Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
Well, I am sure that you've listened to lots of sermons in your life. I don't know if you've ever asked the question, how could
I listen to a sermon better? What are the parameters? What should I keep in mind to listen to a sermon well?
If, in fact, this is worship, and it is, how can I worship God while I listen to a sermon?
And you maybe would expect me to say something like, remember that it's God's Word and not the frail, sinful deliver, take notes, get rest the night before, but the one thing
I want to remind you of this morning is this, and if you'll remember this simple thing, it will revolutionize the way you listen to sermons.
And I'm not making an understatement or overstatement. That if you realize that when a sermon is preached, that you are not the subject of that sermon, it will change your life.
While you might be the object of the sermon, you are not the subject of the sermon.
And you think about all the church growth tactics trying to flip that thing around.
If you say to yourself, I need Jesus as my life coach, you're thinking you are the subject instead of Jesus is the
King and Sovereign Lord. I just need to help work out my American dream versus to God alone be the glory.
God, I just like to have some improvement in my life. Please come and improve my life versus Jesus comes and ends it and then renews it.
I've got a lot of setbacks I'd like to overcome instead of Jesus sets his face like a flint toward Jerusalem to be crucified and raises himself from the dead.
I just would like to be a better me. I'd like to lose weight and get a better job and eat healthier and all these other things.
Friends, you don't need Jesus for those things. You need Jesus as the subject of the message that he is the high priest, that he is the
Lord and Savior and thankfully, and we give him worship for this, that we are objects of his love but the sermon is about Jesus.
It's not about us. Kind of refreshing, isn't it? Deep down, we might want things about us, but we know better because God has opened our minds and our eyes to see that what everyone needs is a fresh look at the
Lord Jesus Christ and that's the book of Hebrews. So please turn your Bibles to the book of Hebrews where this sermon is about the subject of Jesus the high priest and we are the objects of his love, but we are not the subject of this sermon.
He is Jesus' redemption through him alone. Now we're working our way through this book and if you think we're going fairly slowly, in one sense we are but since I came back from sabbatical,
I preached chapter 6, 7, 8 and we're getting close to chapter 9. That's like preaching
Colossians. That's like preaching Titus, like a whole book. Some of you are smiling. Here this book is trying to make sure these struggling
Christians and people who are struggling about Christianity understand that no matter what they might see, they've got to trust in the one they can't see.
Seeing isn't believing in a sense. They need to walk by faith and they need to have the right object of their faith and that is the subject of the
Lord Jesus. So no matter what's going on with trials and tribulations and that temple is still standing there in Jerusalem with all the opulence of gold and marble and smells and incense and trumpeters and priests and the congregation and the labors and the bulls and everything else, there's something more important than all that sensual, tactile things and that is the
Lord Jesus and what He's done. And since God wants you to use your mind to worship
Him, to love the Lord your God with all your what? Mind, right? All your soul, all your strength.
We have to think rightly about the subject of this sermon, the object of our faith, the
Lord Jesus. Let me read to you Hebrews chapter 9 verses 11 through 14 and that's where we'll camp today as this passage essentially has two sentences.
Long sentence, 11 and 12 is a sentence and then another sentence verses 13 and 14 and this will comprise at least our launching pad for the sermon today.
Hebrews 9, 11 through 14 and you might think of this sermon and you might think of subject and object.
The subject is the Lord Jesus. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands that is, not of this creation,
He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living
God. Bow with me if you would please as I pray. Our Heavenly Father, we are thankful for the
Lord Jesus and we would ask that you would increase our faith today. We know that even a weak faith, a small faith in a great
Savior is enough. But we would like to honor you with our faith and have it increased.
And so we can't do it on our own. We would ask that your Spirit would be very generous to us today and He would give us wisdom and insight onto the
Lord Jesus and what He's done. And we would like to worship you better. Father, I think of little children who think,
Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible. The Bible tells me so. And then they expand in that knowledge and they mature.
So too, Father, we want to do the same thing. So help us today in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, if you'd like an outline today, it's simple.
A Christian, let me give you six reasons you can be thankful for the work of the High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. In spite of circumstances, in spite of what's going on, and you think of the book of Hebrews and how they're getting persecuted, they're losing their home and possessions.
Six reasons that you can be thankful for the High Priestly work of Jesus Christ, the subject of this book and the object of your faith.
I don't think we're gonna get through all six today, but that's one of the reasons why I come here to preach.
It's not the high up reason, but I want to see where we get through and we're just gonna keep working our way through this great book.
Number one, the first reason you should be thankful is that everything changes when Jesus, the
High Priest, showed up and did His work. Everything changes. What do
I mean by that? Well, take a look at verse 11 and verse 12, two snippets there. But when Christ appeared, and then verse 12,
He entered once for all. Everything in this book is contrasting
Old Covenant and New Covenant. The old priestly work and the new priest work.
The multiple sacrifices, the single sacrifice. The sinfulness of the sacrificers, the sinlessness of the sacrifice and the sacrificer.
Everything's a big contrast. There's cleaning possible, external cleaning, ritual cleaning, outside cleaning, and then with Jesus, the inside cleaning.
And when the Lord Jesus shows up, all those symbols, all those signs, all those echoes, all those illusions of the
Old Covenant have come in to reality. And you see Jesus, when
He arrives, He's going to be shown here in these verses as the one who changes everything in the perspective of how do
I stand right before a holy God. If you take a look at verse 11, but when
Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation,
He entered once for all. Just a few things that you might glance over too quickly if you're not careful.
It talks about when Christ appeared. Now remember, that isn't anything except His official title.
His personal name is Jesus. And oftentimes we've talked about Jesus as a brother, right? Talking about His humanity.
But here, this is the official title, the Old Testament anointed one. Christ has appeared.
The emphasis here is on the official function of Jesus as high priest.
And what does Jesus bring? He brings good things. And the author doesn't tell us what those good things are that have come.
You might ask yourself the question, what are those good things? And I think the best way to look at it is, this is just a summary of everything great that Jesus has done up into this point in the book of Hebrews.
Jesus shows up and He just brings great things. And He could go through chapter 1 verse 3 about purging sins, sitting at the right hand of the
Father. But this is a good summary of everything that the
Lord Jesus has done. It's a comprehensive way of saying, whatever blessing you have in Christ Jesus, He's the one who earned that for you.
And He did it through a tent. Now when you think of this tent, see verse 11? You're thinking to yourself, oh yeah, this is
His body, the temple. But it says here, not made with hands, that is not of this creation.
So I don't think this is His body. Of course, His body was a tent, but that's not the focus here of the writer.
Some people think this could refer to the church. But these are things that are not made with hands, not made of this creation.
And basically, what He has in mind is Jesus, remember chapter 8 verse 1? The point of what we are saying is this, we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty on high.
It's simple. Christ appears and now He's in heaven. That's all He's trying to focus on.
His presence is in heaven. Remember, His past work was death on the cross. His present work is intercessory ministry.
And He's there. He's got us all kinds of good things. We could go back to chapter 8 verse 10 to see some of those good things that this
Lord has gotten for us and purchased for us. I will be their God and they shall be my people.
They shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.
Jesus, in other words, changes everything. The lights go on when you see
Jesus arrives. And by the way, you can never go back. That's why Judaism today, they don't know what to do with themselves because Jesus changes everything.
And once you say Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, then it's difficult. Jesus changes the way you stand before God.
He changes the way you even look at the Old Testament, the Old Covenant. You don't just see
Adam. You see the last Adam. You don't just see Israel. You see the real Israel. You just don't see David.
You see the son of David. You hear words resonate from Jesus like, something greater than Jonah is here.
Something greater than Solomon is here. Certainly here in this book of Hebrews, something greater than Aaron is here.
It doesn't take much study to realize Jesus is greater than Aaron.
All the weaknesses found in the Old Covenant you don't find with Jesus and the New Covenant. While we can't get very close into God's presence,
He might obliterate us. That's done with the Lord Jesus. We better have the right sacrifice because if we fail to get the unblemished and the spotless animal, then
God might reject our sacrifice. That's done with the Lord Jesus. Jesus changes everything. Even chapter 9 verse 28, you see kind of the bookend section about who
Jesus is. He appears in verse 11. He enters in verse 12 and in verse 28 of chapter 9 it says, so Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time not to deal with sin but to save those who eagerly waiting for Him.
Everything now is about Jesus. In the past He dies for sins. In the present He intercedes at the right hand. In the future
He's coming back for us. And what I love about this, the whole sacrificial system.
I've got to bring the offering. I've got to pick the animal. I've got to go to the priest. He has to do the work. It's all
Him, Him, Him. Us, us, us. With the new covenant priest Jesus, He comes to seek and save the lost.
He enters. He appears. He offers. He purges sins. He gives His life a ransom for many.
He's exalted after His death. He raises Himself. He takes ineffective sacrifices that have to be repeated every year and He effectively makes one sacrifice.
And by the way, when Jesus shows up and He purges sins and He sits down at the right hand of the
Father, what would you be doing if you were a believing old covenant priest? Here's what I would be thinking.
Here's where I go. What do I do with all the knives? Where do
I put all the buckets for the blood? What do
I do with the cleanup crew? What do I do with the veil?
What do I do with the temple? What do I do with all these supplies? It's over.
I mean the paradigm shift has happened. That is why religion without Jesus is futile.
That is why a mere Christianity without Christ at the center is meaningless. That is why union with Christ is everything.
That is why no matter what your circumstances are, this is still true. That is why when this writer
Hebrew, the writer of Hebrews reads Psalm 2, Psalm 45, Psalm 89, Psalm 102,
Psalm 110, and Psalm 22, he says, now that I've seen Christ in all this, I can't go back and unsee
Him. People say, well you're reading Christ in the Old Testament. Friends, I'm just refusing not to read
Him into it. In light of Hebrews, He changes everything. I'll take that as an amen.
So just kind of big picture, the Lord shows up, everything's different. And on a side note, by the way, you talked to one of the two people baptized.
Isn't that true when the Lord Jesus saved you? I mean anybody that says, well
I just accepted Jesus in my heart and kept on living the way I was living, everything about us changes.
Our legal standing before God, our desires, our thoughts, our affections.
Oh we're certainly not perfect. And by the way, when you first become a Christian, you probably think you sin more than you did when you were an unbeliever because you're now tender to the law of God.
And you realize, oh I don't want to do that to the Lord. And what I didn't think was sin before, I now realize that's sin.
The Lord Jesus shows up and changes everything from legal standing to ultimate destination. It's a paradigm shift.
And this writer here won't let you go back and just say, I think I'll just read Nehemiah now with lessons for leadership.
I think I'll just go back to Song of Solomon and it'll help me write like love letters to my wife. Now both of those other two statements might be true, but everything's changed.
And that writer just wants you to have this, not just a flash of lightning in the dark where you go, wow everything's clear, but for it to stay on.
Secondly, the second reason you should be thankful for the work of the High Priest Jesus, in spite of circumstances, and this is more specific to the text, eternal redemption was secured for you by Jesus the
High Priest. You have eternal redemption. Do you see it?
Verse 12 at the end, securing an eternal redemption. I looked up a thing on the internet this week on things that people lose.
What's the number one thing people lose in the week? Keys is third, if I remember rightly.
First is TV remote control. Serves you pagans right. Don't you love to meet people?
I don't watch TV. Do you have a monitor? Oh yeah. Phones, keys, chapstick was down in the list, and I think based on some people's
Facebook accounts, dignity should have been on there, but that's another point. But what we would lose more often than anything would be our own salvation.
If it was possible for us to lose our salvation, we would lose it every single time we sinned.
How can we have eternal redemption? And before we get too self -righteous on ourselves, we know what we've done, even as Christians.
We know how we haven't lived up to our calling. We know we haven't lived a manner worthy of our calling. I don't want to go through this persecution, might the readers say, if I don't think my security is safe, if I'm ultimately secure.
And by the way, I have big problems in life, but the problem that Christians do not have is a salvation they can lose.
Let's talk about this a little bit. When Jesus offers his life to God as a sacrifice for people's sins, all those who would ever believe it was a real sacrifice.
It wasn't a potential sacrifice. It wasn't an almost sacrifice. It wasn't a sacrifice where he did his part, we do our part.
One old Anglican article states it, the one oblation of Christ finished the work on the cross, and that's true.
And notice the way the writer words this, chapter 9, verse 12, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
Now, on the Day of Atonement, one goat, one bull. There's language of plural here because it just means year after year after year after year after year after year do you have to do the sacrifice for the
Day of Atonement. Here contrasted, do you see it? Once for all. The work is done, never to be undone, can't be undone.
Everything about this ministry is one and done because he perfectly does it. Everything else is infinitely inferior.
Leviticus 16, Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself. Verse 15, he shall kill the goat offering of sin for the people.
So you've got to kill these things over and over and over. First to make the priest hands clean, ceremonially his life clean, and then the people clean.
Here no repetition. Repetition isn't even possible today after 70
AD and the temple's destroyed. And here we get to this word that people kind of freak out some.
Not by means of his own blood. Sorry, by means of his own blood, securing an eternal redemption.
Now one thing Aaron never did when he went into the Holy of Holies, nor any of the, according to Josephus, 73 other high priests on that day where he had to go in to the holy place, then into the
Holy of Holies. He never brought his own blood. Here, this high priest brings his own blood.
And when you think of blood, you shouldn't be thinking like some commentators, Jesus got some blood and he took the blood up into heaven with him.
Some translate that that way. I think even J. Vernon McGee said, Jesus takes blood, his own blood up into heaven.
The point is, he takes himself through and into heaven through the means of his own blood.
Because of his own blood, he can do that. The wages of sin is death.
Leviticus 17, the life of the flesh is in the blood. And what does
Jesus have to do? He has to, what does ESV say? I don't know what the NES says. Secures it.
He obtains it. He does the work. It doesn't just happen to him. It's not by osmosis.
We don't contribute. He does it. The price is paid through his own blood, not with his own blood.
He, in chapter 7, verse 26, is called holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners.
So Jesus takes our place. He purchases our salvation, Acts 20, with his own blood.
Ephesians 1 -7, in him we have redemption through his own blood. 1 Peter 1 -18, with precious blood as a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
Jesus, victim. Jesus, high priest. Jesus, sacrifice. Jesus, sacrificer.
New King James says, with his own blood, he entered the most holy place once for all. That's not the point.
But here is the point. A bloodless gospel isn't the gospel. By virtue of his own blood, he secures an eternal redemption.
Now, here's something that's kind of interesting to me. He obtains or secures.
What's that word in Greek? Well, we've got a word similar to that in English that mirrors the
Greek word. And here's the word. Are you ready for it? Eureka. I found it.
Discovered. Now, when I grew up in 1976, I remember some memories in the car.
Mom driving us someplace. I guess in 76 I had my own car. But mom would drive us to school when
I was even smaller, probably 1970. And I remember she'd listen to Jimmy Swaggart on the radio and Chuck Swindoll.
And I wanted to get home to the Batman Tarzan shows.
And she wanted to listen to Chuck Swindoll and Jimmy Swaggart. We drive past cars and the bumper sticker, there'd be this yellow bumper sticker.
And it would say what? I found it. It was a Campus Crusade ad and campaign from 76.
800 number was on there. And here's what you were kind of supposed to do. I found it.
And you would go to the person. I guess you'd drive them down and corner them and corral them and across them and make them roll down your window.
Remember those things? That means roll down your window. And you were supposed to say, what's
I found it mean? And they're going, I'm glad you asked. I found it. A new life in Jesus. That's when you speed off.
He found it. It wasn't what we did. We aren't the subject.
He's the subject. By the way, if you ever want to think about praising God, you think about yourself long enough as subject, it's going to make you do a lot of things but not praise
God. When you start thinking about who God is, no matter what you're going through or what's happened to you, you think, you know what?
I can praise God. I just said to Becky, we were singing some songs. We heard the testimony. I said, I don't have to go to hell.
You don't have to go to hell. God has earned salvation for us. He's redeemed us here.
The word is he found it. He obtained it. He secured it. He's grasped it for us.
I'm thankful because I know no one can take things out of the father's hands. I know no one is stronger than the
Hebrews one to Hebrews, a description of Jesus who makes the world and upholds the world.
I mean, Jesus just didn't do halfway work. Think about the temple veil when it was torn from top to bottom.
What if it wasn't torn? What if somebody just kind of like moved it a little bit to the side and put one of those curtain things around it?
What do you keep the curtain back with? One of those little things. A sash? Charlie said sash definitively and Elaine goes,
I don't know what that is. But he just didn't kind of lift it and kind of walk through.
It was ripped. He obtained, he secured. So then we get a boldly go, as he says in chapter four, verse 16.
He obtained eternal redemption. He buys back sinners at the price of his own life.
He rescues slaves of sin out of the slave market. He like he did with Israel and he redeems them with a mighty hand, saves sinners just like us.
And friend, Christian, one resting in Christ Jesus, your redemption is secure.
You have forgiveness of sins. No one can ever take that away from you. You cannot be unforgiven.
I love it that it talks about eternal redemption because you could just hear that person say, well,
I've got redemption, but how long does that redemption last? Well, the kind of redemption that Jesus finds, that Jesus secures, that Jesus earns, it's forever.
And by the way, this Eureka word is middle voice. What does that mean?
It means he himself did it. No one else. It intensifies that Jesus is the one who made this happen.
He's the one that receives the judgment of God that we earned, but he intercepted. He's the one that looses us free from the prison of sin.
The bonds are gone. This word is used in Luke 168. Blessed be the
Lord God of Israel, for he has visited us and accomplished redemption for his people.
Accomplished. Israel was not just halfway taken out of Israel. It was accomplished redemption.
And so when you think about your own salvation and eternal redemption, your redemption,
Christian, isn't for a time, isn't for a season, isn't for a little while, isn't until you backslide. It is forever.
It answers this question, can a Christian lose their salvation? And what's the answer? If you're thinking about I'm the subject, well,
I certainly, I would lose everything. I can't, I mean, can you imagine? We can't keep our keys and our phone handy.
What about our salvation? But if we remember this subject who keeps it, I think we're going to be fine.
Some people don't even think you can know, can I keep my salvation? Can I lose it? Some people think you can lose your salvation from the
Nazarenes to many Pentecostals, some Methodists, Roman Catholic Church. But if you look at this language here and you say he secures an eternal redemption, you have to have that third answer.
How can I lose what Jesus secures? If you earn salvation, you could lose it.
But since you didn't secure, I mean, who would be bold enough if we had open mic night? Stand up here and tell me how you secured your salvation.
Right, it's testimony in the waters of baptism. I'd like to explain today why I'm going to get baptized in obedience to the
Lord Jesus and how I secured my eternal redemption. What would we do? We would dunk them right away and just be on with it is what we would do.
And since he secured it, how can I unsecure it? Say, well,
I don't understand how I persevere in the faith, the perseverance of the saints.
The only way you can figure out perseverance of the saints is to understand preservation by God first, how
He eternally secures His people. True or false, Hebrew says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
The answer is true. And think about the things we have done even as Christians. But since those sins have been paid for past, present, and future,
I will never forsake you, says the Father, because on Calvary I forsook my son. Jesus says, he who hears my words and believes
Him who sent me has eternal life. First John 5, he who believes has eternal life.
John 6, the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. First Peter 1, kept by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Second Timothy 1, I know whom I have believed and am convinced that He is able to guard that which I've entrusted to Him until that day.
Jesus prays in John 17, Holy Father, keep them in Thy name. I do not ask Thee to take them out of the world but to keep them from the evil one.
And do you think those prayers are answered? The answer is yes. No wonder
Paul praises God in Romans 8 where he talks about how God can work all these things together for our good and God's glory.
If you lose your salvation, here's what it means, one of many things. God's voting for you,
Satan's voting against you and Satan wins the tug -of -war. He secures eternal redemption.
What a comfort that would have been to these people who are on the run getting persecuted and what do they have in their life that's secure?
401ks and houses and the market. They've got nothing except they could carry and he says you might lose everything but you're secure.
What great comfort this must be to Christians who struggle with sin and I know that's everybody here.
Lord, I know you've saved me and I know I keep sinning and I don't want to. Please forgive me. I don't want to take advantage of your grace but I just feel like I'm not worthy to be called even a slave let alone a son.
But that's why we have to preach the gospel back to ourselves and talk about the Lord Jesus. He secures an eternal redemption in you.
See, that's gonna make people live unholy lives. No, that will make people live holy lives. No one shall snatch them out of my hand.
Well, but I might be able to slip through his fingers. He secures eternal redemption.
My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.
Philippians goes on to say I'm confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in you will make sure you have to perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Amen. Some of you aren't listening. Some of you are. Of course it doesn't say that.
We used to sing that song. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete. Good thing!
Unless we're so self -righteous we think God saves us and now we keep our status because we pray, we read the
Bible, we memorize, we have quiet times. I'm glad for all those things but if you want to keep your status before the
Lord based on your good works they better be perfect works, perpetual works, perfect works.
Perseverance of the Saints is necessary and certain. You will persevere but you certainly will persevere because behind perseverance of the
Saints is the preservation of God. That is a good truth. His truth secures.
Number three and finally for today I know we have six but just three for today. The third reason you can be thankful for the high priestly work of Christ Jesus in spite of circumstances.
Not only did he change everything, not only did he secure your redemption but number three even defiled people can be washed and cleansed by the high priest.
His blood is so great it's for the most defiled. I looked up some descriptions of sinful mankind, men and women who are sinful in the
Bible and these are some of the descriptions of those people in the Bible. Deceived, dead in sin, disobedient, evil, corrupt, blind, alienated, hypocritical, malicious, envious, lovers of self, slaves of sin, unrighteous, vain in their minds, going astray, foolish, hateful and the list goes on.
Maybe the worst one, maybe the grossest one is the word defiled but friends sadly maybe it's the truest.
Take a look at verse 13 and he uses this language of these kind of people in the old covenant and so we're going to talk about how much more in the new.
Verse 13 of Hebrews 9, for if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, if they're clean with these external regulations in Mosaic law, how much more, that's preacher language, how much more from lesser to greater will the blood of Christ the
Messiah, that's interesting, don't go too fast, you think it was the blood of Jesus but it's the blood of the
Messiah, the ultimate God man who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living
God. Defiled people, old covenant, they were sprinkled, they were ceremonial cleansed, defiled people, new covenant, sprinkled by the blood of the cross as it were, the blood of Christ Jesus rather on the cross and even their consciences are clean.
This is the language of cleaning. You can just hear people when they sin, oh if I could just be washed whiter than snow, if I could just be clean, people do awful things and they want to take showers and baths and soap to just try to cleanse themselves but they can't.
Here Jesus much more than ritual cleaning, it's inside cleaning. The weird thing is in our society today though, nobody wants to talk about sin like this because they'll think you've got a psych problem, they think you have a bad self -image and you've got to have a better self -esteem.
There was a book written 30 years ago and it was written by a secular psychologist named
Carl Menninger and he wrote a book called Whatever Happened to Sin and if that's true 30 years ago, what about now?
Is it normal? Is it healthy? Is it okay for a Christian to think about sin or have we so far moved beyond sin that we don't talk about it?
I think it's wrong to talk about sin and terminate right there because when we think about sin we should be thinking about the
Savior that washed us from our sin but still we're to think about sin. J .C.
Ryle said, I'm convinced that the first step toward attaining a higher standard of holiness is, now when somebody writes that I pay attention, okay
I'm listening, the first step toward attaining a higher standard of holiness. Would you like to walk in a manner of the
Lord worthy of your calling in a holy manner because you're declared holy?
Yes I would. Here's what he says, is to realize the more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.
In other words, if you want more intimacy with Jesus and to walk in His ways you need to think rightly about sin because then when you do you realize what
He had to bear in love for you, in love for me.
This is the language of cleaning the defiled. These people in the
Old Covenant, they had to do it, the priest had to do it for them. New Covenant, Jesus does it for them for you.
By the way, what defiles a person? Is it what they eat? What did
Jesus say in Matthew 15? He said, do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?
What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.
When you realize the depths of sin then you realize there's only one who secures the eternal redemption and who can wash me clean, not just my hands but on the inside.
When I was a kid I thought the most amazing invention that my dad utilized was something they had over in the sink and it was called lava soap.
Remember lava? Okay, it was called lava and what you had...
I heard somebody say the other day he stands in awe of the Lord Jesus. I know where you're coming from.
I get the idea. The sinner's desperate attempt to be clean on the inside, to somehow take that pumice soap and jam it into your soul and cleanse your soul.
Conscience is killing you. We know what we've done. We can't unknow those things in our past and even now.
Just ashamed of and skeletons. Like, oh I just wish I could be cleansed from all that. I wish
I just wouldn't have to pay for that. I wish I'd have punishment paid for that. I know I deserve things. Somebody else could pay for that and then make me know it's paid for.
If I could just be cleansed of that. No wonder David, when he commits adultery with Bathsheba and murders the husband and sins against Israel, do you think on the inside he must have been thinking,
I'd like to be cleansed. I'd like to think rightly about sin. Let's just turn there to finish in Psalm 51.
Here, David pointing to the ultimate David who would do this for him, discusses this great subject and that is cleansing of sin.
It is not going to do you any good to just jump past blood language without thinking there has to be blood spilt for sin and then you think the
Lord Jesus. Psalm 51. There are probably many reasons
I believe in the Bible but it certainly does not hold back from recording the sins of even the best of men and the best of women.
Can you imagine the Lord gave this to us so we might remember how he cleanses people and secures eternal redemption.
I won't read the whole thing but to just draw your attention to the great God who cleanses and cleanses not just your hands but your heart and your will and your mind and friends, even your conscience.
Psalm 51, the NAS says, in the liner notes even, a
Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.
Be gracious to me. I don't know how David was saying it but my guess is if I could summarize this with one word it would be earnestness.
He's earnest. Be gracious to me, O God. According to thy loving kindness, according to the greatness of thy compassion, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. You see those triads of words for sin so you feel the compounding nature of how heinous these are?
Transgressions, that's rebellion. Iniquity, this twisted, perverse, crooked way of living.
And then sin, missing the mark, God I didn't meet your standard. And all three of those put together in this triad make me blameful, guilty.
If I could just get rid of that stain, if I could just have a clean conscience. And by the way, this is the work of God in the life of a man because what do people who have a lot of power and money do when they are confronted by others saying you're wrong?
One writer said Queen Mary of Scots would have declared to Nathan that she was above the law.
Charles the first would have thrown over Bathsheba. James the second would have hired witnesses to swear away her character.
Muhammad would have produced a revelation authorizing both crimes. Charles the second would have publicly abrogated the seventh commandment.
And Queen Elizabeth would have suspended Nathan. But David, after God's own heart,
God, the umbrella that you have over me has to be grace because I can't earn anything else.
Do you see it? Be gracious to me. Show me favor. Show me favor like the father running to the prodigal, accepting him in his arms and before the prodigal can even utter many words, smothered by the love of the father.
I I need that generosity. I need that that that love father from you. I'm begging you.
I'm pleading with you that I know you're merciful. I know you're you're you're warm and tender.
It's kind of a great word here. I'm going to play to that. And now we see.
As a trifold sin compounded the guilt, the trifold saving requests are a match for those sins.
Here's how grace is made manifest to the center through the work of Jesus. Do you see what it says?
Blot out my transgressions. I stepped over the law, God, through the
Lord Jesus. Now, as we look at the psalm, obliterate those, wipe them out, erase them, wipe them all away.
Not only that, that crooked iniquity, that perversity. Wash me.
This could be used for washing a garment. But it's got the idea of scrubbing.
It's got multiple washes in mind. It's got thoroughly in mind. It's got increasingly in mind.
Wash me over and over and over, Lord, by your grace, through Christ Jesus, until I'm clean, don't stop.
And then thirdly, when sin missing the mark is used, cleanse me, cleanse me.
I just want to be totally forgiven. And as I think of the New Testament, God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together in Christ.
By grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come, he might show as subject the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Lord, if you should mark iniquities, who could stand? But there's forgiveness with you. Christian, based on Christ's work, he has borne your sins, he has taken away your sins, he has purged your sins, he has put them away, he has made an end of them, and he has blotted them out, and he has washed them, and he has washed you.
Purify me, verse 7 says, with hyssop, and I shall be. So the writer of Hebrew says, it's not just an external cleansing, and now you can go about your business, but from the inside.
And we'll talk more about next week, more about this next week, with the conscience. How do you listen to a sermon?
Well, maybe you look at keywords that you write over and over and over. How many times did he say the word Jesus or high priest?
By the way, I always do that with kids, and they'll say, today, pastor, you said Jesus 92 times, and you said high priest, with the hyphen in between, 42 times.
And I say the same thing every week. I used to bend down real low before my knees were bad. Now I just kind of stoop.
And I say, well, what was the sermon about? And they go, they look at me like,
I don't know. My parents just told me to do this. And I say, it's about Jesus, because of the high priest.
Yes. And then whether you can be a homeschool kid like Miss Brown, who probably was saved out of more self -righteousness, or Trey, I don't know your background, just I'm going to assume that it's unrighteousness, or a chainsaw massacre in Craig.
I mean, Trey, from self -righteous to unrighteous, and everything in between. Christian, because of the high priest, the subject of this message.
And everyone in between gets to say, Jesus is a great savior, because I know what I've done on the inside. And he's washed me, he's cleansed me, he's given me a clear conscience, and I am secure to the day of redemption.
Father, we're thankful that death couldn't hold the Lord Jesus. How could
David ever be joyful again after what he did? But he prays, make me to hear joy and gladness.
And Father, that's exactly what you've done. Thank you for that. We don't want to sin as Christians, but when we do, we know we have an advocate, the
Lord Jesus, our propitiation. And so I pray for the dear Christians here today, that you remind them in the middle of all their different trials, there's probably thousands of trials in this room going on right now, that in spite of all those, they, the
Christian has eternal redemption. And Father, I pray that if there's someone here today who's not trusting in the
Lord Jesus, resting and believing, thinking they somehow can get to heaven on their own,
I pray that you'd give them no sleep or rest until they rest in your son. In his name we pray.