A Perfect Priest And Sacrifice, Part 2A – Hebrews 7:26-28

Kootenai Church

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The Promises of the New Covenant, Part 3 – Hebrews 8:12

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And if you haven't not yet, will you please turn your Bibles to Hebrews chapter seven. We'll be finishing up chapter seven today, looking at the end in verses 26 through 28.

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And before we begin, let's bow together in prayer. Father, we would have been able to know you and your power from creation, and we would have been able to see your wisdom from creation but if it were not for your word, we would never be able to know you savingly or know what you have done for us in Jesus Christ.

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It is only because you have revealed to us in Christ the fullness of your nature, your love, and your redemptive plan, and then you have revealed to us in scripture your intentions and what you have accomplished in your son.

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And so we pray now that you would grant to us grace to understand and to appropriate what it is that you have recorded here for us.

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Help us to understand these profound realities concerning the nature of the sacrifice of Christ and what it means for those who are his and how we might avail ourselves of that grace that you have shown us in your son.

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Grant us this understanding today, we pray that your spirit would be our teacher and your word would be our guide and that your glory might be our everlasting and only concern.

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Grant that this may be the case today we ask in Christ's name, amen. Hebrews chapter seven.

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Last time we were in Hebrews seven, a couple weeks ago, we stopped in the middle of verses 26 and 27 and we saw that in chapter seven the author is comparing the work of Christ on our behalf as our high priest with the work that was done and secured on behalf of the

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Israelites with the Old Testament priesthood and the Aaronic priesthood and he is contrasting the nature of the sacrifices and the number of the sacrifices and the efficacy of the sacrifices all in an attempt to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is in every way superior as our high priest.

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The law provided that there would be high priests who would serve according to the law and that they would serve in a dying priesthood, a priesthood that was temporary, never intended to go on forever and these were dying men who always had to be replaced and the oath of God provided something far better.

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The oath of God provided for us a high priest who is innocent and holy and undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens, appointed not on the basis of his genealogy or because he came from a certain family but appointed on the basis of his indestructible life and because he is no longer subject to death and because he is victorious over death, he will never be replaced and so he holds and he possesses his priesthood permanently and because he possesses his priesthood permanently and because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him who sits at the right hand of God and ever lives to make intercession for us because all of that is true, he is able to save to the uttermost, to the nth degree, to the utmost, all who come to God through him.

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He has power and ability to save which Old Testament priests did not have and so in every way,

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Jesus Christ is superior. That sort of reviews chapter seven and brings us to verse 26 and 27.

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In verse 26, we saw the character qualities of the Lord Jesus which imminently qualify him to serve as our high priest.

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He is, in the words of verse 26, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens and then we looked briefly at the fact that those same character qualifications which allow him to serve as our high priest to make him a perfect high priest also qualify him to be the sacrifice on our behalf and we kind of briefly looked at verse 27 and looked at the sacrifice that Christ has offered and today we're focusing in on that, looking more at the perfection of his sacrifice and exactly what it did and what it was intended to do.

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Because he is holy and innocent and undefiled, he is perfectly fit not just to be our high priest but also to be the sacrifice that the high priest offers.

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Being completely innocent, he is able to stand in the place of guilty sinners and bear their guilt.

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So the innocent one can become guilty on behalf of those who are guilty and that's us.

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Because he is blameless, he can take the blame for all of the transgressions and sins and iniquities which we have committed.

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Because he is righteous, he can stand in the place of the unrighteous and bear their guilt and bear their unrighteousness and all of the wrath of God for their unrighteousness and then he can give to those who are his all of his blameless righteousness so that we can stand in the presence of God not just forgiven of our sins but actually declared righteous.

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That is the good news of the gospel, that there are two aspects to our forgiveness, not only the forgiveness of our sins that brings us up to zero but also that he gives us his righteousness.

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So that in the sight of God, all of those who are in Jesus Christ are not just seen as innocent of having committed any crime, they are seen as righteous as if they fulfilled all of the righteous requirements of God's law.

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That is what the righteous one has done for us. So now we're looking at Christ in verses 27 and 28 as our perfect sacrifice.

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Notice the language of verse 27. He does not need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people because he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

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The language that is used there in the middle of verse 27 to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the sins of others.

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That language is borrowed from Leviticus chapter 16 and it is the language that was used to describe the offering of the high priest on that one day of the year,

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Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, when the priest would go behind the curtain and sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the Covenant and then come out and then offer sacrifice for the sins of the people.

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So there was two aspects to the work of the priest on the day of atonement. He would first offer up a sacrifice for his own sins and for the sins of his family.

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Then he would offer up another sacrifice for the sins of the people. And he had to make atonement or pay a price to offer a sacrifice first for all of his own iniquities before he could then intercede and offer a sacrifice on behalf of the people.

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This is the language of Leviticus chapter 16. And I would encourage you if you want, if you're in the habit of reading through the book of Leviticus at least once a year like I encouraged you several years ago, then you may be, well, you'll be getting there soon if you started in January 1st.

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But I would encourage you to read the language of Leviticus 16 to see exactly what the author of Hebrews is drawing on.

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I'm gonna quote here briefly from Leviticus chapter 16. Leviticus 16 verse five, he shall take, now this is, oh, let me set this up for just a second.

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The high priest, Leviticus 16 begins with instructions about what the high priest was to wear on the day of atonement.

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So there were priestly garments that he was to wear and the ephod and all of the gems that were on it.

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And all of this was intended to demonstrate on whose behalf he was offering a sacrifice. So the ephod that he had with all of the gems for the 12 tribes of Israel, he was to bear that close to his heart.

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And when he made sacrifice, all of that priestly garment was intended to demonstrate those on whose behalf he was making the sacrifice.

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So after going through all of the details on the priestly garments and what he was supposed to wear in Leviticus 16, then we read this.

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Here's the instructions. He shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering.

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Then Aaron, and it mentions Aaron, Moses' brother, but then this would apply to every high priest who served as a high priest after Aaron.

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But these are the instructions first given to Aaron that were then later carried out by all of the high priests. Then Aaron shall offer the bull for the sin offering, which is for himself, that he may make atonement for himself and for his household.

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Notice that. The very first thing that it was to do was to offer a bull for his own self and for the sins of his household. Leviticus 16, verse 11.

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Then Aaron shall offer up the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his household, and he shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself.

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He shall then take a firepan full of coals of fire from upon the altar before the Lord and two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense and bring it inside the veil.

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He shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the ark of the testimony.

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Otherwise, he will die. Moreover, he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side also.