Well, today we move into Hebrews chapter 10, and as I mentioned earlier, this will conclude a section that began back in chapter six.
And that section, that extended section, will conclude with verse 18 of this chapter, but it will take us a little while to even get that far. But all of this discussion about the high priesthood of Jesus Christ began in chapter six at verse 20. Where we read where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. You probably remember that discussion that goes on in a number of the verses following about Melchizedek and his relationship with Abraham, and how Jesus Christ is a priest according to his order, not the order of Aaron, that is, of Levi. And of course, the reason for that is because the writer of this epistle is writing to Jewish Christians who have grown up in the Jewish faith, we might call it, grown up in the old covenant worship of God, the old covenant details that were given to Moses, given to the people of God through Moses, I suppose I should say. And now they have been told that Jesus Christ has come and set aside the old covenant and has fulfilled it, and among other things, that Jesus Christ is the high priest of new covenant believers.
And some of them had objections when they heard that. Wait a minute, the Bible tells us, our scriptures tell us, theirs being the Old Testament scriptures, our scriptures tell us that priests must come from the tribe of Levi. If they're going to be qualified as priests, how can Jesus of the tribe of Judah be our high priest? And so the writer of Hebrews explains that.
He is a priest, but not after the order of Aaron, not after the order of Levi, but after a more ancient order, after the order of Melchizedek, not after an order that originated with Moses, as important as Moses was in the history of Israel, but one that originated in the days of Abraham, an even more important figure in the history of Israel because the whole nation of Israel came out of Abraham, and it all began when God called Abraham out of the year of the Chaldees, and it began when God made promises to Abraham and to his seed, and so Jesus Christ, our high priest, is a high priest after that order that supersedes the order of Levi that came for a temporary purpose in the days of Moses. And so for those Hebrew Christians who might have been wavering in their faith in Christ and wavering a bit in their commitment to the New Covenant as opposed to the Old, they are now reminded again and again and again and again throughout this book that no, you cannot return to the Old Covenant. Now that the New Covenant has come, the Old Covenant's gone. It does not even serve the purpose it served before Jesus came.
You not only are returning to something that never fulfilled completely the purpose of salvation that many of the Jews mistakenly thought it did, but now it doesn't even have any purpose in the worship of God because Jesus has come, inaugurating the New Covenant, setting the Old Covenant aside. And so Jesus, we are reminded, is better than anything or anyone under the law of Moses or under the Old Covenant scriptures. Jesus supplies what Moses could only foreshadow.
That's what we need to understand. Jesus supplies what Moses in the Old Covenant could only foreshadow. Now today we're going to take up verses 1 through 16 and learn why Jesus is the remedy for the inadequacies of the Old Covenant.
There are two divisions in my approach today. Number one, the inadequacies of the Old Covenant verses 1 through 4. And number two, the remedy for Old Covenant inadequacies in verses 5 through 7. First, the inadequacies of the Old Covenant. Now I forewarn you that some of what we're going to look at in these four verses has already been said, but it's going to be said again. Clearly, the Spirit of God knows that we need reminder. We need repetition.
And so we're going to hear some things that we've heard before, but with additional details that we have not heard before and that need to be considered as well. So the inadequacies of the Old Covenant verses 1 through 4 of Hebrews 10 can be stated in four statements. Number one, the Old Covenant could not reconcile sinners to God. The Old Covenant could not reconcile sinners to God. That's verse 1.
We'll come back to it in a moment. Number two, the Old Covenant could not clear a guilty conscience. The Old Covenant could not clear a guilty conscience. Number three, the Old Covenant, that was verse 2. Number three, the Old Covenant could not certify the removal of sins. That's verse 3. And number four, the Old Covenant could not pay redemption's price. Verse 4. Back to number one, the Old Covenant could not reconcile sinners to God. Hebrews 10, 1. For the law, that's shorthand for the Old Covenant for everything that was included in the law of Moses. For the law, with all of its sacrifices and priesthood and worship that was involved in that law, for the law, having a shadow of the good things to come and not the very image of the things can never, with these sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.
The Old Covenant could not reconcile sinners to God since it was, as we're told in this verse, a shadow and not the substance. It was a type, but it was not the fulfillment of that type. It was a picture to illustrate what was to come, to illustrate greater truths to come, but it was only a picture. It doesn't matter whether you have one picture or a thousand pictures of, say, a child or a grandchild, or ten thousand, you can put them all together, it still doesn't give you a grandchild.
Right? That's a picture, we're grateful for it, but it's not the substance, it's an image. And even though there were a lot of elements of the Old Covenant, so many, and so complex was it, that some people got caught up in all of that and they thought they had the substance and they got all involved in making sure they were doing everything according to that which was prescribed by Moses, and they lost sight of the fact that all of these things were simply types, they were shadows, they were pictures of something greater to come, and now that greater has come! The Old Covenant could not reconcile sinners to God since it was a shadow pointing to the one who could reconcile sinners to God, but it did not contain the substance. It could not reconcile sinners to God since it offered incomplete sacrifices. Sacrifices which can never, with these same sacrifices which they offer continually, make those who approach perfect.
It couldn't do that! Again, it doesn't matter how many sacrifices were offered. Offer one, and most of the time in this section, the writer of Hebrews is referring to the Great Day of Atonement, the day when a particular sacrifice of the goat that was selected to be slain, they took two goats, you remember one of them was designated the scapegoat, the other was designated the sacrificial goat, the goat that would be the sin offering, and on that Great Day of Atonement, the goat that was the sin offering would be sacrificed, and the high priest would take his blood behind the veil into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat, and then the other goat would be led out into the wilderness as a picture, as a shadow, as a type of the reality that sins must be removed, and God was hereby foreshadowing the removal of sins, and yet he was showing that it really didn't happen in that ritual, not by that goat, not by either of these two goats. And if the sacrifices on the Great Day of Atonement, one time a year, and that was the most important day in all of the Jewish calendar, when the high priest offered a sacrifice that covered the sins of the nation for another year, if those sacrifices on that Great Day could not reconcile sinners to God, could not actually remove sins, then all of the other thousands of offerings for the rest of the year, and indeed there were thousands, they couldn't do it either.
It doesn't matter how many sacrifices you have, they are all only an image, not the substance. And so they are incomplete sacrifices, can never, with these same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, the Old Covenant could not reconcile sinners to God since it failed to remove guilt. Verse 1 says, it could not make those who approach perfect.
It could not make those who, some translations say, draw near, perfect. In a sense, anyone who came and brought a sacrifice to a priest to be offered upon the altar was drawing near in the way that God had appointed them at that time. It may very well be that this phrase, those who approach or those who draw near, is a way of separating out those who come with a contrite heart, with a believing heart. We know that some of those who came were coming doing the ritual but not really with believing hearts. They were going through the motions but they weren't really worshipping God. Some of them we read throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, were going through the details, the requirements of the Old Covenant, even while they were worshipping other gods, idols in their homes at the same time. But there were always some who came sincerely, who came earnestly, who came seriously, who really had a desire to draw near to God.
But this didn't do it. It didn't make those who approached God, who drew near to God, it did not make them perfect. What do we mean by that? Well it didn't make them qualified to be reconciled to God, which requires perfection. When you find the word perfect in the Bible sometimes it has the meaning of mature or complete. But I think in this text it more likely has the meaning that we normally attach to it, which is without blemish, without imperfection. It is perfect and that's what's required to come near to God.
We've got to be perfect. And this didn't do it. This didn't make anybody perfect. This didn't deal with their sins. Even the most committed worshippers who drew near earnestly were not made perfect by this ritual. Those who were most sincere, most desirous of approaching near to God were not qualified to do so through this ritual. The old covenant could not reconcile sinners to God. It could not bring sinners into a right relationship with God. And that reminds us that today those who are trying to be right with God through their good works are, as we say, barking up the wrong tree.
But it's worse than that. It's a fatal, fatal, fatal error because it's a difference between heaven and hell. And there are many people who think that, well since God knows that I'm not perfect and nobody's perfect, then God's not going to demand that which is impossible. And so if I do the best I can, if I'm sincere, if I worship God the best way I know how, if I do good works, if I'm good to my neighbor and live a good life, then surely God will accept that and let me into heaven. And the answer is, no He will not. He requires perfection.
And you say that's not fair. Nobody's perfect. Right, you got the point. Nobody qualifies for heaven, but God has given us a perfect righteousness in His Son that is imputed, that is counted to those who trust in Him. So that in Christ all who come to God are perfect. I mean perfectly perfect. And that's the only condition that can come into God's presence. That's the only righteousness that God accepts. He doesn't grade on a curve. He doesn't accept 99.9%. He requires 100% perfection.
How do we get that? Help others, no way. No, not in yourself. But are you hearing the gospel?
That is what God has given us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. But the old covenant could not reconcile sinners to God. Number two, the old covenant could not clear guilty consciences, verse two. For then, if the old covenant sacrifices, particularly the one on the Day of Atonement, could actually reconcile sinners to God, for then, verse two tells us, would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshippers, once purified, would have no more consciousness of sin. The old covenant could not clear a guilty conscience because the payment for sins was never complete. It was never done. Because if it was able to actually do the job completely of removing guilt, removing sins, then those sacrifices wouldn't have to have been repeated over and over and over again.
If old covenant sacrifices, any of them, or all of them together, had achieved justification, then they would, at the point when they achieved that, have ceased. It's done. It's completed its work.
Work accomplished. But they never ceased, did they? If the old covenant sacrifices could have accomplished justification for guilty sinners, then why did Jesus come to earth and die on the cross? Why was it necessary for him to die? If there was a way, by the sacrifice of animals, to bring to completion the work of justification, then why, oh why, oh why, oh why, oh why did God Almighty send His only Beloved Son to die on the cross? That wasn't necessary if these old covenant sacrifices could do the job, but clearly they couldn't. And because that was true, because that became obvious to old custom worshipers who were endeavoring to draw near, who truly were paying attention, who really were sincere about wanting to have their sins cleansed away and to be reconciled to God, yet it was obvious if they were paying attention to what was going on, if these sacrifices did that, then why do we have to do it again and again and again and again? They should have come to that realization eventually. And because that is so, they would have realized this, then their conscience would never be able to completely rest, would never be able to have peace with God, would never be able to be satisfied that the work has been done, my sins have been dealt with, they have been removed, I am now qualified to come into the presence of God, there's no mark against my record, I have a clear conscience, not because I've never sinned, nobody has that kind of a clear conscience except Jesus Christ, but because I know my sins have been dealt with, they've been removed, but no old covenant worshiper could come to that conclusion, could they?
It wasn't possible. Now that brings us to this question of the conscience. Guilty consciences could not be at peace because the sacrifice of the old covenant animals did not reconcile sinners to God. So very briefly, and this is just a very quick summary, how does the conscience work? Why does the conscience of some people trouble them and of others it does not? The conscience is something that God has created in the human being that evaluates our behavior according to the available knowledge that we have. Conscience is important, conscience is more than helpful, it's very significant in our lives, but conscience is limited, conscience is corrupted by sin, just like every part of us.
When we talk about total depravity, we don't mean that anybody is as bad as it's possible for a human being to mean. What we mean is that depravity, the damaging effects of sin, has touched every part of man's being. It's touched our bodies, we see that in the illnesses we have and the eventual death that we die.
It has touched our mind, we see that in our difficulty in understanding things and having to wrestle to try to understand things accurately. It's touched every part of our being, it's touched our conscience because our conscience does not always operate as it ought to and as it would if it had never been touched by sin. So we have a conscience and it's important, but it's not perfect when we are told, let your conscience be your guide that may be a very untrustworthy guide.
Maybe the best you've got without God's word, but that's why you need God's word. Because the word of God is able to repair and restore your conscience to better health, though it will never become perfect until we get to heaven. But consciences can become worse and consciences can become better and they're made better when the word of God is received and will correct the wrong thinking of our conscience.
When the word of God will give us the knowledge that our conscience needs to signal correctly what we need to understand. And so the conscience evaluates our behavior according to available knowledge, but if our knowledge is faulty or incomplete, our conscience will not be a safe guide. It is possible, the Bible tells us, to sear our conscience so that it suppresses the knowledge which we do have. Not only is the conscience handicapped by the fact that it doesn't have all knowledge to start with, but sometimes the knowledge it does have is pushed away so often that the conscience stops bothering us about it.
We've said no to our conscience so many times that it no longer signals the danger that we should be receiving from it. But here in this use of conscience in Hebrews chapter 10, the writer is assuming, I think, the correct function of conscience. And it is this, that the conscience of Old Testament worshipers that understood what was going on and could evaluate the problem with the sacrifices that were being offered and could see in the fact that they had to be repeated year by year that they weren't really dealing with sin in a thorough way, it was not eliminating sin from their lives, their conscience had all of this knowledge. This is proper knowledge that's informing their conscience, and if that's true, then I'm still guilty of my sins.
In spite of the fact that I've done everything that the law of Moses required, I'm still guilty of my sins. Their conscience could not give them peace before God. The knowledge that the old covenant sacrifices did not justify sinners caused sincere old covenant worshipers to have a perpetually guilty conscience. It never could arrive at a state of perfect peace with God. We don't know how blessed we are with the new covenant truth that we have.
Peace, perfect peace, in this vile world of sin, the blood of Jesus whispers peace within. But the old covenant worshipers didn't have that knowledge. Now, I hasten to remind you, and I've said this before, but please understand that old covenant believers were saved by trusting in the promises of God, but they were not saved on the basis of the old covenant provisions. They weren't saved on the basis of the old covenant sacrifices. On what basis were they saved? They were saved on the, to them, future work of the promised Messiah who would come and offer the one sacrifice that actually would deal with sins thoroughly.
And as we saw in our text last week, from the beginning of the world, clear back to the Garden of Eden, all the way until the second coming of Christ, it would deal with all of those sins that were under the blood of Christ by those who believed the promises of God. But old covenant worshipers were saved on the promise of the new covenant. But the old covenant didn't have any salvation, any assurance, any peace to offer them.
So what are we talking about? The inadequacies of the old covenant. Number one, it could not reconcile sinners to God. Number two, it could not clear a guilty conscience.
Number three, it could not certify the removal of sins. Verse three, but in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. Poor old covenant worshiper. Every year he faithfully enters into the ceremony of the Day of Atonement with much appreciation. Hallelujah, praise God.
My sins, along with those of all of the nation, are covered for another year. Every prescribed time he brings his sacrifice to the tabernacle and hands it to the priest to be offered on his behalf. And yet, in those sacrifices, there is not an assurance that sins are God. He has to keep doing every time he comes back to do it again. That's a reminder that the sins are not God.
That's why he has to come back. In those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins. Not a reminder of atonement, not a reminder of forgiveness, not a reminder of reconciliation with God, but a reminder of sins every year. The old covenant could not certify the removal of sins.
Yet, what did it do? It covered sins and delayed justice. They're covered for another year by the mercy of God who's given this prescription and said, if you'll do this, I will pass by.
I'll pass over you with my judgment. I will cover your sins for another year. But we're still waiting for the only sacrifice that can actually remove them.
I'll cover them until the one that I have appointed to take away sins will come and do that work. And so the annual repetition of the sacrifices was a reminder of the inadequacy of the old covenant, not its sufficiency. Past sacrifices were not sufficient. That's why we're here doing it again. And if past sacrifices were not sufficient, neither will the present one that I've come to participate in today.
Do it either, because I'll have to come again next time. And therein we realize that in these old covenant sacrifices, sins were never removed. But new covenant promises, new covenant provisions promise the removal of sins. Remember when the writer of Hebrews dealt so extensively with that passage from Jeremiah 31 in chapter 8, the promise of the new covenant.
Look at it in chapter 8 for a moment. Verse 12 says, this is part of the provisions of the new covenant, and what sets it aside is different from the old covenant. Verse 12, For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. Now the fact that he sets this in contrast with the old covenant makes it clear that under the old covenant he never was able to say, I remember your sins no more.
He continued to remember them. They continued to be on their record. They continued to be a mark against them until Jesus came in the new covenant, laid down his life, and then God says, under that provision I will remember your sins no more. That's the blessing, that's the glory of the new covenant in contrast with the old covenant. The old covenant could not certify the removal of sins, number 4. The old covenant could not pay redemption's price, verse 4. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. It is not possible that the bull that the high priest shed for his own sins on the day of atonement could actually take away his sins. It is not possible that the goat that was shed on the day of atonement and whose blood was sprinkled for the sins of the nation, it's not possible that that goat could take away the sins of the nation. It was not possible.
It's just not possible for reasons we've already discussed. And if the day of atonement sins, and again because he mentions bulls and goats, he seems to have that high holy day in mind when he makes this statement. If the sacrifices made on the day of atonement could not take away sins, then none of the others could either, the daily sacrifices, the Sabbath day sacrifices. It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. That's an emphatic declaration.
It's not possible. It's not possible that the blood of goats should take away sins. That's a logical conclusion based upon the fact that they have to keep being repeated again and again and again and again. If they ever did the job, why this repetition?
It's a logical deduction. It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. That is an important reminder for all old covenant worshipers, and that's an important reminder for the Hebrews who are receiving this epistle and are being tempted to go back to the old covenant. That's an important reminder for us that there is no religious ritual, whatever it may be, that is able to take away sins.
Only the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, can truly take away sin. So thus we see the inadequacies of the old covenant in verses 1 through 4, but now we take up the remedy for old covenant inadequacies in verses 5 through 7. Therefore, we read, verse 5, when he came into the world, he said, and now the rest of verse 5 and all of verse 6 and all of verse 7, our quotation from Psalm 40. He said, when he came into the world, this is obviously Christ saying this, what did he say, quoting the words of Psalm 40? Sacrifice an offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me.
In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sins, you had no pleasure. Therefore I, that's Christ, said, behold, I have come. I've come to do what they couldn't do. In the volume of the book it is written of me, I have come to do your will, O God.
Here's the remedy. A remedy foretold in the Old Testament in Psalm 40. Now, we've got a second, I would say, significant passage. Back in chapter 8, as I reminded you a little bit ago, the writer of Hebrews quoted a very significant Old Testament passage in Jeremiah 31 about the promise of the new covenant that would replace the old one, foretold hundreds of years before Christ came. This is not new information.
This should not be a surprise. Old covenant worshipers who were paying attention to their own scripture should have been expecting this. And now we come to another significant Old Testament passage that foretells the necessity of one coming who can actually accomplish what the old covenant sacrifices could not accomplish.
It was foretold in the Old Testament. As we look back in the Old Testament, and I'll not ask you to turn right now, but if you look at Psalm 40 and read what it says about it and the heading above it and so forth, you will realize it's a psalm of David. And we start out reading these words thinking, well, this is what David said, but we soon come to some things that rise above David, saying things that David never said. Whoever this psalm is talking about says, I don't need to make any sacrifices. Well, David couldn't say that. He did because he was under the law of Moses.
But we don't need to wonder about what seems to be this mystery. How do we understand the wording here that is ascribed to David and yet doesn't seem to be possible to actually apply to David? We've got the answer here in the book of Hebrews. The New Testament tells us how to solve this mystery, though it was David speaking in one sense, like so many of the statements found throughout the Psalms, David is actually speaking not of himself but of what we sometimes call his greater son, that is, the promised Messiah, who is in the line of David and is the son of David, but who is also the Messiah who will sit on David's throne. And in these words, David is not speaking of himself. He's speaking of the Messiah, the promised Christ.
He, that is, Christ, said these words. And so once again, another significant Old Testament text that's dealt with in the book of Hebrews. Once again, a reminder that the book of Hebrews is saturated with Old Testament truth.
We can't even study the book of Hebrews without going back and back and back and back and back into the Old Testament and looking at the things that are referred to either in general, like the Old Covenant practices under the law of Moses, or specifically as verses are quoted from the Old Testament. But it is a reminder of how unified are the Scriptures, Old and New Testament, and yet also a reminder of how the Old Testament can only be fully understood in the light of the New. If you take the Old Testament and don't have the New, you're going to be scratching your head with a lot of puzzling things. But a great many of those will be straightened out if you'll study the Old Testament in the light of the New and think of the New Testament as being a commentary on the Old. Now it won't solve all of your questions because it doesn't comment on the whole Old Testament. That would take a testament bigger than the Old Testament if it commented on everything in the Old Testament. But it comments on enough in the Old Testament that it should help us to understand what it does comment on and guide us in some thoughts of interpretation and principles even for those things that are not specifically mentioned. This is how the New Testament handles these Old Testament passages.
Let's learn from that. So, the remedy for the Old Covenant inadequacies, and there's a two-fold remedy. It's very simple but very profound.
What's the remedy for the Old Covenant inadequacies? Number one, Christ's sacrificial death, verses five and six. And number two, Christ's righteous life, verse seven.
We usually take that in reverse order. We talk about the righteous life because he lived that first and then the substitutionary death because he laid down his life at the end of his life of obedience. But this particular psalm quoted by the book of Hebrews takes it in reverse order so we will do the same. So these are the two elements of the promises of God that actually deal with the Old Covenant inadequacies. They are again Christ's sacrificial death, number one, and Christ's righteous life, number two. Christ's sacrificial death, I read verses five and six again. Therefore, when he came into the world, he said, Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, you had no pleasure. Clearly this is talking about the incarnation.
When he came into the world, when the Messiah came into the world, the incarnation. And when he came into the world, he, quoting from the Old Testament, said, Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, O God. Some translations say, Sacrifice and offering you took no pleasure in. Well, at first that strikes us as strange because if God didn't desire them, why did he command them? If God took no pleasure in them, why did he have his Old Covenant saints performing them over and over again?
But again, in context, you have to understand what is being said here. Sacrifices and offerings God did not desire or take pleasure in as an atonement for sin. That's the whole point. We just saw it in verses one through four. The Old Covenant, with all of its sacrifices, could not take away sin. And so God had no pleasure in it in that sense. It couldn't do what God desired to do, what God determined to do, what God took pleasure in doing, which is taking away sins of rebellious sinners who deserve to spend eternity in hell. But it's God's good pleasure to rescue them from their condition and to give them life in heaven by his grace. And so he took no pleasure in those Old Testament sacrifices because they couldn't accomplish that. They were not an atonement for sin.
They weren't able to do that. And so, therefore, the Father prepared a body for his Son. Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. Now here we get into something very interesting.
I don't know if I have time to deal with it or not, but I'm going to try. If you read my New King James Version in Psalm 40 in the Old Testament, you will read almost this whole quotation is like you find it in Hebrews except for this part right here. It doesn't say, a body you have prepared for me. It says, my ears you have opened. Well, how does the Old Testament English translation of the Hebrew, the Hebrew clearly says your ears, my ears you have opened or something even more strange, my ears you have digged out is more literal. How does the English translation of the Hebrew manuscripts, my ears you have digged out in the Old Testament, turn into a body you have prepared for me in the New Testament?
Can you explain that? Well, I don't think it's all that difficult to explain. Again, critics like to make a big mountain out of this as if this is proof that the Bible is not inspired and that we can't rely on it.
But of course, critics can find that evidence to their satisfaction nearly anywhere because they're critics, because they're unbelievers. I don't think it's all that difficult. The Hebrew, my ears you have digged, can be understood and I think this is the best way to understand it. I lay aside some of the thoughts that refer to a servant who had his ear pierced in order to remain with his master.
Some of you are familiar with that. But I think it's more accurate to see this as the Septuagint interpretation of a poetic description of what we might call divine sculpture. What is the Hebrew getting at when it says my ears you have digged? Well, think about a sculptor sculpting a body out of stone or sculpting it in clay and he's shaping the different parts of the body when he comes to the ear. He's going to have to do some digging out to make the ear look like an ear.
Right? Obviously. And so you can see it's not very far afield to think in terms of this is a description of God fashioning a human body for his son. It's a poetic description and therefore we understand that what it means is that God prepared a body for his son.
That's really not that far afield is it? It's just taking it from a poetic description and giving it a more concrete interpretation. What did F.F.
Bruce call this? He called it an interpretive paraphrase. It's not a literal translation of what the Hebrew says but it's a really really good and accurate interpretive paraphrase. It really gets at what the Hebrew is saying, is communicating.
I do believe that is correct. It's an interpretive paraphrase. And so it's telling us that Jesus took a body to become the one true effective sacrifice. Sacrifices and offerings of bulls and goats you did not desire but a body you prepared for me.
Why? So that I could become the one sacrifice that actually did what needed to be done. That's it. And so we're talking about the remedy for the old covenant inadequacies. Remedy number one, Christ's sacrificial death. That did the job that all of those thousands of old covenant sacrifices couldn't do.
But for that death to be qualified to do the job we have to add the second ingredient which is Christ's righteous life. Verse 7. Then I said, Messiah speaking, behold I have come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do your will, O God. And that's emphasized all throughout the gospels, isn't it?
Why did Jesus come? To do the Father's will. But do we understand what that means?
That doesn't mean just willing to die on the cross. That means to do perfectly everything that is written in the book. Again, the literal word there is scroll because they didn't have books in that day like we have today.
Scroll. Everything that is written in the scroll of scriptures that is required of man by God, even under the law of Moses, the most difficult body of law and requirements that ever has been written. And it all had divine origin. It was all given by God. And its purpose, as much as anything, was to show sinners that they couldn't obey God. They couldn't keep God's law perfectly.
They were dependent upon God's mercy because nobody can do all that except one. And Jesus did it perfectly. He obeyed the will of God in every detail to the minutest detail. I have come to do everything that was written in the book of the law.
I came to do your will, O God. And so, based upon a perfectly righteous life that, number one, exempted him from the penalty of death, and then made him a perfect lamb of God, a spotless lamb of God, to lay down his life as an effective and accepted sacrifice to pay for all these sins that no other sacrifice could pay for. And then through the amazing mercy of God, God performing a double imputation for all of those – I didn't say amputation, I said imputation – a double imputation for all of those who trust in him, he imputes Christ's righteousness to our account, and suddenly our wretched, sinful, miles-long list of transgressions is blotted out. And we are counted as having a righteousness that's as perfect as Jesus Christ's righteousness. And then the guilt of our sins, which deserves a death of justice, of God's judgment upon us because of our sins, our redeemer, our substitute, bore that in our place. And so God counts his death as paying our debt. God applies his righteousness to our account, which now makes us perfect, and his sight, and we have access into heaven. And lo and behold, all of the inadequacies of the Old Covenant are solved in one person, Jesus Christ, in his perfect life and in his vicarious death.
Christ's righteous life, the perfect obedience of Christ, came according to the prophetic scriptures to do the Father's will. God's will is recorded in a book. It is written. It is written. I have come in the volume of the book. It is written of me. God's will as recorded in a book, not God's will, as someone else says God spoke to me, told me this, told me that. I don't put much stock in that, but I'll tell you what I put stock in. I put stock in everything that's in this book because here's God's will, written and recorded for everybody to have who's willing to have it, who wants to have it.
Everyone is able to read and to study and to apply to their lives. It's all there. It's all written down. My heart is leaning on the Word, the written Word of God, salvation by my Savior's name, salvation in his blood. Two things are necessary for Christ to save sinners. Number one, he must live the life of perfect obedience required of us, which none of us lived.
Number two, he must die the sacrificial death that justice required of us and do that as our substitute and our place. When that has been accomplished, then sinners are reconciled to God. Believing sinners are justified before God. Believing sinners can draw near to God as perfect as Jesus Christ himself, as God counts us, amazing as that is. That will give your conscience rest.
That will give you peace with God. When you lay hold upon these promises and believe them, then you believe that your sins have indeed been wiped away. They're gone as far as the east is from the west, buried in the depths of the deepest sea.
They're gone. There's no reason to spend days reviewing them, months, years. Some people seem to never be able to stop rehearsing their past sins and letting them trouble them all over again. Well, I appreciate anyone who is humbled by their sins. We all should be.
But, folks, God is glorified when we accept his promises. When he says they're gone, they're gone. Let's act like it. Let's believe it.
Let's act like it. Let's walk around with a clear conscience that says they're gone. If God says they're gone, then why am I bringing them back?
They're gone. And thus we learn how Christ has remedied all the inadequacies of the old covenant, shall we pray. Father, thank you for such a wonderful gospel. Thank you for such a wonderful revelation in your word that we can learn about the gospel.
Thank you for such a wonderful provision. Thank you for such a wonderful Savior. Hallelujah. What a Savior. Thank you, Lord. Amen.
