A Shadow Of The Good Things To Come

Hebrews 10 and the Once-for-All Sacrifice of Christ

We continue this evening with our study of Hebrews. Now, entering into chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10. Once again, let us beseech the Lord's blessing upon our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, we do thank you for this opportunity to open your Word, and especially as we continue to touch upon the very essence and heart of the Gospel.

We would ask that you would be with us this night, that you would give us clarity of thought and expression, and Lord, that we would truly rejoice in this message by which we have peace with you. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Chapter 10. At Reformed Baptist speeds, we are truly racing through this book. I don't remember how many years it took Pastor Fry to get through the book of Matthew, but he was preaching every week. I'm only doing this once a month and not always in the book of Hebrews.

So, we must really be making a record run through the book of Hebrews for Reformed Baptists, but we still have a few chapters to go. And really, while I can see the logical division here in the mind of those who made chapter divisions many centuries ago, the subject and the emphasis really is not changing.

And that is, we have already seen, and I have mentioned to you more than once, the raising of the issue of the repetitiveness of the old sacrifices and the once-for-allness of the sacrifice of Christ.

We saw that in chapter 7. We saw it again in chapter 9. And now it is really reaching a crescendo. And I think it is important for us, especially as we get into chapter 10, to understand this, because when we get to the end of this chapter, as we get into the latter portions, we encounter yet another, well, surely the strongest of the, quote-unquote, warning passages.

We've already seen these passages in chapters 2 and 3 and 6. And we're going to run into really the strongest of them in chapter 10. And if we have not been following the argument, and unfortunately, most of the time when the book of Hebrews is used, it's not used by someone who has been following the argument all the way through.

You just grab a portion here, you grab a portion there. I remember debating, I recall it was Robert St. Genes at one point, and he grabbed these percentage arguments from the book of Hebrews. 54 of the book of Hebrews is warnings that you can lose your salvation.

It's just exactly how you do exegesis, by percentage numbers. It's great. But we will be encountering one of those very, very difficult texts. Unless, it's not really difficult if we have been following the line of argumentation up until that point.

And that, of course, is what we want to do. So this morning, we saw the very strong emphasis upon the fact that while it was appointed unto man once to die, after this the judgment, for Christ, Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and He will appear a second time apart from reference to sin to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him.

And so, when we enter into chapter 10, we're really not shifting focus, but we are expanding this point of the once-for-allness of the sacrifice of Christ. So, this evening, beginning with the first four verses, don't know if we'll get through all four verses, but let's take a look at it anyways.

For the law, since it only is a shadow of the coming good things and not the very form of those things, can never, by the same sacrifices which are offered continually year after year, make perfect those who draw near.

Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins. But in those, and specifically in those sacrifices, there is an anamnesis, a reminder of sins year after year, for it is impossible.

It is not a possibility for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. So, the first four verses of chapter 10 give us a very strong proclamation on the part of our writer concerning the relationship of the old and the new.

Here, speaking specifically of the namas, the law. The law is a schion, a shadow. You may have heard, I know I've discussed it once or twice in the past, when the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, the term is epischiazo, so a schia is a shadow.

And chapter 10 begins the word schion for a shadow the law is having. It is but a shadow. Now, when we think of a shadow, well, right now it's a positive word. Any shade is good right now in Phoenix. And so we seek after these things, but that's not quite what the idea is here.

The law is only a shadow of the good things to come. Now, what does that mean? We know that the law of God, well, it's God's law, and it was given for a purpose. It continues to have a purpose. And are we talking here about the ethical law, the moral law, those categories are not the categories being used by the writer here.

I think he's simply using the term namas or law here to summarize the written record of the law that God gave in regards to the sacrifices, especially since he then goes on to make reference to those same sacrifices in the blood of bulls and goats and so on and so forth.

And so I think it would be inappropriate for us to bring in categories of discussion of law that we find elsewhere in Paul and things like that. We need to be careful. I think we've already seen this.

I think we'll be seeing it here again in chapter 10. We need to be careful. There is this kind of thought amongst many evangelicals that because all of scripture is inspired, then you can take the meaning of a word over here and automatically import it over here.

It's almost like the Bible becomes a Rubik's cube where you can just sort of move the colors around until it makes a nice consistent pattern. I'm very concerned about that. The writer of the Hebrews is using terminology.

And while it's very clear that he does have direct connection with Pauline thought, he certainly knows the Apostle Paul's thinking and it could be the Apostle Paul. And yet because of the audience being addressed, there are some subtle differences in the usage of terms such as law here, such as the term sanctify.

It's not necessarily being used in the same way. There's a lot of Old Testament cultic background. The term cultic doesn't mean a cult, a bad thing, but the cult that surrounds the sacrifices and things like that, that's standard terminology.

There's a lot of that kind of language that's involved in Hebrews. And I'm afraid if we don't take that into consideration, we can end up putting the book of Hebrews against a lot of other New Testament books, pitting it against those books in the sense of contradiction, which we do not want to do.

But here what we're being told is the law which prescribed the sacrifices, which prescribed the priesthood, it was a shadow of the good things to come. Now remember, if these people are being called to come back to subservience to this law, to this sacrificial system, then what the writer is saying is you're being called back to the mere shadow of the fulfillment that has now come.

The good things that were coming, this was a shadow of what was to come. Now you might want to think, I remember, I forget exactly when it was, it wasn't all that long ago, I was driving east at sunrise.

I was heading out toward, that's right, I was going to be riding out in Usury Pass out in North Mesa, something or other out there. And as I was driving toward the sunrise, the sun actually came up. But then as I got toward the, I think it's the McDowell Mountains out there, something like that, the shadow of the mountains, the sun went back down.

It was a very odd thing. I was sort of racing the shadow along the 202 as I headed that direction. And when the sun is directly behind the mountains, you can't see much in the way of detail. The mountains are just a big, dark thing.

You can't see any of the detail. You look at the other side of the valley where the sun's already shining on those mountains, oh, you see great detail there. Sometimes better detail than you get any other time of the day.

When you have something that is a shadow, it may have the same outline. It does have the same outline. I do a lot of flying, and sometimes it's weird when we're coming in for a landing, I'll look out the window and, well, there's our shadow.

And as we get closer and closer, the shadow becomes more and more distinct. And so you can not only see the wings, but you can see the jet pods and so on and so forth. It becomes more and more distinct.

The outline is provided by what it is that is causing the shadow. And so the law is a shadow, but it's not the reality. It says it's not the very form of these good things. And as long as people don't get that, as long as people keep looking backwards to that, they won't see the themes of shadow and fulfillment that is found in the Old and New Testaments when they are brought together.

And so the writer is saying, there's nothing to go back to because the law is but a shadow of the good things to come, but it's not the very form. It's not the very image of these very things. And because of that, because of that, the law can never, by the same sacrifices which are offered continually year by year, make perfect those who are drawing near.

Now here's where we really need to start focusing in upon what is being asserted by the author because he's gonna be contrasting the work of Christ. He's gonna be telling us the work of Christ upon Calvary's cross does what those old sacrifices could not do because of their nature.

It was never God's intention for them to be anything other than what they were. They were meant to be shadows. They were meant to be pointers. They were meant to be those things which point us toward a greater fulfillment.

And if they had been seen with the proper attitude, the proper mindset, the proper heart, then they would have been seen in that way. But notice what is specifically asserted. These offerings which are offered continually year by year, the author's mind is still primarily upon the day of atonement, Yom Kippurim, the day of atonement, that one day where the high priest enters into the holy place.

That's still the primary, it's the primary example that wraps up the entirety of the sacrificial system. And so what he's saying is, it is God's intention by the nature of that old covenant law, that law that you're being called back to, because of its nature, those types of repetitively being offered sacrifices which are offered continually year by year are not capable of doing something.

Now the very last word of verse one in the original language is telaiosai. You might recognize the term because you might know what Jesus said from the cross in the Gospel of John, to telaiosai, it is finished.

Telaiao means to finish something. It is a goal or end. You've heard of that term in various forms, it even comes across in the English in some forms. And so what it literally says, never able the ones drawing near to perfect.

Now where have we heard that phrase, the ones drawing near? Well, I mentioned this morning. In Hebrews chapter seven, we have the same description. Jesus is able to save the uttermost, who? Those who draw nigh unto God by Him, same term.

And so we have a specific people. We have the people that in the Old Testament were those who gathered at the day of atonement, distinct from the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and from those who while carrying the covenant sign did not gather for worship of God.

There is a specific people and that sacrifice was specifically intended for them. They had come near unto God for worship. We've already been told that because of Jesus's indestructible life, He is able to save to the uttermost this specific people.

And now we have the assertion that those same people that had been seen under the old covenant, who had drawn near at that time of sacrifice, the repetitive year by year sacrifices which are part of the shadow could never do something for them.

And what's the term? To perfect, to complete, to bring to completion. Completion. Those sacrifices by God's design and their very nature were never able to accomplish those things. Could not accomplish.

Lacked the power and ability. The term dunati, same term as used, for example, in Jesus. No one's able to come to me. Udais dunati, here it's udepate dunati. No one has the ability. No one has the capacity.

And so here these sacrifices lack the ability in reference to those who draw near to perfect them. Now again, we have to keep going back to hearing this in that original context. Come back, come back, come back to what?

The sacrifices you would offer because of the nature of their being a shadow, because of their repetitiveness. They do not in and of themselves have the capacity to perfect those who draw near. And what's the argument?

Well, if it were possible for those old sacrifices, those sacrifices of shadow to perfect those who drew near, the argument of verse two is would they not feast to be offered? Because the worshipers having once been cleansed would no longer have had consciousness of sins.

Now we need to think carefully about this argument. Evidently, whatever the term perfect means here, teleosai, whatever that means, for the argument to be relevant, it would have to have something to do with what is said in verse two.

It would have to result in a cleansing of the consciousness of sins. They would no longer have a consciousness of sins because of this cleansing. Now, it is interesting to note that in verse two, when it talks about the worshipers, it uses the strongest form that we can use in the Greek language of that to engage in true worship of God in the worship in the temple is latruo.

Latruo, that is the highest form of worship. And so it is the worshipers, the true worshipers. So we're actually talking about people here who are serious, who are truly seeking to worship God. And the argument is that to be perfected, whatever that perfection is, that it would seem any true worshiper of God is seeking, whatever that is, it involves a cleansing, a cleansing.

Now, you've probably heard the term for cleansing, katharizo, to cauterize something, comes into our language in that form, katharizo. And so there is here a perfect sense to that, having once been cleansed.

And the emphasis is there because guess what word, by now it should become a word that everyone in here has memorized. I mean, your Greek vocabulary is probably growing, even today, if you've been here this morning, this evening, because you've now heard the term hapax, not once, but many times, but it means once.

And so the writer attaches the term hapax to the cleansing, having once been cleansed, but he uses the perfect tense. So it's a completed action, abiding results, it's a complete, full action, having once been cleansed.

Do you hear what he's saying? He's saying, if those old sacrifices were like the sacrifice of Christ, then they would provide a perfect cleansing of sin. This shows us that how we interpreted chapter nine is correct.

That is when it says that by one sacrifice, he has taken away sin, that the text means that in a full sense. Not merely a provisional idea, but true cleansing. Not hypothetically, but in reality. And so what he's saying is, if you have a sacrifice that perfects, then what it does is it lays the ground for the true worshiper to truly believe that my sins have been atoned for.

I don't always have to be going, well, you know, I hope my sins have been atoned for, but here I go again with another sacrifice, and if my sins have been atoned for before, why are we killing another animal?

Why is there something else I have to do? Why do I have to keep going through these things? There is a once-for-allness that must be attached to anything that is perfect and complete. And so the writer is saying is, if these sacrifices could have had that capacity, then wouldn't they have ceased to have been offered?

I mean, a true worshiper who now has been cleansed in this full sense, once been cleansed of sin. And this really does away, doesn't it? Think about it for a moment. How many times have you heard people say, oh yes, the blood of Christ, it cleanses me from all sin, but now I better keep my nose clean because I'm gonna start getting dirty again and then I'm gonna need to go back.

If that was the kind of cleansing that the blood of Christ presents, this argument wouldn't make any sense, would it? Because that's what we'd be saying. We'd be saying, oh yes, I was cleansed of everything, but that only worked up till now.

And now we need to go on from here. And if I sin again, then I'm gonna lose my salvation or I'm gonna have to do this, that, or the other thing. So many people have that idea because they view the work of Christ in a merely temporal sense.

And they don't even think about the fact that you know what? All of my sins were future when Christ died. People have a hard time understanding how all, you know, as Paul expresses it in Colossians, all those transcripts, those writings which were against us were nailed to Calvary.

They were nailed to the cross. Well, how many of my sins were in the future when Christ died? Well, they all were. Well, then how could my future sins be forgiven? Well, because you were united with Christ.

You were future. You were future. You hadn't even come into existence yet. Yes, we're talking about a perfecting sacrifice. And the only way to understand that is because of our union with him. So the point is that true worshipers, if they had experienced this one-time cleansing, and then they come back, it'd be like, well, what would happen to somebody, what would happen to us?

If someone stood behind this pulpit, and of course, the elders here wouldn't allow this to happen, but if someone stood behind this pulpit, and started saying to you that we need to be looking for another sacrifice, well, I think we would discover just how fast the Baptist version of the Trinity Hymnal can fly through the air.

And a whole group of them at once. It would be natural for us to reject that. What do you mean looking to another sacrifice? Because we naturally understand that if there's anything imperfect with Christ's sacrifice, we're lost.

And there's no one else to look to. And so, if true worshipers had been cleansed by these other sacrifices, and then they're told to come back the next year for another sacrifice of an animal and a splitting of the throats and the taking of the warm blood, we'd be going, but why?

If there was perfection in that sacrifice. So what is the assertion of verse three then? But in those sacrifices, but in literally just, but in them, but it's referring back to the sacrifices. It's a very short verse in the Greek.

There is a yearly anamnesis of sin. Anamnesis. It means remembrance. Remembrance. And so, the writer is telling us that in those sacrifices, because of their nature, because of their place in the economy of God, what they function to do is to remind us of sin.

Now, I can just imagine that if this was one of the arguments of the early church, and we know that they had a lot of debates. They had debates with Jews in public. Paul disputed with them. And I'm sure this issue came up.

And if I was a Jewish apologist, my response would have been, how dare you talk about God's law in that way? What we have is a yearly reminder of God's forgiveness of our sins. And I can see exactly how they would argue that point.

But I believe that the apostles and the author of Hebrews would have responded, yes, you have the promise of God's forgiveness. But that promise pointed forward to a fulfillment. And you have now rejected that fulfillment.

That fulfillment has come. Can you not see that the blood of bulls and goats and calves never perfected you? Can you not see that while there is the promise, can you not see in the suffering servant of Isaiah 53?

Can you not see in Psalm 2 and Psalm 22? Can you not see in all these texts, these lights shining forward to the fulfillment on this one who would give himself? And so we are told that in a sacrifice that is repetitive, the very nature of repetition denies the perfection of the sacrifice.

And therefore, in those sacrifices, there is an omnesis, a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. It is impossible for the blood of animals who are not created in the image of God to atone for man.

God's law was that if we sin, we die. And there is always that tension in the Old Testament. Well, I sinned, why don't I die? Why does this animal have to die? It was a picture. It was pointing forward to a greater fulfillment, which has now taken place.

It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Now, the author is then going to argue from the 40th Psalm, and we'll pick up with this the next time we touch on Hebrews. He's going to argue from the 40th Psalm that this is exactly what was prophetically said by the Messiah himself.

That this body that was prepared for him establishes this covenant that takes away the old. That's going to be his argument. You would imagine when he says something as strong as, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, he's going to provide a biblical argument for that, and he's going to do that, and we will look at that.

But that's not for this evening. But this evening, I want to emphasize two things, both of which you've heard before. But I think it's absolutely necessary that we hear them. The emphasis in the text is the natural imperfection of repetitive sacrifice.

And that is brought out in verse 3. In those, there is an anamnesis yearly. An anamnesis of sins. Now, if you look up that term, you will discover it appears here. And it appears three other times in the New Testament.

Each one of those times is in the exact same context. In other words, they're all referring to one use. And that use is by Jesus himself at the supper. And what Jesus says is as often as you do this, do this as an anamnesis of me.

And so you have in the repetitive sacrifices of the old law, a reminder of what? Sins. Because of their repetition. They don't perfect. But in Jesus, in the Lord's Supper, we are reminded. But what are we reminded of?

If you think the Lord's Supper should be a time of reminder of sin, you've missed the point of the Lord's Supper. Yes, we should seriously consider our relationship with Christ. We should not engage in the supper in a flippant or light way.

No question about it. But sometimes we miss it. And we go back to the old ways and we end up with a reminder of sins. We don't have reminder of sins in the New Covenant. How could we? What did Hebrews 8 say?

If you're in the New Covenant, they all know God from the least to the greatest of them. They shall be called my people. I shall be their God. He's gonna be merciful to all their sins. He's forgiven all their trespasses.

Sounds like what we already read in chapter 9. He has taken away their sins, yes. So in the New Covenant, we don't have a repetitive sacrifice. When we share the bread, when we drink from the cup, there is no sacrifice taking place.

Instead, what we have is an anamnesis, not of sins. We have an anamnesis of a Savior from sins. We need the reminder. We need to be reminded of the great price that was paid for our redemption. But we do not have reminder of sins because that would mean the sacrifice itself was incomplete and imperfect.

But we have in that great gift of the Lord's Supper, the opportunity to gather together as people. And I will continue to emphasize this. You may be sitting there. You may not be coming up and coming forward to get the elements.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But you are active in the supper. According to Paul, you are making proclamation. By partaking, you are saying, I believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I am dependent upon Him for my salvation. You are actively proclaiming the Lord's death until He comes. But you are not actively proclaiming a new death. You are actively proclaiming your participation in the one death that took place at a specific time in history.

And to miss that point is to fall into the abyss of what we see in Roman Catholicism to this day. I hope you've been hearing what I've been saying. Because if you have, and you have any meaningful understanding of Rome's teaching about the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice, then you know everything I've been saying is directly opposite of what Rome teaches.

Rome has no finished work. Rome represents the death of Christ over and over again. You can go to 20 ,000 masses in your life and never be perfected. And that's why it is not the sacrifice of Christ, and it's a blasphemy against the Christian faith.

And I don't care how many people get lovey-dovey and ecumenical today. You can't preach this text with a Roman Catholic standing right there and saying, hey brother, let's preach it together, because they don't believe it.

Why do we need to continue evangelizing those people? Because they need to hear this message. Without a finished sacrifice, there is no perfecting of anyone. And that's why you see people going to their deaths so uncertain.

Oh, wanting this sacrament, wanting that sacrament. A little bit more grace, a little bit more... They have no finished work! And it's not the Gospel. And it never will be. Instead, what many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions this day around the world did when they went to a mass, is they had a reminder of sins.

You haven't been perfected. You've got purgatory coming. You've got temporal punishments of sins. You don't even know if you're going to make it. It's presumptuous to think that you've obtained the grace of justification.

They go with a false gospel. Some of you sitting here today have been delivered from that. Praise God for that. But what amazes me today is there are so many who call themselves evangelical Protestants, and yet they will never raise a word of criticism of Rome's teaching on these matters so that we can have a political unity.

The only thing that can change hearts and minds is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And when you start thinking political unity over the Gospel of Christ, you've missed the boat. Anybody who comes out of that communion and yet wanders around the middle of the Tiber River and still says things are pretty good over there and things are pretty good over here, if you don't take your boat, cross the Tiber River, go to the other side, break your boat up, make a pulpit out of it, and preach to the people on the other side, come out of her, then you've never really left.

Unfortunately, there are many, many people like that behind pulpits this day. My ministry could be a lot bigger and a lot more popular if I didn't deal with certain issues. You want to make sure your ministry is small, talk about Catholicism, be reformed, and talk about Islam.

Boy, I've got those nailed. I am convinced, I am convicted by the Word of God that you cannot open these texts and you cannot speak of the work of Christ. Knowing what is taught by the Roman Catholic Church and not say, come out of her, be warned.

So remember, in these things, verse three, in repetitive sacrifices, you have reminder of sins. But in the once for all sacrifice of Christ, the argument of verse two, the argument of verses one and two together, if you understand what the author is saying, it's the work of Christ perfects those worshipers.

It cleanses those worshipers as we're going to see in just a few verses. By this one sacrifice, He has perfected. He has, it's His work, not He's made a possibility, He has accomplished these things. That is the only ground, my friends, of peace with God.

Indeed, is the Word of the Lord. This is the Gospel. Let us pray and thank God for it. Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, we hear your Word and we are convicted by its clarity and its force. And Lord, we would pray for all of us who have friends and family members this day who labor under falsehood, labor under a works righteousness system, that have no perfect sacrifice, no perfecting sacrifice.

Oh Lord, that you would have mercy, that you would use us as the means to bring that message to them and that you would open hearts and minds. And Lord, as we have embraced this Gospel, may we live in light of it.

May we rejoice in it. May we likewise not seek to add anything to it, but instead solely glorify you for all that you have done. If there be any here this day who have not bowed the knee in repentance and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, may they see in Him the true Lord of glory.

May you draw your people unto yourself. We pray in Christ's name, amen.