Hebrews 9 (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is

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Mike Abendroth, and recording a show today, real time,

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May 3rd. It is pouring rain out right now, pouring, I don't know, 50 degrees and pouring here in beautiful downtown

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Burbank. And Fridays, I usually review my sermons, pray about them, and this is how

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I'm going to review my sermon. So I try not to let No Compromise Radio take away from my day job, that is, pastoring

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Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org. By the way, we're finally back up on iTunes again, thanks to Jonathan.

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If you want iTunes, bbcchurch .org, you can find the iTunes there, finally we're back up.

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But anyway, I'm just trying to review my sermon out loud on the radio so I don't have to do two things, right?

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So I need new shows for No Compromise Radio, and then I thought we'll just do the small group here.

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This is our third sacrament. There's water baptism, the

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Lord's Supper, i .e., the bread and the wine, and then there's the third sacrament for evangelicalism, and that is small groups.

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So this is our small group here on No Compromise Radio. So in other words,

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I'm going to be talking about Hebrews chapter 9 as I'm just thinking about my sermon out loud.

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This is what I've been preaching from these days, and even though you get the Otter Box, still crack screen.

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I can't believe how that happens. If you want to write me, you can, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

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You want to make some comments on Facebook, that's great. I probably won't read them. I usually read the

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Twitter ones, except my policy is I don't do

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Twitter during the day. So the Twitter has to be after four or five at night, six o 'clock at night, something like that, unless it's a day off.

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So we're trying to hold the line. The book of Hebrews, it is a sermonic epistle.

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It is an epistolatory sermon. It is written in a way that has a rhetorical flair to it.

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It is written well, and of course, every book of the Bible is written well, but this is a specific kind of genre.

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Yes, it's under general epistles, but it is a sermon in written form.

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When you read it, if you were to read it out loud even, it will probably take you about 40 minutes to read.

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42 minutes just depends on how you read it, how fast, how slow, but it's got the feel of a sermon, and when you read certain things in it, you'll go, oh, that sounds, even if you're reading it, that sounds like a sermon.

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I don't have much time to talk about this today, but it's a fairly new practice to read silently.

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In the old days, you would read out loud, and if you'd like to study that on your own, you can.

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Many people have written on it, but the art of reading silently is fairly new when it comes to the history of the world.

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Here is what Hebrews chapter 9 says, verse 11, but when Christ appeared as a high priest, we're talking about the

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Messiah, it doesn't say Jesus, it says Christ, of the good things that have come, a good summary way of describing all the benefits that the

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Lord Jesus has earned, merited, and won for you, Christian. Then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, and there's a good cross -reference in 9 .24

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that essentially he means he's going to heaven, so he might intercede for us.

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He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

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We talked a long time in the past about Jesus secures eternal redemption, and how long does eternal last?

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Well, of course, it lasts forever, until you sin, it lasts forever. This is a great way to think about salvation, eternal redemption, and Jesus secures it.

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Now, if I ask you this question, since we're in Burbank today recording, wink wink, what's

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California's motto, M -O -T -T -O, what's their motto? Maybe homeless welcome here,

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I mean, I have no idea, higher taxes, Gavin for governor, there might be all kinds of mottos, but I think the real motto that still exists is what?

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Eureka, right? I found it. That's the basis for the

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English word Eureka, it's a Greek word that means to secure, that means to obtain, that means to discover, and here,

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Jesus obtains, he finds us, he gets eternal redemption accomplished for us.

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This is a God -centered way to think about salvation. It says in the text, thus securing, that's where we get the word

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Eureka, and eternal redemption, and of course, this reminds me of I Found It campaign, back when

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Campus Crusade was called Campus Crusade, now it's called what? Cru, C -R -U,

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Cru, we'd hate to have the word Crusade, but what's worse than the word Crusade? Campus? Nah.

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Campus, I think, is the Latin word for field, right? You look in the back of Harvard or Princeton, there's a large field there, and it was called then a campus.

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I think that was from Princeton originally, but anyway, I digress. I found it campaign, late, oh, mid 70s,

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I found it. You put a bumper sticker on the back of your car, I think it was yellow background with black letters, and it would say,

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I found it, and then people were supposed to say to you, well, what'd you find? Right? This is before road rage.

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What did you find? I found Jesus, and I found new life in Christ. You can find him, too,

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Eureka, but the text is very clear. While there's a response from us,

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God doesn't believe for you, God doesn't repent for you. The response is not salvific, the response is not the initiating, the response is not the working, the response is simply a response.

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So God regenerates, and you respond with faith. God saves, and your response is belief, rest, repentance, et cetera.

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So Jesus is the one who secures the eternal redemption. Now here's a big picture for the book of Hebrews.

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Why would you go back to anything else? For the recipients of the letter, why would you go back to a

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God -ordained old covenant? This is God -ordained. It was meant to be temporary, it was meant to be pointing to, it was meant to be a symbol or a shadow of a greater thing to come, a greater person to come.

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Why would you go back? And therefore, if you're following Christ now, and you're wondering, my life has got all kinds of extra problems now that I'm a believer in Christ Jesus than it was before, maybe my old life was better,

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I'm tempted to go back. Why would you go back to something, and if it's Judaism, it would be more apropos, but if it's not

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Judaism, why would you go back to something that's even man -made, but just made your life easier?

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It's not worth it. And the reader is supposed to be impressed with the person and work of Jesus.

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When Jesus shows up, everything's different. He, it says in verse 11, appeared.

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He, verse 12, entered. He's the one that's going to come back, verse 28, after he bore the sins of many.

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He appears a second time. Don't go back. No matter what your circumstances are now, it's better off that you have an eternal redemption secured, because this life is fleeting.

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This life is short. This life, I mean, it is true, isn't it? Here today and God tomorrow, there's just been some celebrity deaths, and there will be more celebrity deaths, and there will be deaths from all kinds of people who aren't even celebrities, because everybody is going to die.

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And the language here is, why go back to something that's not sufficient, that is, that has to be repeated, and that has to be not final, right?

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The Lord Jesus' death compared to goats, bulls, calves, it talks about here, those things have to be offered regularly, often.

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They have no finality to them, and therefore, how could they help you?

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In addition, I find this very fascinating when I watch the writer here talk about the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer.

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This language of cleaning, this language of defilement, defiled persons.

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Now, the setting there, of course, is Old Testament, but that is something that's very convicting when you think about our sin and how it's defiling, how it's polluting.

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And there were certain things that they did in the Old Testament to purify defiled persons. Then to use the language of the preacher in Hebrews, how much more, right?

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Can it deal with our defilement? Is there a sin that people can commit that is too sinful, too defiling, too polluting, too contaminating that the

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Lord Jesus can't forgive? If you just think back in your mind, what are the worst sins that I've ever committed?

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And for you, maybe they're not really unrighteous. Maybe they're just self -righteous. Maybe you're thinking that you're your own

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Savior or whatever. They're all awful, but the worst defiling sins that you can commit, there's cleansing for you.

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I just find that fascinating and wonderful, that no matter what the sins are that you've committed, from Paul essentially dropping the coat to say, murder

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Stephen. I think that's what the coat meant when he dropped the coat. No matter what you've done, unrighteous, self -righteous, no one's righteous, of course, and therefore we need the righteous

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Lord Jesus. The Old Testament provided ritual cleansing for defiled people, and now we get a much better, much greater type of cleansing.

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Now, it's interesting here. Every time I hear the word heifer, what comes into my mind?

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I think they probably have them all across the world, at least the United States.

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But you know, marketing names, places, my wife, it's her birthday coming up soon, so we get a double whammy.

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It's Mother's Day, two days later, my wife's birthday. It's better when they're on the same day.

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I have to have two separate things I have to figure out. What makes it worse?

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My birthday is on Mother's Day, so I don't really get anything, right? Just like, okay.

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Which is fine. What was I talking about? I have no idea what I was talking about.

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Oh, oh, yes. Names of things. I know what I won't do for my wife for her birthday this

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May. I won't get her a gift certificate to the dress barn. Now, maybe they have some good stuff in there.

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I know it's hard to find appropriate dresses. One of the things that I talk about often to my girls,

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I have three girls between 18 and 26 years old, and I have a wife.

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It's hard to find a good dress that's appropriate to go out in. Maybe it's appropriate for other people, but for Christian people, et cetera.

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Modesty, blah, blah, blah. But I know this, don't buy your wife a gift certificate from the dress barn.

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The barn. But when I think of the word heifer, I'm thinking red heifer.

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I'm thinking people in the end times, Israel developing this red heifer for this, you know, millennial sacrifices, et cetera, et cetera.

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Here though, it says in verse 13, the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh.

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Let me just read you from this. It's to me fascinating. If you're bored, I can't help you.

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It's from the Bible. Numbers 19, verse nine, and a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and they shall be kept for the water for impurity.

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For the congregation of the people of Israel, it is a sin offering. Then jump down to verse 17 of numbers 19.

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For the unclean, they shall take some of the ashes of the burnt sin offering and the fresh water shall be added in a vessel.

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Okay, so you've got the ashes of a heifer and water, and you add it to a vessel.

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Then a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water and sprinkle it on the tent and all the furnishings and on the persons who are there and whoever touched the bone or the slain or the dead or the grave.

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So how do you ritually cleanse, ceremonially cleanse a person who's touched a dead body?

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You've got the ashes of the heifer, and you've got water, and you've got this hyssop for kind of the dipping, and the clean person shall sprinkle it on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day.

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Thus, on the seventh day, he shall cleanse him and he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and at evening he shall be clean.

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And now you've got these heifer ashes, not from the dress barn, from a different kind of barn, the bayan, outside the camp, mixed with water, sprinkle it, you remove any kind of contamination ceremonially, and the writer is talking about that kind of cleansing.

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So you can just imagine what had to go through the minds of people, and then they had to do that.

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Okay, so you've got to kill the heifer, you've got to slaughter it, you've got to burn it, you've got to do all this stuff.

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There's quite a bit going on there. Side note, if you want to take allegorical interpretations of that passage, the heifer ashes, sprinkling, hyssop, etc.,

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here's one for you. The heifer symbolizes the propagation of life. I knew that.

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I mean, everybody knows that. Ashes are an antidote to pollution. Colors of the red heifer and of the scarlet wool portray vitality.

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Cedar wood stands for dress barn gift certificates, oh sorry, durability. And the hyssop is an emblem of cleansing.

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How do you make that stuff up? By the way, when you look at Old Testament characters and you say, well,

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I'm going to do a Bible study, and here's where we're going to do a character study. Why is your interpretation different than mine when it comes to moral exhortations from the life of David?

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I mean, if the author wants you to learn something, shouldn't we both come to the same conclusions? You take five people and look at the life of Joseph, they all come up with five different illustrations, five different sets of moral exhortations, because it's all in the mind of the person who's interpreting, not in the mind of the author.

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But that's a different story, but it's no compromise, and I have to try to keep your attention. A long time ago,

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I realized if you want to keep people's attention, if you act in an ADD manner, you will be able to help them do that.

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Here's an ADD manner I have in front of me. I know it's going to be backwards for you. Matthew, it says, reforesting faith.

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There's a new book out there, and any book that's got redwoods is okay by me. And this is

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Matthew Sleeth, Sleestacks, remember the

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Sleestacks? I was afraid of the Sleestacks, I think, when I was a kid. Reforesting faith. I like a lot of Star Trek articles.

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Deforesting faith. Oh, so that's Deforest Kelly. What trees teach us about the nature of God and his love for us?

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What do they teach us? I mean, maybe their emblems of cleansing are its vitality, or its durability.

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I don't know. But there is a baptismal regenerationist who writes a puff for them, an endorsement.

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Okay, you touch a dead body, you have to go through all these things, and you want to go back to that?

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The point is, he's writing to these Jewish people in the book of Hebrews, do you want to go back to that? Versus when

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Jesus dies on the cross, it's all over. Eternal redemption secured by the

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Lord Jesus. And he uses that preacher language, from lesser to greater. How much more?

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If the Old Covenant could give a ceremonial cleansing for defiled people who touch dead bodies, what kind of system exists for people who don't touch dead bodies, but are essentially having dead bodies on the inside, sinful humans, sinful, awful, wicked, defiled people.

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No matter what sins that I've ever committed, the Lord Jesus doesn't need to make a paste of water and ashes.

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That'd be weird. By the way, when Jesus died and rose victoriously, and you really, as a priest, understood it back then, and you embraced it by faith and resting and trust, what went through your mind?

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Here's what would go through my mind. What do I do with all the knives? What do I do with all the buckets?

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What do I do with all the vessels that collected the blood? What do I do with all the areas to burn the animals, to get the ashes from the hepha?

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What do I do with all these things? I don't need them anymore. That would be a pretty glorious day if I didn't have to do the butchering anymore.

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Frankly, I don't really like to kill animals. I'll just pay other people to kill them for me, and you just package them up really nicely for me.

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If I had to do it, I would do it. But here, no more killing the animals.

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This Christian friend, this is a great truth, that no matter what your defilement is, there is cleansing for you in Christ Jesus, and He secures that for you.

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Remember Jerry Bridges? He's famous for this. To preach the gospel to yourself then means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and flee to Jesus Christ through faith in His shed blood and righteous life.

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It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God's holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.

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You can be sure of one thing though. When you set yourselves to seriously pursue holiness, you will begin to realize what an awful sinner you are.

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And if you are not firmly rooted in the gospel and have not learned to preach it to yourself every day, you will soon become discouraged and will slack off in your personal pursuit of holiness.

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Jerry Bridges, Discipline of Grace, Colorado Springs, Nava Press, 1994, page 58 and 60.

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It's good to be reminded. I feel tired today. I'm not in a bad mood, but I'm not in a necessarily great mood.

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But to be reminded again, I need this truth outside of me, not from within me, not how I process it, not how it makes me feel, but I need this truth that Jesus enters,

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Jesus secures, Jesus grants defiled people like me forgiveness.

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I get to go to heaven. I don't know when I'm going to die. I'm almost 59. And in one sense,

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I don't like that. I don't like it that you just look at yourself and you go, hmm, what is happening to me?

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I feel younger sometimes. Somebody once said, remember the days when coffee actually worked?

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I remember those days. Those were good days. The defilement that could only be cleansed in a ceremonial way and is now deep down, right?

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It is soul cleansing. It is David who in Psalm 51 cries out, wash me, cleanse me.

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And he uses a triad of words for sin and iniquity and transgression and sin missing the mark.

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And then he says, can you just wash me? Can you clean me? I said from the pulpit last week when

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I was a kid, I loved lava soap and I loved lava soap because it had a cool name, lava, and then it also had pumice in it.

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And I can remember my dad just taking the pumice soap with his huge hands and he would wash his hands and get all that car grease out and just thorough cleansing when no other soap could clean, ivory couldn't clean, zest couldn't clean.

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I've tasted ivory soap before when I said some bad words, but it couldn't clean my hands like lava could.

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So what can clean the soul? What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of bulls and goats and calves.

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Obviously not. It's going to take a sacrificial death, not just a bloodletting, but a bloody, vicious, vicarious death in our place because my sins deserved a capital execution, right?

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I should be tortured forever naked on a tree because of what I have done and not done with transgressions and sins and iniquity and perversity and trespasses.

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No wonder there are so many words for sin because that's just what we do. It's part of our nature because of Adam's sin and consequently our sin nature.

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But that's not where the story ends. That's not where the story ends. There's guilt, but grace is greater than our guilt because that grace is incarnate,

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Titus chapter 2, and that grace, he has a name and his name is the Lord Jesus. And when you preach the gospel to yourself, you better be thinking to yourself, the gospel talks about a person, right?

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The gospel is not some thing, although technically I understand that. When you think of the gospel, think of Jesus.

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I have good news for you. I talked to somebody yesterday and I said, the word gospel means good news. I have good news.

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Defiled people like Mike Abendroth get to go to heaven, not because of himself, but in spite of himself because God has grace for sinners.

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My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You can write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.