Heb No.20 The Final Sacrifice 10v1-18

I just have very dim recollections of my grandmother. I think she died when I was about five years of age. And she died relatively a young person, at least by wording standards.

She was only about 60 when she passed on. But I reckon her life was a very difficult one. After all, she'd had 12 children.

My grandfather was a blacksmith, but unfortunately for a great part of his life, because of the depression in this country, so many decades ago now, he wasn't able to get work. And I can't think of anyone in our family circle who must have had a more difficult life than my grandmother did. You imagine bringing up a dozen youngsters, the days when you didn't have a washing machine, spin dryer, even hot water.

I think they had just a sort of copper boiler in the home where my mother was brought up. So, everything was very difficult. No mod cons at all.

Great pressures. And I suppose that if there was ever a lady who never had the joy of just sinking back into a chair at night and relaxing, it must have been my dear old grandmother. Never a time, until she had a stroke during the last years of her life, when she could relax.

Never a time when everything that she wanted to do on a particular day was done. Always a lot more to do, and the following day when she did get up, always a lot to engage in. And I think that that was probably the case of not only my grandmother, but many of our ancestors going back from the turn of the century and further backwards from that point.

A difficult way of life. Never finishing anything. At least, never feeling that one had finished everything that one had to do.

Of course, it's not just people who could be cited from decades ago in this country, in the domestic sense, who are illustrations of this. Some of you have, as a book, back on your shelves at home, a commentary on the Bible, perhaps one of the best that was ever written by a man called Matthew Henry. But you know, it wasn't really Matthew Henry's commentary.

At least, let me express that more accurately. The whole work was of Matthew Henry's. He died before he completed it.

He did enough for it to warrant his name as the author, but he was never able to complete what he started. And then one thinks in terms of the unfinished symphony and the area of music and so on. One could cite many an example to emphasize a point which I bring out in the hand out of my notes this evening, that in contrast to so many, many people, in fact, everyone who has ever lived, our Lord Jesus Christ stands out as the person who did what he intended to do during the days of his life.

And we find in the 12th verse of Hebrews 10, a comment is made just about that. Speaking of the Lord Jesus, it says this, but when this priest, the Lord Jesus, had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. When do you normally sit down? When you've mowed the grass.

When you've cleaned your car. When you've put the children to bed at night. You sit down and the very act of sitting down indicates, or should indicate, that there's nothing else specific that's in your mind to do.

And in the absolute sense, the writer of the Hebrews uses that expression to underline the fact that what Jesus intended to do on this earth, he did it. Absolutely. Perfectly.

And so you've got the concept in heaven, sitting down at the right hand of the Father, with a life well lived and a job perfectly achieved. You remember what the last word of our Lord Jesus was from the cross. The last word that left is parched lips.

Finished. It is finished, if you like, in the authorized version of the Bible. The work that the Father gave me to do is completed.

Now, it's this idea of Jesus having finished everything, having done all that he intended to do, that comes out particularly in these verses of Hebrews 10. Not that, of course, it's a new thought, because in the previous verses, the final part of the ninth chapter, time and time again, you come across the idea of Jesus having done something once and for all. But I'll not go into those verses, or else I might be tempted into a digression.

What I want to show you this evening, and as I say, it's not a new thought, is that what Jesus did, he did perfectly. And that's what stands out in Hebrews 10. Now, in the first four verses, we get a picture once again of the priests.

The priests of the Old Testament era. And they're engaged in a lot of activity. Look at the second verse.

For this reason, it can never be repeated. For this reason, it can never, by the same sacrifices, repeated endlessly, year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. What reference is being made there? Well, what's it referring to? Well, it's talking about the priests, engaged in an endless cycle of activity, offering sacrifices in the tabernacle, or later on, in the temple.

Doing things endlessly, with a vain zeal, concerned to bring before the Lord sacrifices which we understand were never final. They can't take away sins forever. So, you've got the picture of someone, some people, engaging unrelentlessly in a particular practice of offering sacrifices in these first few verses of Hebrews 10.

In the introductory verse, a reference is made to the shadow that the law really was. Let me read those two verses, in case you've not followed. The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves.

For this reason, it can never, by the same sacrifice, repeated endlessly, year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. What is being referred to here? Well, the law, the Old Testament law, and the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. We are told that these things, the sacrifices that were offered, could never finally take away sin.

And one might therefore ask the question, well, what possible good were all these sacrifices offered in the Old Testament era? Well, the writer of the Hebrews tells us this. The reason why such sacrifices were to be offered, or at least the connection that they have with the final sacrifice, the offering of our Lord Jesus, is the same sort of relationship as a shadow has to its substance. You say, what do you mean by that? Well, let's imagine you were walking down the seafront in Worthing this afternoon.

The sun was high in the heavens and it enabled you to throw, though you didn't do it willingly, it's an involuntary thing, it enabled you to throw a shadow on the ground. Now that shadow is not you. But without you, there wouldn't be a shadow.

There's an interconnection between the shadow and yourself. Now this is what the writer of the Hebrew epistle is saying about the Old Testament practice of offering sacrifices. They can't take away sins.

In one sense, they're very transient. They're just like a shadow. But they are linked to something that is highly important.

They're linked to a substance. They're linked to someone who is yet to come. As your body is vital to your shadow, and your shadow to your body, so the Old Testament sacrifices are like the shadow that fall, if you like, from the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's try and explain this even further. And we do so by looking at the second and the third verses of our chapter. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.

But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. I do a fair amount of writing. And one of the things that's very frustrating when you write articles for a magazine or what have you, prepare writing a book, is that you never really feel you've done a perfect job.

And so you take what you've typed and you tear it up and you start again. These notes, for example, are a good illustration of this. I don't know how long you think it takes me to knock this up, probably about 8 hours, maybe 10 hours, for each one of these handouts that you receive.

I work at it, and work at it, and work at it, and eventually I get so frustrated that I shall never get perfection in what I want to say, in the summary of what the Bible is teaching, that I have to make do and send in to my secretary for proper typing out, and it's handed over so it's printed what is really imperfect. Now look, if I were to put a piece of paper in my typewriter and I was to bash on the keys and I was to do something that I felt was absolutely perfect, I wouldn't do anything again. Not in this particular area of work.

Now this is precisely what our writer is saying about the sacrifices of the Old Testament era. The fact that they were offered time and time and time again indicates that there was no perfect sacrifice that any priest was able to bring into the temple. Because if that had been the case, then look at verse 2, If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once and for all.

The Old Testament person who went to the tabernacle, or went to the temple, and offered some animal for his sins to be forgiven as a result of the shedding of the blood of the beast, he knew full well that next week or next month or next year he'd be back again because he would have no conviction at all that his sins had been finally dealt with. You see, if you repeat something, you do it because the first was not perfect. Many of you were possibly glued to the box yesterday watching that royal wedding and you saw the wedding dress of Lady Diana or Princess Diana.

Now I guess that that wedding dress had been designed and redesigned and re-redesigned until the people who were responsible for putting the final thing together believed that they got something that was perfect. Now that's how you are to understand the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus over against the Old Testament sacrificial system. You remember when John saw Jesus coming towards him on the banks of the Jordan, he said, Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.

For the first time, for the only time, there occurred someone who could fulfill all that those Old Testament sacrifices repeatedly offered, symbolized. It would be brought, the whole mechanics of this process would be brought to a halt through Jesus. So what is our writer here teaching us? In the opening verses, he's saying that the Old Testament religious practices were like the shadow that looked to the substance for its real development.

And he's telling us secondly that in the very repetition of those sacrifices there is a straining forward to the day when the final sacrifice would be offered in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. But let's move on a little bit and come through, will you, to the third verse because we're told something else here which is very interesting. Those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.

Those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. Here is, if you like, a relationship between the sacrifices that are offered and the actual memory of the people. What on earth did the ordinary worshipper in the days of the Old Testament think about when he saw so many hundreds of animals being sacrificed? Well, didn't it occur to him that sin itself must be a very, very nasty business indeed? It required so many animals to be slaughtered for some form of atonement to be made.

And so we're told here that the very sacrifices instead of doing away with sin reminded the offerer of the terrible nature of sin itself. And we're told that those sacrifices could never finally erase sins from the human heart because as the fourth verse goes on to say it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Now, we knew that from previous studies in the Scriptures, do we not? Look, for example, at the ninth verse, will you, of the previous chapter, or rather the seventh verse of the previous chapter.

But only the high priest entered the inner room and that only once a year and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins that people had committed in ignorance. What does that indicate? Well, there were a mighty large number of sins that people in the Old Testament era committed not in ignorance but deliberately and all those sacrifices that were offered at the temple and in the tabernacle, they could never take away sins in and of themselves. Instead, I repeat, those sacrifices, they were like the shadow that pointed to the reality, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The repetition of those sacrifices reached forward to the day when the final sacrifice would be offered, even our Lord Jesus on the cross. And the very fact of so many sacrifices being made at the temple and in the tabernacle served as a reminder of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Now, let's break off for a moment or so because it seems to me that there's a point that we have to underline and it's the fact that Christian people also look back to the sacrifice Sunday by Sunday if they come around the Lord's table that has been offered to do away with for forgiveness of our sins.

We look back, of course, to the death of our Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary. But that looking back, that remembrance of the of the sacrifice of Jesus has a completely different objective than the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. You say, what's the difference? Well, in the Old Testament, the sacrifices there just emphasize the guilt of the people.

But when we remember Jesus and his death, it emphasizes not our guilt, but God's grace. The grace of God that overlapped the blackest manifestation of human sin. So, here's a wonderful thing.

In these opening verses, once again, we've got that picture of the priests engaged in the endless cycle of offering sacrifices. And we've discovered why the sacrifices are offered. They're pointing forward.

And we've also found something emphasized about the nature of the sacrifice themselves. They emphasize guilt, but not grace. But when Jesus comes, the whole thing is turned around.

And his final sacrifice for sin forever will be a constant reminder of the of the grace of God. You know, one of the hardest things to do in gospel preaching, and I think I've made reference to this before, is to make people feel forgiven. It's far easier, I'm arguing, at the human level, to make people feel guilty than what it is for them to feel forgiven.

And very often, and perhaps the evangelical pulpit has this as one of its objectives, as I mentioned in preaching on guilt and forgiveness some months back, very often we create the feeling of guilt because we preach about the nature of sin. And we forget to go on so that the person who's listening goes to the cross of Calvary and confessing their sins no longer feels guilty, but feels forgiven. That's why we sing in one of our hymns, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.

Who like me, his praise should sing? Well, have you got the picture? The opening verses, frenzied activity, the Old Testament priests, almost like my dear old grandmother, never being able to sit down, never having done a job so properly it wouldn't need to be repeated the next day, or the next month, or the next year. But all the inadequacy and the incompleteness of the Old Testament serves to underline the perfection of what Jesus, the great High Priest, shall achieve for you and for me. And it's that perfection that I think is brought out, at least in some degree, from the fifth verse through to the tenth verse of the next passage that we're going to look at.

Now, if you're working from the NIV version of the Bible, then it's easy for you to discover that there's a quotation, a quotation which starts from the words sacrifice and offering you did not desire. And the quotation goes on through the sixth verse to the seventh and comes to an end at the completion of the seventh verse. I point that out for folks who are working from the NIV where it's not quite as clear.

Now, what's all this quotation about? Well, it's telling us something about our Lord Jesus Christ. And it's predicting something concerning His ministry. And have you noticed just how the words from one of the psalms are actually taken and placed on the lips of our Lord Jesus? Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said, sacrifice and offering you did not desire and so on and so forth.

Let's just stop there for a moment or two because it's very interesting, I think, that the Old Testament psalms can be looked into and verses there written by David and other psalmists ascribed to our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, in a very real way, when the psalms speak about atonement and they speak about salvation, then they're anticipating the ministry of our Lord Jesus. And so here, the writer of Hebrews can dip into the Old Testament and he can put the words of the psalmist on the lips of Jesus and the very ministry and the achievements of Jesus are worked out in terms of what the psalmist has predicted.

So, let's have a look about what the psalmist said concerning the ministry of our Lord Jesus and how it was going to be far, far greater than the ministry of those Old Testament priests. Well, those verses predict. They predict what Jesus is going to do and what do they tell us? Well, look at the last part of verse 5. Sacrifice and offering you did not desire.

This is what the Messiah is saying. This is what Jesus is saying. What does Jesus have in mind? After all, the Old Testament seems to suggest in the Mosaic books that sacrifices are to be offered regularly to the Lord.

Then why when Jesus comes along using the words of the psalmist written centuries ago does he say, sacrifice and offering you don't desire speaking to the Lord. Well, there's no contradiction. You see, the problem with the Old Testament Hebrews as comes out, say, in the book of Micah is this.

They believe that offering sacrifices was a very mechanical thing. It didn't matter how much you sinned as long as you've got a few old goats and bullocks around slaughter them you'll pacify God. And so very often the Jews would come with hundreds and thousands of sacrifices but there would be no real heart concern to serve the living God.

And when the prophet Micah refers to the offerings of the people in such a large number God says, I hate your sacrifices I despise your feasts all these things are totally repugnant to me. Why? Because God desires truth in the inward parts God desires holiness of life and that was not what these people were bringing before the Lord. You can't buy God off.

That was the message of the Old Testament prophets. You can't buy him off by just offering sacrifices. He wants a righteous life.

And so when Messiah comes as anticipated by David he realizes this sacrifice and offering it's not that that's going to atone for the sins of these people not the blood of bulls and goats they will never take away sin. There's something else that's got to be done for these people which will change their hearts. How are their hearts going to be changed? Well, by me doing something that no dumb creature can do.

What is the Lord going to do? What is the second person of the Trinity going to do? Well, look at the last part of the fifth verse. A body you prepared for me. A body you prepared for me.

When the Son of God was born on earth he was born of the womb of a virgin. He lived like you and me but he was absolutely sinless. He took upon him flesh and blood like ours but there was no impurity at all.

And it was that sinless body that sinless life which our Lord Jesus took to the cross and that was offered as an atonement for your sin and for my sin. Now, bear that in mind and come to the sixth verse, will you? And here is a repeat of what we just found in the previous verse. Burnt offerings, sin offerings with those you weren't pleased.

Well, what is God the Father pleased with? What will satisfy this God? What will enable Him to forgive the sinner? Well, come to the seventh verse and you'll discover and the argument isn't in any logical progression at all. Here is Messiah saying here I am I'm willing to do just what is written in your scroll. I am prepared to do your will, oh my God.

What did Jesus perform on earth? Well, not His own will. He tells us that on two or three occasions. I came not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.

What was the Father's will for our Lord Jesus? I've answered the question many times already this evening. It was to go to the cross of Calvary. And in going to the cross of Calvary Jesus would not only bring to an end the sacrificial system.

The offering of His body on the cross would achieve for those who put their trust in Him what the former system could never achieve. It would deal not only with sins done in ignorance but sins done deliberately. Alright, I wonder if you've got the significance of that.

Let me just go through it again. The psalmist, or rather the writer from the Hebrews from the fifth verse dips into the Psalms and in the Psalms he predicts three or four things about the Messiah. Messiah would see the inadequacy of the Old Testament sacrificial system.

Messiah would take upon Himself a body that would be used ultimately to bring about the salvation of the human race. And Messiah would be willing to do what the Father wanted Him to do. And He would live His life according to what the Old Testament Scriptures had predicted.

Here am I, it is written about me in the scroll. I have come to do Your will, O God. And incidentally, don't you find that about our Lord Jesus? Constantly His life is linked into the Old Testament Scriptures as though there's been a preview of what He's going to do.

And throughout His life He knows that He has specific objectives to achieve. Well, let's come on to the eighth verse and onwards, or rather the yes, the eighth verse and onwards, because here our writer makes reference, makes comment, about that particular quotation. He speaks about the inadequacy about, of those burnt offerings and those sin offerings and says, look Lord, you didn't really desire them, nor were you pleased with them for reasons I've just given you, because they weren't offered with a holiness of life.

He goes on to comment in the ninth verse about the willingness of the Messiah. Here I am, I have come to do Your will. And then he makes a reference, which not many people seem to understand in Scripture.

Let me read the verse. He sets aside the first to establish the second. He sets aside the first to establish the second.

What does that mean? Well, he sets aside the Mosaic Covenant. All the Old Testament religious practices are set aside by the Lord Jesus Christ to establish the second. What is the second? Well, the will of God, to which reference is made at the first part of that verse.

What is the will of God? For someone to offer a final sacrifice for sins. So, in the tenth verse, and by that will we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Once for all.

So, you see what our writer has done in the second part of the passage we've been looking at. Old Testament Scriptures predicting certain things about Jesus. And then he shows us how the Lord Jesus fulfills all that has been anticipated.

Now the last thing for us this evening. From the eleventh verse right through to the eighteenth verse. And here there's a contrast drawn between someone who's standing up and working and someone who's sitting down having completed a job.

Let's read the first couple of verses and this emphasizes the point quite adequately. Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties again and again. He offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Go back to that homely illustration I gave you of my elderly grandmother. Couldn't sit down, at least not very often, because she'd always got something else to do.

Just like those Old Testament priests. A hive of activity with the temple, with the tabernacle. Constantly doing the same thing.

Offering those sacrifices which could never take away sins. Never at rest. Incessantly reproducing the same actions.

Offering the same victims every day. Starting the same task over and over, over and over again. Without any effect at all.

But Jesus, He's not standing here. We're told that He's sitting down. He's not ministering in the earthly sanctuary, in the earthly tabernacle.

He's in heaven. He's in the holiest place of all. And He's sitting down at the right hand of the Father.

Why? Because what He did on this earth was so satisfactory in the eyes of the Father God that He deemed that He had atoned for the sins of a believing mankind. If memory serves me right, I give you a quote from Professor Bruce here. A seated priest is the guarantee of a finished work and an accepted sacrifice.

So, in these final verses we're looking at, we consider the position of our Lord Jesus sitting as opposed to the other priests who were standing on earth always engaged in doing something. But then there's the idea of anticipation. What is Jesus sitting down waiting for? Let me read you the verse.

Since that time He waits for His enemies to be made His footstool because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Jesus Christ doesn't sit in heaven in idleness. No, He's engaged in an intercessory ministry.

As I reminded the youngsters and those of you who were present also last Sunday evening. But there's something else He's waiting for. He's waiting for the victory at Calvary to be recognized as being the crushing blow that it really was for the devil and all hostile satanic forces.

Now there's no shadow of uncertainty regarding the outcome. The cross of Jesus Christ was the conquest of Satan. And there's going to be a future judgment.

But in one sense the judgment has already taken place because it took place at Calvary. For there Jesus dealt with sin and those whose sins have not been forgiven are unbelieving people and they will be condemned because they have rejected the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's the judgment Christ exercises.

The judgment Christ exercises stands on the judgment that He endured. He assumes judgment because He absorbed it. So our Savior waits.

Why does He wait so long? Well, so that the gospel message can be proclaimed around the world. And we are told also from the 15th verse and onwards that all this has been confirmed because by one sacrifice let me read, sorry, from the 15th verse the Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says, this is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord, I will put my laws in their hearts and I will write them on their minds.

Our Lord Jesus has fulfilled not only what the psalmist predicted about His ministry but He's fulfilled what the prophet Jeremiah had to say. The time would come when God would enact a new covenant and when men's hearts would be changed. And because their dispositions and their hearts are changed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit they will be able to keep the law of God.

That's why reference again is made to the prophecy of Jeremiah. I will put my laws in their hearts and I will write them on my mind. And then the conclusion is added.

Look at the 17th verse, the final quotation and almost the end of our study this evening. Then He adds, their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. And where these have been forgiven there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.

When God refuses to remember it means that He has forgiven. Any sin that God remembers is a sin that still has to be forgiven. That was the problem of the Old Testament religious sacrifices.

They didn't take away sins. Sins were still remembered. But when God looks at your sin through the Lord Jesus Christ's offering at the cross of Calvary then He forgets that sin.

He not only forgives but He forgets. And the man who has had his sins forgiven is a very happy man indeed. Now if God remembers my sin no more then does there need to be another sacrifice for my sin? Of course not.

That's the conclusion you see therefore that our writer brings in in the 18th verse. Where there have been where these have been forgiven there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. Jesus has done it all.

He's brought the old to a conclusion because of what He has achieved at Calvary's cross. So here in these verses we've had two or three pictures presented to us of those Old Testament priests engaged in tremendous activity repeating the same thing over and over again and all the repetitions of the sacrifices just reminding us of the nature of sin. Then our writer dipped into the Old Testament and he shows us through the Psalms the predictions about Jesus and then he demonstrates how Jesus lived up to those predictions.

And then finally in the last few verses that we've just been looking at he shows us mainly because of the position of Jesus in heaven what really has now happened what now obtains. Jesus has offered the final sacrifice. He's just waiting for the end of this era the end of the day of grace when Satan and unbelievers shall be eternally punished.

And he brings in, does our writer that final conclusion all his argument it's taken us four or five weeks four or five sessions to look through it all of his argument is now at the end. There's no reason to dip into the Old Testament sacrificial system no reason to go back to the Mosaic law all this has been fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ. And he stands out not only greater than Moses but greater than the sacrificial system of Moses and through the Gospel and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit he's made it possible for us not only to be forgiven but to keep the law of God.

The writer of Hebrews has demonstrated the point that he wanted to sustain all the way along that Jesus is far superior to any man that ever lived to any system that was ever enacted and nobody has got to slip back into the legalism of the Old Testament or to feel that in any way Jesus' death, resurrection and intercessory ministry are inadequate. Praise God for Jesus Christ. Praise God for such a final work of salvation.

Amen. And our Father, we thank you again for our Saviour and may we constantly marvel at your wonderful plan of salvation and how you have done for us what we couldn't have done for ourselves. Praise you Lord that though there was that endless offering of sacrifices which could never take away sin the day occurred when the Lamb of God came and took it away once and for all and He now sits down at your right hand a job well done waiting until that moment when the final consummation of this age is brought in and He shall return to judge the world and to bring into that eternal era those for whom He died.

We bless your name. Amen.