Now, these talks on Hebrews may be a
little bit repetitious, and if they are, I
would like to explain that I am following
the text, and the Holy Spirit's method is,
here a little, there a little, line upon
line, precept upon precept, until we get it.
For the Holy Spirit knows that we don't
get truth by looking at it once or
hearing it once.
We get it by having it repeated very
often until our slow hearts gradually get on
to it.
So I'm not apologizing for repeating.
I only want to be sure that we
don't get bored with it.
I have long had a conviction that one
of the difficulties with modern Christians is that
we are bored.
We act bored in church, we look bored
when we sing, we're bored.
I believe we're bored with God generally, but
we're too pious to admit it.
I think God would love it if some
honest soul would get down on his knees
and say, God, I'm going to pray because
I know I ought to, but I don't
want to because you bore me.
I believe that God wouldn't get angry at
all.
I think that God would say, well, there's
hope for this fellow.
He's telling the truth.
Most people are bored with me and won't
admit it.
But we get bored.
We get bored with prayer.
I think that prayer is boring to some
people.
I think the Bible is.
I've had lots of people tell me that
the Bible bored them.
They didn't use that word.
Only I would think of that real word.
They had nicer words for it, but that's
what they meant.
They said, I read it, don't get anything
out of it.
How do you explain it?
Well, they're bored.
There's nothing so terrible as boredom.
People just have nothing to do.
That's why rich women usually aren't happy, because
they don't have anything to keep them busy.
Women who aren't rich aren't happy either because
they have to be busy, and women that
are rich are unhappy for a different reason.
They don't have enough to keep them busy.
They're bored.
They get bored with living, and bored with
their husbands, and bored with the same thing
all the time.
And it's so in religion, we're likely to
get bored with things.
Let me say to you, friends, that here
is the hope and the glory of the
race.
You and I won't be around very much
longer, really.
Even you young people who never had a
pain in your life and never had anything
wrong with you after you got through teething,
you'll nevertheless one of these days be gone.
And when you go, you want to know
everything is all right with you.
And you'll never know that except you know
it through the thing that I'm preaching to
you here now, that this is the hope
and the glory of the race.
Listen to it.
The law of Moses, the Old Testament law,
having a shadow of good things to come
and not the things themselves.
Now, what did he mean here?
He meant that the light of God fell
across Jesus Christ, and the shadow that it
cast was the Old Testament economy.
The Old Testament ritual, the Old Testament ways,
they were the shadow of Christ, the things
of Christ, thrown by the light of God
across.
That's all the Old Testament was, the Old
Testament ritual and economy, Levitical economy, was a
shadow.
Now, you can't live on a shadow.
A loaf of bread may cast a shadow,
but you can't live on the shadow.
You have to have the bread.
If you stood a loaf of bread on
end and put a light behind it and
you had a veil that a man could
not see the bread, he might see the
shadow of the bread and smile and say,
Well, it's on its way.
The bread will be next because the shadow
falls across the table.
But you can't live on the shadow.
So they could not live there in those
Old Testament times on what they had.
They had to live by looking forward to
what was coming.
The Old Testament things were shadows.
You can't live in the shadow of a
house.
You have to have a house to live
in in cold weather.
The sun shines on the side of a
house and casts a shadow, the shape of
a house, over on the lawn.
But you can't live in that shadow when
frost and snow comes.
You have to have a house to live
in.
So we can't live on shadows.
We have to have the reality, and the
glory of the book of Hebrews is that
the glory of the reality has come and
that the shadow is now fulfilled in the
reality.
This is what it teaches here.
It says here and explains and argues that
if the Old Testament law with its sacrifices,
its lambs, its bulls and goats and pigeons
and the blood of a heifer sprinkling, if
that had been enough, then they wouldn't have
had to do it year by year all
the time.
They could have had it over with.
After you have done a thing, you don't
continue to do it.
A man builds a house and turns it
over to the owner and says, Now I've
built it, it's finished, and the last thing
was done last night at 4 o'clock.
Move in.
He doesn't come back the next day and
tap and cut and saw, and then the
next day come back and tap and saw
and cut, and then wait a year and
come back and saw and tap and cut
some more.
It's done.
He says, Finish now, I've got another job.
He goes from it.
So if the Old Testament law had been
enough, why there wouldn't have had to be
a repetition of it?
The very fact that Israel brought a lamb
today and slew it, and then a year
later brought a lamb and slew it, showed
that the first time the lamb was slain,
it didn't do the work, it wasn't sufficient.
That's what he says here.
He says, Then would they not have ceased
to be offered if they had been efficacious?
Because the worshiper, once purged, should have had
no more conscience of sins.
But in those sacrifices actually there was a
remembrance again made of sin every year.
For it is not possible that the blood
of bulls and goats should take away sins.
Therefore when he cometh into the world, he
says, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but
a body hast thou prepared me.
God got tired of their sacrifices.
Do you remember that passage in Isaiah?
To what purpose is your multitude of sacrifices
unto me, saith the Lord?
I am full of the burnt offerings of
rams, and the fat of fed beasts.
I delight not in the blood of bullocks,
or of lambs, or of goats, when ye
come to appear before me.
Who hath required this at your hand to
tread my courts?
We imagine that by going to church in
vast numbers regularly that we impress high heaven.
But God says, Who told you to do
this, when ye come to appear before me?
Who has required this at your hand?
Bring no more vain oblations, he said.
Yet he had commanded those oblations.
Incense is an abomination unto me, and yet
he had commanded that incense.
The new moons and the sabbaths and the
calling of assemblies, I can't stand them, he
says.
It's iniquity, your solemn meetings, your new moons
and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth.
They are trouble unto me, I am weary
to bear them.
God was bored, and he was bored with
our everlasting sacrifices that had no finality and
no meaning.
So he said, Sacrifices and offerings thou would
not, therefore a body hast thou prepared me.
Then said I, Lo, I come.
In the volume of the book it is
written of me.
In the volume of the book, said Luther,
what book?
What book indeed?
There is only one book.
It is written in that book.
It is written of me.
Who is the me?
Who indeed?
There is only one, and that is Jesus
Christ the Lord.
For this book is a continual setting forth
of the coming one.
When he said, Sacrifices and offerings, and burnt
offering, and offering for sin thou wouldst not,
neither had pleasure in them which were offered
by the law.
Then said he, Lo, I come to do
thy will, O God, by the which will
we are sanctified through the offering of the
body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Every priest, he explains again, every priest stands
daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices
which can never take away sins.
We have in our little record collection two
or three masses, one Protestant, Bach, and then
we have two by Beethoven.
The music is sublime and the language is
beautiful, but you can't escape the feeling that
here is something missing.
There is a shadow here, but there is
not a reality.
They pray, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy,
and stretch it out for a whole side
of a record.
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have
mercy, Christ have mercy.
Isn't there a time where you say, tis
done, the great transaction is done, I am
my Lord's and he is mine?
Isn't there a place as we plead, carry
the issue?
Isn't there a place where we say, done,
put a period down, and say, now God
put me to work.
I am forgiven, I am cleansed, you have
shown mercy?
I believe so.
I think this is one of the troubles
with some of our ritualistic churches, and they
repeat every Sunday and between time, a plaintive
effort to be forgiven and to have mercy.
But there comes a time when that's over,
and you can stretch your hand up to
heaven and say, it's finished, it's done, fixed
on this blissful central rest.
But every priest, he says in the Old
Testament, stands daily ministering and offering oftentimes the
same sacrifices which can never take away sins.
But this man, after he had offered one
sacrifice for sins, notice the many little couplets
we'd call them here, not really couplets, but
twins, two words, two words, two words, listen.
One sacrifice for sin, forever sat down in
the right hand of God, from henceforth anticipating,
till his enemies be made his footstool.
For by one offering he has perfected forever
them that are sanctified.
And for that reason the Holy Ghost also
is a witness to us, for after he
said before, this is the covenant that I
will make with them after these days, says
the Lord, I will put my laws into
their hearts and in their minds while I
write them.
And their sins and iniquities will I remember
no more.
Now where remission of these is, there is
no more offering for sin.
And having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into
the holiest by the blood of Jesus by
a new and living way which he hath
consecrated for us through the veil, that is
to say, his flesh.
And having a high priest over the house
of God, let us draw near with the
true heart and full assurance of faith, having
our hearts sprinkled from the evil conscience and
our bodies washed with pure water.
Now that is the text, and you will
notice here the privilege that is ours.
I will mention it briefly and be finished,
for this is Communion Sunday and that is
the important part of the service today.
Notice our privileged place here, a consecrated way
to God's very presence, a way into God's
very presence.
Do you remember when the only way our
fathers knew was the way out?
God said, Take it and get out, and
they got out.
And God put a sword there, turning every
way by the tree of life.
And our parents, hand in hand with majored
steps and slow, as the whole human race
has yearned to go back.
Now, I don't mean to say everybody wants
to be a Christian, no, because the flesh
and the devil and the world are busy
seeing that we don't want to be.
But in our yearning hearts there is a
longing.
They say that in India there is a
God for every human being, every one.
And all over the world there are gods.
Men don't want to be good, but they
want to get back into that presence.
But there never was a way back, nobody
ever found a way back until it was
here.
When he came, Lo, I come.
In the volume of the book it is
written of me to do thy will, O
God.
And when he went back into the heaven,
he opened the way, so that now where
he went through, he blazed the trail.
So now anybody can get in that wants
to.
So there is a consecrated way into the
presence of God.
And in that presence of God there is
a high priest there who wears our nature.
I was thinking the other day, just thinking
yesterday about this, about justification.
We are given a concept of justification, an
explanation of it, that I don't believe is
a very sound one, scripturally at all.
It is the transfer of guilt explanation.
Now, I believe in the transfer of guilt,
of course.
I believe that God laid on Christ iniquity
of us all.
I believe what the Bible says about it.
But it's a little too pat to please
my heart, the idea that I can be
as vile as the inside of an old
green mossy sewer, and that the Lord drops
a mantle of judicial righteousness around me, and
immediately God accepts me as being perfectly righteous.
God would have to contradict himself to do
that.
God couldn't do that and not contradict himself.
How then does God justify a person?
How does he do it?
He does it by taking our nature into
Christ, who is the righteous one, and his
righteousness becomes ours, not by judicial imputation only,
but by actually having it in our nature,
because we have him in our nature, and
he is in us and we are in
him.
Therefore I doubt very much there is any
such thing known in the mind of God
as justification without regeneration.
Regeneration unites us to the nature of Jesus,
and Jesus being righteous imparts then to us
the righteousness that God is satisfied with.
And in that sense, the idea of transfer
of guilt and imputed righteousness is correct.
But if we carry it too far, it
becomes a mechanical, commercial thing.
I prefer to believe that it is something
more than a commercial transaction.
I believe that it is a living thing,
and that the man who has been taken
up into Jesus Christ actually has in his
nature that righteousness.
Is that what John meant when he said,
His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot
sin because he is born of God?
Is that what he meant?
I think so.
So that righteousness is imparted to the man
who is united to Christ, and not to
the man who simply stands outside and receives
a judicial notification that he has been made
righteous.
A telegram is sent him in the word
of the text saying, You are righteous now.
I believe that is a degenerate and degraded
concept of justification by faith.
Real justification by faith, I repeat now for
the fourth time, is the taking up of
the sinner's nature into Christ.
And because Christ died for that sinful nature
and paid the price back there, he now
can receive righteousness from the one into whom
he is taken.
We are accepted in the Beloved, don't forget
that.
We are never accepted out of the Beloved,
and we cannot be.
So there is a high priest there at
the right hand of God, and he wears
our nature and we wear his.
No angel could qualify.
He took one of our own race, one
that could be one with us.
The New England poet says, speaking to God,
Was thy Godhead not satisfied?
Did thy Godhead not satisfied marry our manhood,
making it its bride?
That is exactly what he did.
As though the nature of God were not
satisfied, and he took man up into his
nature and married it and made it his
bride.
So God's righteousness through Jesus Christ comes to
the sinner man, by justification but by regeneration.
We see here a third thing, and that
is the moral right to come to God.
Anybody can come now, and he has a
moral right to come.
We have a moral right to come and
be heard, because our Lord is there, a
high priest, completely and perfectly representing us.
And we have a right to come and
worship and be accepted, and we have a
right to hide in him and be safe.
If someone says, I don't want to hide
from life, I don't feel that I want
to hide from life, I want to face
life, that's bold, that's a big, brave, bold
way to talk.
But when the temperature goes to 50 below,
nobody says, I don't want to hide from
the cold, nobody runs out and does a
spring dance with just a thin robe on.
He dresses as well as he can, gets
out of it just as fast as he
can, into a place just as warm as
possible.
And when we face life's frigidities, life's frightful
cold, and life's terrible, wearing abrasive action, it
sounds awfully brave to say, I don't want
to hide from life.
But it's ridiculous, because what we're hiding from
is not life, we're hiding from a sinful
world.
We're hiding from a vicious, sinister devil.
We're hiding from temptation, and we're hiding the
only place there is to hide, we're hiding
in God.
So we have a right to hide in
him and be perfectly safe.
The child of God is safe in Christ.
When the lambs are safe in the fold,
the wolf can snarl and howl outside, but
he can't get in.
And when the child of God enters the
Father's house, the enemy can roar without, but
he can't get in.
This is our privilege, this is our high
privilege.
This is our privilege this morning.
In 924 and on of the chapter preceding
this, Christ is not entered into the holy
places made with hands, which are the figures
of the true, but into heaven itself, now
to appear in the presence of God for
us.
For if he appeared often and offered his
blood often for the blood of others, then
he often hath suffered since the foundation of
the world.
But now once, at the end of the
world, hath he appeared to put away sin
by the sacrifice of himself.
I want you to know it says put
away sin here.
Let's not talk about covered sin.
I know what we mean when we say
our sin is covered, and I wouldn't say
we shouldn't use the phrase, though it is
not a scriptural phrase, and we ought to
know what we mean if we ever use
it.
For in the Old Testament, God covered sin.
In the New Testament, he puts it away.
It's a vastly different thing.
The Lord puts away sin by the sacrifice
of himself.
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, that is, without a sin offering
unto salvation.
Notice how this perfectly ties in and harmonizes
beautifully with 1 Corinthians 11, which is the
great Lord's Supper chapter.
For Christ appeared and died and then rose
and went to God's right hand, and unto
them that look for him shall he appear
the second time unto salvation.
So when we say at the Lord's Supper
that we celebrate his death till he come,
we look back at his dying and forward
to his coming, and it's found here in
Hebrews.
You will find in the scriptures the man
who wrote the Hebrews, St. Paul, St. Peter,
John, and our Lord's own words, and all
the New Testament is woven together in perfect
harmony and utter beauty, all saying the same
thing, that Jesus Christ is enough, that he
is our High Priest, he is our Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world, that
he by his blood consecrated the way into
God's presence, and that now we have a
moral right to come to speak to him
and be heard, to worship him and to
be accepted, to hide in him and be
safe.
That's what we're celebrating this morning, a God
-grant that we should come to this in
a true heart with full assurance of faith.