When Jesus Came… (Part 2 of 2)

Music playing Back in Hebrews chapter 9 when Jesus came When Christ came, he says, in verse 11, as the high priest, and then into chapter 10 and to verse 12, But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. This recurring emphasis, then, is upon the fact that what has been inadequately covered in the old covenant is now perfectly taken care of in the sacrifice of atonement offered by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'd like to try and summarize what is a fairly challenging section by considering with you three simple phrases. How are we going to get our arms around all of this material here from verse 11 through to the end of the chapter? What is the writer saying?

What are the central points of emphasis? Well, first of all, he is saying of Christ, he entered heaven itself. Second thing is that he offered himself. When you have a last will and testament, you have three things. There is a benefactor, a beneficiary, and a bequest. The benefactor is the Lord Jesus Christ, the beneficiary are those whom he has redeemed, and the bequest is the blessing of eternal redemption. That's the point.

That's it all. He then uses a couple of illustrations, to which, again, I don't want to go in, in verse 18, 19, and through to verse 22. And if you read your Old Testament, you can find all of this.

But what he is essentially saying is that none of this can happen without blood. Now, again, this would be perfectly understandable to the first-century reader, because they had come out of a background where all of this ceremonial worship was very clear to them. And it would make perfect sense to them that in the same ways there had to be the shedding of blood, the death of the innocent for the provision of the guilty was a principle that they understood. And therefore, if Christ was this, then they understood it to be true. And indeed, they had no difficulty in understanding that apart from the sacrificial death of Jesus, apart from the shedding of his blood, there was no forgiveness of sins. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. I want just to read a quote, which some of you will find helpful and others of you perhaps not. I'm quoting from Bits and Pieces, William Cunningham's historical theology.

He was a Scotsman, lived a long time ago, and wrote big books that are really hard to read, and a few other folks. The author's insistence upon this principle—namely, that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins—the author's insistence upon this principle makes it hard to see how there can be any remission of sins granted through the unbloody offering of the Mass. There is in the Mass no real Christ, no suffering, and no bleeding. And a bloodless sacrifice is ineffectual. The writer of the book of Hebrews says that, quotes, apart from shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. John says the blood of Jesus' Son cleanses us from all sin, since admittedly there is no blood in the Mass. It simply cannot be a sacrifice for sin.

This is therefore an unscriptural practice which dishonors and degrades the one perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ by representing it as repeated or rather caricatured daily and hourly by the juggling mummery of a priest. Some of you, I know, are thinking these issues through in these days, and you do well too. Some of you have come trusting in the fact that your sin is atoned for on a regular basis on account of what someone else does on your behalf. And therefore, dear friend, it is a matter of distinct importance to discover where truth is to be found, because it is not simply a matter of preference in relationship to some religious affiliation. It is a matter of eternal significance.

And one would be a foolish individual to address it in the way I choose to if it were merely a trivial, ephemeral sideshow. But the death of Jesus Christ in an unrepeatable, once-for-all atoning sacrifice is the whole emphasis of the book of Hebrews. The Spirit of God has taken a complete letter to address the issue so that we might be saved from error and encouraged in truth. Now, we're not done with this yet, because there is one other factor to consider in the offering of himself. He entered heaven itself, he offered up himself, and he did so, as I'm suggesting to you, or as the Bible makes clear, once for all. That's the phrase in verse 12, once for all. It is again in verse 26, but now he has appeared once for all to do away with sins. And in verse 28, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. Now, what is the writer emphasizing? He is representing the unrepeatable dimension of the work of Jesus Christ, in contrast to the year-after-year activities of the Old Testament priests. By the same sacrifices they repeated endlessly year after year, they could not make perfect those who draw near to worship.

However, he says, those things serve as a necessary reminder of a man and a woman's need for cleansing, because these continual, repetitious sacrifices point inward and expose the sin of man, and they point forward to a time when the sacrifice for sin would be complete. But now, he says, he has appeared. He has appeared once for all, at the end of the ages.

What does that mean? It means that by his coming he is ushered in that period of time which will eventually culminate in the end of history as we know it. And that's why, again, he starts his letter by saying, In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.

What are the last days they are ushered in? By the arrival of Jesus Christ, and particularly, if you like, by his ascension into heaven. But he appeared in a moment in time. And the sacrifice is in no need of repetition, because it produces effects that were absolutely unpossible under the animal sacrifices. Now some, I think, have been troubled by this notion in verse 3 of chapter 8, because I've heard from you, 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. And you're saying to yourself, and you've been saying to me, Well, I think that he is still in heaven, and he's still offering a sacrifice.

Because after all, they went in and they offered something. I'm pointing out to you that that is not what the Bible teaches—that he didn't carry his blood in there to offer it as a sacrifice. He walked in there himself. And by his very appearing, he declared the reality and sufficiency of the sacrifice that had been accomplished on the cross. Well, what then does he do? Well, he speaks to God on our behalf as our advocate. He prays for us. He exercises his ministry of intercession. But he's not sacrificed all over again.

He doesn't need to be. He had to offer something so that he wouldn't just be called a priest, but he would actually function as a priest because priests offered in a prospect of atonement. So in order to constitute him a priest, in fact, and not only a name, the act of offering was necessary. Just, he says, as the act of childbearing is necessary to constitute a woman a mother. But that truth does not mean in the case of motherhood that henceforth, to those who resort to her as mother, such a woman is always giving them birth. Her act of childbearing is for them not only an indispensable but also a finished work. What they now enjoy are other complementary ministries of motherhood which lie beyond the childbearing. Similarly with Christ's priesthood, his propitiatory offering is not only an indispensable but also a finished work. I think that might be of help to some of you who've been struggling with that.

Okay. He entered heaven itself, he offered up himself, and finally, he obtained for ourselves an eternal redemption. We've now come full circle. He did not enter, verse 12, by means of the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the most holy place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. To redeem is to set free by the paying of a price or a ransom.

Again, these people would have had no difficulty understanding that. They had come out of a background of this. We saw it, for example, in the story of Joseph, when he was redeemed from the folks who had taken him into slavery, and he was carted away into the opportunity of slavehood in Potiphar's house. So he was redeemed from being a slave to the Ishmaelites, and he became a slave to Pharaoh.

And he was at the paying of a price. We, by nature, are slaves to sin. We are redeemed by the paying of a price, namely the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that we might become slaves all over again.

But now we are enslaved gladly and joyfully to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Master and our Guide. Says a chap called Wilson, As the sacrifices sufficed for all who were represented by the earthly high priest, so the sacrifice of Christ actually saves all who are included within the scope of his work. And then, quoting the Scottish theologian of old, John Murray—and this will pass some of you by, but for others it will be a matter of discussion and import—"He who has ears to hear, let him hear," says Murray, he did not die to secure a mere possible redemption of all men, but purposefully to give his life as a ransom for many. It is to beggar the concept of redemption as an effect of securement of release by price and by power, to construe it as anything less than the effectual accomplishment which secures the salvation of those who are its objects. Christ did not come to put men in a redeemable position but to redeem to himself a people. And that, you see, is the significance of verse 28, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. And with this eternal redemption, within the scope of it, there is so much for which we ought to be rejoicing tonight. This redemption which God the Father has planned and the Son has procured and the Spirit has applied encompasses all the wonder of a life changed.

It is in this eternal redemption, verse 14, that our consciences are cleansed from acts that lead to death, that our consciences are cleansed from doing things that are actually deathly in their import. It is by means of his eternal redemption that we have been sanctified so that we might serve the living God. Do you think that Jesus Christ, as it were, went to the extent of redeeming us from all ungodliness so that we could just run around and please ourselves? Do you think that he redeemed us and made us members of his family so that we might treat him with scant regard, so that we might offer to him, as it were, the dribs and drabs of our lives and of our time, so that whenever we had a flush within our tummies that got us excited about God, we decided that we would do him a favor and offer ourselves up for him?

That he would go to such extent by the very shedding of his own blood to redeem you, to cleanse your conscience from acts that lead to death, and to enable us to serve the living God? What a privilege to serve God! By nature, we serve ourselves. By nature, we're interested only in ourselves.

Sometimes, perhaps, in a friend or a neighbor or a loved one, we'll give some time, but the truth is, at the very core of our being, we're essentially selfish. There are none of us that seek after God, not one of us. Every so often, we have a stirring in our hearts, but there is no essential quest for God. And so we look back over our shoulders and down through the corridors of time, and we marvel at his redeeming love, that from all of eternity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit entered into a covenant of redemption and planned to secure a people that belong exclusively to God, who will be given up in service to God.

And down through the corridors of time, he has come, and he has sought us, and he has bought us, and he has secured us at great price, and he has made us his very own. That's the most significant thing about it all, that in his grace and in his mercy, he looks upon us and he says, And she is mine. I chose her from all of eternity.

I have loved her with an everlasting love. I saw nothing in her that made her redeemable. It was not on the strength of his potentiality that encouraged me to reach out and see him.

I was not struck by his inclination to turn towards me. No, I just reached down, and I picked him up. Now, there's another little sermon that I'll leave for someone else to preach, but let me just give it to you. I think this will preach, but my time is gone. At verse 26, you will notice, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin. There you go.

There's your first point. He has appeared. Speak about his incarnation and about his coming and about the fact of his arrival.

And then your second point is in verse 24. He entered heaven itself now to appear for us in God's presence. He has appeared. He now appears.

Before the throne of God above I have a strong and perfect plea, a great high priest whose name is love, whoever lives and pleads for me. And then verse 28, and he will appear a second time. He has appeared and made atonement for my sin. He now appears before his Father in heaven and pleads my case, all of my rebellion, and all of my wandering, and all of my impure thinking, and all of my disinterest in his truth.

And he pleads my case before his Father. And best of all, he's gonna reappear. And when he comes this next time, it's not to deal with the issue of sin, but it is to come for those who are anticipating his arrival. And only those who have understood the wonder of the fact that he has appeared and who live daily in the wonderful experience of the way in which his appearing before the Father ministers to the reality of our need—only those will be looking forward to his appearing again. See, there's such a difference when Jesus came. The lady at the well had been at the well tons of times, but it was different when Jesus came. Zacchaeus thought it was an ordinary day with an extraordinary opportunity in a kind of weird vantage point up a tree. And it was all different when Jesus came. How about you? Has Jesus come to you?

And I'm not asking now if you've been feeling religious over a period of time or if you got confirmed or you drifted into the kingdom, I'm asking, I'm asking, can you look to a point in your life when Jesus came? When I was a boy—and I'm sorry, I'm starting to get old with this stuff when I was a boy stuff. This is terrible. Make a note of that.

I want to cure this problem. But Sunday nights in this place that we went, they had all kinds of speakers and singers and everything. And there was a song that was like one of the top ten in Christian circles, because, you know, you'd go for a few Sundays and some lady would come from Bolton and she'd sing it, and then you'd go for a month, and then some guy had come from America and he'd sing it. And so over time, I really got into this. I didn't particularly like the melody. Seemed a bit old-fashioned. But as I was sitting this afternoon, I said, I wonder if I can remember a verse and a chorus of this song.

And I think I can. It went like this. And I think it was descriptive of the coming of Christ to blind Bartimaeus.

Some of you will know this song. One sat alone beside the highway begging. His eyes were blind, the light he couldn't see. He clutched his rags and shivered in the shadows. Then Jesus came, and bade the darkness flee. When Jesus comes, the tempter's power is broken. When Jesus comes, our sins are washed away. He takes our needs and fills our lives with glory. For all is changed when Jesus comes to stay.

What's the significance of all of this? Well, he entered heaven itself by the offering of himself. And the believer looks at it and says, And that was for myself, that with Paul he loved me and gave himself for me. What a wonderful, wonderful story, unparalleled in the religions of our world. Only Christ can bring about such change. The title of today's message from Alistair Begg comes from the ninth chapter of the book of Hebrews, When Jesus Came. When Jesus came, the world was transformed forever. Today's message is available to download, or you can listen to it for free at truthforlife.org, or you can listen through our mobile app.

You can also purchase this series of messages on CD or the USB drive at our cost. As we prepared to share this study in the book of Hebrews with you, Alistair and the staff selected what we think is a very encouraging book to celebrate one of the great privileges afforded to anyone who places his faith and trust in Christ. The book is called Created to Draw Near, and it ties in beautifully with this current series. It'll help you grow deeper in your respect and understanding for the priesthood of believers. We don't often think of ourselves as priests, but this study in Scripture will help you understand that you actually are. The Bible teaches believers are part of a priestly line, which can be traced all the way back to the Garden of Eden. The author of this book, Ed Welch, shows how being a priest gives us access to the Almighty as a priest who can enter in to the most holy place. The book is called Created to Draw Near, and a copy is yours when you donate today to support the ministry and mission of Truth for Life. Go to truthforlife.org slash donate, or use the mobile app.

Just select the book image to give, or you can call 888-588-7884. Now, to conclude today's message, here again is Alistair Begg. Just where you're seated, tell God your response to his Word today, tonight. Some of us have been living for ourselves, and we have been neglecting the fact that we have been redeemed at great cost in order that we might be sanctified in his service. Others of us, Lord, do not know you, and we cry out to you. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for joining us for today's study. I'm Bob Lapine for Alistair Begg and all of us at Truth for Life. Hope you're able to relax and refresh this weekend, and we hope you can listen on Monday as Alistair continues our series, Rooted in the Book of Hebrews, titled Fix Our Eyes on Jesus. Today's program was furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.