277 1 The Supreme Sacrifice

The old system of Jewish laws gave only a dim foretaste of the good things Christ would do for us. The sacrifices under the old system were repeated again and again, year after year. But even so, they could never save those who lived under their rules.

If they could have one offering, if they could have one offering, would have been enough. The worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and their feeling of guilt would be done. But just the opposite happened.

Those yearly sacrifices reminded them of their disobedience and guilt instead of relieving their minds, for it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats really to take away sins. That is why Christ said as he came into the world, Oh God, the blood of bulls and goats cannot satisfy you. So you have made ready this body of mine for me to lay as a sacrifice upon your altar.

You were not satisfied with the animal sacrifices slain and burnt before you as offerings for sin. Then I said, I have come to do your will, to lay down my life just as the scriptures said that I would. After Christ said this about not being satisfied with the various sacrifices and offerings required under the old system, he then added, Here I am.

I have come to give my life. He cancels the first system in favor of a far better one. Under this new plan, we have been forgiven and made clean by Christ dying for us once and for all.

Under the old agreement, the priest stood before the altar day after day offering sacrifices that could never take away our sins. But Christ gave himself to God for our sins as one sacrifice for all time and then sat down in the place of highest honor at God's right hand, waiting for his enemies to be laid under his feet. For by that one offering, he made forever perfect in the sight of God all those whom he is making holy.

Well, those are sublime words, are they not? Now I'd be grateful if you'd have your Bibles open at the epistle to the Hebrews in the ninth chapter, and let me read to you the 25th verse through to the end once again. Nor yet that he that is our Lord Jesus should offer himself often as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with the blood of others. For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world.

But now, once in the end of the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. There is, I believe, and I should be corrected if I'm wrong at lunch, as we have a couple of Italians who'll be dining with us, in that language the word supremo, which really means the person who is most superlative in achieving anything, the best performer, the greatest actor, the grandest musician, the supremo.

Some while ago, we haven't heard that much of him of late, thank goodness, the words of a certain boxer used to be recorded in the press or heard through other public media, that he was the greatest, the best boxer, the supremo. Well, why am I saying this? Just as introductory remarks to enliven your interest as we come to certain things that the writer of this Hebrew epistle has to say concerning our Lord Jesus. You see, the whole of the opening chapters of this epistle make a contrast between other people in history and our Lord Jesus.

We discover, for instance, in the first chapter that Jesus is greater than the prophets. We discover later on that he was greater than Abraham. He is greater than Moses.

He is greater than Aaron. He is greater than Melchizedek. He is indeed the supremo, the one who is the greatest of all.

And the height of his achievements during his earthly ministry is well identified for us in the closing words of that 26th verse of the ninth chapter of this epistle, that Jesus Christ, once in the end of the world, hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. No greater exploit was ever achieved by any man. No higher height was ever climbed.

Jesus stands supreme. And that, incidentally, is the reason why he has been identified not only in this world, but in the world which is yet to come as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. That is why he bears that name which is above every name.

There is none who can contest with our Lord Jesus for the prize of supremest worth in this world. He has it. He has offered the greatest sacrifice and has achieved the greatest of objectives.

And that, my friends, is what you must have in mind when you come to consider, as you will now do with me, these words in this 26th verse. We are looking at the ministry of the greatest man who ever lived. We are considering the best achievement that this world has ever looked upon.

And so I want simply that God be gracious, with an anointing of his Spirit, to open up these words to you. And let's first of all consider this one who attempted the most difficult of all tasks. And then let's see from my verse how he did it very effectively.

And finally, we close down by considering how he achieved this entirely on his own. The supremo attempted the most difficult task in this world, the putting away of sin. That was a Herculean labor.

On the human level, it was akin to taking away the rock of Gibraltar and causing it to sink in the sea. It was as difficult on the human level as taking away all the grains of sand from the Sahara. In other words, here we are contemplating someone who on the human level did something that was absolutely impossible, attempting a most difficult task that others in one sense have attempted or claimed to have put their hand to, and yet with abysmal failure.

You see, what Jesus has done, the very context of this chapter and the one that follows, indicates the Jewish sacrificial system was unable to achieve. Here were the priests busy in the sanctuary, in the tabernacle, and later on in the temple at Jerusalem. They prepared for that great day of atonement.

The high priest was resplendent in a simple dress, and all the eyes of the people were upon him as he entered into the temple and went into the holy place, and ultimately into the holiest place of all with some blood and applied it to the mercy seat. It was a most moving spectacle at which thousands of Hebrews down the years were present, and yet we read that the offering by the blood of goats and calves, verse 12 of chapter 9, in and of themselves could not atone for the sins of the Jewish people. Here were attempts made, but the day of atonement would come back obviously every 12 months, and the high priest would do exactly the same.

And in the interim period, the minor priests, they too would be attending to the religious needs of the people, offering sacrifices, busily engaged in trying to deal with something that really was beyond their power to achieve, the absolving of Hebrews from the guilt that they had accumulated by the breaking of God's holy law. I tell you, the putting away of sin was something that even the Jewish priests were unable themselves to do successfully. But more than this, let me spell out most clearly right now in the 20th century that living a holy life can't do this.

There are some people who seem to suggest, well, provided I give 100 pence to the pound, provided that from now on I live a life that is of a good ethical standard, then my sins, they are done away with. They will never be brought back to my reckoning. I shall not be reminded of them.

I am living a holy life. But my friend, let me disarm you of that notion if you're suffering from such a delusion of that as that. We may have had a murderer in the English judicial process who later on was a very repentant individual indeed.

Perhaps he was freed eventually having served a long period of imprisonment. And maybe he gave his life in the ministry of others or in rescuing others. Let's suppose for a moment somebody was drowning at sea and this man plunged into the sea and brought the one who would have died back to the land.

And we would commend him for his act of bravery. But in no way can you say that the one balances up the other. He may be now living a holy life, a courageous life, but he cannot bring back from the dead the man who forfeited his life as a result of his murderous act years ago.

You can't balance up the past by the present or the future. The putting away of sin, I say, is the most difficult task that any man has ever attempted in the whole of this world. Self-denial can't do it.

There are some people who feel that if they afflict themselves, if they engage in some painful procedure, then perhaps God in his graciousness will absolve them of any guilt for sins that they have committed in days gone by. There were some in the ministry of Micah who thought that this perhaps would be a way whereby they could be rendered pure in the sight of God. They said, as they listened to Micah preach, wherewithal shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with the with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? That last challenge seems almost horrific, but there were people in the pagan Old Testament era, not only amongst the Jews, but in other cultures too, who postulated, who thought that perhaps if they were to take their own child whom they love and offer him as a sacrifice, then that will placate God.

And in one sense that will be an act of self-discipline, an act of giving up one's greatest treasure so that sin might be forgiven in the sight of the Lord. The approach is one of self-denial. You get it later on.

You get it in the experience of Luther. Why did he go into his Augustine monastery? Why did he afflict himself? Why did he do penance upon penance? Because he thought by self-denial he might be acquitted in the sight of God. He might be justified.

Whitefield was under the same dilemma. Here he is in his college at Oxford and he goes without food. He exposes himself to the wintry nights as he refuses to go back to his own lodgings, and his skin sometimes shows up almost black with the cold.

What is he doing? Is this man bereft of his senses? No, he has a problem. What is his problem? He wants to be right in the sight of God. He wants to attend to this great business of moving sin out of his life, putting away sin.

But Whitefield, he'll never do it like that. Luther, you'll never do it like that. Those people in Micah's day, you'll never do it like that.

Because this task that you're attempting requires someone with greater qualifications than you have. And neither, my friend, let it be added, can you do this task successfully simply by being repentant. Now that may astonish some of you that I argue this way this morning.

Repentance is a good biblical word. And so often in the in the presentation of the gospel, the preacher demands from the hearer that he will repent and believe the Lord Jesus. But repentance in and of itself will never cause sins to be atoned for in your life.

David was terribly repentant. And well, he ought to have been. In an act of foolishness, he broke so many of God's commandments.

He became a murderer, an adulterer. He envied someone else's possession, if you can talk in terms of a wife in that respect. And suddenly the hideous, horrific bout of sinfulness hit David, and he recognized what he had done.

The penitential psalm, Psalm 51, tells the whole dreadful story of a sinner convicted to the very root of his being. But how does he receive forgiveness? By crying until his pillow is saturated with his tears? No. Could my tears forever flow? Could my grief, no respite, no naught for sin would err atone? Thou must save, and thou alone.

This business of the putting away of sin, I argue, is the most difficult task that anyone can attempt in this world. And quite frankly, it's impossible to do it. It's like to go back to my earlier inadequate illustration of taking a chisel to the rock of Gibraltar and trying to sink it into the Mediterranean.

It's like a young child going to the Sahara with his bucket and his spade and filling the grains of the Sahara into the bucket and trying to get rid of the whole of that obscene stretch of desert. It cannot be done. But the Supremo can do it.

And this is what my text says. It is He, the Lord Jesus, once in the end of the world, who has put himself to the task of dealing with the most difficult problem that the universe recognizes. And having come, let's go on to break my text open a little more and deduce from this, He did it very effectively, very efficiently.

Once in the end of the world, hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself? There's no trace of a job undone here. This isn't a question of someone who has inadequately attempted on the first go and comes back and back and back again to the task in hand. No, no.

Once the word is used on many an occasion by this writer, when he is assessing the value of the death of Jesus, look at chapter 7 and verse 27, and you find that the Lord Jesus Christ does not daily, as those high priests need to offer up sacrifice, first for His own sins and then for the people's. For this He did once when He offered up Himself. Look at chapter 10 and verse 12.

This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God. And verse 14, for by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. I deduce that not only did Jesus come into this world to attempt the most difficult of tasks, but He did His work effectively and efficiently.

Only one attempt was necessary. And that's the reason, blessed be God, why we come around this table later on. We'll be taking bread and wine, and we won't be under the delusion that some are under, that that wafer, that that bread turns somehow mystically to the body of Christ, and the wine becomes His blood.

This is not an altar in which we reenact Calvary. This is a table, a table of memorial, which goes back in time to that day when once, at the end of the world, Jesus Christ in His own body offered Himself and His purity as an exchange for the sin, our broken humanity. I say, my friend, particularly on a day like this, it is good for Protestant people to recognize that the basis of the gospel is centered in the work of Jesus at Calvary.

He's not re-offered. He cannot be re-offered. The very notion is a blasphemy.

Once He climbed the hill called Calvary. Once He made complete atonement for the sins of all those who believe in Him. I said sins, but the word here is not in the plural.

It's in the singular. Again, I bring you back to this verse 26. Now in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin.

As though the whole of sins are now concentrated in this one singular, a recap if you like, or rather better a reflection from what Isaiah has to say about Jesus who bears the iniquity of us all in His body. The mass of human sin, that bulging, swaying, contagious, revolting thing. He puts it away.

He takes the responsibility upon Himself. I, and if you can understand this from Scripture, come and tell me, for I find it difficult myself to fathom. The Apostle Paul says He's made sin.

He is made our defilement. He takes that impurity, our disgusting behavior. The many occasions when we have broken the law of God and stand condemned in the sight of our Heavenly Father.

He takes that into Himself. He becomes sin. And in so doing, He puts it away.

That is, puts it away from us. The word here in the original is what you would have had to have used in the Greek if you were divorced. A wife put away because of infidelity.

A husband put away because of immorality. The union which once existed between the two exists no longer. One has been stripped from the other.

So it's this word, a very legal word, which the writer of the epistle uses. Here we were as sinners. We were married to our sin, inextricably woven with our sin.

And yet Jesus, He has come along and He's torn that sin, if He has separated us from the consequences and the guilt of our sin. As far as the East is from the West, so far has God removed our transgressions from us. And it's one of the Old Testament prophets who says that God has sunk our sins.

He takes them and He sinks them in the sea of His forgetfulness. When the Israelites kept the Day of Atonement, and I believe the same is enacted to this very moment of time, they take away, they strip from their larder, from anywhere in their home, any leaven at all. They put it away.

They won't have anything to do with leaven at that moment of time. And so we read, Jesus has put away sin from us. The Supremo has done for you and for me, what we could never do for ourselves.

He came into this world, I repeat, and He encountered the most difficult of tasks. And having seen it, He put His hand to it. And He did it most effectively.

And finally, will you observe from my text, that His achievement was entirely personal. It was entirely personal. He, once at the end of the world, has He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

No human agency was involved. Indeed, had any help been required, there was no one around. The disciples, they were like frightened rabbits, even in the Garden of Gethsemane, they had run away.

I looked for someone to have pity on me, says the Old Testament writer predicting the scene. But there was no man, deserted by his friends, shunned and despised by his enemies. And even forsaken, if you can bear that thought, by his Father.

He Himself, the Lord Jesus, hung upon that gibbet. He Himself bore the sins of many. He Himself put away our iniquity.

We're told in the preceding verse, that the high priest entered into the holy place every year. To do what? To offer blood. The blood of the bull that had been slain.

And here is our Lord Jesus Christ. He does not repeat the work of the high priest. Not in the sense that He's going to come back year after year after year.

Why? Because if you follow me, and this is a very interesting observation, I believe, from the Spirit of God, there are two areas in which our Lord Jesus differs from the high priest. The high priest enters into the holy place, verse 25, every year with the blood of others. And He offers another's blood.

Jesus doesn't offer the blood of another. He offers the blood of Himself. He hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Aaron can offer. Jesus can offer and suffer. Then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world.

Aaron never suffered. He offered the blood of another. Jesus both offered and suffered.

Why? Because the blood was His own. And that, I say, is a stupendous thought. And in the very suffering, our Lord Jesus Christ has released into this world the power of forgiveness.

The power to make you and me absolutely whole. The supremo. He comes into this world.

He's manifested. There have been other manifestations from God. Angels have been known to commune with men in the Old Testament dispensation.

God has sent the patriarchs. He sent the judges. He sent the prophets.

He sent the minor prophets. But now, in the end of time, God has manifested Himself through Jesus. As is always the case, He keeps the best wine until the last.

And He brings His Son. And He shows His Son the greatest problem that bedevils this world. The problem of putting away sin.

And Jesus seeing that problem, agreeing with what He had previously said in an eon gone by, said, I'll attempt it. I'll put my hand to it. And so He did.

And He worked effectively, efficiently. He worked personally, completely on His own with no outside help. The supremo.

Doing for you and me and for a fallen, broken humanity what we could never have done for ourselves. Jesus, at one point in history, referred to here as being the end of the world, the fulcrum of history, the point from which we date the past and also the present generations. The Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross of Calvary, offers His own body as an atonement for you and for me.

And in so doing, He puts away sin. But you've listened to my preaching this, and yet that in itself is not what I was after. For it's not just the hearing, it's the translating of what you've heard into your personal experience.

It's the receiving, it's the acknowledging that Jesus Christ is indeed the supremo. He is the one who is Lord of all. He is the one who can do for you what you can't do for yourself.

It's no no worth, I say, my friend, for your eternal destination's sake. There's no value in merely repenting. There's no value in mere self-denial.

All these things are interesting. All these things in and of themselves are good, but there is no saving merit. The merit of salvation is entirely in the Christ, the supremo.

And you must come to Him, and you must say, Lord Jesus, I believe that sin is a vile thing, and that part of the vileness of my sin was, indeed all the vileness of my sin was taken by you, and the accumulated sins of other people. You bore it in your own body on the cross, and when you died, you were in effect putting away sin on the part of those who would trust you. I trust you right now.

I repent of my sin. I'm remorseful for every time I have broken the law of God, and on the basis not of my penitence, on the basis not of my repentance, but on the basis of your finished work at Calvary, I pledge myself to the Lord my God, and I give you my heart, and I give you my life, and I acknowledge from this point onwards that the greatest achievement ever gained, ever done by any man was the achievement on the Christ, of the Christ on the cross, as He became sin for me, the Supremo, whose offering I remember as I do, as I can, within the will of God, each first day of the week, as I take bread and drink wine and recall the successful work of the Supremo. Amen.

And great Supremo, we thank you for putting away sin at such tremendous cost in the fulfillment of the will of your Father, and we bless you, Spirit of God, for applying the victory of Calvary to our own hearts. Amen.