The Centrality of God in the Atonement (Hebrews 9:11-17)

We're blessed to have our brother, Dr. James White, with us tonight. He's a man who needs no introduction to most of us, so I'm not going to introduce him at all. Just kidding. But our brother is an elder at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church in Arizona, and he has two important upcoming debates, one on the 28th with a Roman Catholic, and another one on the 30th with an atheist.

Any other further details, has anything to do with Dr. James White, see Chris Arnson. He knows it all. So, we'll have our brother come and preach God's word to us now.

Indeed, thank you very much. It is a frightening thing to be introduced as a person about whom Chris Arnson knows everything. That's a new one, and it's probably a new one as well. I was asking the elders, I believe that I am the first person to preach from this pulpit using an iPad.

That's not too unusual because I was the first person to preach from the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London using a computerized device. And if you're not familiar with the Metropolitan Tabernacle, that's Charles Spurgeon's church in downtown London.

Ironically, I have not been invited back since then. I'm not sure if there's a connection, but there could possibly be. It is good to be back with you. I don't remember the last time. It wasn't that long ago, but I don't remember.

Sometime last year, I guess I was here for something. Do you remember what I was here for? You don't remember either, okay. That's going to bother me until I remember what it was now, but it wasn't that long ago.

Oh, the Muslim debates in November, I believe. Okay, so there you go. It wasn't even a full year ago. Was that the same time we did the recordings? Yes. Okay, we actually used the facilities here, the worship center, and I recorded.

I met with a former Protestant who is now a Roman Catholic, and he was making a movie about his journey to Rome, and he asked to talk to me about reasons not to be a Roman Catholic. So we said fine, and we met here.

The pastor was kind to be here and to pray for me during that time. I have not heard much from those folks, but I'm still looking forward to seeing what that film ends up looking like when it finally comes out.

I do give you greetings from the people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. We're pretty much exactly like we were the first time I walked into this building in 1996, 1997, somewhere around there, I believe.

Don Fry is still the primary preaching elder there. He's been there for 37 years, I think, now, preaching there. Once a month we bring in the B team, that's me, and I get to preach there. In fact, I've been preaching through the book of Hebrews, shock of all shocks.

So why don't we turn to Hebrews chapter 7. I'm not going to do one of my sermons from that series. Please do not feel like you're only getting the leftovers, though I would trust that any meaningful discussion of Hebrews would be very useful.

It has become one of my favorite books in all of the New Testament in my preaching through it. There is no question about that. I highly recommend this book to you as one worthy of your in-depth study.

The problem is it does take in-depth study to properly handle the book of Hebrews. There is no question about that. It is so soaked in the Old Testament scriptures that many evangelicals struggle with the book because of that.

I think Reformed Baptists especially should really enjoy this book because we're not canonically challenged. We actually believe in all 66 books, unlike a lot of evangelicals today that only have 27 books or fewer in their canon.

But I want to derive a couple of texts from the book of Hebrews and then make some application in regards to the source, origin, and glory of the gospel and the work of salvation itself. Now you might say, well, nothing like going with a safe topic amongst Reformed Baptists.

But we so often have opportunity of engaging in conversation with others who ask, well, why do you go to a church that is in so many ways different than what is common in our society today? And we are different.

For example, we just sang the amens at the end of hymns. Now, you may say, so? Well, that means you've probably been raised as a Reformed Baptist. But let me warn you something right now. If you go to most churches and you start to sing amen at the end of a hymn, you will be singing a solo.

Okay? Just to warn you because I've done it many times. And I sound really odd when I try to hit that first note of the amen and everyone's, you know, looking at you. But that's not why we're really weird, even though that's part of it.

Our hymnology is different. We have a different view of what worship is to be. We are significantly less focused upon programs and much more focused upon exegesis and proclamation. Why is that? People ask us those questions.

And that opens up the opportunity of discussing the centrality of the gospel. And everybody says, well, of course the gospel is central. The gospel is absolutely central to everything that we do. But what we're saying is that there's something about how we view the gospel that forces us to be different than many other churches in our context.

And why is that? Well, because we believe the gospel reveals to us a God who is first and foremost glorifying himself in all of creation. And that the gospel is the primary means whereby God, the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, glorifies himself.

Now you may have noticed I haven't said anything about mankind. Mankind is the object of God's justice and wrath. Mankind is the object of God's mercy and grace. But the creature is not the central player in our understanding of this entire drama of creation itself.

We are blessed to be the recipients of God's grace. But we are not the central players. We are not the central characters. We are God's creatures. And the gospel is all about what God is doing to glorify himself.

Now many people believe the gospel is all about what God is doing to try to get us to allow him to be a savior. And I suggest to you that that's a very different perspective. It's going to have a huge impact on how you not only proclaim the gospel, but how you view God, how you preach, how you organize the church.

It has a huge impact. Now recently, some of you might notice that even since last November when I was here, I left a whole portion of me someplace else. I'm a little bit lighter than I was then by about 32 pounds or so.

That's what happens when you start eating right and ride about 175 miles a week in the Arizona heat. And the reason I'm doing that is I'm training for something. I am training for a ride on October 9th.

If you would like to write that date down and pray for my survival, I would appreciate that. Because I will be competing in the Cochise County Cycling Classic. It's just a little race. It starts at 2 a .m. in the morning.

And it, in one day, covers 234 miles on a bicycle. Now I don't know if I'm going to survive that, but I'm going to give it my all and I'm training for that. And in the process, I have lots of hours pedaling through the Arizona desert.

And I have discovered a wonderful thing. And that is, that's the greatest time in the world to study. And so with the use of modern technology, the computer sitting down there on the front pew, which if anyone touches, I will fly over the podium and tackle you.

I can take almost any book anymore. As long as I can get it in PDF format, document format, get it on my Kindle, whatever it might be. And I can convert it into MP3 and I can listen while riding. I can even speed it up while riding.

It doesn't sound like chipmunks. It's quite understandable. Don't worry. And that is my study time. That's when I listen to my future opponents. That's when I study ancient history. That's when I prepare for everything is in those many, many hours when I am out there on the road crunching along on a road bike.

The Centrality of Christ's Finished Sacrifice in Hebrews 7 and 9

And while I was doing so, just really literally last week, I was reviewing a debate that I did in sometime around 2005, I believe, with a Roman Catholic apologist by the name of Robert St. Genes. It took place up at the University of Utah.

And it was an odd thing because we had many Mormons in the audience listening to a Protestant and a Catholic debating the mass. You can see they were very confused. But that was okay. That's what we did.

And as I listened to a discussion of what the death of Christ accomplished, I was struck yet once again by the absolute man-centeredness of the Roman Catholic religion. And especially of the understanding of Robert St. Genes.

Now, Robert St. Genes, some of you may have... How many of you saw one of the two debates with Robert St. Genes here on Long Island? I know that a couple of you did. The first debate on the mass was the nasty debate.

And the second debate on justification was the let's try to be really nice debate. But we debated those two subjects here on Long Island. And here we're really debating, is the mass a propitiatory sacrifice?

And we looked at a number of texts in the book of Hebrews, some of which we're going to look at in just a moment. My heart was grieved, it truly was, to listen to a man who is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary read each and every text that was so focused upon the accomplishment of salvation.

The power of God, the ability of God. It was soaked in God-centeredness. And yet, to listen to a man read those words and do everything in his power to insert into texts that tell us that God is perfect in his work, he doesn't fail, he's glorifying himself, to insert into those texts the overriding control of man over the grace of God.

So that you could defend the Roman Catholic system, which if you're not familiar with it, right now in churches in this city, there are men standing before congregations and they are elevating a host.

And there's probably a few Latin mass churches around in this area, I would assume. And if it is in the Latin mass, they're saying, This is my body. And how many of you are former Roman Catholics? If this is a Roman Catholic church, what would you have done as soon as you walked through the back door?

You would have genuflected. Why? Because Christ is physically present, body, soul, blood, and divinity, in the monstrance, in the tabernacle. Because that miracle of transubstantiation creates the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

However, every one of you who is a former Roman Catholic also knows that while you attended that mass, you were not perfected by that mass. You have to keep coming back, over and over and over again. Because while it is said to be a re-presentation of the one sacrifice of Christ, it in and of itself is not enough to perfect.

And you know all the sacraments of the church. Priestly confession, absolution, how many Hail Marys you had to do, how many Our Fathers you had to do. And the other sacramental avenues of receiving grace from God.

What is a sacramental system if it is not man's means of controlling the grace of God? God makes grace available through the sacramental system, but you have to work the system. And that means the people who control the sacraments control you.

Is that not the history of the Roman Catholic Church? And so my heart was grieved in listening to now Dr. Syngenis reading texts of Scripture. Let's look at some of them that we discussed and let's consider this central aspect of whether we read the text of Scripture in a God-centered way or in a man-centered way.

Christ's Ability to Save to the Uttermost

And what it results in. In Hebrews chapter 7, after we have been told in verse 20 that Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant, we read the former priests, in verse, I'm sorry, that was verse 22 and verse 23, the former priests on the one hand existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing.

But Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore he is able also to save forever or to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.

This text came up and I pointed out that Jesus is said here to have an ability, a capacity. Notice it says, he is able. He is able to do what? To save Panteles either forever in a temporal sense, completely, or to the uttermost.

They're really related concepts. Because Christ holds his priesthood permanently without successor, unlike the old priests who, due to age, would have to pass their priesthood authority on to someone else.

Christ holds his priesthood permanently. His is the Melchizedek priesthood promised in Psalm 110. And since he is no longer subject to death, he has an indestructible life, then he has become a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

And we need no more priests. He holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore, because of this, he has a capacity and ability that the old covenant priests did not possess. He is able also to save. Not to make salvation a possibility.

But he is able to save completely those who draw near to God through him. That's a specific people. All the Jewish believers who would have originally read this epistle, this epistle being written to Jewish believers, who were under tremendous pressure to go back to the old ways, to go back to the old sacrifices.

The argument of the book is there is nothing to go back to. And they would have understood what the phrase, those who draw near to God through him, means. Because when the sacrifice was being offered on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, but literally when you read the Old Testament text, it's Yom Kippurim, the Day of Atonements, that were made in the Holy of Holies.

When you think about what the high priest did on that day, and as I've been preaching through Hebrews, we even had to step aside to go back to the Old Testament text and work through the Levitical passages so we would understand exactly what the high priest did and why he did it.

There was a particular people who drew near to worship. They did not enter into the holiest place. They did not even enter into the outer court where the sacrifices were, but they were standing outside of that.

But the atonement was being made in their behalf. And the people understood. This sacrifice was not being made for the Assyrian. The sacrifice was not being made for the Egyptian or the Babylonian. The sacrifice was for those who drew near to worship.

It had a specific audience. And the audience the writer has in mind is those who draw near to God through Him, through Christ. Again, that particularity of the Gospel message. We cannot give in to the pressure to be pluralists, to deny the Christian faith and say, well, there's one way through Him.

We cannot give in to the Oprah Winfrey's of the world that tell us that there are many ways to that which you call God. The Scriptures have none of that. He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him.

Why? Why does He have this capacity? Since He always lives to make intercession for them. Christ's act of intercession can never fail because that act of intercession is nothing more than the offering of a perfect sacrifice.

You see, if there was something lacking in the sacrifice of Christ, then this act of intercession would be a new work added to the act of self-giving and sacrifice. But you see, again, we go back to the Old Testament.

What did the high priest do on the Day of Atonement? He offered the sacrifice. He brought the blood into the holy place. It was one act. It wasn't, well, this has one thing, this has one effect, and now there's a second effect when I take it.

No, the high priest makes the sacrifice, and then he enters in with that blood of the sacrifice into the holy place. It's one act. And if Christ is the high priest, then His intercessory work is not a second work beyond sacrifice.

It is merely the presentation of the finished work of that sacrifice in the presence of the Father. But remember, the high priest of the Old Covenant only entered in and he sprinkled the blood upon the mercy seat, the place of atonement, but then, then, he had to leave.

There was nothing in the holiest place that would allow him to sit down. He could not stay there. He could not stay there because he was not entering into the presence of God with the one sacrifice that would allow the high priest to stay in the presence of God, and that is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Not only that, but he was reminded. As soon as he sprinkled that blood, as he took that warm blood and was about to sprinkle it upon the place of atonement, he would look, and what would he see? He would see the dried blood of the last time, and the last time, and the last time, and it was a reminder.

This is a picture. This is not perfect in and of itself. It is a shadow of what is to come. Jesus has the capacity to save completely because he always lives to make intercession for the very same people for whom the sacrifice has been offered.

Do you see the importance, my friends, of recognizing that the scope of the atonement is identical to the scope of the intercession? The scope of the atonement is not wider than the act of the high priest in intercession.

But for whom does Christ intercede? I suggest to you that if you believe that Christ intercedes for every human being, there is only one possible result of that. Every human being will be saved because he is able to save.

He has that power, he has that capacity, and if the sacrifice is in their place and Christ intercedes... But you see, no one reading this would ever have really thought about that particular conundrum.

No one had yet come up with the inconsistent idea of a substitutionary atonement that is universal in its scope. Those who originally read this fully understood they were steeped in the Old Testament Scriptures and the Old Testament Scriptures always made it clear that the sacrificial work was for a specific people.

He always lives to make intercession for them. That is why he is able to save. He is in the presence of the Father. Now, what did my Roman Catholic opponent do in the face of such a text? I raised it for obvious reasons.

If you're a Roman Catholic, you know that you could go to Mass 20 ,000 times in your life and still die impure, have to go to purgatory, or even worse, be lost if you committed a mortal sin prior to your death.

I know there are many Roman Catholics today, many Roman Catholic priests that are pretty much universalists, everyone's going to get saved, but if you're an older person, you know that that's really not what Rome has always taught.

What I was pointing out was that from Mr. St. Genes' perspective, he has no perfected work. He has no perfect sacrifice. He cannot understand what Hebrews 7 .25 is saying. So you know what his focus was?

Ah, but Dr. White, Jesus can't save outside of our cooperation because it says those who draw near to God through him. If you stop drawing near, then Christ can't save you. Now, it's not just Roman Catholics who make that kind of argument.

I wish that's where the dividing line was that made it convenient at one time. That's not really where the dividing line is anymore. But I want us to step back for just a moment and to consider this text and to consider what it means to read it in the way that Robert St. Genes read it, and so many other people read it as well.

What would cause a person to look at these words, and what are the words about? They're about Christ's ability. They're a promise of Christ's capacity. The argument of Hebrews is there's nothing to go back to because we have what?

A perfect and completed and finished sacrifice. So what would possess a person, and that might be a good term, to read a text of Scripture that is plainly meant to emphasize the perfection of God's work in salvation, and the only thing they can see is, well, Jesus tries, but unless I draw near, he can't save me.

That's not what the original audiences would know. They never understood this in that way. They understood exactly what drawing near to God through him was, and it never crossed their mind that there was some intrinsic controlling ability on the part of the people who went to the temple for the sacrifice, that that somehow was adding to what the priest did.

It never crossed their mind, but it does for people today. There are those who read the text of Scripture, and they see in it man's abilities and God's trying, and it truly makes me wonder, how can a person whose self-righteousness has been burned from their hearts in true repentance read the Word of God in this way?

But as I said, it's not just Roberts and Janus. I could not help, as I listened to him saying these words, but to think of a Protestant, an evangelical by the name of Dr. Norman Geisler. Dr. Geisler has told us in his books, Christ's death saved no one.

It made us all savable. Christ's death saved no one. It made us all savable. And that might explain why he could look at John 6, 44, where Jesus says, no man is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

A God-soaked text. It's what God accomplished. It's specifically saying, no man has an ability to come to me. And he can quote it and then say, here we see the free will of man. Really? How? It's because you have a view of the Gospel that is centered upon God making salvation a possibility, but man is the central character.

Man is the one who determines whether it's going to be accomplished or not. I think it's a fundamental problem in not recognizing that the Scriptures, from beginning to end, are focused upon God, not upon his creatures.

Oh, we're important elements of the story. But have you ever noticed the Bible doesn't start off by God seeking to convince us of his role as God? It doesn't start off with an argument for God's existence.

It starts off with the assertion of what God himself did and nothing more. When we look at what the Scriptures are really saying, it becomes very, very clear. Look with me at a few other texts just to see this God-centeredness and to see how people read these things.

Turn with me to Hebrews 9. Hebrews 9, beginning at verse 11. But when Christ appeared as a high priest with the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and cows, but through his own blood he entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify with the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Now, do you notice, and I hope it rings in your ears, he entered the holy place in heaven, not the holy place on earth, but the writers already argued that the tabernacle on earth is but a copy of what's in heaven.

The tabernacle on earth is the unreal, the real is what is in heaven. He entered the holy place once for all, that's not once for every person, this is an adverb, it's a temporal adverb, once for all, one time, and then notice what it says, having obtained eternal redemption.

Not having made eternal redemption a possibility, not having opened up the way to, we hope, to provide eternal redemption for the maximum number of people possible, when he entered in and he said, Tetelestai, it is done, it is finished, it is completed, he meant it.

He doesn't have to keep coming out of the holy place, he enters into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption. That which he brought in is sufficient in and of itself. Man's paltry works cannot be added to it.

So I simply ask us a question, do we believe that? Or maybe I should put it this way, do we preach as if we believe that? He obtained eternal redemption. But you know how people read that? Oh yes, he obtained eternal redemption, alright, and now he's doling it out based upon what we do.

He has the big hose of eternal redemption in heaven, but now it's all up to you to turn the spigot on. And you have some people who say it's pretty simple to do that, it's your autonomous faith, and then you get the church of Christ, folks, and you gotta do that by getting baptized in a particular church in a particular way to all the other folks that have all the sacraments and works and everything else that you must do.

And what is the mindset for every single one? I can't believe that salvation is an accomplished reality done by the triune God alone, because if that's true, well, then I'm dependent completely upon God for salvation.

Yeah. Well, but he says all men everywhere are commanded to repent, all men everywhere are commanded to repent, and you are commanded to repent. Well, then I don't see how you can put those two together.

And I say, I certainly can, because true repentance requires, what did Jesus say? Being freed from slavery. You see, as the fallen son or daughter of Adam, you are enslaved to sin. He who commits sin is the slave of sin.

And that is a just punishment, by the way, and it requires the gracious act of a gracious God to free us from the bonds of slavery and give to us the ability to have saving faith and to repent of our sins.

But Paul said, those who are according to the flesh cannot do what's pleasing to God. They cannot subject themselves to the law of God. But you see, those who have not come to the end of their own means, those who still have an element of self-righteousness in their hearts, they want to read the text in such a way as to always control God's power by man's activities.

And so it can even say, he entered in having obtained eternal redemption. Yeah, I'm glad he's got it up there, but now we need it down here, and you see that it requires this, this, this, and this. Never mind that would completely destroy the argument of the epistle.

Never mind that that would put Christianity on the very same basis as the Old Covenant itself and therefore make the writer of the Hebrews a self-deceived man. We do what we have to do to make our system work.

Christ's Once-for-All Offering and Eternal Redemption in Hebrews 9-10

But notice verse 23 of the same chapter, chapter 9. Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us in our place. Nor was it that he would offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.

Otherwise he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world, but now once at the consummation of the ages he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Now once again, step back for just a moment and listen to these words.

What do you hear? You hear the perfect accomplishment of Christ. There's nothing here about trying. There's nothing here about hoping to accomplish something. What has he done? He offers himself. Not many times, but one time.

The high priest, many times, blood not his own, but he offers himself once at the consummation of the ages. He has been manifested to do what? To put away sin. Not to try. Not to hope. But to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself?

Where can man find a foothold in there to get his own glory? There's no place to put man's accomplishments, man's merit, man's boasting, when it's the triune God who himself, Father, Son, and Spirit, accomplishes perfect redemption.

But notice, look at chapter 10. Look at chapter 10, verse 10. By this will, by this covenant, this will, we have been sanctified, we have been set apart through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.

For by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Do you hear these words? By this will, we have been sanctified. How? Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ one time.

For by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. The focus is upon what God has done in Christ. We are the gracious objects, but never is it even slightly suggested that all of this triune work, the Father decreeing it, the Son accomplishing it, the Spirit coming and applying it, all of this can be undone by the almighty will of man.

My webcast is called The Dividing Line. I don't remember when I came up with that name, but it seemed to me that The Dividing Line was a good term because there is truth in God's Word. And if God has revealed His truth, it creates a dividing line between that which is in harmony with God's Word and that which is not.

People are afraid of drawing dividing lines today. We don't want to divide people. We want to unite people. I suggest to you that there is a dividing line between those who see that the Gospel is about what God does to glorify Himself and those who see God as doing something that is all wrapped up in mankind and in mankind alone.

Those who see themselves as the creatures of God, redeemed by the act of God, will see themselves as servants, individuals to be used at His command, and they will find joy and happiness and contentment in being used by the One who has redeemed them.

But those who think that the Christian message is all about mankind and what God has done to try to do something, if but mankind will cooperate, if but mankind will help, that is what has given rise to the rampant preaching we have in our land of a God who is a cosmic butler, who can be called upon whenever we need some help, but we really don't need to worry about Him and His will in our everyday lives.

You're a bit of a legalist if you really think that your every decision, that your every action should be guided by the Lordship of Christ. Isn't that just a little extreme, we're told? What the triune God has done to glorify Himself is very extreme.

It's so extreme that not only is it perfect, but He says it's the only way of salvation. And as we look at these texts and we hear enunciated so clearly in the context and in the argument of the Epistle, God has done this, God has done this, God has completed this, God has perfected this, when you encounter a person who can read all these texts and find a way to insert man, to find a way to get around the centrality of God and keep man in the center, there's someone that I fear for.

Now I don't expect that on a Sunday night during vacation time in a Reformed Baptist church there's too many of you who have disagreed with almost anything that I've said. But I do think that we all need to be reminded that we live in a day and age where the world is constantly warping our minds.

That's why we need constant exposure to the Word of God, that's why we need constant exposure to fellowship, being with one another. Because the world warps our minds and when the world warps our minds the result is that we start trying to find ways of inserting our dirty little fingers into the purity of the Gospel itself.

Not to try to steal all the glory, I mean, we want to continue to be able to sing to God be the glory, right? But you see, we'll give God 99 of the glory as long as the 1 I get is the 1 that determines my own destiny.

That is the dividing line between a supernatural faith and a man-centered faith. It's the dividing line between God-centeredness and man-centeredness. It's the dividing line between a perfect work of Christ in atonement, intercession, and an imperfect work that merely makes salvation a possibility, a hoped-for possibility.

It's a dividing line that is extremely important. And we are told, well, you're being divisive. Well, dividing lines divide. And it's the Word of God that tells us. There are many people who originally read this letter that might have found it to be extremely politically incorrect.

How dare you tell us that the very religion that can trace its origin back to Moses is no longer pleasing to God in the offering of sacrifices upon the altar. And yet, if Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be, was it a neutral act or was it an absolutely sinful act when the Jews repaired that veil?

They sewed it back up. They closed the way. And having done so, was it a sinful act when those scribes and Pharisees who had heard the message of Jesus and had testified before Pilate this man said he'd destroy the temple and in three days build it again?

And three days after the death of Christ, they're told, he's risen. The grave is empty. And yet they go out and they get the goat and they get the bull and they follow meticulously the traditions of the fathers in the sacrifice of these animals and the blood pours.

Was God pleased in any of that any longer? When you reject his own testimony in his own Son, which he has verified by raising him from the dead? Who drew the dividing line? God did. Who drew the dividing line?

Jesus did. When he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. That's a dividing line he drew. And that's why those who pretend to be Christians today detest that text so badly.

And there are many. The former bishop of Newark, Anglican bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, would identify those words as one of the sins of Scripture. That's because he remains in his sin. And he finds it sinful that someone would tell him he is in his sin.

I know that you believe in the sovereignty of God and in the God-centeredness of the Gospel. But sometimes we get apathetic about it. Sometimes that flame that burned so brightly at one time that caused us to have such joy that was the first thing upon our mind upon arising in the morning and the last thing upon our mind before retiring at night.