a horror movie. Then once per year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, the high priest of Israel had divine sanction, permission, to walk into the innermost room of the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, where the Shekinah glory of God dwelt. He was the only man who could ever go in that room, and that was the only day

4 4 he could go in. And on that day the high priest (you can read about this in Leviticus 16) would personally slaughter one bull and one goat, gather up their blood, go into that room with it, take his finger, dip it into the blood, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. Now the obvious question was: why all the blood? Answer: because Israel was guilty they were guilty of committing sins. Every time the people of Israel gathered around the temple and saw those priests hacking into those poor animals it was a reminder they were guilty. They were guilty of sinning against God. And blood is, in almost every culture, used a symbol, a metaphor, for guilt. For example, in Shakespeare s play MacBeth, the king of Scotland, Duncan, is murdered by MacBeth, one of his thanes, because his wife, Lady MacBeth, basically bullied him into it. She wants MacBeth to be king. But then later by the end of the play Lady MacBeth is racked with guilt for what they ve done, and she walks her castle in Inverness in a psychotic state, washing her hands over and over again trying to wipe imaginary blood stains off her hands. Do you remember from your tenth grade English what she said? Out, damned spot. Out, I say! and she washes and washes but she can t get the blood off her hands. You may think, Okay, that s very interesting, but I don t see what it has to do with me. Friends, it has everything to do with you, everything to do with me, because just like Israel and just like Lady MacBeth we are guilty of our sins, and we all try to wipe the blood off of our hands. Some of you have done something that you are very ashamed of, you ve said something to your kids, your parents, your spouse, your best friend, or you ve done something that you ve wished a thousand times that you could take back, but you can t, and you ve tried over and over again to make it right with the people you hurt but things will never be the same and you feel guilty. You wipe and wipe but the blood will not come off. And maybe your guilt isn t so severe maybe your guilt is a lot more mundane than that, but it can still be crippling. A lot of you probably feel guilty about how you use your time. You re not working as hard at school as you ought, and it shows. You re not working as hard in your job, and it shows. You re not working very hard at keeping the house clean, and it shows. You re not spending enough time with your kids and your wife, and it shows. You re watching too much television, you re eating too much, you re not exercising enough. Everyone in this room is at least walking around every day with a low-grade guilt because we know we aren t performing like we should. Some of you I m sure feel guilty because of sexual immorality maybe you re not having sex with your boyfriend, girlfriend, but you do other things and you can t match that behavior up with Ephesians 5:3: But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality And you look at your life and you know there s more than a hint.

5 5 Maybe you re looking at pornography. And you feel guilty you want so badly to wipe away the blood from your hands but it won t come off. And far more often that you want to admit, within a matter of weeks or days or even hours, you go right back to the sin. So what do we do? We try to make up from what we ve done; we try to atone for our sins. We say, I m going to be better I m going to be kinder to people, I m going to volunteer more, I m going to give more of my money away. I m going to start exercising, I m going to start eating right. I m going to start going to church, I m going to start reading my Bible, I m going to get up early and have my quiet time, I m going to get my life right, I m going to start doing some good, and then I ll feel good about myself. But that s no answer, and you know why? The Bible says you cannot, through any act of your own, atone for any sin you ve committed. You cannot take away your guilt through any amount of Bible reading or hard work or good deeds. You cannot atone for your sins. For those of you who ve tried, you know. When you feel guilty about something in your life, you can go out and work as hard as you possibly can all day for other people, from dawn until dusk, volunteering your time, doing good, but when you lie down to go to sleep the guilt comes back, and you are powerless to stop it. You will toss and turn all night. You re like Lady MacBeth you ll wash and wash but you can t get the spot out. If you re here today and not a Christian, welcome we are glad you re here. But I want you to understand very clearly what s at the heart of Christianity. Christianity is the only religion on the planet which teaches that there is nothing you can do to make up for the bad things you ve done. Christianity says you have done bad things, wrong things, hurtful things, mean things, but you can t make up for it. But more than that: Christianity is the only religion on the planet that says it s dangerous to even try to make up for the bad things you ve done. You say, How can doing good things take you further from God? Because when you by your own actions try to atone for your sins it makes you feel self-righteous. And this is what self-righteous people do: you look around at the people who aren t trying as hard as you are to justify yourself, to improve yourself, to make up for the bad things you ve done, and you hate them. You look down on them. You disdain them. But when you do that you re only pushing yourself further and further from God. Or, put another way, you think you re wiping off the blood, but you re only driving the stain deeper in. 9 He [Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust,

6 6 adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get. Luke 18:9-12. What s that Pharisee doing? He s working hard to make himself righteous in God s sight, doing all these good deeds, but instead of bringing him closer to God and atoning for his sins, it s driving him away from God and making him sin more. He s not kinder, more compassionate, more tender for doing these good deeds he s hateful, he s proud, he s arrogant. Friends, the hardest thing about a Christian is not so much repenting of your sins you get that, you know you re supposed to stop doing bad things the hardest thing about being a Christian is not so much repenting of your sins but repenting of your damnable good works. Realizing that anything you do trying to atone for your sins only drives you further from God. You remember that Daniel Day-Lewis movie from a few years ago? There Will Be Blood, where he was an oil man? Every time someone mentioned that movie I thought of Hebrews 9, because Hebrews 9 not only says there will be blood, but there must be blood. It s unavoidable. In Hebrews 10, we read this: For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Hebrews 10:4. The Bible is clear no animal sacrifice, no sacrifice any sinful human being can come up with, can cleanse us from our sins. Nothing can wash away the spot. Is there then any hope? Second, the power of the blood. Hebrews 9:11-12: 11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. It s not just any blood that can make us take out the spot it s only the blood of Jesus. The book of Hebrews tells us that the tabernacle itself in Israel in the Old Testament was a copy of a true tabernacle that exists somewhere outside of this created universe, and when Jesus died on the cross he actually entered somehow into that true tabernacle, by virtue of his own blood, redeemed us from all the sins we have committed. He has cleansed us he s gotten the spot out, he s remained our stains! It is only his blood that can atone for our sins. But of course that raises the question: why is the blood of Jesus the only blood that can remove the guilt? Why does only his blood have the power? 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Hebrew 9:27-28.

7 7 Jesus Christ had to bear our sins what s that talking about? Friends, our sin problem isn t just that we feel guilty, that we might feel guilty over what we ve done that we can t sleep or even that we re driven to psychosis like Lady MacBeth. Our sin problem is much greater than that. The Bible says that we have offended a just, holy God. And because he s just he will not leave sin unpunished. But rather than give us what we deserve, God gave us his Son. And Jesus Christ on the cross somehow entered into that greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by human hands, and by his blood cleansed us from not just our psychological guilt for our sins but our actual guilt before God that we have in our sins and purified us from all unrighteousness. Only Jesus blood has the power to do that. And there are so many hymns about this. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Or, I hear the Savior say, Thy strength indeed is small, child of weakness watch and pray, find in me thine all in all. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow. Some churches, some churches in our community, have taken hymns that talk about the blood of Jesus Christ out of their hymnals they say they don t want to focus on negative themes like guilt and our need for atonement, because they say that we re not really guilty before God. In fact, these church leaders have actually said they are doing whatever they can so that future generations in their church will not hear about the blood of Jesus, because God is not displeased with them in any way, shape, or form. Well, friends, I simply don t see how anyone could read Hebrews 9 or any one of a hundred other texts in the Bible and come up with such an idea. We all stand guilty before God, and the only thing that can take away our guilt is the blood of Jesus. But I won t just pick on the liberal churches. I went to a conservative, Bible-believing seminary (or at least it was supposed to be). And I had a full professor in that institution tell me that you shouldn t sing about the blood of Jesus on a Sunday morning because it might really confuse your guests. And this was how he put it he said a visitor might say, Why are these people singing about blood? What in the world is that about? I m not coming back here. And I remember thinking, I guess that could be confusing or the preacher could just explain it. Again, if you re here this morning and not a Christian, welcome. But I want you to know that we re not going to pull and bait-and-switch on you. We re going to try to entice you to come to our church through gimmicks or stunts or by trying in some way to downplay what we believe the central truths of the faith are to you. It s just too serious to do that. We, all of us, need a big, bloody sacrifice named Jesus, because we are guilty, we are guilty before God for our sins, we feel the guilt of our sins, and nothing but the blood of Jesus can wash our guilt away.

8 8 Third, the freedom of the blood. Friends, if you see the power of the blood of Jesus, and most importantly, if you see there s power in the blood for you, it sets you free. Four ways: first, in the blood of Jesus you can see the moral perfection of God. Friends, we all understand inherently that evil can t go unchecked. Nobody admires corrupt judges who accept bribes and turn a blind eye toward dangerous criminals, do we? No one wants a judge like that. Well, in the God of the Bible, we don t have a judge like that. We have a God who will make sure every wrong is avenged. He promises that in Scripture. But the beauty of the gospel is that if we take shelter under the blood of Jesus, his vengeance won t reach us, because Jesus bears our sins. He takes them upon himself. So once you understand the gospel and the blood of Jesus Christ rightly, you see that Christians have the best of all worlds. We have a God who is determined to punish all sin, but he won t punish those who have come to him through Christ for forgiveness. He won t punish us, even though we deserve it, if we come to him through Christ and say, like the tax collector in Luke 18, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Friends, our God loves to answer that prayer he s just yet merciful. Moral perfection. Second, in the blood of Jesus you can see the love of God. You may rightly ask (in fact, it s a very good sign if you ask), why would Jesus sacrifice himself for me? And the answer is found in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. And then, if you re really thinking, you ll say, Okay, well, then, why does God love me? And the answer is: we don t know. He just decided to love us. We have a lot of college-age guys, possibly looking for a girlfriend, maybe a wife. I want to give you a helpful tip on how to deal with your girl. Sooner or later, once you ve determined the relationship and gotten serious, she s going to ask you, Do you love me? of course you will say, Yes, baby, I love you. But then she s going to ask: But why do you love me? In response, you could say to her, Well, your daddy has a lot more money than the other girls. Or, you could say, You let me do whatever I want to do, that s why I love you. Those might be honest things to say, but they d also be stupid things to say. Or, you could choose more diplomatic and say, I love you because you re beautiful. Or, I love you because you re so kind to other people. Or I love you because you are so fun to be around. But even with those great complements, if those really are the reasons you love her, then your love for her might be conditional. And she may not always be kind, and she may not always be fun. And even if to you she always will be beautiful, she won t always feel beautiful. The only thing safe response to the question, Why do you love me? is this: I love you

9 9 just because I love you. And guess what, friends? That s what God says to us! I love you just because I love you. Except when he says it to us, it s true. The blood of Jesus Christ is proof of the first order that God loves you, he gave his only son for you so that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God that is found in Christ Jesus our Lord and his blood. Third, in the blood of Jesus you can begin obeying for the right reasons. You know, it s good to work hard. It s good to remain sexually pure. It s good and right to be kind to one another. God does want us to do those things. But they are only helpful when you do them out of the knowledge that they won t affect your relationship with God one way or the other. It s only good when you re not doing it to be self-righteous. The blood of Jesus Christ means that there is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and nothing you can do to make God love you less. His love is based on grace; you can t earn it or change it. As John Newton wrote: Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before, since we have seen His beauty, are joined to part no more. Fourth, in the blood of Jesus you can begin to live in true security. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance Hebrews 9:15a. That last phrase is what I want to focus on: the promised eternal inheritance. Friends, if you ve taken shelter under the blood of Jesus, then one day, you ll either die and go and be with Jesus, or Jesus will return and bring you to him. Either way, though, if you are covered by the blood of Jesus, you are absolutely secure nothing can shake you. Do you believe that? I doubt you do, not really, not thoroughly I doubt I do. You know why? Because while we wait for our inheritance, we don t live as if we re absolutely secure in the blood of Jesus. We still live as if your security is all up to us. We are under so much pressure to build secure lives for ourselves, for our kids. We work and we work to have a nice house in a nice neighborhood, nice cars, nice vacations, nice activities for our kids but we re tempted to make those things our security. And if you do, you know what will happen? All those nice things won t feel like security, they ll feel like a prison. Every time we think about those nice things, we ll get anxious and dissatisfied. It s not wrong to have these things, but if you trust in them for your security to make you happy, you will be miserable. It s either the blood bought inheritance of Jesus Christ or nothing at all. Addison Leitch was a professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell up in Massachusetts, and one day two students came up to him and said, We re both Christians, and we believe God is calling us to the mission field. But then we told our parents and they said, You ve had a religious experience how wonderful! But first you need to get some security: get a masters degree, then get a job and a couple of years of experience behind you, and save up a nestegg, and then you ll have the security you need to do whatever

10 10 you want to do. And the students, two girls, asked Addison Leitch, What do we tell them? And Leitch said, Go home and tell your parents that one day a trapdoor is going to open under your feet, and you re going to fall into the everlasting arms or nothing at all. And you think a masters degree will give you security? Friends, there s no such thing as security anywhere in this universe apart from the blood of Christ. Do you know that? Then if you do you can begin to enjoy the things of this world without being enslaved by them. There is power, power, wonder working power in the blood of Jesus. Amen. Let s pray together. PRAY