[0:00] Now, with the Lord's help, let us turn again to the epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 10, and focus for a short while on words we have, specifically at verse 12.
[0:23] Hebrews chapter 10, and at verse 12. That this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin forever, sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
[0:44] For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Now, this letter written to the Hebrews was written to those who had received the gospel.
[1:06] They had received the Christ of the gospel, but after a certain length of time, they were tempted to turn back from a wholehearted following of Christ and re-embrace the ways of Judaism.
[1:32] They had been involved in the worship of God in Judaism, and they knew very well the details of the temple worship.
[1:45] Many of them may very well have had and brought sacrifices of animals up to the temple, and slain them there, and laid their hands upon the head of the sacrifice, and saw the blood flow from the dying animal, and seen the priest take the blood, and sprinkle it according to the commandment of God in the Old Testament ritual.
[2:18] And they would have seen the priest's clothing, and all the details of that kind of ritual in the Old Testament.
[2:34] The people had come along and tried to embrace them once again from the fold of Judaism, to bring them back.
[2:49] And it looks as if they were, as it were, almost turning back to being involved with the worship of the temple.
[3:04] The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, he begins at the very beginning to show that these things in temple worship and in the worship of God in previous generations in the tabernacle, they were certainly appointed by God.
[3:28] But they were only shadows of better things to come. The priesthood of Aaron and his successors, as the priests in Israel, these were shadows of a better priesthood.
[3:51] And the priests themselves, personally, were mere shadows of the great high priest, even the one who was coming in the fullness of times.
[4:02] God had given a promise that he would send his servant, Jesus Christ, to be the great high priest of his people.
[4:14] And in the prophecy of Haggai, we read these words, that the desire of nations was coming. That is, people were looking to the coming Messiah to fulfill every aspect of sacrifice that had to be fulfilled for the eternal salvation of the people of God.
[4:40] And we see that in chapter 10 here, the writer makes abundantly clear that it is Jesus Christ who is the great high priest promised of old.
[5:02] Certainly, it wasn't possible for any sin to be taken away completely, radically, actually, with the blood of bulls and of goats, as had been shed so often down through the centuries.
[5:22] These were mere shadows of the blood that was to be shed, even the blood of Christ on Calvary's cross. And this is what we have here.
[5:36] The verse we have taken as our text highlights that Jesus Christ, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.
[5:50] And I'd like just to see a few words under three headings. First of all, but this man. At the beginning of verse 12, this man.
[6:03] Christ Jesus. Secondly, this one sacrifice that was and is so significant.
[6:15] This one sacrifice for sins that he gave up. And thirdly, this wonder that we have mentioned in verse 12, that he is now forever sat down on the right hand of God, having given this one sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile his people to God, he now sits down.
[6:47] Which was unheard of under the Old Testament ritual. Because the priests, day after day, year after year, had to stand and offer yet another sacrifice because there was a repeated awareness of sins because the blood of bulls and goats was not able to take one sin away, only symbolically.
[7:18] Only symbolically. First of all, then, a few words on this wonderful man because it says here, but this man, he is the man who was able to take sins away by offering himself once to the satisfaction of the divine God.
[7:45] This man, the man Christ Jesus. Now, I'd like just to say that he was a real man.
[7:58] human nature. All you have to do is to look in the Gospels and you can see his genealogy.
[8:13] All mapped for us there. So far as his human nature is concerned, he has a true body, as we have in the Catechism, a true body and a reasonable soul, which is exactly what we all have.
[8:30] That is our personality, true body, a reasonable soul. That is humanity. That is human nature. But of course, the Lord Jesus Christ was no mere man.
[8:49] He is, he was a man, but he's no mere man. because his human nature is a sinless human nature.
[9:02] Do you remember what the angel said to Mary when the angel came to notify her that she was going to have a child? Although she was a virgin and had known no man, the angel says, the Holy Ghost shall come upon you and the power of the highest shall overshadow you, therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
[9:38] Although Mary herself was a sinner who needed a Savior, nevertheless in God's miraculous way, the human nature of our Savior was conceived within her womb and yet without sin.
[10:03] He has a sinless human nature. Well, certainly his human nature had infirmities that were sinless.
[10:18] For example, he had the infirmity of being able to hunger. That was natural to his sinless human nature.
[10:30] He was thirsting, he would be tired. Read the account we have of him meeting with the woman of Samaria at the well, and the scripture makes abundantly clear there that he was tired because of his journey.
[10:47] That was an infirmity that was true of his sinless human nature. But we see that he was more than just a sinless human being.
[11:05] This man. This man was the God man. The God man. This person was the son of God in human nature.
[11:25] God in three persons from all eternity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, the eternal son of God became man.
[11:36] man. This was an act of his divine nature, the son of God taking to himself human nature at the very point of its conception within the womb of the Virgin Mary.
[11:58] Mary. It was an act of the Son, of the eternal God, taking to himself and uniting to his eternal person this sinless humanity begotten within the womb of the Virgin Mary.
[12:17] glory. We see the Apostle Paul writing of this glory when he says in Colossians 2.9 In him, that is, in Christ Jesus, in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
[12:40] He was a true man, a sinless man, but he was the God man. This man was also the God man mediator.
[12:59] From all eternity he had been set apart to be the mediator of his elect people. And in the fullness of times when he came into the world born of a woman made under the law, he was the mediator of God's elect.
[13:20] What does that mean? He came to exercise the offices of prophet to instruct his people.
[13:32] He came to exercise the office of priest, which we'll focus on for a moment in a minute. And he came to exercise the office of a king.
[13:47] This man, the mediator set apart by God from all eternity, came into the world, human nature and divine nature in one person.
[14:03] Now he is the God man mediator appointed to do the work of a mediator in the office of prophet and priest and king.
[14:19] This man, well, when we begin to understand who he is, we realize that the work that he has done could only have been done by himself.
[14:37] He needed to be the sinless one. to bear the sins of others. He needed to be the God man to be able to make reconciliation on behalf of sinful people with a holy God.
[14:56] And this is what the apostle here now is talking about. But this man, and he uses but this man in contrast to the sacrifices that had been given up repeatedly over millennia.
[15:13] And these sacrifices offered according to the law were not able to make reconciliation for the sins of any one person over these years.
[15:30] This man. Secondly, this sacrifice, sacrifice, the sacrifice that this man offered.
[15:41] Well, when you think of who he was, you expect the sacrifice to be something completely different in quality and in depth and in efficacy from all the sacrifices that had been offered under the Old Testament ritual.
[15:59] And certainly it was. if you look at the book of Leviticus, the first, let's say, seven chapters, you find there minutely set before us the different sacrifices God commanded the people to offer.
[16:20] And there were five distinct kinds of offerings or sacrifices that God had appointed to be offered. For example, we read in chapter one of the burnt offering.
[16:33] And that burnt offering was symbolic of the consecration of the self to God. The giving up of oneself totally and completely to God.
[16:49] We see also the meat or the meal offering. And that indicated the consecration of one's gifts or one's service to God.
[17:07] We see also the sin offering which symbolized atonement. We see also the trespass offering where we have symbolized for us the restoring of all the wrongful gains of the trespasser.
[17:28] The person who has trespassed and broken God's law and got gain in some measure by doing that. Well, now, this trespass offering symbolizes the restoring of all that we have illegally done or gained through sin and robbed God of through sin.
[17:50] And of course, there is also the peace offering which symbolized the reconciliation. You see, in Isaiah 53, we have in that marvelous verse, by his stripes, we are healed.
[18:08] It finishes off. But the chastisement of our peace was upon him. You see, there is this peace between the sinner and God, the elect of God and their God, as we are by nature.
[18:23] And there is only one way to establish peace, and that is through the sacrifice, even the peace offering. now, all of these offerings were repeatedly offered by the priest according to the command of God down through the years.
[18:47] But we find this man in Hebrews 10 and 12, that he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever.
[18:59] one sacrifice. I believe that the word of God is here saying to us that every reference to sacrifices in Leviticus and throughout the Old Testament system as appointed by God, they were all, as it were, summed up in all their details and all their varieties, summed up in the one sacrifice that Jesus Christ gave when he gave himself through the eternal spirit without fault unto God.
[19:41] Do you remember in Leviticus 1 we read that the offerer had to come and to lay his hands upon the head of the animal being offered as a burnt offering?
[19:55] That was symbolic of transference of the sin of the offerer being transferred onto the animal who was being sacrificed in his room and in his place.
[20:11] And he must lean heavily upon the head of the sacrifice to show that he was truly as it were believing and trusting that this is what God required that the sin bearer have the sins borne by itself or by himself in the sacrifice.
[20:35] Now, Jesus, we said, was sinless. He was completely innocent so far as the law of God was concerned in himself.
[20:53] Which one of you accuses me of sin? He said to those who were accusing him of various things. He never had one thought that was sinful, one word or one action that deviated from the uprightness of the law of God.
[21:13] But he came to be the sin bearer. You see, this is what happened when Jesus Christ came into the world. And when he offered one sacrifice for sins, well, it meant that he had become the bearer of the sins of his people.
[21:37] See what it says in 2 Corinthians 5.21. He, that is God, has made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
[21:53] He who knew no sin was made sin for us by God. Is it not true that at the very point of his conception that the sins of all his people were imputed committed to him?
[22:15] Every sin of your own, today, and yesterday, and last week, since you were conceived yourself, and all the sins of all the people of God down through the ages, and what a mass that is, and what a weight that constitutes.
[22:38] someone said that there is enough gravity and weight in one sin to sink our souls into a hell, a lost hell forever.
[22:50] and when our Savior was in this world, John the Baptist said of him, behold the Lamb of God, who is taking away the sin of the world.
[23:04] He saw him for what he was, even the Lamb, bearing the sin of God's people, because God had imputed that sin to him. It's as if God had leaned upon him and put the sins of his people onto him.
[23:27] And Jesus carried this sin to the place called Calvary. He himself is the sacrifice.
[23:44] He himself is the priest. he himself is the altar, because it was at the altar that God met the people to deal with their sin.
[24:02] And so it is in the person of Jesus Christ. We have a suitable sacrifice, and we have a highly qualified and appointed high priest coming to the place where the offering needs to be given up.
[24:24] The word sacrifice here has overtones of slaughter. fire. And that was through in the Old Testament ritual.
[24:35] The animal had to be slaughtered and divided and laid upon the wood that was on the altar, and the wood set alight according to God's commandment.
[24:50] And when Christ ascends the hill of Calvary, he is going to this place where the fire of God is going to deal with him.
[25:05] Remember the way we had explained to us in Leviticus 1, the way the pieces had to be laid out on the wood, so that the fire as it burnt could come in between the pieces and consume all the pieces efficiently.
[25:25] Or so it was in the experience of Jesus Christ. He who suffered upon the cross, he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.
[25:43] And Professor Finlayson, the late Professor Finlayson, says somewhere that there is significance in the way that the scripture uses these words. He was wounded for our transgressions, having particular reference to the open wounds, as it were, upon his body, the gashes caused by the crown of thorns, the wounds by the nails in his hands and in his feet, and so on, the outward aspect of his sufferings, and that, as it were, having reference to the outward aspect of our sinful life.
[26:22] He was wounded in a public way because of the public aspect of our sins, our sins of speech, our sins of actions, and so on.
[26:37] But, of course, he was bruised for our iniquities. And Finlayson says that that has reference to the inward sin, the sins of our thought, the motives that are unhealthy and unholy, that lie deep in the caverns of our soul.
[26:59] For who can his errors understand? But God knows where our sin lies, and every sin of God's elect people needs to be atoned for, and there is to be suffering associated with the making of atonement.
[27:21] And Christ suffered in his body extreme suffering, and he suffered in his soul to a great extremity. The old theologians used to say that the sufferings of the soul were the soul of the sufferings.
[27:38] It's as if that's really where it happened, not disregarding the outward sufferings, of course, it was all one, but the sufferings of the soul was where he experienced the greatest of all of his sufferings.
[27:57] The prophet Zechariah says, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against my fellow, and he plunged the sword of justice into his fell.
[28:14] And who can understand the sufferings associated with that extreme experience, as if the fire of God's justice licked right into the very soul of the Messiah, this God-man mediator, in his act of offering himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God.
[28:46] This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, one sacrifice, his sacrifice, how glorious must the efficacy of this sacrifice be.
[29:08] He had active obedience in all that he did, and he had passive obedience in all that he suffered.
[29:22] His obedience actively involved the fulfilling of all the details of God's law, and his passive obedience involved the suffering intensively, but not extensively, the sufferings of the hell due to his people.
[29:49] He cried upon the cross, it is finished. What was finished? Well, certainly the Old Testament dispensation was finished, and the people to whom this letter was first written, they knew that Christ had died upon the cross at Golgotha.
[30:12] If they didn't, they ought to have known it, because it had already happened, and the momentous cry that went up from the cross, it is finished, meaning that all the Old Testament ritual now was at an end, because he himself, Christ, had come to fulfil all aspects of it, and he says, I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do.
[30:38] he had given the ultimate burnt offering, consecrating himself to God, the ultimate meat offering, in consecrating his gifts and his service to God, the ultimate sin offering, whereby he made atonement on behalf of his people, the ultimate trespass offering, whereby he restored unto God the glory that no sin had robbed him of, I mean the declared glory.
[31:12] God cannot be robbed of his essential glory, but sin robs him of his declared glory, when people mock him and put his law under their feet, in disdain.
[31:26] Christ offered the ultimate peace offering, in making reconciliation, on behalf of his people. the word in the original, it is finished, it is in the perfect tense, meaning that this work that he has finished, now indeed is finished, but its effect continues.
[31:57] In other words, the Lord here is saying, well, the fact that Christ, the God-man mediator, has given this one sacrifice of himself up.
[32:09] It means that no more sacrifices need to be offered, because when he spoke that word of the cross, it is finished.
[32:20] It means the Old Testament now, ritual is complete in himself, and there is no need for another priest to rise, to offer any more sacrifices, because God approves of the sacrifice given by his Son.
[32:42] People ask, how do we know that God approved of the sacrifice offered by Christ? Well, it has been very attractively put, I think, by somebody who has said, well, the resurrection on the third day is God's signature of approval, all that Christ had done.
[33:09] He rose from the dead the third day, and that rising from the dead showed God's approval of all that Christ had done for his people.
[33:22] This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever. Isn't it amazing that he will remember our sins no more?
[33:36] As far as east is distant from the west, so far has he, in his love, removed from us our sin. Ah, but you see, this man, like the scapegoat mentioned in the Old Testament, had to carry the sin away, in his own death, and never again to come back to haunt or to afflict the people of God.
[34:08] Their sins have been dealt with, and their sins no more will come to lie at their door. death.
[34:21] This man, this sacrifice, but then this wonder that we see, mentioned in the chapter, that he has forever sat down on the right hand of God.
[34:39] Into thine hands I commend my spirit, he says, from the cross. And having yielded up his ghost, or his spirit, he bowed his head in death.
[34:57] Ah, but his spirit went into the presence of God. But you see, on the morning of the third day, he rose from the dead.
[35:12] And after forty days, he ascended. these are the points, or the marks of his exaltation.
[35:23] His rising from the dead, his ascending to the right hand of God, and thirdly, his sitting down at the right hand of the majesty on high.
[35:34] These are the ascendancy, as it were, of his exaltation. And the sitting down is a significant aspect of his being elevated.
[35:47] There is one more step in his elevation yet to happen, and that is his coming in glory at the last day. But at present, he is sitting at the right hand of God.
[36:01] If you read in Philippians chapter 2, you'll find that after he has finished the work, that God highly exalted him. And he has given him a name above every name.
[36:13] Well, this is the great exaltation of which we read here, that he is sitting on the right hand of God. There he continues, one aspect of his priesthood, one aspect he has finished, that is the aspect of offering himself as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice on behalf of his people.
[36:41] That's all finished. But another aspect of his work as high priest continues, in that he continues to make intercession on behalf of his people.
[36:54] Isn't it a marvelous thing that Christ knows all the details of your own heart and situation today, and that you are, as it were, upon his heart, as he sits at the right hand of the majesty on high, making intercession, particular intercession, personal intercession, minute intercession, on behalf of all of his people.
[37:25] How do we know if we are within the circle for whom Christ intercedes? I believe we know when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
[37:42] And we see that he is sitting there from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. Isn't it amazing?
[37:54] His enemies are at last to be cast under his feet. man and every obstacle in the way of the complete salvation of the elect children of God is to be removed.
[38:11] Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter what poses a threat to the church in our day. Doesn't matter what groups try and bring persecution and trial and affliction into individuals' experience or the experience of the church throughout the world.
[38:30] Doesn't really matter because his elect people will enjoy complete salvation and he exercises divine power to ensure that that is so.
[38:48] His providence is under his own control. He has sat down and he now applies the efficacy and the merits of his finished work.
[39:06] to his people in the world. And then finally by one offering he has perfected forever them who are sanctified.
[39:20] Perfected them forever. Who are those and who are they who are sanctified? Well I believe that they are they who have from all eternity been separated as the elect of the world.
[39:35] the word sanctified means consecrated or set apart. And that's what happened if we can use the word happened regarding God's election of people in eternity.
[39:49] he set them apart. And that's what we have here. Those who are sanctified. Those who have been set apart from all eternity. Those who are the heirs of salvation.
[40:01] Those who are the brethren of Christ. Those who are God's people. And it says here everything in his place is in place now for them to be perfected forever.
[40:21] God starts in their own personal experience with the new birth. He justifies, he adopts, he sanctifies, and at last he will glorify.
[40:36] How is that possible? Because the basis for it all has been laid in the finished work of Christ. He laid the foundations of his eternal church in his sufferings unto death as the mediator of his people.
[40:57] People ask, what was Christ doing during the hours of darkness when he hung upon the cross? And somebody said he was laying the foundations of the church of God.
[41:10] laying the foundations of his own glorious kingdom. And it says in scripture, thy kingdom hath no end at all, it doth to ages all remain.
[41:24] How can it remain? How is it inevitable that it will be built up in personal experience and in the wider experience of the church throughout the world?
[41:35] Because Christ has finished the work and he now sits at the right hand of God ensuring that the benefits of his finished work are applied to individual souls and to the church in every age.
[41:51] What a wonderful saviour we have. This man, sinless man, the God man, mediator, who in himself offered one sacrifice, yielding himself, so that our sins would be forgiven.
[42:14] He's worth remembering, isn't he? Every day we rise, and he's worth remembering today since we have the opportunity to sit at the Lord's table, because it is an opportunity to remember him in a specific way in his death.
[42:33] May God grant us grace to do so. Let us pray. do through televisions themselves amen.
[42:49] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.