Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
What is your only comfort in life and death? What is your only comfort in life and death? What would you tell your kids? I'm going through a trial and my only comfort in this life is my 401k, my HMO. Oh, you probably wouldn't say that.
I have faith in faith. It'll all work out in the end. We've been in tougher times before. This question was the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism written centuries ago and it was answered this way.
What is your only comfort in life and death? Question number one, answer number one, listen carefully please, that I am not my own but belong with body and soul both in life and in death to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me free from all the powers of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly father, not a hair can fall from my head.
Indeed, all things must work together for my salvation because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.
What a great question and what a wonderful answer. What is your only comfort in life and in death? My comfort is I understand who God is and I stand forgiven, preserved, protected and sealed to the day of eternity.
Now, where are the churches that want to preach the one in whom all these blessings flow? Where do they flow, who do they flow out of? They flow out of Christ and David Wells from Gordon Conwell Seminary was insightful when he said, it's not like Jesus has been kidnapped from local churches.
It's not as if he's been taken and have been abducted but it's more like this. Jesus, as it were, is like a child in a home that has not been kidnapped but basically ignored, basically forgotten, basically pushed to the side.
He said, they remain in the home but they have no place in the family. So it is with Christ in the church. He remains on the edges of evangelical life but has been dislodged from its center. Is that the way you think?
Jesus is the center. For those of us like me who struggle throughout the week and everything clouds my mind, Sundays are a good day to gather corporately and say, Lord, my compass is kind of messed up because I'm at the geographical North Pole but the compass is all messed up because the magnetic North Pole is doing something different and today, if you'll turn your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, we get to see this passage that assaults anything or anyone that moves Christ out of the center of the church and in our personal lives.
I don't know what else to give you than Jesus Christ and him crucified. What am I going to tell you each and every week? My new cycling tips, Nebraska football insight, movie reviews? The man in the pulpit is to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified and his word and the day I stop it, first rebuke me, then send me to a lunatic asylum because for sure, you'll know I'm crazy, like Spurgeon said, when I don't proclaim that Christ is God from the pulpit and he is the king and today, we'll learn something that's even greater than Jesus is the king.
We will learn that Jesus is our savior. When I first got here, my first sermon was Colossians 1, verse 28 and Paul says to the church at Colossae, we proclaim Christ. What else is there? He's the one that saves and sanctifies and he uses his word and I love Hebrews because this is a book all about the incomparable superiority of Jesus Christ.
He's better than anything else or anyone else. Matter of fact, how many times in the book of Hebrews is the word better used? 13 times better. I think it's kind of effective if I do it this way. Think of Jesus Christ when I say these words, better, better, better, better, better, better, better, better, better, better.
Counting down, better, better, better and somebody said last week, good, better, best. We can say he's the best but here, the word is better. He's better than the sacrifices. He's better than the old covenant.
He's better than Moses. He's better than Joshua. He's better than Aaron. Jesus is better and if he's better, he's not standing at the door of your heart kind of knocking, saying like a Jesus gentleman, could I please come in and be better in your life?
Jesus is better and he commands and demands our response that he is holy and high and he's not asking friends, he's telling. That's why I love this passage because when we understand it, it should change our minds about, well, we wanna tell other people who worship themselves or some kind of religious system, Jesus is superior, he's better.
It helps us with ministry. Here's another week of ministering and I've gotta just take care of the ministry again and change the light bulbs and take care of the sound room and change the diapers back there.
Jesus is so great when we serve him, he gets the glory and a right view of Christ being better changes everything about ministry, our life, evangelism, our work and I've wanted for six weeks now to just look at these three small verses to say with some neon banner, Jesus is better and what Paul was trying, sorry, Paul, what the writer of Hebrews was trying to say, I think Paul wrote it, let's just get, let's just put it all out there.
I think Paul wrote Hebrews, I could be wrong. What the writer of Hebrews is trying to say to the Jewish people there, don't turn your back on Christ but turn your back on all but Christ. Don't turn your back on Christ but turn your back on all but Christ and then he says in chapters one verses one and two, a great introduction, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many ways and in many portions, just very melodic writing, in these last days, he has spoken to us in his son and then he gives seven statements of Jesus being superior, seven bursts of praise, seven thoughts about God that should change the way you live, that should change the way you think and as you know, we've seen most of those seven, we've seen the first five in the last five weeks and we'll see the next two, Lord willing, this week.
Jesus is superior, do you notice the text? Because he's the heir of all things, he's the only son, therefore he's the heir of all. Do you see Jesus is superior secondly because he's the creator, he makes just not the world but here, the text is in Greek, he makes the eons, he makes time.
We've seen in weeks past that Jesus is superior, number three, because he is the radiance of God's glory. And we've seen Jesus as superior, number four, because he is the exact representation of God's nature.
And then number five, if you'll see in verse three, Jesus is superior, Jesus is better because he upholds all things by the word of his power. Now, I pretty much discussed this for the last three weeks but I wanna make a few more comments about the providential hand of God through the agent, the son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ upholds the world and he takes it and sustains it in a providential, sovereign way. So there's an end and he knows the end, this is the end that he desires and he will do everything because he has the power and the wisdom and the will to make things turn out the way he wants, from the crucifixion to everything else.
Matter of fact, Nate Saint, do you remember Nate Saint? His father was killed by the Aki Indians along with Jim Elliott. Nate Saint understood that God was in control and involved in life, he wasn't a deist God, he was involved with a very hands-on way.
Here's what Nate Saint said about the death of his father by Aka Spears. I can't explain the death of my dad outside divine intervention. I can't explain it, it was not supposed to happen. Everything about the place, everything about the people, I can't explain the death of my dad outside divine intervention.
And if you'll just flip your Bibles over for a moment to 1 Timothy 6 and I want to show you a word that will help you in your own life when things become chaotic, hectic, cataclysmic trials come and you can remember that Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power or you could just remember this particular word.
If you're a pastor, there are all kinds of issues that come up in pastoral ministry and you want to make sure that your focus, if you're in ministry, is on the Lord because he will make all things right.
And he's the one that we have to look to when there is utter chaos and things are frustrating, we have anxiety, we are not fulfilled, we are not joyful, everything is not peaceful. And look at 1 Timothy 6, verse 15 in this pastoral epistle.
What does Paul want to tell his protege Timothy? And he uses this one word about God that I don't want you to miss it. We've talked about this a year ago, but it's so rich. He just jumps, we'll just jump right in there because he's going to say something about who this God is and he will bring about at the proper time.
And he stops as he does with Paul's writing so often, in his own writing so often, he just stops and I was gonna talk about God. He who is the blessed. Have you ever thought about God that way? He is called the blessed.
What does that mean? God is called blessed, the blessed. Well, what does it mean? Do you know God is content? Do you know everything can swirl all around with troubles and trials and difficulties and God is happy, that God is calm?
Is God worried? No, God is calm, God is serene, God is peaceful, God is ironic. God is happy, he's fulfilled, he is not frustrated, he does not feel checkmated, he does not feel blocked. God, as we said last week, is not sweating and wringing his hands saying, I can't believe that's happening in this guy's life.
I like that about God because you should be worried under one circumstance as a Christian. If God is worried, you better be worried. And if God isn't worried about your circumstances because his son is holding up the universe and bringing it to the proper end, God doesn't look at it and say, wow, I can't believe what's happening, I'm frustrated, I'm checkmated.
One man said, while some things please him and others do not, nothing alters his heavenly contentment. He controls everything to his own joyous ends. And so we look at this great book and say, God is not frustrated, God is not unhappy with the way circumstances are and the sense of internal blessing.
No, because he's the blessed one. Now, if you think that is great, he's the heir of all things, he makes the worlds, he's the exact representation of his nature, he's the radiance of God's glory, and you think, what could be better?
He upholds the universe in his hands. Here comes the best one, number six. Back to Hebrews chapter one, please. The sixth, the Roman candle burst of praise, why Jesus is so superior. What could be greater than holding up the universe?
What could be greater than being the heir of everything? We'll see, it comes right out of the text, and I think that's how preaching should be done always, is the point of the passage is the point of the sermon.
The point of the passage is the point of the sermon, and the point of this passage is Jesus is better. How can he be so better? Look at the passage in verse three of Hebrews one. When he had made purification of sins, or literally having made purification of sins, Jesus has purified the sins of Christians.
Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. We're now in the book of Hebrews, and the writer is going to talk about what priest did, and what Jesus has done. This is priestly language, this is the priestly work would be arranging the sacrifices and taking care of all that, and now you can imagine the writer of Hebrews is talking to the Jews, and the Jews were sacrificing things over and over and over.
How many sacrifices did the Jews have to make by the way? I always picture Jerusalem and it's sacrifice time, and you hear a little boy cry because they had to kill a lamb, or have to slit the lamb's throat, no, that's bad, and it would be bad, but can you imagine the blood, and the currents, and the channels, and the blood just running down the streams, and through the sidewalks, and everywhere else, the blood and the flies, and all the blood that was just spilled everywhere.
It was a bad job in terms of dirty, it was an exalted job because God chose these priests, and here we have the apex of the praise which is Jesus paid for our sins. Literally he purged the filth of our sins, how about that?
I found a book this week, it's called Meredith's Big Book of Bible Lists. Meredith's Big Book of Bible Lists, 29 descriptions of sinful mankind, and I'm going to read them, and then I want you to think, if I'm a Christian, I've been cleansed, if I'm a Christian, that has been removed, if I'm a Christian, God has made purification, if I'm saved, God has purged those sins out, and I never have to deal with them ever again.
Here is our resume, would you like to see my resume, my CV? Here it is, in alphabetical order, thanks to Meredith's Big Book of Big Lists of the Bible. Alienated from God, Ephesians 4, and we've been purified.
Carnally minded, Romans 8, now our minds have been set on things above. Corrupt, 1 Timothy 6, 5. Darkened, there's a whole list of verses, Ephesians 4, 18. Dead in sin, we're cleansed. Deceived, now God has cleansed us from that.
Defiled, filthy, destitute of truth, disobedient, an enemy of God. Evil, foolish, going astray, hateful, hypocritical, impenitent, malicious, pleasure-seeking, proud, refusing belief, rejecting truth, resisting God, guided by Satan, lovers of self, self-satisfied, a slave of sin, subordinating God, unrighteousness in vain in imaginations.
And that has all been what? It's been nailed to the cross, and we bear it no more, and the response, like the songwriter says, praise the Lord, all that. Can you imagine judgment day, and God just goes down the alphabetical list?
And Hebrews says, you can slay lambs all you want, the writer of Hebrews says, but Jesus has made purification, he's removed those sins. Now, in order for you to think Jewishly, let me just read you a little bit of Leviticus 16.
There shall be a permanent statue for you in the seventh month on the 10th day of the month. You shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native or the alien who sojourns among you. For it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you.
You will be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It is to be a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls, it is a permanent statue. So the priest who is anointed and ordained to serve as priest in his father's place shall make atonement.
Did you get that? Cleansed, cleansed, the priest makes atonement. He shall put on his linen garments, the holy garments, and make atonement for the holy sanctuary. And he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, he shall also make atonement for the priest and for all the people of the assembly.
You have Aaron, the high priest, and he is sinful, he is imperfect, yet he does this for God. He puts on holy garments, as it were, to make sure he's right to be able to do it. When it comes to God the Son, is he sinful?
No, he is sinless. Is he the priest in this particular capacity? Yes, but he's also the sacrifice. And the writer here wants us to realize that Jesus did it all. He was holy, he was undefiled, he was set apart, he was the sacrifice, and he was the priest to take care of our sins and make us clean.
And how many times did he have to do that, by the way? One time, and that is a theme in Hebrews that we'll get to in a minute. I don't call Good Friday, Good Friday anymore, I've got a new word for it.
I think it is Good Friday, I'm glad it happened. But I've got a new one, and I'm gonna call it this, Finished Friday. It is finished, and that's why it's good. Can you imagine if you sin today during church and you've gotta go home and go get some animals, sacrifices, and by the way, don't just get the thing with, you know, blemishes and spots, go get your best, and here we go again.
The language here is he made purification. Sapphire said this, not William Sapphire, but a different Sapphire. I wish William Sapphire would say this. What height of glory, what depths of abasement, infinite in his majesty and infinite in his self-humiliation and in the depths of his love, what a glorious Lord.
What an awful sacrifice of unspeakable love to purge our sins by himself. Did you notice what's not in the Bible? It does not say he made cleansing and removal of sin and purification by Christ's death plus your baptism.
He did not say plus your communion. He did not say plus your confirmation. He did not say plus your church attendance. He did not say plus your reading the Bible. It is 100 a work of God. That's why all the praise goes to the Lord.
And if the text, if you look at it, having made in the Greek is a middle, and basically that means he did it himself. It wasn't something that someone else did by himself. He purged our sins. First John 1 .7 echoes that.
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sins. And God, as it were, took his magic marker with an exclamation point and destroyed the temple in 70 AD through the hands of Titus of Rome and said the sacrificial system is over because purification for sins has already been made.
Christ's death makes the old covenant obsolete. And when did this happen? Of course it happened at Calvary. The tabernacle was always busy. Jesus died once and it's done forever. Removal of sins. And we need that.
We need cleansing and removal because sin stains. My best illustration is my mom used to dye some of our shirts. Remember tie-dye was really big in the 60s. I didn't even know who the Grateful Dead were, but I thought tie-dye was pretty cool.
And so I grew up in the 60s and kind of tie up those shirts and knot them up and put rubber bands around some of them. And mom went to the store and she got this thing called Rit dye, R-I-T. I just thought that was the best thing ever, Rit dye.
She could take one drop of that dye and put it in a little cup that said Nebraska Cornhuskers on it. And you could put one drop in that thing and the whole thing would turn red. One little drop. And here we have the stain of sin.
When sin is existent, it just affects and infects everything. And it is in our warp and our woof. It is down below our skin. It is in our hearts. And there's not any kind of Brillo pad that you can take and rub and scrub to get sin out of yourself because sin has to be removed by another.
We can't remove it ourselves. Our filthy sins needed cleansing. Hebrews 9 .22 says, according to the law, one may almost say all things are cleansed with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.
Jesus' blood was shed, but it's a kind of language that says his blood was shed to the point of death and sacrifice. And what I like about Hebrews, it takes this word purification, our salvation, and then expands it throughout the book.
Let me show you. Would you turn to Hebrews 2 .17 and let me give you a jet tour of how Hebrews describes the atonement, Christ's death in our place with language that the Hebrews would understand. And you will too, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
This is wonderful. How is purification and the concept of Christ's death expanded from 1 .3? Let me show you several. I have about eight or nine and we'll just see how far we get. The first expansion is found in Hebrews 2 .17.
Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. Here we see the atonement of Christ described as a propitiation.
Well, what's that? Take a look at the text even before we answer that question. He was under divine obligation. Do you see that early? He had to be made like his brethren. Why? Do you know what that means in the original?
It behooved him. It was his duty. He had to do it. He was under divine compulsion, divine mandate to do this very thing. It's used in Matthew 18 of somebody owing money. I owe someone something. God, the son owed this as it were.
It was an obligation or duty that had to be met. This implies moral obligation, necessity. Jesus Christ's work by nature had to include the incarnation. If Jesus was going to be our substitute, how could God be our substitute without first adding on human nature?
So to be the wrath bearer, which that's basically what propitiation means. If God is angry with the wicked every day, and if his eyes are too pure to look at evil, how can God then punish his son who's not a human?
How can Jesus represent us? And so it was under, God the son was under divine obligation. It was mandated for him to take up that human perfect flesh so God could punish him in our place. Furthermore, he was under divine obligation because to remember Titus 1 language, in Titus 1 there was a promise before time that God would redeem his sons.
And before time, I wonder who God promised. God the father and God the son and God the spirit in a triune promise, in a triune like covenant. We have this promise that says, I'm going to redeem people and make them more like myself.
He was under obligation to keep that promise as well. You can't lie. And back to Hebrews 2 .17, do you see what else the text says? He had to be made like his brethren in all things that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest.
By the way, what kind of high priest do you think they had in those days? In New Testament days, in the writer of Hebrews days, Ananias and Caiaphas, wicked, unmerciful, unfaithful, unregenerate priests.
And here Jesus for the first time in all of Hebrews and maybe in all the Bible, he's called a faithful high priest that's also merciful. The aim of the incarnation was to become the sacrifice. Jesus came to die and he was merciful towards us and he was faithful to God.
Exactly what God required, Jesus the son did. And he put away divine wrath. God himself meets his own demands of holiness. Now what else? Let's go a little farther in Hebrews to understand what our salvation really is.
And by the way, we're having communion after service because our whole sermon's about the death of Christ. And then we'll come to remember not only with our ears, but also with our taste buds. Look at chapter eight, verse 12 to see almost the second expansion of purification of sins.
Purification basically can either mean to cleanse or to remove, most likely in Hebrews 1 .3, it's to remove by cleansing. We can put both concepts together. And here in Hebrews 8 .12, God doesn't remember our sins anymore.
Do you see this? Right from Jeremiah 31 .34. For I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more. Now that's a different word than mercy in Hebrews 2 .17. The Hebrew word for mercy in 2 .17 is mercy.
The Hebrew word for mercy in 8 .12 comes from where we get the word propitiation, our wrath bearer. Very interesting. God, because of Christ, remembers your sins no more. Brady brought this out excellently several months ago when he preached.
Are we to confess our sins when we commit them? And if we confess them, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, true? If you want your sins forgiven, if you've sinned against me and you come, what attributes that I have are you banking on that I will forgive you?
Kindness, graciousness, long suffering. Why do you wanna go to somebody who's faithful and just when you want your sins forgiven? In light of Hebrews 8 .12, how can God not remember your sins anymore?
Because he is faithful, he is omniscient. He does know all these things. What do you do when you go to a God when he knows everything about your past, present, future? He knows all that. Because if God the Son has been punished by God the Father for your sins, he won't punish you again for those same sins because he would not be faithful.
If you sin, you'll die. There's been a death in your place. He wouldn't be just because he would exercise double payment. So when we even sin as Christians, we go to God and say, God, you're faithful and you've already punished my sins on Jesus at Calvary.
God, you're already just, you would never want double payment. And so we come to God and say, please forgive me. And we know he's faithful and just to do that very thing. All my sins forgiven. And the original, I have to keep going back to the original because it's so much more rich.
It's a double negative. I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins. No, never, double negative. Well, let's go to Hebrews 9 and expand this a little bit more. Can't imagine that he will not remember our sins.
By the way, on a side note, when you're turning to Hebrews 9, this is the way we're to treat other Christians when they sin against us. We're not remembering them anymore. Does that mean we never can recall them?
Well, God, this omniscient God, he knows all our sins, doesn't he? He could remember them, he forget. No, but he will not bring them up again to the other people of the Trinity, other persons of the Trinity, to angels, to us, to anyone else and kind of rub our noses in them.
And so when someone has sinned against you and they say, please forgive me, your response can never be, well, remember back that other time? Do you remember over there? We say, you know, I'm not gonna bring them up to you, to anyone else or to God.
God, just help me just get rid of these things. I've granted forgiveness. They prayed to you for forgiveness and I want to be God-like and not remember their sins anymore. Happens to manifest itself most often, I think in marriages where we both sin against each other and if we're not careful, we act ungodly and say, oh yeah, 1947, you did that thing.
Remember coming home from church that day? Remember it was kind of stormy out. Hebrews 9 .15, oh, it just gets so good. This is kind of a jet tour of Hebrews. Hebrews 9 .15, again, talking about Christ's death for us.
When you're a new Christian, Jesus died for me. He was raised from the dead. That's all you know. Mature Christians start realizing all the different facets to the diamond of salvation. You think that is so amazing, he died for me.
For this reason, what's the reason? If you go back to chapter nine, verse 14, because he cleanses our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. For this reason, he is the mediator of a new covenant in order that since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions, here we have the word redemption, bought out of slavery with the price, this price happens to be Christ's life, that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of an eternal inheritance.
The Old Testament pointed to Jesus, yes, could cover sins, yes, but it could not forgive sin. We're in the slave market of sin, Christ buys us out. We have an internal inheritance based on the son's death.
Look down at verse 26, please, and we'll see even more. Otherwise, Hebrews 9 .26, he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. If Jesus's death was not perfect and complete, how many times does Jesus need to be slain?
Answer, as many times as you sin, and it should have been going on from the consummation of the world to the very end. Oh, I sinned again, it's time to kill Jesus. Oh, I sinned yesterday, time to kill Jesus.
Sin of omission, let's kill Jesus. Sin of commission, let's kill Jesus. I didn't love him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, he needs to be killed again. What kind of system is that? I think it's a system many of you have come from.
But now, once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifest to put away sin by sacrifice of himself. He doesn't need to sacrifice over and over and over, one station of the cross, two stations of the cross, around and around we go.
Matter of fact, the text says, but now they're in the middle of that verse, it literally could be translated as a matter of fact. It's a one-time deal. He annulled or canceled our sins. If you were a priest back in those days, in the Levitical system, you would never ever stop.
Perpetual offerings. And they had all these different groups of priests and in your shift, my shift, and your shift, and over you go, over and over and over. This just strikes a death blow to that. Jesus is not re-sacrificed.
Look at 928, here it says he bore our sins. So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await him.
Do you notice the text there, having been offered once? That's not Jesus offering himself, this is the father offering the son with divine intention and divine purpose. Did Jesus offer himself? Yes. Did the father plan it and have it be his offering?
Yes. Once to bear the sins of many. Now let's just go back to the old days and thinking about the high priest that would go into the Holy of Holies once a year to bear sins. Now he'd have to take care of his own sin and he'd have to go in there and he was going to go into the Holy of Holies and present a sacrifice and if God accepted it, it would be giving forgiveness to all of Israel.
What do you think would happen that day? What do you think the people would do if you were not the high priest? If you were the high priest, you would be nervous. And tradition says they would tie a rope around his legs and have some bells on his feet kind of thing.
So as long as they heard the bells, still alive. No bells, pull the guy out because if you walked into the Holy of Holies and there stood with your sin and met the thrice holy God, there would be a spiritual nuclear winner and you would be undone and dead.
And I'm sure they died, many of them. But if God accepted the sacrifice, you would still hear those little bells and there would be no need of the rope. And do you think the people of Israel were eagerly anticipating that sacrifice being authorized and okayed by the father and to have that priest come back out again?
If there's ever a time to use the word drool from the pulpit, this is the time. You would be drooling, you would be waiting. Will God have the sacrifice accepted? Is this sacrifice, does God vindicate the sacrifice by having the priests come out?
And they would eagerly with anticipation, wait for this. Look at this passage here. It's a different kind. But here, this is in reference to all who eagerly await him for his second coming. High priest walked out of the sanctuary.
Oh, confirmation of everything. Jesus is coming back for his people. It doesn't say anything about the unbelievers here but that's elsewhere. Well, let's just look at just a couple more quickly. Hebrews 10, 12.
Hebrews 10, 12, again, expanding the idea of the atonement found in Hebrews 1, 3 with purification of sins. But he, Hebrews 10, 12, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.
How many sacrifices? One, then he sat down, a posture of rest. Those 24 orders of priests were busy all the time, time after time, lamb after lamb, year after year. Here, done. Look at down in verse 18.
Now, where there is forgiveness of these things, Hebrews 10, 18, there is no longer any offering for sins. It's been removed, forgiven. Sins are out of God's sights, out of his sight, out of his reach.
Micah 7, 18 says, who is a God like thee? Explain that prophet Micah, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession. Now, let's go all the way back to Hebrews 1 again and pick this up.
Why is Jesus to be praised? Because he forgave our sins based on Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. And if there's anything in you that's creeping in, saying, this is old hat, I already know that, then you can just say to yourself, God, I repent of that, because this is it.
This is Christianity. There's nothing else to offer. He is the one. By the way, when you get to heaven, let me tell you what you're going to do for the first 10 ,000 years in my prediction. I'm not the prophet or a son of a prophet, but I'll make a prediction today.
This is what you will do for the first 10 ,000 years in heaven. Have you ever seen a kid? I have four kids. Haley's growing up, and Luke, and Maddie, and Grace, and when dad does something so spectacular, they didn't know I had it in me to do.
You can just see their look. It's a jaw-dropping experience, and your focus is not going to be on, look at all my relatives, and friends, and family. Fine, you'll worship with them, but they're going to be right next to you just going, I can't believe I'm seeing the risen savior.
I'm seeing God with the body, with the nail-scarred hands and feet, and you're going to be going, so if you're not doing this now with Hebrews, I don't know what to tell you. Caffeine won't work. Hard work won't work.
Daily devotions, putting glass in your shoes won't work, but what will work is to say, God, I've lost and left my first love, and God, you tell me that you revive people and wind them up by one way and only one way, and that is through repentance and your word.
Revive me according to your word. And so I just love this kind of passage. I want you to see it again in Hebrews chapter three, chapter one, verse three, when he made purification for sins. Now let me give you an opportunity to evangelize people.
I'm going to read a few authorized statements by a church, and you think, are they biblical or unbiblical? Secondly, I want you to think that if you have this particular view that I'm going to read, could this kind of person be a Christian?
And if the answer is no, then you need to preach the once-for-all slain Savior to them. Jesus has purified our sins. He's washed them. He's cleansed them. He's made purification in one time and has sat down.
Now here are the documents. All who die in God's grace and friendship because still imperfectly purified are indeed assured of their eternal salvation, but after death, they undergo purification. The catechism of this church says the church gives the name purgatory, or purging, purgatory, to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.
The church formulated her doctrine of faith on purgatory, especially at the councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the church, by reference of certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire.
You say, well, it doesn't really matter. I have this question then for you from the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, Canon 30, Decree of Justification. If anyone says that after the grace of justification has been received, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out, for by any repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment needs to be repaid, either in this world or the other, in purgatory, if anyone teaches what I've just taught you for 45 minutes, then what is the response of 80 of your neighbors?
Maybe they don't believe it, but their church does. If you don't believe in purgatory, then you sit anathema, quote, end quote, by the Roman Catholic Church. You are damned and sent to hell forever. Now, what does the text say?
People say, oh, you're a Catholic basher. I'm not the one who has, in my statement of faith, Catholics go to hell because they believe in purgatory. But they, in their statements of faith, say if you don't believe in purgatory, you are damned.
What does Hebrews 1, verse 3 say? Having made purification for sins. I think we can come and show the real Savior to our Catholic friends and say, we love you. I don't hate Catholics. My grandmother was a Catholic, but I loved God enough to tell my grandma the truth.
And it is a false, ascetic truth that says, you know what, we're gonna go along to get along, and we never wanna upset the apple cart. And if I tell grandma the truth, she's gonna get mad at me. That's a lie.
Here's the issue. When I wrote grandma my 14-page letter and said, grandma, I love you enough to tell you there's a Savior, a risen Savior, a Savior who has paid for sins, and you don't have to somehow denigrate and blaspheme the cross by adding your good works and sacraments.
Grandma, please, here's the cross. Do you know what she did? She despised me. She hated me. When I was on the deathbed of my other in-laws, my other grandparents, and I was trying to tell my grandfather, I said I had to arrange it all and have my mother and sisters get my grandmother out of the room because she would freak out if I was preaching the gospel.
I arranged it all, and I said, grandpa, you might die, and when you die, you're just gonna stand and pay for your own sins unless Jesus pays for them. And grandpa, I know this is not going to seem loving at all, but if you were walking with a blindfold off a cliff and I tackled you down with a football-style tackle and I knocked the wind out of you to preach the gospel to you and to save you, you wouldn't say that was unloving.
Grandma comes back to the room. He basically said, I'm okay, I've been baptized. Grandma comes back to the room and she just starts screaming at the top of her lungs because she knew what I was doing.
She was not proud of me. Are you proud? Can you imagine my brothers, a Bible-teaching pastor as well, and the grandparents, they were all happy when I was making 100 grand a year and I was a cokehead and everything else.
Oh, he's so, oh yeah, he just bought this big house, he did this and that, and now he's a Bible-teaching pastor? Shame. We don't talk about what our two grandsons do because all that shame and all that cloak of it's not loving to tell the truth is ways people try to push away any kind of gospel that offends to keep their own self-righteousness because the Satan, the demons are trying to trick them, their own flesh tricks them, and it is no love to not tell people the truth.
80 of the people here in New England are dying and going to hell, and we don't wanna bash anybody. I'm not bashing any people, I love them, serve them, feed them, pray for them, evangelize them, but this going on our way, if we lived in Utah, we would not say, well, by the way, we won't ever say anything about Mormons because 90 of the people here are Mormon.
I get riled up about it because A, this whole love thing, it's not love, if you love me, you'll obey my commandments, and the Bible says preach the gospel to the unbelievers. If you think you need purgatory, friend, you are an unbeliever.
Look to the cross, there's only one way to go. If anyone says that you need to have punishment paid in this world or another in purgatory, you are damned eternally. That is a false gospel, and I believe even worse than that are what it does by implication.
It takes the perfect, once-sacrificed Jesus Christ at Calvary where he made purification, he removed our sins, he made propitiation against the Father's wrath, he redeemed us out of the slave pit of sin by his own life, death, and blood, and ransom, he annulled sin, he nailed them all to the cross, and then someone has the gall and the audacity to say, you know what, by the way, that's not good enough, and stick their nose up into God's face and say, and I will tell you that I have to do something to contribute to that, and God says, that is dumb.
If you look back at Hebrews chapter one, verse three, the last great thing about Christ that fits all in, now the seventh way he's superior is that God accepted that. God accepted the sacrifice. He didn't say, by the way, in time you better be good, be baptized, have a sacrament, do this, do that, the other.
That is not from the Bible, friends. He sat down, look at verse three, at the right hand of the majesty on high. Were there any seats in the tabernacle? Were there any seats in the temple? Well, there's no sitting down because somebody just sinned again.
Slice the neck, slice the throat, and then take care of it. Here, he sat down. That is amazing. He sat down on the majesty on high. Literally, he sits at the highest height, at the elevated exaltation, at the upper up.
Jesus received the sour wine, he said, it is finished, and now God has raised him to a seat of honor, to a seat of rule, to a seat of rest. If you're in a war with me, who do I want at my right hand, by the way?
I've got a sword and I've got a shield. And who's gonna protect this area right here? I'll tell you who. It's the guy who's on my right, and his shield covers out over my exposed area, and he stands like this.
And the guy on his right, he wants to have somebody good there because he's gonna be protecting his person as well. And so you say, I wanna have somebody who's exalted, who's honored, he sits at the right hand of God on high.
Hebrews 1 .13, to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand? Answer, none. Psalm 110, verse one, the Lord says to me, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet.
There's only one time God, the son, as it were, stands up. We sang about him standing up today. I look up there for the words that are not there. Why does God stand up when he, I gotta just take a breath.
When Stephen is getting martyred in Acts chapter seven, the son stands for intercession and help of Peter. Excuse me, Stephen. God stands, the son stands at ready to serve us. He's not lounging around when we need service.
But when it comes to his sacrificial death for his dying at Calvary once for all, he has finished that job, never ever to do it again. And what does this whole passage teach us? You could combine those seven into this.
Jesus Christ is prophet, priest, and what? King. He's a prophet because he foretells the news, the good news, I'm the Messiah. He's the priest because he's not only the sacrificer, but the sacrifice. And he's the king because he says, I'm dead, and I've been raised from the dead.
And there, as Acts four says, is no salvation in anyone else for there's no other name under heaven that has been given under men by which we must be saved. And there's got to be someone here today who is not born again.
And my entreaty to you is I've shown you what Jesus has done and I've listed even on the resume of the 29 things and probably even more of the Bible where we fall short and there's only one person to look to.
Your sins aren't bad enough that he can't save you. Luke 19 10 says, for the son of man has come to seek and save those which were lost. And it all starts with saying, here's God's holiness. I realize I am undone and I am not holy.
And for those of us who are Christians, can you imagine if we get the opportunity to go preach the gospel to other people? It's amazing. But you, first Peter says, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession.
Why are you who you are? Why didn't I hold Eric Johanson under the waters last week for baptism? Might as well just go straight to heaven, hold them under. Why does he come back up? Because of this reason.
So that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That's why we're Christians. That's why we're not immediately raptured, held under, fill in the blanks.
I want to tell people the truth, but here's the issue. When you go tell people the truth about Christ, here's what you're saying to them and their system, whatever that might be in India or here. Your whole life, you've labored for a system that is damning.
And everything that you've done has counted not for zero, but has counted against God and against you. And that's why the Bible says that the cross is an offense. And may I say that if you preach the gospel and people aren't offended, either God's in the process of giving them new life or drawing them is a better way to say it, or you're not preaching the gospel that says repent.
Turn around. I teach my kids this. Everybody walk this way. I mean, how do you teach an abstract concept to a kid? What's repentance? They all walk this way in the kitchen and I say, when a daddy yells out repent, what do you do?
Repent, turn around. You're going this way, you're thinking everything's all nice and cozy and I've been baptized. How many funerals have you ever been to where they say, based on their baptism, they're for sure in heaven now.
It's nice to tell the family that, but it's not truly nice, it's cruel. God has told us, God has sent his son to die for us. That's why I love that song, may Jesus Christ be praised. When morning gilds the sky, my heart awakening cries, may Jesus Christ be praised.
When you begin the day, oh, never fail to say, may Jesus Christ be praised. My tongue shall never tire of chanting with the choir, may Jesus Christ be praised. Does sadness fill my mind? A solace here I find, may Jesus Christ be praised.
Be this, it meals your grace in every time and place, may Jesus Christ be praised. When sleep her balm denies, my silent spirit sighs, may Jesus Christ be praised. No lovelier antiphon in all high heaven is known, than Jesus Christ be praised.
In heaven's eternal bliss, the loveliest strain is this, may Jesus Christ be praised. Be this while life is mine, my canticle divine, may Jesus Christ be praised.