A Superior Sacrifice, Part 2, Hebrews 9:13-14

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The Church: God's Divine Construction Project, Part 3 (Romans 11:33-12:2)

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And if you haven't already, please open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter nine, Hebrews chapter nine.

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We're gonna be looking at verse 14 today. And let's bow in prayer before we begin.

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Oh Father, we come now to your word and it is our desire that we may understand it and that your spirit would be our teacher.

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We pray that as we look at the sacrifice of Christ and its glory, its superiority, its sufficiency, that our hearts would be hit by this truth and that these truths may never leave us.

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We pray that you would help to us to understand, give us eyes to see and ears to hear, minds to understand and hearts that are quick to obey that Jesus Christ may be glorified in his church, in us, your people, both now and forever.

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We pray it in his name, amen. Last week we stopped in the middle of an argument, actually in the middle of a sentence.

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We looked at verse 13 at the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer and what that referred to and what that significance was.

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And it is in the middle of verses 13 and 14, we stopped in the middle of a lesser to greater argument.

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If the blood of bulls and goats is able to accomplish this, if the ashes of a heifer can accomplish this, then how much more the blood of Christ is going to be able to accomplish what it is intended to accomplish?

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And that is an argument from the lesser to the greater that the author is giving us here. And the contrast is between the work of Christ and the work that was accomplished from the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer and the blood of bulls and goats.

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And the blood offerings of the Old Testament, that atonement was a reminder of sin year after year.

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It didn't take away sin, it didn't pay the price for sin, it didn't effect the salvation of anyone who offered an animal sacrifice.

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It covered over sin, it dealt with the sin problem until a sacrifice could come that would remove sin entirely and do what

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Old Testament sacrifices were never able to do, namely to cleanse the conscience and to remove sin and to save the ones for whom that sacrifice was made.

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The ashes of the heifer sprinkling those who had been defiled symbolized the purification or the removal of sin, but that ceremony itself did not make one pure, it made one ceremonially pure.

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It symbolized what the removal of sin and the removal of guilt and total cleansing would look like in the heart and the conscience, but it didn't actually provide for those things.

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And so neither of those two things was actually able to obtain eternal redemption. But in the sacrifice of Christ, he has done something that all those sacrifices and all those offerings and all those ceremonies could never have done.

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His is a better sacrifice, offering a better blood by a better high priest, initiating a better covenant which is founded upon better promises.

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And so everything about what Christ has done is superior to what was accomplished under the old covenant.

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So now we come to verse 14, and here's where we stopped last week, just looking in verse 13 where it says, if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, that's where we stopped last week, looking at the red heifer and that ceremony.

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Now look at verse 14, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living

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God? And I mentioned last week that there are five qualities of the sacrifice of Christ mentioned in verse 14 that we would cover today.

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And we are going to cover all five of these. I'll give you those five, even though I challenged you last week and I know you went home and memorized all five of these, and we could all recite them together as a group,

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I understand that. But for those one or two of you who might not have been here I'll just give you these five qualities.

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The sacrifice of Christ is a Trinitarian sacrifice, a voluntary sacrifice, a blameless sacrifice, an effective sacrifice, and a fruitful sacrifice.

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Those are the five qualities, and I know you had to memorize just as I do. Those are the five qualities of the sacrifice of Christ that show its superiority, its infinite value above Old Testament animal sacrifices.

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And before we look at those five though, I want you to notice the language of comparison that is mentioned, that is used in verses 13 and 14.

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If this, then look at verse 14, how much more the blood of Christ?

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I want you to notice that the author asks the question, but he doesn't answer the question, do you notice that?

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How much more the blood of Christ? But he doesn't actually end up answering the question and providing for us a measure of exactly how much more the blood of Christ would accomplish the salvation or the goal for which it was intended.

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He asks the question, then he kind of leaves it out there. As if the question doesn't need an answer, or as if the answer to the question, the only answer to the question is infinitely more so.

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And it would be very difficult for the author to put a measurement on how much more the blood of Christ would accomplish its task, because that comparison really defies measure, doesn't it?

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Can words describe the value of the death of Christ as opposed to animal sacrifices? Could the author have said the sacrifice of animals and the ashes of a heifer accomplish this, but the blood of Christ is twice as effective?

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He doesn't say that, does he? He doesn't say it's 100 times more effective, or a million times more effective, because the comparison between the effectiveness of animal sacrifices to deal with sin and the effectiveness of the blood of Christ to deal with sin, this is not a quantitative comparison.

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It is a qualitative comparison. It is like asking the question, how much longer is eternity than an hour?

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Can you measure that? Can you answer that? Can you say eternity is a million times longer than an hour, twice as long as an hour, sometimes an hour sitting in hot traffic or something like that might feel like eternity.

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Sometimes one of these sermons might feel like eternity, but in honesty, you can't put any kind of words to a comparison like that.

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Or it might be like saying, how much more effective in your car's engine is oil than sand?

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You can't really compare that, can you? You can't say, well, oil is twice as effective or three times as effective, because sand does not accomplish the intended task.

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So it is with animal sacrifices. How much more effective is the blood of Christ in removing sin than animal sacrifices?

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Not two times, not three times. It's a qualitative difference. Animal sacrifices could never deal with sin.

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It's not like they were half able to do so. It's not like it would kind of remove parts of sin. It didn't deal with sin at all.

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But the blood of Christ, how much more? Infinitely so. So he asked the question without answering it, and really the fact that he doesn't answer it is an answer to the question.

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It is intended to sort of set it out there and help us to realize this is infinitely better.

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It is far superior to the blood of bulls and goats. Now let's look at those five things again. First, a

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Trinitarian sacrifice. I want you to notice, I'll show you each of these five in verse 14.

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How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, that's the Trinitarian sacrifice, offered himself, that's the voluntary sacrifice, without blemish to God, that is the blameless sacrifice, cleanse your conscience from dead works, it is an effective sacrifice, to serve the living

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God, it is a fruitful sacrifice. Those five things. And we will get through all five. And I know that you probably don't believe me.

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You're thinking, no, there's a catch to this, right? You're only gonna get through one. We are gonna get through all five, but I want to tell you, if at any time this morning you're thinking to yourself, this really could be like five different messages, each of these five points.

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You're absolutely right with that. And if at any time you feel like you're getting, I'm shorting any of these points or I'm giving you the short shrift, that's not the intention.

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And if you feel that you're being cheated in any way, I promise you, we will return to all of these points before we get to the end of chapter 10.

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Because the author spells them out here, but then he spends the rest of chapter nine and all of chapter 10 really going through the significance of this sacrifice and all that it has accomplished.

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So, first of all, a Trinitarian sacrifice. The author says that Christ offered himself through the eternal spirit.

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Now, the NASB has the term spirit capitalized there. There are some traditions that say this term spirit should not be capitalized because it is not a reference to the

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Holy Spirit. I think that it is. Most of your modern translations, the ESV, the NIV, King James, the

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NASB, all capitalize the term spirit because they see it as a reference to the Holy Spirit. There are some people who see it as a reference to Christ's human spirit, meaning that in his own human spirit, he offered a sacrifice to God.

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Not only that it was a bodily sacrifice, but that in his spirit, he was offering himself to God as a sacrifice.

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So then it becomes a spiritual sacrifice as well as a bodily sacrifice. I think that the word eternal spirit eliminates the possibility that this is referring to Christ's human spirit because Christ's human spirit was not an eternal spirit.

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It came into being at a point in time at the incarnation. So it is not a reference to the humanity of Jesus or his human nature willingly participating in the sacrifice.

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It is, I think, a reference to the Holy Spirit, which has already been mentioned in the context in verse eight where the author says in verse eight that the spirit is symbolizing or signifying this, that the way to the holy place has not yet been disclosed.

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So there the author has in mind the Holy Spirit and it kind of prepares us to read a reference to the eternal spirit as a reference to the

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Holy Spirit. And I think that that is what the author intends and not the human spirit. And that would be consistent with how the

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New Testament describes the life of Christ being lived under the power and the influence of the Holy Spirit.

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He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove at his baptism.

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He was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness. It was in the power of the Spirit that he resisted temptation. It was under the enabling of the

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Spirit that he lived in obedience to the law of God. His entire life was lived in the power and under the influence of the

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Holy Spirit. So it shouldn't surprise us then to read in the New Testament that the very offering that he makes as a sacrifice for sin would itself be done under the power and influence of the

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Holy Spirit, a divine enablement as it were. That the person, the Lord Jesus Christ, the God, man,

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Christ, Jesus would offer himself as a sacrifice for sin completely in concert with the will of the

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Holy Spirit and the enabling of the Holy Spirit so that for the joy set before him, he could endure the cross and despise its shame and that he could do so under the power and influence of the

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Spirit of God that filled the man, Christ, Jesus. Notice in verse 14 that we have a reference to all three persons of the

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Trinity. God is mentioned, the Father, the Spirit is mentioned, and Christ is mentioned. This is a

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Trinitarian verse. And all three persons of the Trinity are involved in the sacrifice of Christ. The Father plans salvation, the

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Son procures or purchases salvation, and the Holy Spirit applies salvation. So our redemption, our salvation is a

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Trinitarian work. It was not one or two persons of the Trinity acting in independence of the other persons of the

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Trinity at all. It was a Trinitarian accomplishment. So the Father could plan salvation and then send the

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Son to redeem the people whom the Father had chosen and given to the Son in eternity past.

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That's what Jesus describes in the Gospel of 10, chapter six, 10, and 17. All that the

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Father gives me will come to me. I lay down my life for my sheep. Nobody takes it from me. I die so that I may give them eternal life and they will never perish.

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That was the intention of the Son. Well, the Father planned that. He chose the people for that.

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He sent the Son into the world to accomplish that redemption. The Son willingly and voluntarily came here and lived a perfect life in order to provide atonement and a sacrifice to save those whom the

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Father has given to him. And then the Holy Spirit, having enabled the Son to do this and filled the Son for that work, the

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Holy Spirit then takes that work and the value and the merits of that sacrifice and in the course of time applies it individually to every last one whom the

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Father had given to the Son so that in our salvation, all three persons of the Trinity are not only active, but they are involved intimately in our salvation, accomplishing that which the triune

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God in eternity past determined what should happen. All three persons of the Trinity are involved in it. So verse 14 mentions the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father sending the Son, the Son coming and volunteering and accomplishing that work and the

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Spirit enabling him and empowering him to do so. How much greater is the

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Trinitarian sacrifice than the blood of bulls and goats? Can you even put a measure to that?

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That the Father would intend this sacrifice before the foundation of the world, that the Son would agree to it and volunteer to come and to offer that sacrifice and that the

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Holy Spirit would enable that sacrifice and then the value of it would be applied to his people? Can you put a measure on that?

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How much greater then, how much more than the blood of Christ than the blood of bulls and goats? Infinitely so.

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It's an infinite measurement. It's a qualitative difference. Not a quantitative difference. Second, it is a voluntary sacrifice.

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He offered himself. The word offered there is the Greek word used to speak of Old Testament offerings or sacrifices for sin in the

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Greek translation of the Old Testament in the Septuagint. It's that Greek word that is used to describe the priest offering sacrifices for sin.

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Christ offered himself and not another. He didn't assign somebody else to do it. He didn't create an animal to offer up on that sacrifice.

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He didn't offer the blood of bulls and goats but his own blood he offered himself. If you see verse 12 says it was not through the blood of goats and calves but through his own blood that he entered the holy place.

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So it is himself that he offered. If salvation had come through the work of Christ as a result of him sending somebody else to die for humanity or if our salvation had come because Christ had come into the world and created a special animal to offer that blood upon an altar and that he had done this as a

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Melchizedekian high priest and if God had ordained that that was the way of salvation and that had accomplished our deliverance from sin, he would be worthy of eternal praise and adoration just for that act.

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But how much more when it is his own blood and his own sacrifice that he offers and not another?

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How much more? He's worthy of praise. And he did this not unknowingly. It was his intention at the incarnation to come into this world and to offer the sacrifice.

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He said at the age of 12 years old, I must be about my father's business. Was he talking about taking over a carpentry for Joseph?

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It wasn't that at all. He knew at a young age what he came into this world to do. The Lord himself said he had came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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He knew what he had come to do. He knew it was a sacrifice for sin. When he started his public ministry, he chose

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Judas knowing that Judas would betray him. On the night of his crucifixion or night before his crucifixion, he said to Judas, what you do, do quickly and get out.

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And Judas went out to betray him. And Christ marched right to the cross willingly, not unwillingly.

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He was a willing participant and a knowing and voluntary sacrifice for our sins. How much more than the blood of Christ?

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And every element of his sacrifice was under his sovereign control. There was nothing that was done up to the point of crucifixion and all the way through his death and his resurrection.

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There was none of it that was done outside of his sovereign control. He controlled all of it. The gospel of John speaks of him walking out of a crowd untouched, even though they intended to take up stones and stone him.

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Why? Because his hour had not yet come. He knew when he would die. He knew how he would die.

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He knew who would be responsible for his death. He knew every last detail of it. And he went not unwittingly and unknowingly, but quite knowingly to his death.

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And he went to Jerusalem with that intention. And leading up to that death, he lived an absolutely perfect and sinless life, obeying fully the law of God, obeying all the commandments in our place, submitting himself to the law of God, humbling himself, resisting temptation, yielding perfect obedience to God's law, enduring suffering and affliction and the hatred and the scorn of men.

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He did it all so that he might die a sacrificial and substitutionary death, having lived a sacrificial and substitutionary life.

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And he did this and he was not forced. He said in John 10, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down in my own accord.

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This command I've received from the Father, not only that I have the power to lay down my life, but I have the power to take it up again.

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And he did this voluntarily. And he describes the intention of his death. It was not an accident.

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He was not a victim. He was a volunteer. And there's no hint at all in the death of Christ of any coercion.

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Nobody forced him to do it. He didn't come unwillingly to the cross. He could have called legions of angels to come to his assistance and he didn't.

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And he knew the whole time exactly what faced him. Even on the night when he prayed, if it's possible, let this cup pass from before me, he knew then fully the weight of sin that he was about to bear.

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And he knew fully then even the plan of the Father and the intention of the Father from eternity past to offer up the

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Son as a sacrifice. Because Isaiah 53 said, it pleased the Father to crush him for us. That was pleasing to the

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Father to do that. So he knew all along what was gonna happen. There's no coercion at all in the death of Christ.

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Neither is there any hint of accident in the death of Christ. Contrary to liberal scholars and liberal theologians who say that Jesus was just a political revolutionary kind of ahead of his time, sort of a cutting -edge rioter or protester, if you will, and he just ran afoul of Roman authorities, that was not it at all.

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He stood before Pilate knowing fully what Pilate intended to do. And he said to Pilate, you have no authority except what my

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Father in heaven has given to you to have. And he marched as a lamb straight into the slaughter.

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And nobody took him, and he did it willingly. And he did it knowingly. And it was not an accident.

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He was not the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time. Stumbling afoul of Roman authorities.

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It was his intention when he came here. It was his intention in eternity past to come here and to pay the price for sinners.

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And there's no hint of surprise in the death of Christ either. It didn't take him by surprise in the least.

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I want you to compare that, if you will, to the animal sacrifices. The animals went to the altar, went to sacrifice completely unknowingly.

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They had no idea what they were doing. They were led there. The animal didn't come into the

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Temple Mount and think to himself, well, I sure care about the person whose place I'm dying. Animal didn't think that. And there's no, that intention, that intentionality, that love or concern for the person on whose half -life he was dying, that intention was not in the mind of a sheep.

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He walked into the Temple Mount, and the only thing running through the head of a sheep was, oh, neat buildings. Oh, other sheep.

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Look at all the animals around here. Lots of blood. I wonder why that's on the ground. That was the only thing that went through the mind of a sheep, if anything.

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But not so with our Lord. He went straight to the slaughter, and he knew exactly what would lie ahead of him. But the animal sacrifices had to be drug into the place of worship and tied to the horns of the altar and bound there where they were sacrificed.

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And they had no intentionality and no knowingness of what they were doing whatsoever. There was no knowledge of the meaning of that sacrifice, but Christ, unlike any of the animals, did it quite voluntarily.

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So how much more, then, of how much greater value, then, is the sacrifice of Christ than the blood of bulls and goats?

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Infinitely so. Third, it was a blameless sacrifice, a Trinitarian sacrifice, a voluntary sacrifice, a blameless sacrifice.

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It says in verse 14, through the eternal Spirit, he offered himself without blemish to God, a sinless and spotless one, pure, undefiled, morally pure, spiritually pure, perfect in every way.

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This was what the Old Testament sacrifices pointed forward to. Because under the

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Old Testament, with the animal sacrifices, you couldn't, though some Jews did, and they're criticized for this in the book of Malachi or reproved for this in the book of Malachi, Jews didn't bring into the

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Temple Mount their lame animals, the ones that walked with a limp, the ones that had scabs all over them and their hair was falling out and their bones were broken and their eyes didn't work or the lambs were cross -eyed or none of that.

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They didn't cull the worst from their flock and bring those up to the Temple Mount to be sacrificed. The law demanded a pure, spotless lamb without blemish as a sacrifice.

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They didn't offer the worst of their herd, they offered the best of the herd. They found the animal that had no physical blemishes.

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Now they couldn't measure the moral quality or the spiritual purity of a sheep, that was impossible, but the blemishlessness of the lamb, the pure, spotless quality of the lamb was intended to be a picture of the blamelessness of Christ when he offered himself on a cross.

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That was what was pictured by the blemish or the spotless lambs. And Christ himself is that sinless one, that blameless one, that one who offered himself up without spot, without blemish, without any defect whatsoever.

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He speaks of a moral and spiritual blamelessness while possessing fully a human nature. He did not possess a sinful human nature.

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So scripture can affirm of him, 1 Peter 1 .19, that he purchased us with a precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless.

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You see the similarity there? Like the lambs had to be spotless and without blemish in the Old Testament, so Christ is the one who is spiritually and morally without spot and without blemish.

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1 Peter 2 .22 says he committed no sin nor was any deceit found in his mouth. 2

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Corinthians 5 says he made him who knew no sin, he knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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He was the pure, blameless, spotless, sinless one. Hebrews 4 .15 says we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with us in our weaknesses but one who is tempted in all points as we are, yet he was without sin.

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He knew no sin. There was not even in the pure Son of God an inclination or desire to sin.

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When the temptations faced his eyes and his heart, there was nothing in him that longed to give in to temptation.

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There was not even a desire to commit the sin because a desire for sin is itself a sinful desire.

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And so there was not within Christ any inclination towards sin whatsoever. No desire for it, no willingness to compromise with it, no desire to participate in it, and he committed no sin, lived fully a blameless, spotless, and pure life before the law of God, fulfilling all of its demands, morally compromising nothing, never sinning in thought, word, or deed.

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He lived that perfect and sinless life. He had no sin of his own for which he had to make a sacrifice. Hebrews 7 .27,

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not like those priests who first had to go in and offer a sacrifice for their own sins and then the sins of the people.

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Christ came in and he offered one sacrifice because he had no sins to atone for of his own. And so God was able to lay on that pure, spotless one all of the sins of his people, all who will believe through all of eternity because it was valuable enough to pay the price for all that sin.

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And so God laid on him, on that one of infinite value, of infinite glory, and of infinite worth, the infinite debt of our sin, and he could bear it.

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And his life was lived in resisting temptation, being perfectly obedient, experiencing all of the weaknesses of sinful humanity, living under the law, enduring hardship and suffering, affliction, the hatred of sinners.

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He lived all of that in a substitutionary way so that he could die his death as a substitutionary death in the stead of sinners.

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That was his intention. He lived a morally perfect life and then gave that one final act of obedience to the

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Father in offering himself as a sacrifice for sins. Blameless, pure, spotless.

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Such sinlessness is not even something that we can comprehend. We can't even get our minds around what one sinless moment in these bodies of death would look or feel like.

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We can't even comprehend that. And Christ lived his entire life that way. And it was an effective sacrifice, trinitarian, voluntary, blameless, and an effective sacrifice.

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Verse 14 says, he offered himself without blemish to God to cleanse your conscience from dead works. So this sacrifice did what the animal sacrifices never could, they never removed sin, they never cleansed the conscience or made the sinner clean in the presence of God.

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All they did was ceremonially point forward to and picture that one coming who would accomplish that.

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So Hebrews 10 .3 says that in those sacrifices, all the Old Testament animal sacrifices, in those sacrifices there was the reminder of sin year after year.

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And in the sprinkling of the ashes of the red heifer mixed with water for purification, there was the reminder of the defilement that sin brings day after day, week after week, year after year, and the animal sacrifices reminded people of sin.

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They reminded people of sin but they didn't remove sin. What we needed was a sacrifice to completely remove and take care of sin.

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And we needed this because our conscience bears witness to the fact that we are guilty. Our conscience persecutes us in our unsaved and unredeemed state.

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Our conscience bears witness to the fact that we sin with knowledge, we know that it's wrong because the law of God is written on all of our hearts.

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God's moral commands and his moral demands are stamped on the heart of all of his image bearers so that even children who sin, knowing that they are violating a right and moral standard.

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And we live our lives understanding that we are violating a right and moral standard. And the more we sin, the more we heap up our guilt in all of our sin, our conscience is seared and our conscience is inflamed when we sin and the law of God does its work in reminding us of our sin and our guilt before God so that in every lie we tell, we know that we are doing what is wrong.

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And in every lie that we tell, we realize that our part belongs in the lake that burns with fire. And with every act of blasphemy, we know in our hearts that God will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

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And so the law does its work of condemning us and making us feel guilty. If you're counseling or talking to somebody, an unbeliever who feels guilty and they see the weight of it, you can simply explain to them, you feel guilty because you are guilty.

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Your conscience is testifying with God that what you have done is wrong and that you need to have that guilt and that sin removed.

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And there is only one thing that can clean the guilty conscience. And that guilty conscience makes us want to avoid coming to God.

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We want to avoid coming into his presence or approaching him and yet that's the only thing, the very thing that can cleanse the guilty conscience.

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Spurgeon said this, there are no pains of body and there are no tortures inflicted by the inquisition which are at all comparable to the whips of burning wire which lash the guilty conscience, close quote.

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That's great imagery. There's no pains of inquisition that can compare with the lashings that we receive from our guilty conscience.

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When the law of God does its work and you walk someone through the Ten Commandments to show them their guilt before God, you have an ally in your court and that is the conscience and the heart and the mind of the guilty sinner that testifies and agrees with scripture and with God that they are guilty before him.

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There's only one thing that can cleanse the guilty conscience. Excuses cannot fan the flames or cool the flames of a guilty conscience.

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Time only serves to exacerbate the problem and make us feel even more guilty and drive us further away from God.

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There's only one thing that can cleanse the conscience. Works cannot do it, why? Well because our works are dead.

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We need our conscience cleansed from dead works. So all of our good works cannot soothe our conscience, cannot make it less intense and time only serves to make it worse because as time goes on, we realize that we are guilty still more and more before God.

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There's only one thing that can take care of the conscience and that's the work of Christ and his sacrifice for sin. The Old Testament sacrifices reminded us of sin, they didn't remove it.

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They displayed sin but they didn't dispose of it. And Christ lived one life and he died one death so that he could forever remove the guilt that we feel.

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For he could forever cleanse the conscience so that he could forever declare us righteous so that he could finally and forever declare us innocent in his sight and take our sins away from us.

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That is what the death of Christ has done. And so he calls us to repent and to believe in that sacrifice.

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For when we do, then our sins, past, present and future are removed as far as the east is from the west.

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The promise of the new covenant is our sins and our lawless deeds, he will remember no more. All of them, not just some of them, but all of them.

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And so you and I can know if we have repented and turned from that sin and trusted in Christ, you and I can know that if we leave this earth, if we die, and even if we were to die today, that we can step into heaven declared righteous by his grace, forgiven of all the sins that we have ever committed, all by his grace.

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And we can know that our conscience is cleansed and the guilt is removed and that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

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We have every right to step into heaven as a saved and redeemed one, not only because we have been forgiven and there's no condemnation before the bar of God's justice, but because we have been declared righteous in his sight, a positive righteousness.

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All of Christ's obedience to the law credited to us, it becomes ours on the basis of faith, not just forgiven, but righteous, infinitely righteous, and eternally righteous, and the conscience is cleansed from all of its sin by that one atoning work.

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Dead works could never do this. You can never work enough to work off your sin debt. You can never do enough deeds because they're all dead works.

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In fact, they're an offense to God to say that I will pay for my sins, I will atone for my guilty conscience by doing good works, by contributing something to my salvation, by doing something that will take away the guilt, that is an offense to God because they're dead works, done by spiritually dead sinners.

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That is why salvation can never be by works because we can never accomplish salvation by dead works done by dead people.

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We need to be regenerated, and the sinner cannot cleanse himself, and nor can the deeds done by a sinner make atonement.

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So then you might ask a question, but I wanna address this before we leave the subject of the guilty conscience. You may say, well,

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Jim, I'm a believer in Christ, and yet I lived for years in sin, and rebellion, and all kinds of wickedness that I don't even wanna talk about.

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Why is it that today, even though I have been fully forgiven that I still struggle with guilt today for what

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I did years or decades ago? You know what the answer to that is? It is because your conscience, your guilt, the way that you feel is not in line with what

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Scripture says is true of you by the grace of God. We constantly need to make our feelings and our emotions conform to what is true, and we need to make truth inform our feelings.

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Sometimes people, and you've met them, maybe you know them, and I don't know this of anybody here today, I can honestly say this, but you've probably met people who get some kind of joy or delight out of taking past sins and bringing them into the present, and mulling them over, and feeling that guilt all over again.

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Friends, that is a form of disobedience, because Scripture says concerning us that all of our guilt is taken away, it's all gone.

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Your desire to feel that guilt, or your feeling of that guilt is not compatible, it's not in accordance with what

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Scripture says is true. In Jesus Christ, all that sin debt has been erased, and in Jesus Christ, all that guilt has been removed.

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All of our sins, we bear them no more, they're all taken out of the way. So if I go back into my past and I drag up something that happened 30 or 40 years ago, some sin

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I committed, and I decide that I'm going to turn that up in the present, stir it up like muddy waters, and get all that silt back up in it again, and feel that guilt again,

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I have no one to blame but for myself. What I need to do in that situation is remind myself that yes, those were horrible sins that I committed, but they're all gone.

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The sin has been atoned for, the payment has been made, and not only is it forgiven and taken out of the way, the guilt

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I bear no more, I am righteous in His sight, and now I need to make my feelings and my conscience comport with what is true, to remind myself of what is true so that my feelings and my emotions follow truth, so that truth not just informs how

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I feel, but forms how I feel, makes me to feel as it is true, according to what is true.

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We constantly have to do this all the time. I'm fearful of persecution, I'm fearful of what people say,

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I'm fearful that God might not provide, I'm fearful that I might lose my job. What do you do in that situation? You have to take the truth and make it form your feelings.

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Make your feelings obey the truth, and not try and question the truth according to how you feel.

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We have to do this in every area of life, we have to do it in terms of our guilt as well. You struggle with a guilty conscience?

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If you're an unbeliever, you should struggle with a guilty conscience, you should feel the weight of your guilt because you are guilty and you stand before the bar of God's justice, and if you were to die today without Christ and without a payment for your sin, you will perish everlastingly according to God's justice, because that is what you deserve, that's what everybody else in this room deserves.

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But if you are a Christian, there is no truthful reason why you should ever feel guilty for sins that you have done in the past.

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Now, if we do something in the present, the conviction of the spirit should come and he should convict us, and we should feel a twinge of conscience and a little bit of guilt.

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And what do we do in that situation? We go to the Lord, we confess our sins, we acknowledge it, knowing that we are cleansed from the guilt of that sin, and then we walk away, and we turn from it and we repent of it, and we don't go back to it, and we don't churn it up, and we mortify that sin and we put it to death.

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So it might not cause us guilt anymore. So, is a Trinitarian sacrifice a voluntary sacrifice, blameless and effective, and the fifth, it is fruitful.

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Look what he says at the end of the verse. It cleanses our conscience from dead works to serve the living God, and this is what the goal of our salvation is.

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This is why we were created, this is why we were saved. We have been saved to be made into his servants.

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First Thessalonians 1 .9, Paul said to the Thessalonians, you turn from idols to serve the living and true God. It's the same sentiment that is expressed here.

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He has cleansed your conscience, not to leave you in sin, not so that you might wallow in it, or so that you may continue and sin anymore.

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That's not why he has saved you. He didn't remove your sin debt so that you could continue sinning. He removed your sin debt to make you a servant of the living

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God, and so now we turn from that sin, we repent of that sin, and we go to war with that sin constantly, mortifying it, putting it to death, denying the desires of the flesh, and walking in holiness and righteousness by the empowering of the

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Holy Spirit. That is what servants of Christ do. So the result of his sacrifice is to turn millions of people from all over the globe on every tongue and tribe and kindred and nation, every corner of the globe into his servants, into his bride.

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That is what his sacrifice has accomplished, and this is properly motivated service, so we don't serve in order to get rid of our clean conscience.

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I want you to notice the order of this. He cleansed your conscience so that you would serve. You don't serve the Lord to assuage your guilt.

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You don't serve the Lord to remove the guilt of your sin. You serve the Lord because your guilt has been removed, because your sin has been taken out of the way, and because you have been made righteous.

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So you're not saved by your works, you're saved unto good works, and the good works don't cleanse our conscience. The good works flow out of a clean conscience.

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The good works flow out of a redeemed heart. That's what he saved us to, not to continue in sin or to walk any longer in it.

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He saved us so that we might serve him, that we might serve the living and the true God. We are gifted to serve.

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We're filled with the Holy Spirit to serve. We are empowered to serve, and in fact, Ephesians 2 says that he has, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus, and he has created works for us to do, and he's prepared them beforehand, in eternity past that you and I might walk in them.

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It was the goal of our salvation. In the mind of Christ, in giving his trinitarian, voluntary, blameless, and effective sacrifice was that it might also produce a church full of people who serve the

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Lord out of joy and gladness, not to cover up their sin, not to atone for their sin, but because they have been forgiven.

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That is his sacrifice, and it has obtained eternal redemption. And friends, I'm telling you this. Unbeliever, if you are here today, and you've never trusted

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Christ for salvation, if he does not save you, you will not be saved. There is no other path.

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But Christian, if he has saved you, if his blood has purchased you, you cannot be lost.

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If you will not come to him, you cannot be saved. But if he has purchased you, you cannot be lost.

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Let's bow our heads. Father, we thank you that you have created a people for your own possession, zealous for good works.

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We thank you that the salvation that is provided in Jesus Christ is so infinitely glorious, of such infinite value and worth, that it can atone for and pay the price for countless sinners who will be saved by that sacrifice.

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We thank you that you have cleansed our conscience. We thank you that you have given us the truth. We thank you that you have saved us by your grace and for your service.

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Be honored and glorified through us, your people, as we rejoice in these truths and take them to heart.