Christ’s Finished Work (Part B)

You do not know the Scripture nor the power of God. And that power of God has to do with upholding you and your faith, even when He does not deliver you for the present time on purpose. He is still the one who loves and has the power and in the end you will be delivered and the angels will carry us home.

And if the angels don't carry us home, the rapture will. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Hebrews.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will conclude his message called Christ's Finished Work in Hebrews chapter 9. So again, sin did not begin with Adam and Eve, though, before the mystery of evil in the universe raised its ugly head in the dateless past in the universe, before sin and evil showed up in Satan, the Godhead, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. They were ready. They were ready with the solution. It was not something that surprised them. It was not sprung upon them.

They were not ambushed. They would bring evil in the universe to a head. They were determined to do so. They will settle this once and for all. Of all the orbs in the universe, of all the orbs in outer space, the battlefield was chosen by God to be planet Earth and that's where Satan was thrown to. Jesus said, I saw him fall like lightning.

This is the battleground right here, like it or not. Calvary has finalized it for God. The living have to go through phase one and make it through to phase two, which is glory.

Bunyan, John Bunyan, writing his pilgrim's progress. This is not Scripture, but it is a man of Scripture whom God no question uses, illustrating much of his own experiences. See, we have our Scripture that is sacred and not to be messed with.

It is entirely trustworthy. But God has allowed other things of his people to surface, even by his Spirit, not on the level with Scripture, but sort of to say to us, I know you see Paul, you see Jeremiah, you see the saints of Scripture and you get a feeling like they're just too far ahead of you to be like them. So to help you with that a little bit, I'm going to also highlight some servants of mine, who though not Paul and Jeremiah, still faced the dragon and made it through. Bunyan is one of those men.

Those who have a testimony all through the ages, these are the men, the women, that we admire because of the work of the Holy Spirit. It is to God's glory, not theirs. While Bunyan is writing his pilgrim's progress, he's in prison for preaching the word, he's in prison for years. I'm not going into details of what he suffered during that time, his great sorrow and grief, but he illustrates what the Christian goes through from earth to heaven, to that celestial city and at one point he talks about Christian, the character facing Apollyon, Satan. Satan starts off by challenging the faith of Christian, talking about the sins that he has committed and how because he's not bowing down to Satan, he has chosen the wrong leader.

The Christian is standing up to him and at one point Satan says, well, you know, look at the Christians who suffer if you got the right God and this is Bunyan's response. He says, his forbearing at present to deliver us is on purpose. What a profound thought. It is on purpose to try their love, to see if they will cleave to him to the end. So your suffering, my suffering is on purpose. If you are in Christ Jesus, if you're outside of him is purposeless, but if you are in Christ, Christ has got to show that your love is real. This is the battleground, this orb, this planet and it is not without purpose.

That explains so much. It makes me understand that when I am in trouble, when I am in dread and God is not acting for me visibly, it is on purpose that he can prove my love. I will cleave to him no matter what is happening to me. This is the story of every martyr that's ever gone to heaven. This is the story of Christ on the cross, of Paul, of Peter, of countless millions who will be singing in heaven. I don't want the CD or the recording of the saints in heaven singing to God.

I want to be there and not let suffering get in the way. And so Bunyan, when he makes this answer to Satan and Satan, Napoleon in the story, in the allegory gets infuriated with him. So what does he do? He attacks him physically.

He throws fiery darts. Christian is blocking them as much as he can, but they're getting through. Finally, Napoleon knocks him to the ground.

And in the eloquence of Bunyan, while Napoleon is fetching his final blow, he's loading up, he's knocked the sword out of Christian's hand. If you have been a Christian long enough and you have suffered, you know Satan is trying to disarm you, knocking the word of God out of your hand. So you don't want to do your devotions. You don't want to hear preaching. You don't want to think of the word of God.

You just want relief. And Bunyan says the character reaches out and grabs his sword and with that he strikes a mortal wound on Napoleon. What illustration?

How does a man like me get to write stuff like that unless he's lived it? He has had to face Satan's assault. He has had to have suffered the loss of God's word in his heart, but not his deepest heart.

His forbearing at present to deliver is on purpose. That he might try their love to see if they will cleave to him to the end. So if you're suffering, or if you're going to suffer, or if you have suffered, don't think God is turning his back on you. He is looking right at you just like he looked at his son on the cross.

I went down to the potter's house, Jeremiah said, and there he was making something. He's making me into a saint for eternity. And he's doing it to everyone who loves him. As Alan Redpath said, God has no son without suffering, only one without sin. And that is Christ. Isaiah 53, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. If that is real to you, and the word of God gets knocked out of your hand, if it is real to you, you will grab that word again, and you will strike the enemy again. Just trust God. Whatever comes your way, learn your role in suffering, and trust God. The lesson of the cursed fig tree. That faith makes destruction unnecessary.

Destruction of the saint's faith. Verse 27, we have another greater point coming up. It's more about doctrine than it is about life.

But they are not detached. Verse 27, as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. Death is an appointment.

We've got to get that in our heads. It is appointed for men to die once. It is appointed, it is appointed. It is the gateway to eternal delight or dread.

It is up to the individual. Some to everlasting life, some to everlasting contempt. Daniel chapter 12 verse 2. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. Some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt. These words are faithful, and they are true. God will have no one in heaven who rejects Jesus Christ on earth.

Anyone who looks into the face of the gospel and says, I don't want it, does not get in. That's our commission. We are to preach it that way. What God does with it after that is his business. What is our business is what we have in the word of God. That is our sword.

And it is a sword that is meant not only to keep Satan off of me, but to get him off of whoever God sends me to. And that's what we've got to understand. How faith is not just for us.

It's not just for our children. It's for anybody God says, get them. We use the word of God. How else do they get saved? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So we are on, all of us who believe the calendar of Christ and we will be with him forever. It's marked down. It is written.

And no one's going to erase it. Believers have a reservation at the marriage feast. We will be there with him at the table. Now there are divine exceptions where he says it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. Enoch, Elijah, the child Elijah raised from the dead.

Lazarus, that son of the widow at Nain, the raptured believers. There are exceptions, but they're God defined. They're written down. And there's no one that can add to or take away from them. And if they're not written down, we leave it like it is.

God, anticipating a challenge to this statement, has already recorded his answer. But those who die, they don't, and are resuscitated, such as Lazarus. They're not resurrected when they are resuscitated. When Jesus said Lazarus come forth, he resuscitated him. Lazarus did not get his glorified body.

He is going to get it now, but not then. He had to die yet another day. He had to go all the way into death. Now the medical world may have their definitions to pronounce someone dead and bring the coroner in and make their announcement, but God has his standard, and that's the one we go by.

And we learn from scripture that, and we learn from life. People have, you know, no vital signs. They're gone, yet they revive.

That's not out of the ordinary for God. They didn't go all the way. They went out of here, but they didn't make it all the way there. But they will, they will, and then they will stand judgment. Spiritually, they did not go all the way to judgment until their death is final. But after this, the judgment, he says, all who die go somewhere.

There, as C.S. Lewis, again at the grave of an atheist, and on the tombstone of the atheist, it said, all dressed up and no place to go. And Lewis looked, read it, and said, you wish. Profound truth given by God, spoken by a man of God. God demands that sinners pay for their sins, but sinners can't afford it, not one. 2 Corinthians 5 21 tells us Christ has paid for it.

Again, we read this last session, we'll read it again. For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. No Christian can believe in reincarnation without rejecting scripture. You cannot say, I'm a Christian and I believe in reincarnation. You've just disqualified yourself by rejecting what God has said.

How can you do that? I don't know. And I don't want to preach anybody into comfort to thinking that they can get away with it.

It ain't worth it. You might as well just side with what God says and make it easier, which brings us further into our points. Verse 28, and now we are going to face a bigger point emotionally for some. So Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many to those who eagerly wait for him. He will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. How many times does God have to do a thing before people believe that it is God who has done it? How many times would Jesus have to die on the cross to satisfy man's self-made criteria for the standards that God has to meet to prove himself to them? Well, I didn't see him die on the cross.

I didn't see him walk on water, so I don't believe it. But then you will suffer the consequence if you meddle with the research and the facts that it yields. Must he die afresh to satisfy each generation's demand? He's not going to do it.

He will not. He has left scripture to document the most important event in human history and other important events in human history by the hand of God. So we look again at verse 28 and we read, So Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many, which brings us to the Roman Catholic mass. Now, what I'm about to say again is not in their favor. I am not Roman Catholic. I categorically reject their doctrine. I don't mean to do it and offend them, though offend them it will, because you are not agreeing with them. You're saying they are wrong about something they may cherish. And there's nothing I can do about that and I will make little effort to, but except to preface it, my intention is not to be rude to God or His truth.

To make someone feel comfortable on a point that I disagree with them on and know full well I can back it up from God's word, which I am going to do if God would help me. The Roman mass is their idea of perpetual offerings of Christ. It is that He suffers every time there's the mass. He is crucified again to get to the point. It is in direct opposition to what the scripture has said. I've already read from Peter. I've read from Hebrews 9, 28. I'm going to read a little while from Romans 6. All three say He died once, but the doctrine of perpetual offering means He dies every mass, whether in theory or fact it is wrong. It started at the Council of Trent in the middle 16th century to go against the Reformation.

One of their writers wrote this, Ludwig Ott. The Holy Mass is a true and proper sacrifice. It is physical and propitiatory, removing sins and conferring the grace of repentance. By offering this sacrifice, God grants the gift of penance, pays trespasses and sins, however grievous they may be. Now that may sound very nice, but it is very wrong and it is diabolically against God's word. Because in other words, it's saying God's satisfaction regarding sin depends upon a weekly mass.

If you don't make the mass, your sins are on you from week to week. That's what their statement is. It's in their own words and their own writings.

This is not liable. I'm not telling you false things about them. It's what they believe. That is why attending the mass is so important to the Romanist. Our communion table remembers Christ's death. It does not repeat Christ's death. That is the difference between the mass and our communion table. If you follow the Roman Eucharist mass, then you side against what the Bible clearly says in this verse that He was offered once. They don't believe that.

They have opted to believe their religious leaders over the Scripture, which is the fundamental difference between being born again and being anything else. Jesus died once and no more. He died once, in fact, and no more, in fact, or in figure.

And that's what He is saying, the writer, to Hebrews in verses 26 through 28, before the Roman doctrine was penned, centuries before it was written down. He's only died once. Why would you let this into your head? Because you won't let the Scripture into your heart.

That's why. Romans 6, verses 9 and 10, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life that He lives, He lives to God. How much more clear can you make it? But yet, when you share this, what do you meet with?

Walls, jungles, fortifications, reinforcements. But what does the simple Scripture say? Simple in the sense that it is easy enough for a child to understand it. I believe it is possible for a misguided remnant of believers to be trapped in Roman Catholicism. I believe that. But as to their doctrines and their leaders, I don't think they know the Jesus of Scripture. Otherwise, if they did, they would never pray to Mary. They would never hold such unscriptural views of her and of her relationship to Christ Jesus. If they understood the Jesus of the Bible, they would never value the opinions of their leaders above and contrary to the Bible. They would know that the Son of God dies once for sinners and never again because the Bible says so. See, this is a big issue with those who are trapped in Roman Catholicism. I think some of it is fear. They are actually afraid to break out because they just might go to hell anyway because they have been so told that. And if you say, well, I think then they're doomed. I'm not going to argue with you.

I've stated my position and you are free to have your position. I've met Roman Catholics that I've felt know the Lord Jesus Christ, didn't believe in their doctrines and why they wouldn't come out. I couldn't get it out of them. Why don't you get out of there?

They could never get an answer. Maybe God has stationed them there. Maybe God has said, you know, leaving them there, they can reach others. I don't know. My heart goes out to all of them, the lost as well as the saved.

I mean, you listen to the things that their present leader has to say and you just get disgusted. You say, that is so against Jesus Christ. How could you even say you represent him? How many souls do you damn by playing such games? And so it is not what you like. It is what God says. Jesus said it this way. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Well, what flows out of your heart if you don't believe Jesus as he has said?

It can only be the work of Satan. There's no second place. There are no second or third option. Jesus said you're with me or you're against me. So the basic and profound difference between the believer and the Roman Catholic is they choose to follow their leaders. We choose to follow the word of God.

And that is it. They believe that their religious leaders, what they believe, what their religious leaders tell them at the exclusion and hostility towards the scripture. As this verse here so clearly points out. And we are to believe in God's word and no man, no beast, no principality, no angel is to take that from us.

Mark 12, 21, Jesus answered and said to them, are you not therefore mistaken because you do not know the scripture nor the power of God. And that power of God has to do with upholding you and your faith even when he does not deliver you for the present time on purpose. He is still the one who loves and has the power and in the end you will be delivered and the angels will carry us home. And if the angels don't carry us home, the rapture will. Continuing in verse 20, to those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time. A glorious expectation.

But here's what he's saying. Here's the historical part of this document. The high priest would go once a year into the Holy of Holies. On the bottom of the hem of his garment were bells. And long as they heard those bells moving behind that veil, the holy place, they knew he was alive.

If the bells stopped ringing, he was no longer moving. And if he was no longer moving, God struck him dead, not receiving the offering. Now there's no documentation that this ever happened because they were meticulous on obeying God, but the threat loomed. And so when the high priest came out from behind the veil, the people went whew. God received our offering. Our sin is covered.

What the writer is saying to the Jews, we have a high priest that has gone behind the veil and he's taking us with him. And he has resurfaced because he is the son of God. His mission is complete. There's no danger that his blood offering is not received.

It is a glorious thought. And so he says, apart from sin, he will emerge to us. We will see him apart from sin for salvation. He does not die again. He does not come again to die. He comes again to take this planet and make it his again in the literal sense. Right now, he has exiled himself, self-imposed exile, from ruling the world. He can change that at any minute, but he's going to stay true to his prophecy because that is his will. And so there will be no burden again on Christ when he returns.

The burden will be upon those who reject him. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews right here on Cross Reference Radio.