Jesus is Superior (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

Dr. Mike Ebendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

Why was Jesus born? Number one, all of the sacrifices were inadequate. Number two, because he had to obey the

Father. Number three, Christ had to be born to save people from their sins.

Lots of reiteration there, but we will read verses 8 to 10 and talk about this great salvation.

Verse 8, when he said above, excuse me, when he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings, offerings from A to Z.

These offerings are according to the law. Then he added, behold, I have come to do your will.

You see the reiteration there? He does away with the first sacrificial system in order to establish the second.

And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The Son says, I've come to do your will. What was the will of God for the Son? Perfect life, including redemption.

I've come to redeem people. By the way, I'm sure glad he did, because I can't redeem myself, and no other spiritual leader can redeem you from your sins.

One man said, consider the fact that if it's God's provision for man's redemption was through the agony of his beloved

Son, God will not be impressed by any other means of salvation which men may devise or in which men may put their trust.

Father, you've sent me on a mission. I'll obey. I'll go redeem the people that you've given me. Titus 2, and he gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself a people for his own possession.

Galatians 3, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.

The Father and the Son and the Spirit had this great plan before time began, and certainly there were two or three witnesses there within the

Trinity. Then Jesus went and obeyed. He took on the body that the Lord had fashioned for him, and he perfectly lived in that body as a human.

And then he died on the cross, and he effected redemption. It happened.

It worked. It worked. That's why they sing in heaven even now, Worthy art thou to take the book and break its seal, for thou was slain and did purchase for God with thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

B .B. Warfield said, There is no greater title of Christ, more precious to human hearts than Redeemer.

Look at verse 8, And when he had said the above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings.

He's just trying to add these all up so we know they're all insufficient. These are offered according to the law. He's not ultimately pleased with those things.

He's pleased with what the Son would do and how the Son obeyed. The obedience of his

Son, who never sinned. And you know, when

Jesus came, in one of my favorite verses, and if you're kind of a young man, maybe you'll think this is something that the man in me really likes this.

I don't know if I'm showing you my further strangeness or not, but, Verse 9,

I have come to do your will, Jesus said. He does away with the first in order to establish the second. By Jesus coming and sacrificing once for sins, he gets rid of the old law and now the old covenant and now he starts the new covenant.

And you know that word there, he does away with the first? It means to murder or it means to assassinate.

Jesus, as it were, takes a knife and comes up from the back of the old covenant and slits the old covenant's throat and says, you're done,

I'm the new covenant. The men are smiling, the women are saying, okay, no more eyes to Jesus, Pastor.

Jesus didn't come and say, well you know, that was kind of good, and we'll take a lot of the principles that are there, a lot of the feasts, and maybe we can have maybe the festival of booths, that's still kind of good, and maybe we'll have a little bit of Passover and we'll kind of Christianize it.

Jesus comes up from behind his back and slits his throat, it's over. There's no kind of commingling, no, he does away with the first to establish the second.

And once that second one's established, you don't go running back to the first. By the violence of Christ's death, he destroys the old covenant, fulfilling all the requirements of the priesthood of Aaron, Mosaic law, cleansing the consciences of those who believe.

And look at the benefits we get in verse 10, and by that will we have been sanctified, that's positional sanctification, that's justification, that's to be made holy, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Friends, if it's ever in your mind Jesus didn't really have a body, he just kind of was a spirit being, you're instilling your sins because you need to have a

God -man who had a real body, not just a spirit. And by whose will did this happen, the offering of the body?

Friends, I've said it a hundred times because I think it's the most God -honoring thing I could ever say, salvation does not originate in man's will, because man's will is fallen and bound and enslaved.

Whose will is the one that saves here? Whose will before time was involved in preparing the body and this plan that had to happen?

Yours? Mine? Yeah, it was kind of like the Father, Son, and the Spirit and Mike were there, kind of we're planning it all out, you know,

God said I don't want you to be like a robot or something, you know, some kind of puppet or anything, so you come here in the councils of the

Trinity, the quadrinity, and then now we're here. Friends, of course our will is involved after we've been saved, in response to the salvation our will says,

God I believe, God doesn't believe for us, I trust in you, God doesn't trust for us, I repent of my sins,

God doesn't repent for us, but I'm saying, who's the first cause? The first cause in salvation, the initiator of salvation is

God, and a passage like this should bear it out because who was in eternity past planning our salvation?

It had to be planned because God knew that all our plans would be what? In your face

God, here's a stiff arm for you, I don't want you, I like my sins, so God in His love, who saves sinners like that by the way?

Might rescue relatives or help friends, but somebody that would spit in my face if I approached them?

I remember when I was a lifeguard, they would always say for training, you know, you're going to go save people, swim up to them, you have to be very, very careful, first of all, don't take your eyes off of them when you jump in, don't let your head go under, swim up to them and assess it, and here's what you need to do, you're going to try to save them, but they're going to try to drown you, they're going to drown you, so be very careful, and here are the moves that you do underwater, and here's what you do, because otherwise you're going to be dead, and you think, why would

I want to save somebody who's trying to kill me? I guess I have to because I'm making six bucks an hour down at the pool, who's got that long pole instead?

But here's my point, my point is this, God loved us while we were yet enemies, we weren't

His friends, I'm going to do something nice for my friends, in the eternal counsels of God, of course He knew

Adam would fall, it was part of the plan to give God more glory because it was more glorious for Jesus to come and rescue sinners than it was to make

Adam perfect and unable to fall. If Adam was made perfect and unable to fall, God could have done that, but God gets more glory by devising this great plan and having

His Son go live the perfect life as the last Adam that the first Adam could never live. Salvation originates not in man, but in God in eternity past.

That is mind blowing, and it's a once for all, that's what verse 10 says, once for all.

What other religion in the world, throughout all the centuries of mankind, has a one sacrifice that's effective forever?

By the way, look at the text, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, do you see that?

Why would He write that, of Jesus Christ, once for all? Why? Because the body had to be fully human, and the body had to be fully divine?

Human to represent us and divine so He'd have enough righteousness to bestow on all those who would believe.

So He says, Jesus, human, it was a human body, and He says Christ because He's God.

Jesus Christ. It's there for a reason. Remember when I was a kid, I told you often, I thought Jesus was His first name and Christ was

His last. It's said here for a reason, Jesus Christ, double name.

So we think, yes, bodily sacrifice, but still deity. Christ bore our sins,

Isaiah 53. John 1, He took away our sins. Hebrews 1,

He purged our sins. Hebrews 9, He put away our sins.

Daniel 9, He made an end to sin. Here's what theologians call it, this conversation before eternity passed where the

Father, Son and Spirit say, we don't have to rescue anybody. We could rescue them all. We could rescue some.

This agreement, this arrangement, this promise is what we call the covenant of redemption.

God made a promise within the Trinity. The Son said, I'll fulfill that promise, and you want me to take a body and go?

I will gladly go. Sometimes we think of it this way, that mean father sent the

Son to go die, and that mean father kind of punished the Son with all His wrath. That's the wrong way to think about God.

Because it was the Father and the Son and the Spirit who all agreed, one God, three persons of that Godhead, and they said, you know, give the most glory to us, to maximize our glory, showing kindness and grace and sovereignty and wisdom, holiness.

This is the most glorifying thing that we could ever do. Let's make this plan where the

Father will gladly command, the Son will gladly go, and the Spirit will gladly affirm.

I hate to say this, especially kind of on Christmas day, but salvation isn't even really primarily about us.

It has nothing to do with us primarily. It has everything to do with us secondarily. Are you glad? I'm forgiven.

I'm declared righteous. I'm going to heaven. I have the hope of heaven. I have a clean conscience.

It's all true. But we live in a world where everything's around us, you know. It's this kind of talk where, you know,

God don't make no junk, and you're special in His eyes, and if you're the only person that ever lived, you know, He'd still come and die for you.

And maybe there's truth to all that. Maybe there's no truth to all that. Well, here's the truth.

As glad as we are that we're saved from our sins because of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, I'm glad.

We sing. We're going to sing about that today. Rejoice. Let the world rejoice, as great as that is.

There's something more important, more glorifying, more spectacular, and that is the triune

God in the covenant of redemption saying, we are going to go rescue people, and it's not primarily about their salvation.

It's about our glory. Good side benefit, good byproduct. I never want to speak lightly of my salvation or yours, but I will speak more highly of God's glory than our salvation.

You say, well, you can kind of put them together because God was glorified in our salvation. That's true. But my point is the eternal triune

Godhead made a plan, and on Christmas day, whenever that was back in June, or now, on Christmas day, the son says,

I'll do your will, and I'll take on that body, and I will obey perfectly. So when it comes to sacrifices, that sacrifice isn't from a sinful person, a sinful priest.

That sacrifice is from a perfect human being who offers not just sacrifice, but also obedience.

I like that. You say, yeah, but you know, theology is not very practical. That's just all kind of esoteric, ethereal, pie in the sky stuff.

How dare you say that? Hebrews is written with two sections.

First section, theology. Second section, application. And you know, chapter 10 is the hinge.

Chapters 1 through 10, 18, theology. 10, 19 and following, application.

So while we're in Hebrews 10, should this idea that we have a great high priest who cleans our conscience, who sacrificed once and for all, who fulfills the word of the eternal

God and eternity past, takes on a body, perfectly obeys. We're made holy.

We're made right. We're declared right. We're declared holy. The list goes on and on when you paint the facets of salvation.

There's been propitiation. There's been reconciliation. There's been redemption. Should it change the way you live?

I think it should change the way you live because if your life isn't changed, then you have not experienced this.

I have a friend who's a butcher and he said he's been cutting meat for 30 some years and he's never made a mistake before.

And he said for a quarter of a second, I stopped thinking the other day and he cut his thumb almost off.

Everything should be okay and he's a Christian man and it reminded me of the man who was a butcher and he said, you know, my life is completely changed since the

God of the universe saved me. Well, how's your life changed? He said, you know,

I don't weigh my thumb anymore when I weigh the meat. Look at what happens here when

God saves us. What's the response? Should it change our lives? Of course we should think this way, chapters 1 through 10, 18, but also it affects who we are.

Therefore, there's the hinge, verse 19, Hebrews 10, 19, therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, since we have a great high priest over the house of God, he just comma after comma.

This is one long Greek sentence in verse 19 through 22. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed.

Look back up to verse 19. We have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus.

Before we didn't have confidence, before once a year just the high priest would go into the holy of holies and you hoped he came back through that curtain.

What does Jesus do through the veil of his death, the veil of his body? He goes in, he rips the veil, he opens it up and he says what?

Come in to the holy of holies, not the geographical one now, something better.

We've got confidence to enter in. Before slinking, shy, not too sure,

I've got sins and if I enter God's presence, the end of chapter 12 that Pastor Steve read, our

God is a consuming fire and I go in with sin, I'm going to be consumed. But now somebody else has already taken my sins and I walk into the presence of God and what does

God say? He says, son, friend, we're encouraged to come into the presence of God with confidence.

Look at verse 20, by a new and living way. The Jews were so steeped in sacrifices, now the writer of Hebrews talks their language, literally by a newly slaughtered way, a newly slain way, a recent kill.

There's been a recent kill to get you in there and that recent kill has been Christ himself, his flesh.

It's amazing, that's a living way, a new and living way. It's not a dead way. And we've got a high priest, verse 21, so what should we do?

Two responses from two kinds of people. One, if you're not a Christian, response number one, found in verse 22, get saved, believe, repent, trust.

Let us draw near. That's just an Old Testament term used in James 4 as well, for come to Christ.

I invite you to think Christian, I invite you to ponder and then I want you to draw near with faith, saving faith, sincere faith, genuine faith.

See the text, let us draw near with a sincere faith. Some kind of ulterior motives, I'm going to kind of believe to make my spouse happy or I'm going to try to trick

God, no, but with true faith. Only one God, only one God man, only one offering.

So if you're here today and you've heard what I've told you from the word of God and you don't believe, draw near.

If you're a Christian, he tells you two things in verse 23 and 24. He says firstly to the

Christian in verse 23 of Hebrews 10, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.

Isn't this good? For you have to stay faithful to keep those promises.

What hope would there be? There would be no hope, but here's hope.

Hold fast the confession of your hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful.

He says, hold fast chapter three, he says, hold chapter three, he says in chapter four, hold fast and so when it comes to this faith, what do you do?

White knuckle, hold fast. I'm in a trial, there's money issues, I'm over in Afghanistan, I'm this,

I'm that of hell things and you go, you know what? But he who promised is faithful and I'm going to hold fast.

My life is upside down, but what's happened in eternity past has been effectuated in time and I'm going to hold fast.

All these other chaotic things, you know, by the way, how do you sell newspapers? How do you sell magazines?

You make people afraid. So you read, what are the prognosticators saying for 2011?

I'll tell you what they're saying, sin, death, inflation, stock market, big government.

You know what I'm telling you today? Because of what Jesus did with the other members of the

Trinity and then in his life and at Calvary and then raised from the dead, here's what you do, you hold fast to the promises of God.

You let go of all this other stuff. You don't say, well, let the world be damned,

I don't care, but you say, you know, I'm going to hold on to the promises of God and one of those promises says, be salt and be light, of course, but I'm going to hold fast.

I'm going to grab hold of this truth so much, my knuckles are just going to be white.

And then the other thing he says for Christians, if you've heard the voice of God through the scripture on what

Jesus said before he was born, you hold fast, you keep on believing, focus your minds here on what?

Secondly, let us consider how to stimulate one another to build Y2K sheds and good deeds.

Wait a second. I didn't, I knew there was something about the ESV I was struggling with. Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.

We've got this promise, God's faithful unbeliever, believe believer, hold on. And then, all right, this is going to be the

Greek word for it. And I'm not kidding when I say this Christian, you need to irritate your brother and sister.

That's actually the word stimulate, it means to irritate. But it's used in a good way, kind of this paroxysm, kind of, you know, you need to just kind of be this catalyst to try to get other people to just do good things and to think about this

Jesus for love and good works. You spur them on.

A lot of times that word stimulate means either irritation or exasperation. Hi, my name's

Mike, I have the exasperation ministry. All the one another's exasperation, irritation, incubation.

This is in a positive light. This is you're around other Christians and, you know, there are some Christians, if you think about it, and we probably should wrap it up.

When you're around them, you feel that compulsion to want to serve more, be more faithful, have the right attitude, not complain.

You're just around certain Christians and you go, you know, they lead me on. That's right.

They do the right things. I want to be like that. I need to be more like that. My position in Christ, I know, is holy, but as I work it out, that's good.

I need to be around those kind of people. Everyone here is called to be that kind of person.

And by the way, you can't do that at home, doing TV church, some kind of home church.

You have to be around other Christians because you can't irritate other people unless you're around them. Let's close in prayer.

And by the way, that word consider there, it means thoughtful perception. It means the

New Year's coming and you should write down my resolutions, not for some kind of reformation, but I should probably just sit down and think, how do

I encourage people this year? How do I provoke them to love and good deeds? How can I be the one who's not the ball and chain?

Everybody's like, do we have to have that person around? I guess we do. We're Christians. And they're going to just kind of bring us down.

I want to be, Lord, by your grace, the kind of person that actually believes what's in chapters 1 to 10.

Because if you believe that, how are you going to be less than infectious, thinking, before eternity passed, God created this plan.

He did this, he did that. God, a body died for me. I deserve sin. I deserve hell. I deserve all of these other things. And I got saved.

He's put me here. He's sovereign. He's orchestrated it all. And, well, you know, I think the

Patriots got a pretty good chance this year. Watch all the football you want after you've exasperated other people.

Paul says, not Paul, the writer of Hebrews says, with thoughtful and serious contemplation, like he said in chapter 3 of Hebrews, consider

Christ. Now he says, consider how to stir up the bride of Christ. Verse 25, of course, you've got to be around other people, not forsaken our own assembling together.

This is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you do see the day drawing near.

What did Jesus say before He was born? Here's what He said, Father, as we've agreed with each other, the

Father, Son, and Spirit, we're all in total agreement that we'll get the most glory in all the universe if we don't save all.

We're not going to save just none, but we're going to save some. We're going to save the bride.

We're going to go rescue a people and make them just like Christ. And the Father said, Son, go. And the

Son in eternity past said, I'll gladly go. How are we going to have you to die for sinners if you're an eternal spirit, visible?

Well, I'm going to have a body prepared for you, Son, and you take that body, and with open hands and open arms and with obedience, you are the living sacrifice.

And then you die on the cross, not for your own sins, but the sins of all those who would ever believe. And then it was such a good job,

Son. I'm going to raise you. You'll raise yourself. The Spirit will raise you. And then throughout time, the

Spirit will begin to apply that life, death, resurrection, perfect body, sacrifice to these people's lives.

And then they're going to be so spurred, so stirred up, stimulated to change the world.

That will give me great glory. And then there's going to be an end, and the day's going to come sooner or later where it'll all be wrapped up.

And then an eternity passed, and everybody will go, there couldn't be a better plan. It's the best plan ever.

The God of the universe takes a body and then gets crucified and is raised from the dead. Unbeliever, draw near.

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

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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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

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