R704 Shadows of Truth

God has an encouraging word for you and me today through the Bible-based teaching of Dr. Don Wilton and a message called Shadows of Truth. As we open God's Word together, know that we're ready to connect with you on our website right now at www.tewonline.org. You'll find a multitude of resources and an opportunity to pray with one of us.

That's www.tewonline.org. We're here for you. And now today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. Please take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews in chapter 8. We are going to be in a most remarkable passage of Scripture this morning, and I want to invite you to take a copy of God's Word as always, and I want you to turn there with me. My heart is always so deeply touched by the literal scores of letters that I receive from members of our television ministry who worship with us, and I know that thousands upon thousands of you are worshiping with us today. You are so much a very part of all that God has done for us here on Main Street in Spartanburg, and I want you to know how much I love you with all of my heart. So many of you write to me and tell me how that during this hour you get out your Bible and you sit there in, whether it's in the nursing home or retirement center or in the confines of your own home or your place of work and you get out your Bibles and follow along and that just blesses my heart as it does all of us here who are in the sanctuary in downtown Spartanburg, and God bless you this morning, and I know that He has a very special word for us, Hebrews chapter 8. I'm going to speak to you today on a remarkable subject and I've entitled our subject, Shadows of Truth.

Little bit strange if you think about the title, but I'm going to show you that it comes right out of our text, Shadows of Truth. Well in the time that the letter to the Hebrews was written, they had a Supreme Court. In fact, right throughout the Old Testament, the Supreme Court was in operation. It was a court of final judgment.

In fact, it had a name. It wasn't called the Supreme Court, it was called the Sanhedrin, S-A-N-H-E-D-R-I-N. The Sanhedrin was the Supreme Court for the nation of Israel, by the way, instituted by God through His law. And back in these days, if you wanted a final judgment rendered on any matter, the only way you could derive a final judgment was to hear what the Supreme Court, which was the Sanhedrin, had to say about it. But let me tell you about the Sanhedrin. This is what the Sanhedrin looked like. There was a presiding judge, I think that one might have likened him to the chief justice.

There were 70 members of the Sanhedrin. Now they weren't called justices, they were called elders, and that's fine. But they were the high up lawyers of Israel.

They were elected and selected to this position. They were the teachers of the law. There was no higher authority than these 70 men that sat in the Sanhedrin. And all cases pertaining to the law of Moses were brought before the Sanhedrin. And all matters pertaining to the life of the Jewish people were brought before the Sanhedrin. All cases, all litigations, all matters that were rooted in their constitution. Our justices believe that they make a judgment based upon the Constitution of the United States as much as I disagree with them sometimes. Before the Sanhedrin made their judgments based upon what? Based upon the covenant of God, the law of Moses, which was given to them by God.

But there was something very interesting about this setup that my friends, we need to understand this morning. Because when judgment was handed down by the presiding elder, the presiding judge, when sentenced, they were found guilty or not guilty and sentence was handed down. The man who sat on the left side of the presiding judge had one responsibility. His responsibility was to write condemnation. Condemnation had to do with the man on the left side. He literally sat in a seat on the left side of the presiding judge.

Now here's what was expected, Scott. This man whose responsibility was to call for condemnation. He was the guy who said, take him out and stone him, execute that woman. That man needs to get what he deserves. I appeal to you, members of the Supreme Court, what this person has done is wrong in the sight of the law. He stands condemned.

I believe we should take him outside the walls of Jerusalem and stone him to death. And the man who sat down at the left side of the presiding judge, that was his responsibility. But the man who sat on the right hand side of the presiding judge had only one responsibility. While that man wrote letters of condemnation, this man's responsibility was to write letters of acquittal. The man on the right hand side who sat in the right seat at the right hand of the presiding judge was expected to plead for mercy in behalf of the one who stood condemned.

Josephus and other great historians record for us that there were literally thousands of condemned men and women who were acquitted despite deserving to die because the man who sat at the right hand of the judge pleaded their case before the Supreme Court through the presiding judge. Thank you, gentlemen. I want you to listen carefully this morning. If you were to take your Bible and I was to say to you today, what are the two sections of the Bible? I think most of us here today would be able to say, well, there's an Old Testament and there's a New Testament. What we're about to study here in God's word in Hebrews chapter eight is the fact that God gave to Israel the Old Testament. By the way, it wasn't a bad testament. It was what God gave to Israel. It was instituted by God and it was based upon the law of Moses. The ones who carried out and handed down judgment were those who were assigned that responsibility to interpret the law and pass judgment.

The only person who could override that was based upon not his own decision, but his capacity to argue clemency before the seated Supreme Court, which was the Sanhedrin. What is the New Testament? Well, you will remember that when the Lord Jesus, the night before he was betrayed, he took bread and he took the cup and he went up into the upper room and he gathered his disciples and he took the bread and he took the cup and he said, this bread is the cup, is the bread of my New Testament.

It is the new way of doing things. The cup is the new covenant because of or in my blood. This is the way you do it.

I want you to do it often. I want you to do it in remembrance of me because I am the way, the truth and the life. This is the way you receive acquittal and clemency despite the condemnation of your sin. That's why Paul put in Romans chapter eight and verse one, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in union with Christ Jesus.

Now folks, watch this. Boys and girls, what happened to Jesus after he died on the cross? You'll remember they took the Lord Jesus and put him in a grave and rolled the stone over.

On the third day, the stone rolled back. Jesus rose from the grave, went and met with over 500 people. Then he went to the Mount of Olives, to the Mount of Ascension and he ascended. He went back up into heaven to be seated, where? At the right hand of God. Isn't that amazing?

Isn't that amazing? Now folks, watch this. I'm going to be speaking to you this morning on shadows of truth.

Now folks, watch this. The Old Testament was a shadow of truth. Jesus Christ is the truth and everything that happened in the Old Testament was a copy or a forerunner to the truth of God who is the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, every time I open the book, I make a beeline for the cross. Didn't matter if he was in Genesis, everything from Genesis to Malachi points where to?

To the cross. It is a shadow. It's pointing to Jesus. It's not irrelevant. It just is obsolete. It's obsolete, not because it's irrelevant. It's obsolete because Jesus Christ now is our high priest.

All right, let's put this into perspective. Let me read to you Hebrews chapter eight, and I'm going to read just the first seven verses and part of verse eight. Here's what the Bible says. The point of what we are saying is this. We do have such a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven and who serves in the sanctuary, watch this, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord and not by man. For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices.

And so it was necessary for this one also to have something to offer. If he were on earth, he would not be a priest. For there are already men who offer the gifts prescribed by the law. They serve at a sanctuary which is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. Now what is in heaven?

The Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle, see to it Moses, that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. Folks, there was meticulous detail given. You go through the book of Numbers, the book of Leviticus, the book of Deuteronomy. You can go through pages after pages where there is meticulous detail given to the very meticulous detail of what God Jehovah required of the children of Israel concerning the law of the old covenant. Why was it so important for the Jewish people to carry out the letter of the law? Because the letter of the law was a copy or a shadow of that which is in heaven.

God has always been in heaven. Verse six, but the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator, is superior to the old one and it is founded on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and he said, and so it goes on to the establishment of the new covenant. It culminates in verse 13 by calling this covenant new. He has made the first one obsolete and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear. When will it soon disappear?

It will soon disappear because Jesus Christ is crucified once and for all and has become our high priest. He's given us access to the father which is in heaven. Shadows of truth. There are four shadows, by the way, in this passage. I'm just going to mention them to you briefly right here in this passage just to help us to understand what it is that God is trying to see, help us to see concerning Jesus Christ.

There were four shadows, there were four major things that the Old Testament people had to deal with that all pointed to the coming of Jesus Christ. Number one involved gifts. You can go there into verse three with me and you can see that every high priest is appointed to offer gifts.

We've talked about gifts. The gift giving of the Old Testament pointed to three things. It pointed to dedication, to commitment, and to thanksgiving. The giving of gifts was essentially very, very important under the law of the old covenant. But it was a shadow of the new covenant.

Why? Because it pointed to the greatest gift of all who is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God's gift to mankind.

Now what does that mean? That means that I no longer have to base my salvation on the giving of gifts. I no longer have to give something to God in the terms of gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh in order to carry or to win my salvation. That's no longer relevant because God has already given to us the gift of his son.

There can be no gift that can out gift God in Christ Jesus. Forgive the interruption. We'll be back with the rest of today's message, Shadows of Truth in just a moment. But Dr. Don wants you to know we're here for you. Ready to pray with you anytime day or night at 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 and also available on our website at www.tewonline.org.

That's www.tewonline.org. While you're there, sign up for the daily devotion from Dr. Don Wilton. You'll be glad you did. Now let's dive back into today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton.

Isn't that wonderful? The second thing that is a shadow of truth was the matter of sacrifices. Gifts dealt with dedication and thanksgiving and commitment, the making of sacrifices, the offering of sacrifices that you see in verse three, that had to do with sin.

Now here's what happened. If you lived in the Old Testament or even during this time that the letter to the Hebrews was written and you were still holding to the precepts of the old covenant and you wanted to have access to God and you wanted to have your sins forgiven, what did you do? You had to go and make a sacrifice.

In fact, you didn't make it. The priest did it on your behalf. You had to get a lamb. You had to go and offer this and offer that.

It was continued in. Well, what was the whole matter of sacrificial giving in the Old Testament? It was a shadow of the truth of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who was the lamb of God slain from before the foundation of the world. Well, there was a third shadow of truth and that revolved around the matter of the sanctuary. I wish I had time to get into the specifications of the sanctuary that Moses was instructed to build, suffice to just simply say to you, you and I will well remember that the sanctuary had specifications amongst other things that had a place called the Holy of Holies. There was a big curtain that was drawn across.

Only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies. Well, why was that a shadow of truth? Because Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, the temple was torn, the curtain was torn from top to bottom.

What happened? We now through Jesus Christ, we have complete access to his sanctuary through Jesus Christ the son. We have access to the father. You see the sanctuary of the Old Testament was about two things, worship and service. What are we going to do when we get to heaven? We're going to worship God and we're going to serve around his throne. So the Old Testament and the Old Covenant was a shadow of the truth to come. And then number four, there were the priests themselves. The priests, we read about them time without number in chapter eight, who were they?

They were mediators. Well, my friends, you wanted to go and get your sins forgiven. You wanted to have access to God. Who did you go to? You went to the priest.

In fact, you didn't stand a chance if you didn't go to the priest. I tell you, went to him. He offered sacrifices one sin at a time. He was so busy day after day. He never had a day off. He never got to play golf. He couldn't go and burn chicken on July 4th or throw a Frisbee with his kids. He was so busy, folks. He was busy mediating between God and man.

Well, what happened, folks? Jesus Christ has forgiven us once and for all. Let me just ask you a question today. How many times does God have to forgive you in order for you to go to heaven? Anyone like to tell me, now just listen carefully.

How many times does God have to forgive you in order for you to go to heaven? Anyone like to tell me? Boy, are you quiet.

How many? All right, everybody hold up one. Now I tell you, if you're not holding up that hand, you're in problem.

You've got big problems. Folks, let me tell you, we might win the national championship with our favorite team and say, we're number one. There is no greater number one finger that I will ever hold up than the number one to let you know that Jesus Christ has forgiven me once and for all. My sins are forgiven once and for all. Let's see a number one. Once and for all.

Why? Because Jesus Christ takes my sin, He casts it as far as the east is from the west, and He remembers it no more. Look, I don't earn my salvation because I'm continually asking God to forgive me.

When I earn and merit my salvation, it is because Jesus Christ has forgiven me upon the cross when I place my faith and trust in Him. Well, how do we understand all of this? We're gonna try and understand the shadow of truth. All right, watch this. Get back to this, friends. This is very, very, very important, very important.

Listen carefully. If we are going to understand shadows of truth, we must understand the seat Jesus Christ sat on because everything points to that point. And the first question I'm going to ask is, what qualified Jesus to sit on that seat? Remember, God placed Him at His right hand and He sat down. What qualified Him? There were four qualifications.

I'm just going to list them for you very quickly. Number one, the relationship He had with Almighty God, the Father qualified Him. What gave Him the right to sit in that seat? Well, you can go right throughout the New Testament. Time without number, the Lord Jesus Christ tells us I and my Father are one. If you've seen me, you've seen my Father, which is in heaven.

We find that so difficult to understand, don't we? The Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, it's so hard for us to understand that. But I want to say to you, my friends, that Jesus Christ was qualified to be seated at the right hand of the Father because of the relationship that He had with the Father as God. Number two, the willingness with which He went to the grave and the willingness with which He gave His life. That's what qualified Jesus Christ. You see, obedience is what it's all about. The Bible says that the Lord Jesus Christ was obedient all the way, even unto the death upon the cross. What was it that satisfied God the Father? It was the complete obedience of the Son.

Number three, there was a third qualification, the completion of His work. If you go back to chapter seven and verse 27, the Bible says that Jesus Christ sacrificed for their sins once and for all. Jesus Christ sacrificed for their sins once and for all.

His work was completely complete. What did Jesus say upon the cross? Jesus said, it is finished.

All right, that brings us to our fourth qualification. What qualified Jesus to be seated at the right hand of God the Father? The finality of His sacrifice. There was nothing else to be done. Now folks, those old priests of the Old Testament, their work was never done. I mean, if they were dealing with me, their work would never be done, just me alone. I would have to go to the priest and tell him about the 500 sins I committed yesterday. They would spend all day offering 500 sacrifices on my behalf. Then I'd have to go back to them today, tell them about the 500 I did today. And tomorrow, the 500 sins I committed tomorrow. And so it goes on and on and on.

Folks, watch this. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ was final. There was nothing more to be done. The appointment of the Son. The Bible tells us in chapter seven and the last verse made the law perfect.

And that word perfect there means completely complete. There was nothing else that could take the place of what Jesus Christ has done. Well, the seat that He sat on, what is the significance of the right hand of God? Now you need to listen real carefully to this folks.

This is gonna bless your heart. What is the real significance? There are four significances of Jesus Christ being seated at the right hand of God, which explains to us why all in the Old Testament was a shadow or a copy of the truth that was to come in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is the significance? Number one, it was a place of honor. It was a place of honor. It's a place of honor. Number two, very important, it is a place of mercy. You see my friend, this was the place where people were acquitted.

That's what the right hand judge did. Jesus Christ upon the cross is the one who has written the acquittal for all time and for all eternity for people just like you and me. Number three, number three, it is a place of intercession. The right hand of God is a place of intercession. But there is a fourth significance related to the right hand of God. Folks, I'm going to tell you that the Lord Jesus Christ got all over me with this fourth point because it gave him a position from which to stand up. I want to submit to you today, my friend, Jesus sat there at the right hand of the God because it was the place from which he was able to stand up. Such a powerful message from Dr. Wilton today and our prayer is you've heard more than Dr. Don Wilton, you've heard the voice of God calling out to you.

Before we get away, closing thoughts from Dr. Don. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today, I repent of my sin and by faith, I receive you into my heart in Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. If you just prayed along with Dr. Wilton to give your life to Christ, to rededicate your life, call us for the free resources Dr. Don wants you to have at 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 or meet us online at tewonline.org. You know, I'm so glad that we've been able to share together by means of radio today.

You just mean so much to me and how thankful we are for the Word of God together. You can call right now and connect with me at 866-899-9673. Did you get that? 866-899-9673. Call and connect with me right now. Our time's gone for the day, but you can stay connected over the weekend with great worship services and more connections on our website at tewonline.org. That's tewonline.org. The Encouraging Word