Our Once For All Sacrifice

[0:00] And if you would open up your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10, I'm going to read through verses 1-18.! We are starting to see the end of Hebrews in the distance.

[0:14] So Hebrews 10, 1-18, hear God's word. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.

[0:39] Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

[0:56] Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me. In burnt offerings and in sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.

[1:10] Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. When He said above, You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings.

[1:25] These are offered according to the law. Then He added, Behold, I have come to do your will. He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

[1:40] And every priest stands daily at the service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until His enemy should be made a footstool for His feet.

[1:59] For by a single offering, He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying, This is the covenant that I will make with them.

[2:14] After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. Then He adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering of sin.

[2:30] May God bless the hearing of His word. Can you guess which virus this is I'm about to describe?

[2:42] You've got a child or a grandchild with an itchy rash around the trunk of their body. And then they start itching it. They start, boop, boop, boop, boop.

[2:56] You know what that is, don't you? Chicken pox. The symptoms of chicken pox are pretty easy to cite. Do you know what the symptoms of legalism are?

[3:08] Legalism is the belief that your eternal standing with God is dependent upon your personal present obedience. Legalism says your eternal standing before God depends on your daily obedience to God.

[3:26] Legalism is a toxic distortion of the gospel of grace. It says God's grace can save you plus something else, your obedience.

[3:41] And the thing about this toxic distortion of legalism is that it's unhealthy for a Christian. It's unhealthy for a church. It can be oppressive. It can puff up some people while totally kind of suffocating others.

[3:55] It's a subtle shift of dependence off of the risen Christ and onto yourself. So how do you know if you've got legalistic tendencies?

[4:07] Well, do you have a tendency of thinking that your eternal standing before God depends upon whether you're having a daily quiet time, reading your Bible, or you're getting to church every Sunday?

[4:19] Do you think that your eternal standing with God depends upon your up-to-date confession of sin? In other words, if you were to die and not have confessed all of your sin, do you think that your eternal salvation would be in jeopardy?

[4:36] Maybe you think that your eternal standing with God is in jeopardy every time you sin.

[4:49] Maybe you think that your eternal standing with God depends on kind of what's more in the columns. More good works than evil works.

[5:02] The thinking is, if I have more good works than evil works, then I'm in right standing with God. Is that what you're thinking? That's not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[5:14] Do you think that your salvation depends in any way on your obedience, on your performance, on your repeated sacrifices day after day, year after year?

[5:32] Your eternal standing before God depends solely on the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ.

[5:43] The antidote to legalism is this once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. And so here's what I'm going to try to convince you of from Hebrews 10, 1-18 this morning.

[5:56] Here it is. Hold fast to Christ and say good riddance to legalism. Kick it to the curb. In Hebrews 10, 1-18, the author of Hebrews is kind of wrapping up a line of argument that he started in chapter 8.

[6:15] He's been making a case that the new covenant is better than the old covenant because the new covenant can actually rid you of all your sins where the old covenant couldn't.

[6:27] And remember, he's writing to a church that was suffering for Christ and they were being tempted to go back to the ineffective animal sacrifices of the old covenant.

[6:39] We're tempted to go back to the ineffective offerings of legalism, thinking that is what makes us right with God.

[6:51] And so there are two reasons from this text why you should hold fast to Christ and kick legalism to the curb. Reason number one, Christ's superior sacrifice.

[7:04] And reason number two, Christ's superior priesthood. So let's look now at these two points from this passage, starting with Christ's superior sacrifice.

[7:20] The book of Hebrews is one long exhortation to hold fast to Christ all the way to the end. And one of the repeated kind of tools that the author of Hebrews uses to help exhort us is by comparing and contrasting.

[7:38] And so again and again, he shows us that Christ is better. Again and again, Christ is superior of all different sorts. And here in chapter 10, verses 1 through 10, we have a comparison of sacrifices.

[7:51] Let's look at the inferior sacrifice first. It's spelled out in verses 1 through 4. It starts with a reference to the law.

[8:04] For since the law, the law of Moses, has but a shadow of the good things to come, of the true form of these realities. The law of Moses is talking about the Ten Commandments, all of the commandments spelled out in the first five books of the Bible.

[8:27] And what we're being told here is that the law of Moses and the commanded sacrifices, they're but a shadow of the good things to come. If you look back at chapter 9, verse 11, we read this.

[8:42] But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, you see, the good things to come was Christ and all that he offered.

[8:56] And somehow the law of Moses would point to him. It was a shadow of the good things to come. But it wasn't the good things. And so that little phrase, the true form of these realities, instead of the true form of these realities, what it's getting at is the law of Moses and its sacrificial system.

[9:16] It lacked substance. The one who would come with the good things, there's where the substance is. And what is striking is what we read in verse 1, the law and its commandments, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.

[9:39] This is shocking. The writer of Hebrews is saying that the law of Moses and all of its commands and all of its sacrifices, it's all of the Levitical priests, all of what they were doing day after day, was ineffective.

[9:58] Powerless. To make perfect those who draw near. When the writer of Hebrews is using that made perfect language, he's talking about being cleansed from your sin, of having your sins fully taken away, of knowing that you've been completely and fully forgiven by God, that there's no condemnation for you.

[10:19] God's wrath has been satisfied. That's the point of verse 2. If these animal sacrifices of the law of Moses could actually cleanse your conscience, then they would cease being offered.

[10:33] But they were being offered day after day. They were ineffective. What they were effective at is reminding people of their sins. Verse 3.

[10:44] But they're ineffective because it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. That blood, that death lacked power.

[11:00] When we apply this to our legalistic thinking, when you think that your daily devotions, your weekly church attendance, doing more good than evil, even the frequent confessing of your sins, when you think that these are the things that keep me saved, you're making a mistake.

[11:27] None of these has the power to take away your sins. In verses 1-4, we have this inferior sacrifices of the old covenant.

[11:40] They're ineffective. They're powerless. And then in verses 5-10 comes the contrast. Comes Christ's superior sacrifice.

[11:54] In verse 5, oh man, the author of Hebrews does some crazy stuff here. Remember in chapter 10, verse 1, where he starts?

[12:05] He starts by saying, for since the law has but a shadow of the good things. Look where he starts in verse 5. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, he said, whatever he's about to say, it trumps the law of Moses.

[12:26] Jesus said, I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. If you would flip back to the beginning, the very first two verses of the book of Hebrews, here's what's going on right here.

[12:37] Long ago at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, Moses being one of them. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son.

[12:51] That's what's going on here. It's Christ's final word on the matter. And what the author of Hebrews does is, he puts the final word as fulfillment.

[13:03] He has Jesus speaking from Psalm chapter 40, verses 6 through 8, a Psalm of David. And he's saying like, this has been fulfilled. It's in the mouth of Jesus.

[13:17] And we read, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and in sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure. When David wrote that, he was talking about being his heart fully unto God.

[13:31] When the author of Hebrews has Jesus saying that, what he's saying is something monumental, a huge paradigm shift. He's saying that all of the Old Testament sacrifices are now obsolete.

[13:46] God takes no more delight in them. These were in reference to the sacrifices of the Old Testament.

[14:00] In verse 7, we read, then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. That's David originally saying, I've come to do your will as your king.

[14:12] It's been written me of the scroll of the book, probably Deuteronomy 17, these instructions to a king, with Jesus saying it. He's coming to do the will of God to save all who would believe in him, to establish a forever kingdom.

[14:29] Do you remember when Jesus was in Gethsemane and he said, not my will, but your will be done to his father? Do you remember Isaiah 53.10 that says, it was the will of the Lord to crush him? This will is God's will and Jesus came to do it and by him quoting Psalm 40, 6-8, what the author of Hebrews is doing is he's saying, this is the one, the descendant of David, David's greater son.

[14:58] Remember Psalm 110, the Lord said, to my Lord? And the sacrifices, there's a shift.

[15:13] In verse 5, we read, but a body have you prepared for me. This is talking about sacrifices. And so in the words of Christ, it's his body that God has prepared.

[15:26] It's a better sacrifice. A once for all, single, for all time sacrifice.

[15:39] So what the author of Hebrews is doing here in extraordinary fashion is he has Christ speaking Psalm 40, 6-8 in order to demonstrate he's the final word on the topic of sacrifice.

[15:54] Because he is the sacrifice. Maybe the question needs to become this. Why was it impossible for the blood of goats and bulls to take away sin?

[16:12] But why is it that this single, once for all, sacrifice of Christ can take away sin, can make us sanctified?

[16:22] Verse 10. And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. How does that work? Well, remember who Jesus is.

[16:37] He's totally God. Totally man. He's totally man. He is the perfect representative man, yet without sin.

[16:48] Remember that? from Hebrews chapter 4, 15. He was tempted in every way yet without sin. And he is God. His death satisfies God's wrath forever.

[17:04] That's why Jesus' blood is better than the blood of animals. His blood is the power. power. The power to deliver us from our sins.

[17:17] What we have here is quite a comparison between the inferior sacrifices of animals and the superior sacrifice of Christ.

[17:29] The repeated offerings of these animals points to their ineffectiveness. But the once for all sacrifice of Christ it points to how effective it is.

[17:46] Christ alone takes away our sins. For the legalists in the room, this is really good news. Because what this means is that your eternal standing with God depends not on any repeated effort of yours, but on the once for all sacrifice of Christ.

[18:16] Amen. Christ's superior sacrifice is amazing. Imagine you owe 50 million dollars in debt.

[18:34] But you're responsible. people. So you set up a payment plan to work with your $75,000 a year income. And so you are able to set aside $300 a month to start paying down this debt.

[18:50] So for the next 50 years, every month, you are paying $300 a month on the nose and your credit rating starts to go up. You're like, oh, this is good.

[19:00] I am paying off my debt. I'm doing what I can. You're feeling pretty good about yourself. And then when you come to the end of your life, you realize that these 50 years of paying $300 a month amounts to $180,000, which is less than half of 1% of the $50 million debt you owe.

[19:30] not even a dent. It's a picture of Old Testament sacrifice of animals. Not even a dent.

[19:42] It shows us our sin but does not take away sins fully and finally. But imagine if you've got a billionaire uncle and he loves you dearly.

[19:57] he finds out that you've got a $50 million debt and with one single check offering once for all for all time, he pays off your debt in full.

[20:10] Now that's effective. Now that's superior. That's done. And if you pulled out your checkbook and said, okay uncle, can I start paying you $300 a month?

[20:24] He'd be like, no, you don't get it. This is a gift. Enjoy it. Live free. The antidote to legalism is what we see in verse 10.

[20:37] And by that will, the will of God, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. He's a superior sacrifice.

[20:49] Hold fast to Christ and kick legalism to the curb. God's second point. Reason number two, Christ's superior priesthood.

[21:03] There is another comparison and contrast in this passage. And it's in verses 11 through 18. And the contrast is between the inferior priesthood of the Levites, old covenant, and the superior priesthood of Christ, new covenant.

[21:22] And both priests deal in sacrifices. So let's look at the inferior priesthood first in verse 11. We read this. And every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

[21:41] One of the things you're aware of about these inferior priests is that there are more than one. There are many. many. And all of these men, they lived and then they died.

[21:55] And then all of these human priests were sinners. Do you remember how they would have to offer sacrifice for themselves before they had to offer sacrifice for the people? They were sinners.

[22:05] They had to offer sacrifices for themselves. And what we see here is that they were offering repeated sacrifice, the same sacrifice of animals, bloody messes that couldn't take away sins over and over and over again.

[22:24] And the result, verse 11, it could never take away sins. This past week I was reading in one of the commentaries and one of the writers pointed to Sisyphus, the figure from Greek mythology.

[22:44] Remember this guy? The gods punished him for eternity. And they punished him because he had to push this boulder up, this huge hill. And then once he got to the hill, the boulder would just go roll down again and then he would have to push it back up, strenuous, repeated, time and time again, and he never got it done.

[23:05] It's this repeated, ineffective picture of futility. And what we see going on here is that the Levitical priesthood, though set up by God, those serving to expose our sin, it's Sisyphus-like in its ineffectiveness and in its futility.

[23:28] It doesn't take away sins. This is the inferior priesthood that has now been made obsolete. By the superior priesthood of Christ.

[23:43] And we see this superior priesthood in verses 12, 13, and 14. We're not talking multiple priests, we're talking one. And we're talking one priest in the order of Melchizedek who died and then was raised from the dead.

[24:00] He's alive today. It's a single offering, 12 and 14. And yes, he's human, but he's a human who never offered a sacrifice for his sins because he never sinned.

[24:14] He was sinless. He's totally human, so he can represent us fully, but he's also totally God. Flip back to Hebrews chapter 1.

[24:28] We read in verse 3, He, the Son, Christ, is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.

[24:40] And He upholds the universe by the word of His power. He's God. And all of God's power and He's human in all of humanity without sin.

[24:54] A superior priest. Christ. And the sacrifice that He offers is far better. He didn't need to offer an animal because He never sinned.

[25:10] What He did is He offered Himself for our sins. This totally God, totally man, priest, king, offered Himself, as one commentator talked about, the offering and the offerer are one and the same.

[25:31] Single, once for all, for all time. Did you see that in verse 14? Sacrifice for our sins.

[25:45] Do you know what is striking about this passage? it's the posture between the priests. If you look at verse 11, every priest stands daily.

[26:01] They're busy. Busy offering ineffective sacrifices. But then when you look down to verse 12, when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand.

[26:18] of God. It's a reference to Psalm 110 again. He sat down. It's a picture of being done. Remember from the cross, He said, it is finished.

[26:32] If you go back to Hebrews 1, we read this. Verse 3, after making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of majesty.

[26:44] Work finished. One and done. single. Once for all. For all time.

[26:54] Done. It's an amazing work. Through His death, He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

[27:10] God. And now He waits. He's alive. He's waiting on His throne and look at verse 13. Waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet.

[27:23] It's like a picture of Jesus lounging with His feet kicked up and His enemies are His footstool. It's a picture of authority and dominance who are His enemies.

[27:34] Sin, death, devil. We're one day closer to them being eradicated. Thrown down forever. And for a church that was originally received this who are suffering for Christ, that would be a huge assurance for them.

[27:52] That Christ is in control. He's not standing, wringing His hands. He's seated. And one of the things that He is doing for us as our great high priest.

[28:07] And we know this from chapter 7 verse 25 is He's interceding for us. That we would live in the good things that He has come and established. The fullness of our salvation.

[28:26] If you are tending towards legalism, what this helps us to see is this.

[28:40] You're not your own self appointed priest who mediates his or her salvation through your own offerings.

[28:53] Christ did that once as your high priest. Once for all. And now He's bringing it to bear in our lives from the throne of grace.

[29:07] There is no service, amount of service you can render. There is no amount of offerings you can give.

[29:19] There's no end to your confessing of your sin that will make you holy in God's sight. It's only through the blood.

[29:30] Christ's blood. He is no Sisyphus. It's a contrast between the ineffective feudal offerings of the old covenant and the effective and profitable and fruitful offering of the one time all once for all sacrifice of Christ.

[29:52] He secured our eternal redemption. And when we get to verse 14, we read that his once for all sacrifice, well, it took away all of our sins.

[30:04] It perfected for all time. That's flying in the face of 10-1. These animal sacrifices can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.

[30:18] Whose sacrifice can? Christ's has. is perfected for all time. We're completely, utterly forgiven of our sin. If you put your faith in Christ, you are forever forgiven of your sin.

[30:35] And we are now being sanctified. This one verse holds two things at the same time. Your position as being kind of brought into right standing with God, you've been perfected, you've been sanctified, we'll often use the word justified, you're in right standing with God, and at the same time, we are being sanctified, we are being transformed, we are being conformed into the image of Christ.

[31:02] In chapter 12, we will be sharing more and more in the holiness of God. Both are true. And it's because of this once for all sacrifice that set it into motion.

[31:17] So positionally, we're secure based upon this finished work and experientially, we are becoming more and more holy as God is holy.

[31:31] And you can't confuse the two. You being holy doesn't make you perfect. God by his grace makes you perfect through Christ's death and then he makes you experientially holy.

[31:45] This is Christ's superior priesthood. This is why he's interceding for us right now from the throne of grace. You're not your own self-appointed priest.

[31:59] When it comes to your salvation, when it comes to making you perfect, when it comes to taking away all of your sins, Christ offered himself for your sins once and for all and sat down.

[32:21] Done. It is finished. So let me just say it this way. Christian, there is absolutely nothing you can do to add to what he has done.

[32:36] Nothing. Nothing. And now he ever lives to make intercession for you. What a great high priest we've got.

[32:49] In verses 15 through 18, the writer of Hebrews comes full circle. He comes back around to quoting from Jeremiah 31. And after quoting from Jeremiah 31, he says this in verse 18, where there is forgiveness of these, where there's full forgiveness of your sin, where the new covenant has come, where Christ's once for all, for all time, sacrifice has come to bear and it has.

[33:21] There is no longer any offering for sin, no need for animal sacrifice. It's been made obsolete. So what this means for us is this, we hold fast to Christ and we say good riddance to legalism.

[33:40] there's no hope in it. There's no salvation in it. So what do you do when you start seeing legalistic symptoms start to show up in yourself, whether that's towards yourself or maybe towards others?

[33:59] Maybe you start wondering or fearing that your standing with God is now in jeopardy because you haven't had your quiet time in three days or you haven't been to church in three weeks or maybe because you haven't confessed your sin recently or maybe it's just because you just don't feel like you're good enough.

[34:26] You take your eyes off yourself and you set your eyes on Christ and you hold fast to Christ his once for all sacrifice and his ongoing interceding priesthood and you say good riddance to these legalistic fears.

[34:49] Would you repeat after me? Christ is my risen and reigning priest and king the anchor of my soul.

[35:04] who now intercedes for me the once and for all sacrifice for my sins.

[35:22] Knowing that Jesus is your perfect substitute who has paid for all of your sins now you read your Bible with joy. now you come to church as often as you can.

[35:37] Now you confess your sin whenever the spirit brings it to your mind and now you do good works not because you're earning your salvation because all of these are outworkings of your salvation and there is joy and at the heart of it is the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

[36:02] Let's pray. Lord Jesus we are so grateful for what you have done and what you are doing.

[36:14] Thank you Lord Jesus for bearing the full weight of our sin and God's wrath towards that sin.

[36:25] And thank you that now we get to live for you with a clear conscience and we can make much of reading our Bibles and coming gathering together on Sundays and confessing our sins and doing good things because we've been freed of thinking that these somehow make us acceptable in your sight.

[36:50] Through Christ's death you have made us acceptable in your sight. Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen. Thank you so much for coming from