Of Deaths, Covenants, and Wills

Good morning. The Old Testament reading this morning is in the book of Exodus, chapter 24, verses 3 through 8. If you'd like to read along in your pew Bibles, that's page 65. I would ask you to please stand in honor of God's word.

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.

He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.

And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient.

And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.

New Testament reading is Romans 3, 21 through 26. But now the righteousness of God has been manifest apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood and to receive by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because of his divine forbearance and has passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Who's your man standing?

You may be seated.

Boy, after a song like that, it's hard to preach. Nevertheless, God calls us to hear his word. So I ask you to turn to Hebrews chapter nine. You follow as I read the ninth chapter. I want us to get the whole context of what we're saying.

Hebrews nine, beginning in verse one. Now, even the first covenant had regulations for worship in an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared, the first section in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence.

It is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the most holy place, having the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron's staff that budded and the tablets of the covenant.

Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things, we cannot now speak in detail. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.

By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy place is not yet opened, as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age. According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

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 the means of the blood of goats and calves, but by the 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.

Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

And in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under this law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

Thus it is necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood, not his own. For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

And just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment. 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 are eagerly waiting for him.

Father, now open the text of your word to our hearts. It is a living word, and we expect you, Lord, to work. So now we commit this time to you, looking forward to the work that you will do in our minds as we understand something of the sacrifice of Jesus.

And we'll thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Just about every one of you at some point in his life has signed a contract. What happens when you sign on the dotted line? Well, it means that you've made an irrevocable promise to fulfill all the obligations that you've agreed to.

So when you sign that piece of paper with the bank, you promise to pay the bank back that $125 ,000 that you borrowed at $900 a month plus interest within a 30-year span. That's the promise you make.

You say, I'm going to fulfill those obligations. And then you and the loan officer take that piece of paper, go out to the back, take a pigeon out of a cage, cut its neck, and sprinkle it with blood. Right?

No. None of you have experienced that. Of course, because your signature, in our culture today, your signature is good enough. Your signature says, I promise to fulfill all the obligations that I've committed myself to.

But when our writer penned this letter to his believing fellow Jews, contracts or covenants were guaranteed by death. They were guaranteed by death. An animal had to die. And his blood had to be used in some way in order to make that agreement binding.

The sign that made it clear that the parties to the covenant were going to fulfill their particular obligations was death. Not a signature. It was death. So when God made a covenant with Abraham, animals were killed.

When Jacob and Laban entered into a covenant, animals died. And when God made a covenant with Israel, according to our text, calves and goats died. You see, death is central to covenants, to agreements, even wills.

And we see that in our text this morning. And we're going to look at verses 15 through 22. So follow as I read that again. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred, that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

Now remember that our Hebrew writer is writing this to us, is on a mission. And that is to convince you that you must remain steadfast in your faith, in your devotion, in your loyalty to Jesus. Because we are tempted to abandon him and to drift away from him if we are not careful.

And that he then is our only hope. That's what we have to see as we read this book. He's trying to convince us, don't drift away from Jesus. He is your only hope. Without him, there's no hope. And if you would persevere in that hope, then you have to know the central place that death plays in that hope.

So what indispensable truths do you need to know about deaths and wills and covenants? Well, let's look at our text this morning. The first thing he says to us in verse 15 is, Understand the necessity of death for new covenant promises.

Understand the necessity of death for new covenant promises, verse 15. Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from transgressions committed under the first covenant.

Because of what Jesus did, we now relate to him by this new covenant. Now, God always relates to us by covenant. As you read the Bible, you see that God always relates to humanity by covenant. That is, a covenant is an agreement that governs our relationship.

An agreement that governs our relationship. We live with one every day. It's called the United States Constitution. That is a covenant. That document governs the way that we relate to the government. It says, you elect your representatives every two years, the president every four years, the senator every six years, and that's what you have to do.

We agreed to that.

All right.

It tells us the way the government relates to us. It says, we're going to impose laws on you, but that only can happen if both houses of Congress pass the bill and the president signs it into law. Then it becomes your law.

We also have a Bill of Rights that governs the way the government relates to us. It says it cannot dictate to you what religion you can belong to. It does not dictate to that. It does not dictate to you the free exercise of your religion.

That's all the way we're supposed to relate to one another. It tells us how the branches of the government relate to one another. It governs that relationship as well. Saying that the legislature is the one that can declare war, for example, and the president can only sign bills he cannot legislate, the Supreme Court has to determine what's constitutional, all these sorts of things.

That covenant tells us how we relate to one another, how the government relates to us, how it relates to each of its branches. It governs that relationship. So God related to his people Israel by a covenant that was made at Sinai.

This was to govern their relationship. There he promised certain blessings for obedience and certain curses for disobedience. This is going to govern our relationship. You obey and you receive blessings from me.

You disobey, you will be cursed by me. Now, our relationship to God, as we've seen so far, as we've seen as we've gone through the book of Hebrews, our relationship to God is no longer governed by that agreement.

We are now under what's called a new covenant. The old covenant said we could only approach God through priests who represented us, who had to go into particular sections of the tabernacle or the temple.

They had to do particular things. While the high priest is the only one who could go to the Holy of Holies and there to make atonement for the people once a year. And the people had to go through certain purification rites for certain things and there were certain sacrifices they had to make.

All those things were governed by that old covenant. But we have a better covenant, we've learned already. We have a better covenant with better promises. And that's all because of what Jesus did. And thus we see, therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant.

Because Jesus offered his own blood rather than the blood of calves and goats. Because he enters the true holy place. Because he has purified our consciences, not just our bodies. And because he has obtained eternal redemption.

Because of all those things, he is the mediator of a new covenant. He's changed the whole thing. He now mediates a new covenant. The covenant that governs our relationship with God is now mediated by Jesus.

It is a new covenant that governs our relationship. Now the great benefit of that covenant, he says in verse 15, is that we receive an eternal inheritance under this new covenant. He says the ones called, or the ones that God chose, are to receive that benefit of eternal inheritance.

He's talking about the call when he says those who have been called. He's talking about those whom God calls, who he appeals to. He commands, he says, believe. But it goes beyond that. It's a call that's effectual.

It's a call that accomplishes what it calls you to do. The ones that he has called are the ones who hear the call and respond to it. That's the theological term here. As we talked in Sunday School class, maybe it's not the words of scripture, but they're scriptural in nature.

We call this the effectual call. It's effective. The call that God goes out takes the people that he has chosen and changes them so that they respond in faith. He says those who are called receive this benefit.

Now the old covenant, mediated by Moses, could not give us any kind of eternal inheritance. Remember what our writer said. The most it could do was to make one ceremonially clean in order to worship, in order to serve God.

They had to be ceremonially clean. But the old covenant never dealt with the depravity of the human heart. So people could be ceremonially clean and grudgingly worship God. The new covenant, on the other hand, doesn't do that.

It deals with our hearts and changes us. The old covenant didn't change anybody. The new covenant does. So the old covenant, mediated by Moses, could not give any kind of eternal inheritance. But the new covenant promised that someday God would grant that eternal inheritance.

So what's involved in that eternal inheritance? A changed heart, for one thing. It promised that God would write his law on our hearts so that we would now obey willingly and joyfully. We would be given a forgiven status.

That is, he would choose to not remember our sins anymore. He will not bring them up to use against us. That's the promise of the new covenant. We were promised a new relationship where God would be your God and dwell with you.

And that is your eternal possession. That's your eternal inheritance. These would be yours always. You see, under the old covenant, you were forgiven, but you had to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it because you wouldn't remain forgiven.

But with the new covenant, for example, your forgiveness is forever. That status will never change. You will always be forgiven. We will always have the law of God on our hearts. We will always have God.

That's our eternal inheritance, our eternal possession that we have because of this new covenant, he says in verse 15. But here's the deal. Something had to happen before you took possession of that eternal inheritance.

A death had to occur. A death was necessary for you to gain those promises. It's what he says in verse 15 where he says, we received the eternal promised inheritance since a death has occurred. That redeems the call.

It was a death that must redeem those whom God had called, must redeem them from their transgression. Now notice what he says here. It redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

All of you would say to me, I didn't commit any transgressions under the old covenant because I'm under the new one. Well, here's what he's saying. Many were called to salvation during the time when the old covenant was in force.

Many were called to salvation. Think of David, Daniel, Hezekiah, Elijah, Asaph. Think of all these people in the Old Testament that give us these wonderful songs of praise for what God has done for them.

But the old covenant could never save them. They were not saved by the old covenant. They were saved by looking to God and in faith, looking to his mercy and his grace and calling out to God to do something to save them.

You remember what David wrote in Psalm 32. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

The old covenant couldn't do that. And he's praising God for doing that. God saved him. But how could God save them since as our writer plainly says, the old covenant at best could only purify them or the old covenant could never, I'm sorry, the old covenant could never perfect them.

How is it then that they could be saved? If the old covenant couldn't perfect them, how could God save them? There was nothing in that old covenant that would do it. Well, they were saved because Jesus redeemed them from their transgressions, committed under that first covenant when he died.

You follow?

God said that he would save them, but only on the basis of what Jesus was going to do. Look back at our scripture reading from this morning in Romans chapter three, the apostle Paul talks about that in Romans chapter three in the last part of verse 25 and 26.

This was to show, in other words, he put Jesus forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith, okay? Jesus has offered the sacrifice. It turns away the wrath of God so that the wrath of God does not fall on you.

That's propitiation. His wrath is satisfied, and so he's not going to pour out his wrath on you. But then he says this was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

He had passed over David's sins. He had passed over Hezekiah's sins. How could he do that? Because he sent Jesus as a propitiation. He paid for their sins. When he died, their sins were paid for. And God then, because God passing over their sins, it would look like, where's your justice?

Where's your justice, God? David doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Ah, but God says, I am just, and Jesus paid for his sins. So that's why he goes on to say, it was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

You follow?

That's what our writer is saying in Hebrews here. They were redeemed. That redemption goes back, and they're redeemed from their transgressions. They were saved because Jesus redeemed them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant when he died.

And so when Jesus died, he paid for the sins committed under that old covenant by God's called ones. But you see, Jesus also has to redeem. Jesus had to redeem people for the future as well. He had to redeem you.

He had to redeem you from your sins as well. The point is, no matter where you are in history, Jesus must die for you to enjoy the promises of the new covenant. Jesus must die for you to enjoy those promises.

So I say to you today, do you want the promises of the new covenant? Do you want your forgiveness? Do you want to be changed? That's only possible because Jesus died, and the only thing you need to do is with a broken and contrite heart go to him and find that he will give you the promises of that new covenant, where God will be your God, where you will change, right?

You will be forgiven. You know, we were talking as the elders met for prayer today, one of the things that, you know, we get to talking, and one of the things that came up was the fact that isn't it amazing that God can change?

I think Pastor Andrew said, isn't it amazing that God can change our desires?

Right?

God can change our desires. The new covenant radically changes us, and it does that because Jesus died and redeemed. He had to redeem us in order for those covenant promises to apply. He had to redeem us.

So understand the necessity of death for the new covenant. Understand the necessity of death for the new covenant, but it doesn't stop there. In verses 16 and 17, he says, understand the necessity of death for a will,.

For a will.

Now, you know how a will works, right? Now, you all know that Pastor Tim is incredibly rich, yet rich in books, right?

You all know that.

I'm rich in books, and I make no apologies for that. Great investment as far as I'm concerned. Best returns you get from any investment, but I am rich in books. Suppose in my will, I said, I, Tim Passama, being of sound mind, bequeath all my books to Andrew Beebe.

And then one Tuesday, I walk into our offices, and I walk in the door, and I see him walking from my office to his office with an arm load full of books. And I'm watching this happen.

I go, what?

What are you doing, Andrew? And he says, you said these were mine. And what's my reply going to be? No, not until I'm dead.

Right?

That's the way a will works. You don't get what the will promises until the person dies.

Isn't that the way it works?

It's not in force until somebody dies. It's no good. The promises are not good when you're alive. So that promise to Andrew of all my books, and I haven't written it down yet, okay? So don't get your hopes up, Andrew, but anyway.

The point is, it's no good until the person dies. And so that's what he says is going on with the new covenant. That's the way it is with the promises of the new covenant. We do not get what it promises until the death of the maker is established.

Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, God, made that covenant with his people and said, there's a covenant coming in which I promise these things. Forgiveness, the law on your hearts, change, right?

The fact that I will be your God forever. He's the one who also made that promise. And when he died, we now can claim those promises in the will, if you want to put it that way. We now have those promises, they're ours because the one who made it has died.

By the way, the writer of the Hebrews says nothing about this, but I'm going to throw this in. This is a freebie. You don't have to put this down in your notes, but you can if you want. Do you know that Jesus is not only the one who made the will, and so he had to die for the will to come into force?

He's also the executor.

Do you ever think about that?

He's also the executor of the will. That is, he's the one who sees that the promises of the will are all fulfilled. You know why?

Because he's been raised from the dead.

So he not only made the will and died so we get its promises, he's also the executor. Just to make sure that we get them, okay? I think that's amazing, but be that as it may. The point is, Jesus, again, he's making the point.

Jesus had to die in order for us to receive the promises, that promised eternal inheritance of the new covenant. Jesus had to die for us to get that. Again, necessity of death for us to get the promises.

Then the last thing he says is to understand the necessity of death for any covenant. Now he goes back, he looks back again, and says, okay, if you don't get the point, let's look at that first covenant.

Let's look at that old covenant. Having established the fact in verse 15 that Jesus' death brought the new covenant into force, he returns to that subject in verse 18. That's why the therefore is there.

I think he's referring back to the fact of the new covenant. He's saying, he essentially says in verses 18 through 22, the fact that Jesus had to die so that we could, you could receive the promised eternal inheritance should not surprise you.

It should not surprise you. That shouldn't surprise you, because even the first covenant came into force with blood, with death.

All right?

Death was necessary to inaugurate even that first covenant. Now we read of the covenant ceremony this morning in Exodus 24. That's what he's referring to, that story that we read in Exodus 24 today. Now one difference is that our writer has Moses sprinkling the book of the covenant rather than the altar.

And I can't explain to you why he included the book but not the altar. It may be that it was a common belief at his time, but it doesn't change anything. Moses read the covenant to the people and as one of the parties to it, they agreed to live under its conditions, under its promises.

And then what did Moses do? He took the blood of the sacrificial animal in the bowls, remember? And then he sprinkled them and the book, and according to Exodus, the altar, he sprinkled them. Now the book represents God as the author of the covenant and the people then were brought under the covenant as they were sprinkled with the blood.

This brought them under the blessings and the curses of that covenant. This then is called the blood of the covenant, right? But again, a death had to occur before that covenant was ratified with blood.

And on that, as we read that, it appears that the defilement of the congregation was removed so that Israel could enter into a covenant relationship with God. You see again that the covenant relationship requires what?

It requires the death of a victim. The blood represents that death. The sprinkling then happens. But not only that, as he says to us now, he says not only that, but the objects used in worship were also sprinkled with blood.

Notice, after he talks about the people, he says, and in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship.

Indeed, under the law, almost everything.

Is purified with blood. So the objects used in worship were also sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificial victim. Under that old covenant, the very objects used in worship must be purified by blood. So therefore, what?

Under that old covenant, worship required death. Worship required the death of a victim. And lastly, he says, in verse 22, not only covenant purification and covenant worship, but covenant forgiveness required the shedding of blood.

For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. To have any kind of forgiveness, blood had to be shed. Something had to die. The death of the animal functioned as a substitute for the death of a human being.

You remember that always in these atonement sacrifices, whether it's the one that the person offered or the one that the high priest offered on the day of atonement, you will always notice the hands of the person on the head of the victim.

In a metaphorical way, in a symbolic way, transferring the sin of the person to the animal, and the animal then dies and takes the punishment that this person deserves. All right, that's what's behind all that.

And that showed, really, that showed the seriousness of sin and the great cost of forgiveness. You know, even back then, they understood the great cost. I mean, again, most of you don't have a flock. There's only a few of you, okay?

Look, so we go over. I go over to the Parkers, see my grandkids every once in a while, you know, buy some eggs off of Clarence, see my daughter and my son-in-law. So we go over to the Parkers every once in a while, and over here, you hear this noise, and it's these goats, right?

They have these goats over there. And you go, ho-hum, yeah, goats are interesting. I like watching them. But consider this. Consider this. Can I tell you something? The Parkers love those goats. I know they love those goats, okay?

The day that one died, and we thought the others were poisoned, was just an absolute traumatic day for everyone, okay? They love those goats. Now, can you imagine Lee having to say, I need to go and make a sacrifice?

I have to make, you know, there were provisions for you know of a sin, you've got to make a sacrifice. Can you imagine that whole family going over there and saying, which one of those goats are we going to take to the priest to slit his throat and put him on an altar and to be there when it happens, right?

Listen, it costs, do you think people back then cared about their animals like that? And not only that, you took the best one. Now, think about that for a moment. Do you think the cost would register?

Sure it would. Sure it would. But guess what? Even at that great cost, it could never offer ultimate forgiveness. You had to keep doing that over and over and over again. You had to keep doing that. That God was putting in their minds, forgiveness costs.

All right?

Forgiveness costs. There's no ultimate forgiveness granted through those sacrifices because the high priest had to enter the Holy of Holies repeatedly, year after year after year to do the same thing.

The covenant required death for forgiveness. Now, of course, all of this points to Jesus. All of this points to Jesus. We too have to be purified and forgiven by death, by blood. And there must be blood to ratify this new covenant.

Look over it, 1 Peter, for a moment. 1 Peter 1, verse 1. Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing. Oh, that didn't seem right. It's 1 Peter.

That's 2 Peter. Right away it didn't seem right. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect, exiles, of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to, now you're the elect, exiles, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood.

You see, that blood was necessary to ratify the new covenant. His death was necessary for us to have the promises. It shouldn't surprise us. Death was necessary to establish that first covenant. It is necessary for the new covenant.

And Jesus is the one who did it. Now look, we all know that death is inevitable. You're going to die.

Right?

Death is inevitable. But there's only one death that was necessary. And you got to see that. Not our death, but the death of Jesus was necessary. He must die. Jesus had to die for you to enjoy the blessings of that eternal inheritance promised in the new covenant.

Jesus must die for you to be purified. Jesus must die for you to be forgiven. So you see, once more, Jesus is your only hope. There is no other hope but Him. You've got to know that. And His death underlines, highlights, says unmistakably that His death was necessary for all these good things.

And thus, you can't go anywhere else. He is your only hope. Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for the Lord Jesus. Thank You for making it clear to us that His death was absolutely necessary if we would enjoy all the promises of that new covenant.

First of all, we want to thank You for that new covenant where You give us all these promises as an eternal inheritance. And we want to thank You for Jesus, who now is the mediator of that covenant because He is the one whose death was necessary for us to possess our inheritance.

Thank You for Jesus. And God, when we are tempted to drift away, when we are tempted to look somewhere else for change or for forgiveness, when we're tempted to look somewhere else, remind us that Jesus had to die for those things to be accomplished in us.

Help us then to be steadfast in our faith for Your glory and our good. In Jesus' name.