Sunday Live at Kootenai Community Church

All right, everybody, if you could get settled in, we'll get started and thank you all for coming.

Glad you could make it, really appreciate that. Hope you all had a good time celebrating the birth of the

Savior with your families and friends. And without him, there wouldn't really be a reason for us to be here today, would there?

Wouldn't be a need to fellowship around with each other.

I'm so thankful, though, that Christ did come. I'm thankful that he provided that light into the world through his birth, that we can have that hope that we wouldn't have without him, it's amazing to see that.

And hope you enjoyed that time around the table with your family.

So before we get started, maybe let's just open up with a word of prayer. Father, we love you and praise you. We thank you so much that you're an amazing

God, that you provided a way for us to know you through the scriptures and through the fellowship that we have with one another.

I'm amazed at the teaching that we see in the word of God, the purity of it, the exact truth that can penetrate our hearts and our minds and our soul, and just gives us so much clarity when we live our lives.

And that's amazing, and I thank you so much for that. And the birth of our savior, him going to the cross, dying there, paying the penalty for our sins, and by believing in him, we can have everlasting life based on that.

And it's so thankful for that, Father, that we have that hope within us.

And so today, Lord, as we look into your word, it's our prayer that you would help us to understand this truth and apply it to our lives, that we might be able to become more and more like you and to follow after you and to be able to share the truth that we have with a lost and dying world.

We just commit it to you, Lord, and we praise your holy name, amen. So we've been in the book 1

John. We've covered chapter 1 all the way through so far.

Today, we're gonna be looking at chapter 2, verses 1 and 2 only.

The title of my message today is Message to the Children of God. Message to the

Children of God. That message is gonna come in the way of a few things.

One is that sin has devastating effects. Two, that we have an advocate with the

Father. And three, that Christ is the propitiation for our sins.

So we're gonna be looking at those particular ideas and topics this morning.

And we're gonna be reading the first chapter. We're gonna start in our passages.

We're gonna look at chapter 1, verse 5, through chapter 2, verse 6. So if you can open your copy of God's word to the book of 1

John, we're gonna read those verses right now, starting in chapter 1, verse 5.

This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

My little children, I am writing these things to you, so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

By this, we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. The one who says,

I have come to know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word, in him, the love of God has truly been perfected.

By this, we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him, ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked.

That's our kind of our lay of the land for what we're gonna be looking at this morning. The book of 1

John is really an interesting book to me. It's relevant, obviously, to any age that we live.

And John has a number of purposes when he writes the book. You know, he proclaims the eternal life.

That's what we talked about in the first chapter. He's addressing the Gnostics, that the physical world is evil.

And so to do that, he confronts that error with truth, that Jesus Christ is both

God in human flesh, right? And he has a physical body.

This time of year, that's important for us to understand, isn't it, to remember the birth of Christ? I mean, we just celebrated that.

God in human flesh arrives on the scene to provide hope to the nations.

I mean, without that lightning rod coming into the world, I mean, what does that say for us?

It provides that hope and that light that we need. He dies, he's resurrected, he lives forevermore to make intercession for us.

Without this perfect sacrifice, we just don't have that same access to the Father. We just don't have that.

It's Jesus that provides our salvation. It is of his doing.

He draws us. He grants us repentance. He secures us with the

Holy Spirit, seals us till the day of redemption. It says our inheritance is locked in.

It's guaranteed. We know we're going to receive that. We'll spend eternity with him.

And that's a hope that we have, isn't it? It's amazing. John also says that God is light.

The beauty of light is that it reveals truth. I mean, as we look into the scriptures, you can probably attest to that yourself.

As you read it, all of a sudden, that illumination is there and you begin to grasp the concepts and it penetrates your heart and your mind and it propels you on to live for the gospel.

All of life comes from the God who is light. He provides us that life.

We need that. But light also exposes darkness, doesn't it? Exposes darkness.

It exposes sin in our lives. That's a terrifying concept.

Don't really want that, but it is there and it's relevant and we need to identify with it and understand it.

Sin has consequences. When we looked at the first chapter there in verses five to 10, if you look at verses six, eight, and 10, they all start off the same way.

If we say, if we say that we have fellowship with him, verse six says, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

Our walk, he says, should be consistent with the things that we say about our faith.

It should be matching up. And if they don't, he says, we lie and don't practice the truth.

Verse eight says the same thing in a similar way, but a little different. If we say that we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

To deny sin is really to deceive ourselves. Can't deny sin in our lives.

If we say in verse 10, it says, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and the word is not in us.

Then to say that we have no sin, that we are perfect, I mean, that's just crazy talk.

Who says that we have no sin? In Proverbs 20, verse nine says, who can say

I have cleansed my heart? Who can say I have cleansed my heart? I am pure from sin.

I don't think anybody can say that, but yet some people try to live that way.

And it's just not possible. Nobody is free from the effects of sin in our life.

And John says in verse nine of the first chapter, he says, because sin is in our life, because a believer is affected by sin, he says we're supposed to confess our sin.

Supposed to get it out there, have a short list of our sins because it affects our fellowship with God and with other people.

We're not supposed to harbor that. Remember that John's up in years when he wrote this book.

He's around 80 years old. He's the last living apostle. He is writing to Asia Minor, the believers in that area, to the churches that had been scattered abroad.

He speaks one with kind of that fatherly tone, that pastoral tone.

He speaks to his readers with affection. You can hear it in his voice almost when he says, my little children.

It's like as a little child, you grab their little faces, you know? And my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And you think about that. That sin has really devastating effects, doesn't it?

The effects of sin are devastating. Whether you're a believer or an unbeliever alike, it is impacting.

Sin can either destroy you or it can humble you.

Sin can shake its fist at God or it can put a person on their knees. It just is impacting.

And it's how you look at it and how you deal with it. But everyone has to deal with it, don't they?

God is not selective in saying that some have sin and others don't.

I mean, think of Adam and Eve. I mean, Romans 5, 12 says, therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin.

And so death spread to all men because all sinned. We don't have a choice. We have a sin nature and it is destructive and we have to deal with it.

Says in from the very beginning of time, sin's on the scene. Sin is often described as something that comes out of the heart, isn't it?

Romans 17, nine says, the heart is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked.

Who can know it? I mean, it comes out of the person. Sin never produces anything good.

The only time I can think of it is anything good is that it humbles you to the point of finally looking up, finally seeing that there is a savior and that there's hope.

But even that, the scriptures say, God draws that person, right?

It's not really us doing it. So sin never produces anything good in our lives.

The Bible is filled with story upon story of the devastating effects of sin.

I mean, we can sin against God. I mean, you see the story of, you know,

Moses going to the mountain to get the 10 commandments and, you know, people are clamoring, you know, where's

Moses? And next thing you know, all the people are bringing the gold before Aaron and he throws together a golden calf.

And it says in Deuteronomy, and I saw that you had sinned, you had indeed sinned against the

Lord your God. That's Deuteronomy 9 .16. I mean, we can sin against other people.

We can lie to them, we can steal, we can do a lot of things. There's also unintentional sin that affects us.

We don't even know we're doing it. Numbers 15 .2 says also if one person sins unintentionally, then he shall offer a one -year -old female goat for a sin offering.

I mean, it's devastating. Even our health, the scriptures say, is affected by sin.

Our health is affected by sin. Psalm 38 .3, there is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation.

There is no health in my bones because of my sin. Wow, that's amazing.

It affects even our health. God provided a way for the people to deal with their sin though, right?

Through a mediator. In the Old Testament system, we see that the high priest acted as a mediator between the people and God.

The sacrificial system was really created as a way for people to deal with sin.

I mean, there's every kind of offering it seems like you can think of for sin. I mean, there's guilt offerings, there's burnt offerings, there's grain offerings, sin offerings, wave offerings.

There's all these ways in the Old Testament that they could deal with their sin.

The people of Israel had a high priest to do that, that stood there on their behalf. Nobody could approach

God without any kind of a mediator. Well, in the New Testament, I mean,

Jim's been covering this in Hebrews a lot, that Jesus is our high priest. I mean, he's our mediator now.

It says in Hebrews 4, 14 to 16, it says, therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,

Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Wow, he's our high priest. So when we get to 1

John 2, we're gonna look at our first verse there. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.

I mean, the sin's devastating effects need to be dealt with in some way, shape, or form.

So John says here that we have an advocate. We have an advocate, the

Lord Jesus Christ. And that word is translated, it's a Greek word, and it essentially is, it's called a paraclete.

And it's similar to the Holy Spirit, but this word refers to one who comes alongside of another.

Comes alongside of another, one who is basically summoned to the assistance of another, a counselor, if you will, a defense situation.

The idea really is that of a courtroom where you have a prosecutor, you have a defense attorney, and you have a judge.

And so that's the idea. An advocate is one who essentially comes to our defense.

He is a pleader, and an intercessor, and our defender before a holy

God because of sin's devastating effects and something that we cannot deal with on our own abilities.

We often think of Jesus dying on the cross for us, right? We say, Jesus died on the cross for my sins.

We have that idea in our mind, it's God and us, or Jesus and us. Well, in this context, in 1

John 2, 1, it's a different context. It's not necessarily talking about, you know,

Christ dying on the cross for our sins. Look what it says. It says, and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

Father. The context here is Jesus and the Father.

This is the idea. It's not talking about Jesus and us.

It's God's direct communication with the Father in this matter. Jesus represents us before the

Father. He's our advocate. We're gonna talk about the reasons why that's important here in a minute.

But the same word paraclete is often used of the Holy Spirit. You might have heard this before, that the Holy Spirit is our helper.

Similar idea as an advocate. It's not exactly the same translating it, but it's similar.

If you think of John 14, six, it says there, I will ask the

Father and he will give you another helper, one that will come alongside you to help you live your life.

The Holy Spirit is here as your helper, he says, that he may be with you forever.

That's the idea, that he may be with you forever. John 16, seven, but I tell you the truth.

It is to your advantage that I go away. It's to the advantage of us that Christ went away.

It's to our advantage, why? He says, for I do not go away, the helper is not going to come.

So Christ leaves, the Holy Spirit comes to help us and guide us. The paraclete, the one called alongside of us who provides guidance and comfort is left behind for us.

That's the idea. Romans 8, 26 and 27 says this, in the same way, the

Spirit also helps our weaknesses. For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the

Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he intercedes for the saints.

According to the will of God. So you can see the connection there. We have an advocate in Jesus.

The Holy Spirit also intercedes for us. There's a connection there. But moving along into our texts a little bit further in verse one, my little children,

I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

Father, with the Father. If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

Father. With is the Greek word pros, and it means facing the

Father, facing the Father. So in the courtroom scene, Jesus is face to face with the

Father in heaven advocating for us. You see, he's there now.

The Holy Spirit though is interceding for us here on earth. That's the difference. The Spirit was given to us to be our helper because Jesus left this earth to go be with the

Father. Jesus is now our paraclete in heaven. He's there.

This is the courtroom scene depicting Christ as our advocate. That's what it's representing.

Jesus himself standing face to face with the Father representing us and our sin is ever before him.

Defense attorneys argue their case, don't they? They argue their case whether they're guilty or not.

I don't know how anybody could be a public defender, but we need that service. It would just be hard for me to do it because you're representing people that you know are 100 % guilty, but yet you're trying to prove them innocent.

In this case here, Jesus is not trying to prove our innocence, but to confirm our guilt.

That's the difference. There's a big difference in that. Jesus does not defend our innocence at all, but rather proves our guilty and our need for a

Savior. Our sin requires an advocate that can go to the Father on our behalf because we can't do it on our own.

We don't have the ability to do it. If sin happens, which is the cause, then the paraclete,

Jesus, is there with the Father for us, which is the effect. That's how that goes.

So moving on a little further, read verse two there. Says, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins.

You've probably heard this word before. It's a long word, but it's a good word.

It really conveys a lot of meaning. It has a lot of depth into it. It's a translation of a

Greek word. It means to appease or to satisfy. Christ's sacrificial death on the cross satisfied the demands of God's justice.

Therefore, appeasing is holy wrath against believers' sin. So it's an appeasement, it's a satisfaction.

It averts anger by offering a sacrifice. And it always denotes the removal of wrath.

So propitiation denotes the removal of wrath. We need an advocate that is qualified to satisfy the wrath of God Almighty.

We have to have an advocate. At the end of verse one, it says that we have an advocate with the

Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. The righteous. Jesus is personally qualified for his role as our advocate, isn't he?

He's perfect. The one who is sinless. He has no guilt.

Nothing, no imperfection within him at all. He's perfectly qualified to do it.

If you were going to pick a defense attorney, wouldn't you want the one that was the most qualified to do it?

Well, you can't get any more qualified than Christ. That's for sure. There's good news in this story, in this message today.

And, you know, there's also bad news. Bad news is there's

God's wrath. And people are under that wrath. And that's a struggle. And we see it so prevalent.

If you were to read John 3, 36, you would find these words. He who believes in the

Son has eternal life. But he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

The wrath of God abides on him. Anyone who trusts Jesus has eternal life, don't they?

But the one who rejects Christ, the one who says, I don't want anything to do with Christ, it says here that God's wrath abides on you at this very moment.

The wrath of God does. This wrath is very real and it's very present in our world today.

It's not something that we are looking in the past for because Romans 1, 18 says for the wrath of God is, that's present tense, is being revealed, it says, from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in righteousness.

Did you know that you can suppress the truth of God? Do you have any idea?

To suppress is to hold down the truth. That's what it means, is to hold down the truth.

It's like the image of a beach ball at the beach and you're trying to push it under the water.

What happens when you do? It wants to come up, doesn't it? It wants to come up.

But in order to keep it under the water, you gotta keep holding it down. That's the idea. The wrath of God is coming to those who hold down the truth of God, those that replace

God's truth with any other kind of truth out there. That's suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and the result of that is that it requires wrath.

Romans 2, 5, but because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you're storing up for yourselves storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

I read these verses and it's chilling to me. Eternal life is available, but because of stubbornness and an unrepentant heart and pride and all these things that keep us away from the

Lord, it's chilling because as a believer, you know the impact of that.

You know the result of pride and someone not accepting the

Lord Jesus Christ as their savior and people do this for many kinds of reasons, don't they?

They try to deny Jesus for a lot of reasons and unfortunately, none of them are valid because the truth is revealed in Christ and in our

Bibles and we have to recognize that. Romans 2, 8 says this, but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, wrath, and indignation.

Selfishness has no room for God. A person can be ambitious, they can go out there and seek all the material things this world has to offer.

They can live their lives though in the wrong way and if they do not obey the truth as it's laid out here, that God has revealed to us the only reward after death is the wrath of God.

That's a weighty subject and I don't say that with any kind of joy at all.

It is a struggle to think about that because we all have loved ones that we want to come to know the

Lord and so it is with a humble heart that I can even say this and it's a struggle.

Ephesians 5, 6 says, let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things, the wrath of God comes.

That's again, present tense. The wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience.

Well, what things is he talking about there in Ephesians? Well, just before that verse,

Ephesians 5, 3 and 4 says, but immorality or any impurity or greed must not be named among you as is proper among saints and there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting but rather giving of thanks.

That's the things. It's sin that requires some kind of or merits wrath,

I should say. The wrath of God to me is terrifying and it is imminent and I would say to anybody, don't wait till tomorrow to seek

Christ. Find him today because no one knows about tomorrow.

No one knows whether we're even gonna be here or not. We don't have time to play games and to seek after the one that can remove this wrath.

We should seek him with everything that we have because it is coming.

Revelation chapter six, verse 16 says, and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the presence of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb for the great day of their wrath has come and who is able to stand?

There it is. Who is able to stand? No one is able to stand against this wrath and it's why we need so deeply to tell everyone we possibly can about our faith in Christ because we want them to have this removed.

But I wanna get back to the idea of propitiation here. It's to avert anger by offering a sacrifice and again, it always denotes the removal of wrath.

It's to satisfy the wrath of God. Jesus himself, our advocate, came and he satisfied the wrath of God.

Picture the scene in your mind. Jesus enters the heavenly courtroom.

He's there. But you know who also is there? Satan, the accuser is there because in Revelation 12, 10, it says that Satan accuses us before God day and night.

That's what he does. He is there. Satan himself opens his briefcase, pulls out the documents of the case.

In those documents are listed every sin that we have ever committed.

The most vile, ugly sins that you could ever think of are presented there.

Our advocate agrees with these charges because he knows that we're guilty. He's not trying to prove that we are innocent.

He definitely knows that we are guilty. Jesus doesn't point the finger though at us and says, you know, he doesn't say,

Father, pour out your wrath on my people. No, he doesn't say that.

He says, pour out your wrath on me instead. Wow. I can't even fathom that.

He pleads with the Father face to face on our behalf and the wrath that should go to us, he's asking and he's requesting that he take that.

And he does so. God does so because Jesus is worthy. He is righteous and he's able to do that.

The reason why he's able is because Jesus' death on the cross for the sins of mankind appeased

God's wrath. It satisfied God's wrath. His people once and for all have that removed to those that believe on him.

God's righteous anger has been turned aside by Christ's sacrifice.

God punishes sin and because of that declares us righteous. God is obligated to judge sin.

He punishes sin because of that righteousness that he has within him.

I read something from Stephen Lawson on this and he said this, God demonstrates his justice by not punishing sin but by punishing himself in the person of God the

Son serving as our substitute. You think about that, wow. That's pretty amazing that God would do that for us.

But you know what? There's good news in some of this. It's not all wrath. It's not all bad.

There is good news and God's not destined us for wrath. It says in the scriptures in 1

Thessalonians 5, 9, it says for God has not destined us for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our

Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't want us to have that wrath. Sinners are to turn to God for salvation, aren't we?

That's the only way we can really avoid the wrath. We need to throw ourselves down at his mercy.

We should be seeking his face. We should be turning from our wicked ways.

We should be repenting of our sin and showing a godly sorrow over sin.

The scriptures talks about a worldly sorrow and a godly sorrow and we should be moving away from the worldly sorrow into the godly sorrow which is really a grieving over our sin and how that affects our relationship between a holy

God. And we need to walk in a manner that's different. That's the idea.

When we are saved, we walk in a manner that is different from before. We don't stay in our sin.

We don't walk exactly as before. There should be some kind of a change in our character and in the way that we walk our lives.

We walk as Jesus walked now. Follow his commands, his ways, his truth.

It's not my truth anymore that I follow because my truth is all selfish.

We need to flee wrath. We need to run into the arms of God. There is no other way to avoid the coming wrath.

Matthew 3 .7 says this, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Well, I have no idea who warned them of the wrath to come, but I am here warning everyone in this room and anyone listening online to flee the wrath to come, to make a decision to seek

God and lay your life down at him. And I pray that God will open up his life and heart to you because without it, we are lost.

Salvation through Christ is the only way to avoid this wrath. Romans 5 .9 says, much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

The message of the cross is simple. Place your faith and trust in him. It's very simple, but it's very difficult to do, isn't it?

It's very difficult to live once you have it, but it is the only way to avoid wrath and we need to seek him.

Romans 5 .9 says this, much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

Saved from wrath through Jesus. That's how it works. The result of salvation is that Jesus bore the wrath of God on our behalf.

What a blessing that is to sit here and think that the wrath and the destruction that we so rightfully deserve,

Christ bore that for us on our behalf. What a blessing. Righteousness of Christ, his sacrifice on the cross has made it possible for you and I to have peace with God.

Romans 5 .1, we probably all know that one. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. The peace represents the hostility from sin that stood in the path between you and God.

It's that sin that has been removed, that friction, that sin because of that hostility has been removed.

You are no longer under wrath but have peace. You see, that's beautiful. It's like a relief, isn't it?

Inside our soul, we are not fighting against God anymore. Our sin and the wrath we deserve has been taken care of by our advocate.

The result is a calming, it's a peace. You all might be able to think back to when you were saved.

I mean, hopefully that peace of God came over you recognizing that your sin was out of the way and you were able to share in his fellowship.

No matter what happens on this earth, nobody can take that peace away from a believer.

Anything external can be happening. You can't take that away from us.

They can take my home and my car and everything I have but they can't take peace because that is something that God provided for us.

Our last point today dealing with our passage is the meaning of the word world. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, verse two says, and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world.

Well, what is meant by the world here? It sounds like universal salvation, doesn't it?

Spoiler alert, if you've listened to any of Jim's sermons for the last three years, you can know that that is no.

That is not universal salvation, not gonna happen. But yet many teach this truth.

I mean, I remember Rob Bell's book a few years ago called Love Wins, right?

Where you can do whatever you want, you know? You can live your life and at the end, doesn't matter, we all go to heaven.

Well, that's not what the scriptures teach. He had a focus on God's love but not his justice.

The goal of universal salvation is to make allowances for sin, isn't it? Because if I can do anything

I want in my body like the Gnostics taught, where my physical body can't really be held accountable because it's evil anyway,

I can do anything and not be worried about it. That's a love wins principle.

I can just do anything, I can sin my whole life and I don't have to change,

I don't have to follow the commands of Christ, I can do whatever I want and at the end, we all go to heaven.

That's the idea of it all. But that's not what the Bible teaches at all. I mean, in our passage here, the whole world refers to the children of God who have a personal relationship with him that are scattered throughout the cosmos.

It's the ones that have believed and accepted him. For if Christ's propitiation was effective for all, then everyone would be saved.

That's not a concept that you find in scripture because we clearly see that God has a people for himself.

He has a people for himself and it's not just anybody that goes to heaven.

God died for all but not all receive him. We see that in scripture. Second Corinthians 5, 14 and 15 says, for the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all.

Therefore, all died and he died for all so that they, not all, they who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

We see that and we see it again in Hebrews 9, 28, the many.

So Christ also having been offered at once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time for salvation.

Doesn't say all, says salvation without reference of sin to those who eagerly await him.

God gives Jesus some, not all for salvation. John 17, 6, I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world.

They were yours and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. John 17, 9,

I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world but of those whom you have given me.

Those you have given me for they are yours. It's not all, it's those that the father has given

Jesus. John 5, 28 and 29, do not marvel at this for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come forth.

Those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to the resurrection of judgment.

Not all are saved. The teaching in the Bible is strong and it is very clear that Christ's death actually satisfies fully and eternally the demands of God.

His wrath has been removed because of that perfect sacrifice. Jesus' death benefits only those who trust in him.

For only those who serve him in faith receive cleansing from this sin. So think about this.

Sin has devastating effects. You can see it all over our world.

Remember that the Gnostics brought in that aberrant teaching into the church saying that the body was sinful and all kinds of devastation came as a result of that.

But we have an advocate with the Father, someone that entered heaven on our behalf and paid the penalty for our sin.

Christ himself bore the wrath of God on himself for us.

I mean, that to me is the ultimate gift. Wow.

To be able to think that Satan accuses us day in and day out before the

Father, reminding him of all of our sin, and yet Christ bore that wrath for us to remove it, that we might have this relationship with him, that we might have an idea to move in to relationship with one another here, and one day we're gonna be with him in eternity.

And all this world that we have and the struggles within it are gonna be gone and we're gonna spend eternity with our perfect, holy, and righteous

God. What a blessing that is. Let's pray. Father, you alone are worthy to be praised, and we thank you so much for watching over us, for guiding us, for giving us your strength.

Just go before us in this service, help us to glorify you in all that we say and do, Lord, and just commit it to you now in Jesus' name, amen.

Please come in and find your seat and stand with us as we sing. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Somebody next to you? Well, good morning, everyone.

Good morning. Welcome. Just a couple of announcements. First, a new round of fellowship dinners is forming up, so if you would like to participate in that, there's a sign -up sheet on the welcome table out in the sanctuary where you can sign up on the church website as well if you have the link for that.

And then there is a New Year's Eve shindig going on here at the church this week if you're looking for a place and some people to spend

New Year's with. The bulletin has the announcements on that, so check that if you're interested. I think they're gonna do some lawn darts and campfire here in the sanctuary, some things like that.

Turn your Bibles to the book of the Psalms, please, to Psalm 110. We're gonna read together

Psalm 110 and then Psalm 111, both of them together. Not at the same time,

I mean consecutively like that. Psalm 110, a

Psalm of David. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

The Lord will stretch forth your strong scepter from Zion, saying, rule in the midst of your enemies.

Your people will volunteer freely in the day of your power. And holy array from the womb of the dawn, your youth are to you as the dew.

The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings in the day of his wrath. He will judge among the nations.

He will fill them with corpses. He will shatter the chief men over a broad country. He will drink from the brook by the wayside, therefore he will lift up his head.

Psalm 111, praise the Lord. I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart. In the company of the upright and in the assembly, great are the works of the

Lord. They are studied by all who delight in them. Splendid and majestic is his work and his righteousness endures forever.

He has made his wonders to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and compassionate. He has given food to those who fear him.

He will remember his covenant forever. He has made known to his people the power of his works in giving them the heritage of the nations.

The works of his hands are truth and justice. All his precepts are sure. They are upheld forever and ever.

They are performed in truth and righteous uprightness. He has sent redemption to his people.

He has ordained his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. The fear of the

Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding have all those who do his commandments.

His praise endures forever. Will you stand with me as we pray? Let's bow our heads.

Our Father, you are the righteous judge and you judge among the nations. We thank you that you are great, that your name is awesome, that you are worthy of our praise and that you will be praised everlastingly.

We thank you for your works. They're truly gracious and compassionate. You do them in justice and in truth.

And there is no imperfection in any of your attributes. You are glorious and holy and gloriously holy, righteous and just and perfectly merciful.

We thank you for who you are and it is in those attributes that we as your people rest and take great confidence.

We thank you for your grace toward us in Jesus Christ, that though our sins deserved your eternal and just wrath, that you have propitiated those sins for those sins, you have made propitiation for those sins in your son and that you are satisfied concerning our sin because of what

Christ has done. So we rejoice in that and we thank you for that righteousness which is imputed to us, that righteousness that is ours by faith.

We thank you that our salvation does not depend upon anything that we do, but what has been done for us in Jesus Christ.

And we pray that you would teach our hearts and our minds to rest confidently in the sufficient and perfect and completed work of the

Lord Jesus Christ for his people on the cross. We thank you for your grace and we thank you for your kindness to us.

And we pray that we would trust with confidence in you and that you would draw near to us as we draw near to you and give us grace and strength to sing with hearts full of praise and adoration and affection for you, our great

God and King. We ask these things in Christ's name, amen. ♪

In peace like a river ♪ ♪

Attendeth mine and sorrows like sea billows roll ♪ ♪

Has taught me to say it is well with my soul ♪ ♪

It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

With my soul ♪ ♪

My soul ♪ ♪ Oh, Satan should bow down to me ♪ ♪

No trial should come to me ♪ ♪

As the shepherds control me ♪ ♪

It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

With my soul ♪ ♪ It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

I sinned over this glorious thought ♪ ♪

I sinned but it is left to the cross ♪ ♪

It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

It is well with my soul ♪ ♪ With my soul ♪ ♪ It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

He sighed the scroll of truth ♪ ♪

Shall resound and earth shall descend ♪ ♪

Even so my soul, my soul ♪ ♪

It is well, it is well with my soul ♪ ♪

It is well with my soul ♪ ♪

It is well, it is well with my soul ♪ ♪

I am sin, who knew no sin ♪ ♪ His righteousness, love so pure may

I serve Him ♪ ♪ Jesus Messiah, blessed, redeemed, rescued for sin ♪ ♪

Jesus Messiah, blessed, redeemed, rescued for sin ♪ ♪

Jesus Messiah, Jesus Messiah, name above all ♪ ♪

Jesus Messiah, Jesus Messiah, name above all ♪ ♪

For Savior, your soul is with, blessed, redeemed,

Jesus ♪ ♪ Jesus Messiah, Jesus Messiah, name above all ♪ ♪

For Savior, your soul is with, blessed, redeemed,

Jesus ♪ For deep the

Father's love for us Beyond all he should give his only

Etch his treasure Of chosen ones to call

His shoulder shamed by ear -mouthed scoffers

It was my sin that until it was accomplished

His dying breath Most in Heav 'nly

No power, no wisdom Most in Jesus Christ Why should

Why should I gain from his Have paid my

You may be seated He moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform He plants his footsteps in the sea

And rides upon the storm Deep unfathomable minds

Of never failing skill He treasures up his bright designs

And works his sovereign will Take courage now, you fearful saints

The clouds you so much dread Are big with mercy And shall break

In blessings on your head And I will trust

The hands that made the starry heavens And I will trust

The words of Calvary And I will trust

And I will know His ways are love

Judge not the Lord by feeble sins

But trust him for his grace The dance he hides his chest

Unfolding every hour The bed may have a bitter taste

But sweet will be the flower And I will trust The hands that made the starry heavens

And I will trust The words of Calvary I will trust

And I will know I will trust

We turn in your copy of God's Word to the 10th chapter of Hebrews Hebrews chapter 10

We're going to read together beginning at verse 11 and we'll read through the end of verse 18 Hebrews 10 beginning at verse 11

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 and the

Holy Spirit also testifies to us for after saying this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days says the

Lord I will put my laws upon their heart and on their mind I will write them He then says and their sins and their lawless deeds

I will remember no more Now where there is forgiveness of these things there is no longer any offering for sin

Let's pray together Our Father we ask that you give us insight and illumination into your

Word we pray that that we may be understanding this morning of what your Word means here and that we may see in it the glory of Christ the sufficiency of his work for us on the cross and what it means to trust in him may you be honored and glorified through the preaching of your

Word and through our listening to it and our time here together as we study in Christ's name Amen Life involves a lot of waiting doesn't it?

When you're a kid you you just can't wait until you're old enough to have a car and get your license and then you think well

I just can't wait till I'm out of school and I can't wait till Jim's done preaching through the gospel of John and I can't wait till I get out of the house and having gotten out of the house and I can't wait till I get married and I can't wait till I have kids and then you have kids and you think

I can't wait till Jim is done preaching through the book of Ecclesiastes and I can't wait till my kids are out of diapers

I can't wait till my kids are out of school I can't wait till my kids are out of the house I can't wait till I have grandchildren

I can't wait till Jim is done with Hebrews I can't wait till I retire, and then

I can't wait until my kids come back to see me again." That took a dark turn right there at the end, didn't it? Kind of like Ecclesiastes all over again.

Life is full of waiting, and we're always waiting, and this is difficult for us in our culture particularly because we are accustomed to getting everything instantly right when we want it and not having to wait for anything.

We are almost conditioned to be instantaneous people. Do you want to know where you saw that actor in some other movie?

You don't have to go down to the library and scroll through magazines or last month's issue of People magazine or anything like that.

You just go to Google, and you have your answer instantly. Do you want some product that you see online? Well, you order it, and you have it in two days.

You know, I hardly have to wait for that, and now we're experimenting with same -day delivery in some markets so that we don't have to wait that two days that it takes to get a product.

Do you want to communicate with somebody? Instantly, you can talk to somebody on the other side of the world. No need to write a letter. You can have

Insta picture, whatever, Instagram, Insta message, instant texting, instant phone calls, instant

FaceTime, instant everything. Everything's instant. We've become instant people. We don't like to wait for anything.

We don't have to wait for nearly anything. Even our entertainment is on demand. It's streaming. It's right when we want it, where we want it.

We don't even have to wait till we get home to watch what we want to watch because now we can watch it on our phone, and we can download it to our phone so that even while we're sitting in a traffic light, which undoubtedly some people must do and stare at their phones, binge -watching whatever the latest series is that they've got to binge -watch instead of watching for the light to turn green, they have it right there in front of them.

Everything is instant. We have become a people that pace back and forth in front of our microwave waiting for our coffee to warm up.

It used to be that you'd have to gather the wood and start a fire and then warm up your coffee, but not us. We get impatient for that 60 seconds that it takes to warm up a cup of coffee, and yet Christianity is a waiting religion.

We are always waiting for something. We as God's people are waiting for Jesus Christ to return, are we not?

Our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says in 1

Thessalonians 1 verse 10, we've turned from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven who delivers us from the wrath to come.

We are just, we are waiting. We are waiting for the promise of the new covenant, the promises of the new covenant, the eschatological ones to take place.

We are waiting for the coming kingdom. We are waiting for the King to return. We are waiting for our glorified bodies. We are waiting for God to gather in all of His elect.

We are waiting for the next phase in God's eschatological program. We are waiting for the resurrection of the just.

We are waiting to be reunited with our loved ones. We are waiting so that we can receive that, the full inheritance which is reserved and preserved in heaven for us.

Everything that we as Christians most desire and most want, we have to wait for those things.

And the waiting is not easy. We're still waiting for God to fulfill His promises to Abraham and David.

If you think you've been waiting a long time, Abraham and David are still waiting to see the fulfillment of some of the promises that were given to them.

Christianity is a waiting religion. And we're not alone in this. Because our Savior waits too.

He's waiting for something. He's waiting to judge the quick and the dead. He is waiting to receive the kingdom from the

Father. He is waiting to return again and to establish that kingdom here on earth. He is waiting to gather all of His people to Himself.

He is waiting until that day when we get to enjoy His glory with Him and we are one with Him as He is one with the

Father. And we get to enjoy and see that glory that He had with the Father before the world was.

He is waiting for that day. Our Savior waits. Our Savior is waiting for all of His enemies to be made a footstool for His feet.

And that's what our passage here in Hebrews chapter 10 says. Our Savior waits. Having taken

His seat at the right hand of the Father, verse 11 says, sorry, verse 12 says, He is waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.

We're here in Hebrews chapter 10, and this passage here that describes Christ having taken His seat at the right hand of the

Father and then waiting until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet, this is actually the conclusion of a very long theological argument that the author has been making since chapter 7.

Most of chapter 7, no, I dare say all of chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 9, and now all of chapter 10 so far has been one long theological argument here in the middle of the book of Hebrews.

And the point of his theological argument is this, that Christ is a superior high priest who occupies a superior priesthood, who has initiated and inaugurated a superior covenant by the sacrifice of a superior sacrifice, and now

He has taken that superior blood and He has entered into a better tabernacle in heaven itself where He makes a better intercession, having accomplished a better thing than all the

Old Testament priests and sacrifices could have accomplished, namely the redemption of His people. Everything about Jesus is better.

And now we come here to the middle of chapter 10 and the author is drawing all of these lines of thought, all of these points that he has made slowly over the last four chapters, he's pulling them all together into this concluding paragraph which begins in verse 11.

And before we jump into verse 11, I want to give you just sort of an overview of the immediate structure of the context so you can see how these are concluding thoughts that he's drawing.

This is a concluding paragraph, verse 11 through 18. I want you to notice it because this paragraph really functions in two ways.

It's a conclusion to all the theology that he's laid out for four chapters, but he's transitioning into a stage of Hebrews, a section of the book of Hebrews that is really heavy with application.

You can see it in verse 19. After he has concluded his argument in verse 18, he says in verse 19,

Therefore brethren, since we have this confidence, that's verse 19, look at verse 21, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, in other words, since these things are true, then look at verse 22, let us, verse 23, let us, and verse 24, let us.

See what he's saying? Since this is true and this is true, since everything he said for four chapters, since we can bank on these things being true, here's the application.

Let us do this, let us do this, and let us do this. So verses 19 through 25 is application, and then verse 26, we get into another one of those warning passages, which we haven't looked at in a long, long time.

We haven't looked at that since chapter 6. So that is the warning passage begins in verse 26.

So we come now to verse 11. Having looked at that structure, I just remind you that earlier in this theological argument, the author has been making the case that the animal sacrifices were inferior.

There's a bunch of things that they couldn't do, and now he's coming to the point where he is arguing that the sacrifice of Christ is superior.

It has done everything that the animal sacrifices could not do, and so as he's drawing these concluding thoughts, what you're going to see in verses 11 through verse 18 is a lot of the ideas and the themes and the topics that we have addressed over the last number of months as we've been working our way through this, because he has handled each one of them separately and kind of focused on them, and we've spent some time working through Melchizedek as a high priest and the superiority of the new covenant and his sacrifice and what the animal sacrifices could not do.

We've dealt with all of those kind of in parts and pieces, and now he brings them all together here in these concluding sentences.

As all of this, he's bringing it all together as it were. So we've dealt with all of them individually, and now he puts all of it together in verses 11 through 18.

He piles it all in here, and he is making a contrast between the Old Testament sacrifice as the

Old Testament priesthood and the sacrifice of Jesus and the priesthood of Jesus. And so all of these themes that we've been looking at over the last number of months, now they all are coming together, and he's drawing this contrast, a series of them, in a very compact form.

So a lot of this is going to sound familiar to you, but you're going to see it all laid out in really one paragraph here.

And as he makes the contrast, we see that the work of Christ is superior, the sacrifice of Christ is superior, and the accomplishment of Christ is superior.

And that really will serve as our outline for this morning. The work of Christ, his sacrifice, and then his accomplishment.

Look first at the work of Christ. Let's start with verse 11. In fact, let's read verses 11 and 12, and I want you to keep in mind that 11 describes something, 12 describes something, and it's almost phrase for phrase a comparison between the

Old Testament economy and the New Testament, New Covenant economy with Christ. Verse 11, every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

Now notice the contrast, but, verse 12, but he, having offered one sacrifice of 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.

But he, Christ, as opposed to all the other priests, he sat down as opposed to stand, he offered one sacrifice as opposed to many sacrifices, he offered one singular sacrifice as opposed to many of the same kinds of sacrifices, and those sacrifices could never take away sin, and Christ has done that, which is why he is seated at the right hand of the

Father. So it's just a series of contrasts, almost phrase by phrase in verse 11 contrasted with verse 12.

So let's look first at his work which is superior. Notice in verse 11 it says, every priest, and of course that is contrasted with the singular he in verse 11, or sorry, verse 12.

Every priest does this, but he, that is Jesus, one priest, does that. That's the first most striking contrast in these verses is simply the number of priests and the persons who are involved in this work.

Under the old economy you didn't have just a couple of priests who did a priestly work. You had hundreds of priests who did that priestly work.

And over the course of 15 centuries of that old economy with the old covenant, you would have had thousands upon thousands upon thousands of priests who did the work around the tabernacle and then later on the temple.

In fact, in the first century there were 24 orders of priests, and those 24 orders of priests, each order had within it thousands of priests who did the work.

And they would rotate on, and having time off from the work, they would rotate as to who did the morning sacrifices and who was involved in maintaining the tabernacle and later on the temple.

There was a rotation to that order of priests, and each order had hundreds of priests in it. So there were not just one or two priests doing that work, there were thousands of priests involved in the maintaining of the tabernacle and the temple and the sacrifices and everything that went with it.

Because the amount of work that was necessary to do, what they were commanded to do, required more than just one or two priests.

And this is the point. Thousands of priests offering thousands of sacrifices over 15 centuries with all of the work that they did, none of that accomplished what one priest did with one sacrifice and one offering.

Every priest, he lumps them all in, thousands of them, but he, one man.

That just demonstrates the glory of Christ's work and the power of his accomplishment. Notice the second contrast, not just the number of priests, but notice the position of the priest.

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifice. This is contrasted with Christ, who he says in verse 12, sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Standing was the normal posture for an Old Testament priest. This is what they did. There was no place in the tabernacle or in the temple or in the courtyard where they could sit down.

There was no couch. There was no break room. There was no priest lounge where you went in if you were tired and you had your 15 minute morning break and your 15 minute union mandated afternoon break and then a one hour lunch.

You didn't have any of that. There were no vending machines where you sat down, you stood around the water cooler and talked about the animal you sacrificed that morning.

The priesthood didn't have any of that. You went to work and you worked all day long and you worked until you were exhausted and you never felt as if the work was ever done.

That was the point of the Old Testament priesthood. Every priest stands daily ministering. He had to stand up and do his work and you showed up for work and you worked as long until all the work for that day was done, but then you always knew that you were coming back the next day and you were going to go right back to work again.

Contrast that with Christ, who has sat down at the Father's right hand. And the fact that he has sat down demonstrates the completeness and the perfection of his work.

Daily, hundreds and thousands of priests were involved in the ministry of the tabernacle and the temple, and yet this one priest who has accomplished his work has finally sat down at the

Father's right hand. And he does not stand and work, he sits and intercedes. He sits and represents us as our advocate with the

Father. Jesus Christ the righteous does this. As one commentary put it, and this

I thought was really punchy and well stated, the priest of the Old Testament stands timid and uneasy in the holy place, anxiously performing his service there and hastening to depart when that service is done as from a place where he has no free access and can never feel at home.

Whereas Christ sits down in everlasting rest and blessedness at the right hand of majesty and the

Holy of Holies, his work accomplished, he is awaiting his reward."

Notice that contrast. Those priests walked into the temple, into the tabernacle, and they labored and worked and strived all day long, day after day, week after week, year after year, never sitting down, never resting, never feeling that their work was accomplished.

And when they were done, they left the tabernacle because that was not their home. They could never feel at home and they could never feel at rest there.

But the Lord Jesus Christ has taken his seat at the right hand of the Father because that is his home and that is where he belongs, that is his position, and he gets it and he could feel at home and at rest there and he never feels like he has to leave the presence of the

Father because that is where he deserves to be. All of the other priests, even in the day that Hebrews was written, they were striving and they were working and they were serving.

They were laboring and fatiguing themselves in an obsolete system, with an obsolete sacrificial system that accomplished nothing in terms of redemption.

And even while the Lord Jesus Christ was seated in the heavenlies at the Father's right hand, those priests were still laboring away.

That demonstrates the superiority of Christ's work. At one sacrifice, he's done and he sits down never to offer another sacrifice.

Second, his sacrifice is superior, not just his work but his sacrifice. Notice the number of sacrifices that is contrasted here and this is something that we've looked at in previous weeks.

The verb tense here is important. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering. Notice that's present tense.

Even after Christ had left and gone to heaven for another four decades, that work went on at the temple until the temple was destroyed in 70

A .D. and that sacrificial system came to an end and it has never restarted again in the last 1950 years, it has not started again.

No sacrifice has been made there as part of that priesthood since 70 A .D. So even while the author is writing this, those priests were daily standing and ministering day after day again and again in the temple and in the tabernacle, whereas Christ has taken that, made that one sacrifice and sat down at the

Father's right hand. They offered the same sacrifices, so there's not just a contrast here with the tense of the work that Christ offered, past tense once, they keep offering all of these sacrifices, that's a contrast, but notice the number of sacrifices.

They offer the same sacrifices which can never take away sins and the author says that Christ, having offered one sacrifice, so it's not just a contrast in the work being done and the work continuing to go on, but it is also a contrast in the number of sacrifices, one as opposed to thousands of other sacrifices.

The repetition of the Old Testament sacrifices, the author makes this point earlier, it was actually the evidence of their inadequacy.

Those sacrifices were inadequate and the demonstration of that inadequacy is the fact that they had to be offered time after time after time and that there was no end to it.

Hebrews 10 verse 2, the author says, otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered because the worshiper, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?

If that animal sacrifice was able to cleanse the sinner, then that would have been the end of it. If those animal sacrifices were able to accomplish anything in terms of perfecting the worshiper, in bringing us to God and reconciling us to Him and taking away sin, then there would have been, at some point, those animal sacrifices would have ceased, but they never did.

And the fact that they continued to go on and on and there was no provision ever for those sacrifices to stop, since that is the case, that is evidence that those sacrifices were inadequate.

Now somebody in the first century might have objected and said, well, look, you Christians, you have a priest and he's only offered one sacrifice.

Our priest, he offers more than that before breakfast. He's constantly offering sacrifices.

He'll offer 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15 sacrifices a day. Your priest has only offered one sacrifice.

And the Jews would have been trained in their thinking to think that a priest offering only one sacrifice would have been inadequate, and it's the exact opposite that is the case.

The fact that he offered only one sacrifice shows just how sufficient it is, that no further sacrifice would ever be necessary.

Now there's an interesting translation issue that comes up at this point in the text, and I want you to see it because it's not just a curiosity thing, it's actually, there's some theological gravitas to this.

In verse 11, every priest, no, no, verse 12, sorry, but he, Christ, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.

Now here's the interesting translation issue in verse 12. Notice that word for all time.

If you have the King James, the New King James, it might read forever. It's the word that can be translated forever, it certainly means that.

Newer translations translate it for all time. It means always, forever, eternally, continuous, or unbroken.

What's interesting is that that word occurs between that phrase, having offered one sacrifice for sins, and the phrase, has sat down at the right hand of God.

So he's offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.

Now here's what's interesting. Which of those two phrases, that it is right between, which of those two phrases does it modify?

Does it modify the fact that he offered one sacrifice for sins forever? Or is it saying that he forever sat down at the right hand of God?

Because you could read that either way. Having offered one sacrifice for sins forever, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

You could read it that way, or you could read it this way. Having offered one sacrifice for sins forever, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Can you see that those are two slightly different meanings? Here's what's interesting. That word could modify either one of those phrases.

And I almost have to wonder if the author put it in the middle there, not to confuse us for the next 2 ,000 years, but that he put it in the middle there to really reflect upon both of those phrases.

If it is describing the sacrifice of Christ, then here's what it means. Here's the gist of it. That he has offered one sacrifice for sins, and that sacrifice is effective and sufficient forever.

There will be no more sacrifice for sins. Now that would certainly fit the context, because verse 18 says, now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

So the idea seems to be that this sacrifice was a once -for -all, forever -sufficient sacrifice.

It will never, ever have to be offered again. No more sacrifice would be necessary. This was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, for this sacrifice is sufficient and powerful evermore, everlastingly.

No further offering would ever be necessary, no matter how many sinners are saved. In other words, if all of a sudden we went out and we evangelized the whole state of Idaho, which would be nice, but if we were to do that, and let's start with the statehouse, if we were to do that, we would not expect the

Father to turn to the Son and say, there's a lot of people getting saved down there, that's a lot of sin to cover, you're going to have to go offer yet another sacrifice, or we're going to have to find something else to fill in with that and to suffice for that, because a lot of people are getting saved.

And some of those were really wicked sinners, especially the ones at the statehouse. And their sins really need a lot of atonement and a lot of propitiation.

And so since that is the case, we need to make sure that that's covered, get ready to go make another sacrifice. That can never happen.

No matter how many people are saved, no matter how much sin is atoned for or covered, there is no need for the

Son to ever make another sacrifice again. He's offered one sacrifice for sins and that forever.

But it's also true that He has forever taken His seat at the right hand of the Father. Isn't that also true?

Will He ever step down from that position of power and majesty and glory? Will He ever be succeeded in that position of power and majesty and glory?

Will anybody ever usurp that position or that throne? Will He ever step down because He is unworthy or He is ever disqualified?

The fact that He has taken His seat at the right hand of the Father and that He has sat down there forever, the idea behind that would be that He owns this position,

He is worthy of this position, this is His exaltation, and that exaltation will never be undone.

He can never become less than what He is. He can never take a lower position. He will never be humiliated again.

He will never suffer at the hands of His enemies again. He will never be cursed and reviled at the hands of sinners again.

He has been exalted to that position and that is everlastingly. So that now for all of eternity, having put away sin,

He has forever sat down at the Father's right hand and from that position He rules and reigns and He will rule and reign everlastingly and forever because His kingdom knows no end.

His dominion knows no end. His rule and His power and authority are infinite and eternal and He can never be taken off of that throne or pushed off of that throne by anything else, which means that He has that position everlastingly and which of those is true, that He offered one sacrifice for sins forever or that He forever sat down at the

Father's right hand? I don't think we have to choose between those two because I think that beautifully that is constructed to communicate just exactly that, that He has offered one sacrifice for sins forever and He has forever sat down at the

Father's right hand. These actions of the Lord Jesus Christ are forever and thus our future is secure because He holds that position forever.

There's no such thing as an unfulfilled promise. Every promise that He has made must be fulfilled because He possesses that very power and position and majesty and authority at the

Father's right hand and He does so forever, so He must necessarily fulfill His every purpose and His every promise to His people and He will complete what

He has begun in you for His own glory, for He will accomplish all His good pleasure. His work is superior,

His sacrifice is superior and then notice His accomplishment is superior. Look at verse 11, those same sacrifices which could never take away sins and verse 12 is the contrast, but He having offered one sacrifice for sins.

His sacrifice was for sins in the same sense that He has been describing all the way through this theological section here in the middle of the book of Hebrews.

His sacrifice was for sins in the sense that in that one sacrifice He has obtained eternal redemption, chapter 9 verse 11.

He has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, chapter 9 verse 26. He has bore the sins of many, chapter 9 verse 28.

His sacrifice actually does these things, whereas the animal sacrifices never could. In fact, chapter 10 verse 4 says it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Those animals could never deal with the sin issue, but what the animals could not do Christ has done. They offer the same sacrifices which the author says almost repeating

Himself over and over again here as He has elsewhere previously. They can never take away sins, but Christ has offered one sacrifice that actually has taken away sins.

And it's not just sins which have been taken away in the sacrifice of Christ that make it so glorious, but all of the other things that He has accomplished as well.

In our context here He's talking about expiation. The sacrifice and His payment for sins, making atonement, that has been the emphasis all the way through.

But ask yourself, what other aspects of the sacrifice of Christ, what other things are accomplished by the sacrifice of Christ that were not accomplished by Old Testament sacrifices?

How about the fact that in Christ's death He conquered forever Him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and who kept us in the fear of death as slaves all of our lives?

Back in chapter 2 the author says that, that Christ triumphed over Satan in that sacrifice that He made.

Do you think that Satan was ever scared of any Old Testament animal sacrifice? Do you think he ever mulled around the tabernacle of the temple and thought, oh, another animal, what am

I going to do? My kingdom is shaken to the core, I'm defeated. These animal sacrifices are setting captives free and liberating people and making sanctified all of the people of God.

Do you think Satan ever trembled over a single animal sacrifice? How about over a thousand animal sacrifices?

Do you think the devil ever cared about any number of animal sacrifices that were ever made under the Old Covenant? He wouldn't have cared.

None of those sacrifices did anything to liberate people from his power, to liberate people from his darkness, to set his captives free.

None of those sacrifices ever did any of that. None of those sacrifices ever made a single person adopted into the family of God.

None of those Old Testament sacrifices never made any Jew a son with an eternal inheritance because none of those sacrifices could accomplish any of that.

The sacrifice of Christ has done all of that and so much more. Makes us holy, righteous, sanctifies us, justifies us, gives us the righteousness of Christ, delivers us from sin, opens our eyes, changes our hearts, regenerates us, gives us an eternal inheritance, secures that eternal inheritance, draws us near to God, guarantees the provision of all of the blessings that are promised to us in Scripture.

The sacrifice of Christ accomplished all of that. No animal sacrifice ever did any one of those things.

And so now, verse 12 says, having sat down at the right hand of God, he waits.

Redemption has been accomplished, the prize has been won, the work has been done, and now the

Lord Jesus Christ waits. He waits until the next act in God's redemptive drama.

He waits until the next stage of God's plan for humanity. He is waiting.

He is waiting until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. Now just the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ has taken a seat and is now waiting is yet another contrast with the

Old Testament priests. I want you to think of this. The Old Testament priests, their work never progressed beyond what they did in the tabernacle and the temple day after day after day.

There was never an end to that, so Old Testament priests never moved on to the next thing. In other words, at the end of the evening sacrifice, when the sacrifice had been made and the blood had been applied and the coals had been stoked and the wicks in the tabernacle had been trimmed and the incense replenished until morning, when all of that was done and their work for the day was complete and the

Old Testament priests were ready to go home, they never gathered around the altar and said, all right, men, we've done it, that's all done, tomorrow we move on to the next thing.

There was no next thing. Tomorrow you came back and you did the exact same thing, but Christ having accomplished

His work is now waiting for what? The next thing. His work has progressed. Their work was never done.

His work, having been done, He now waits. I take solace in the fact that we can say with complete candor that the

Lord Jesus Christ is waiting. In one sense, He's waiting for us just like we're waiting for Him. He's waiting till He's with us.

He's waiting, Scripture says here, until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. That's a quotation from Psalm 110, verse 1, where David writes, the

Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The author here quotes that, again returning to Psalm 110, which he has quoted numerous times in this epistle.

Returning to Psalm 110, he quotes that. Chapter 9, verse 28, the same author, Hebrews, says this, so Christ will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await

Him. That's what describes us. We eagerly await for Him. He is eagerly waiting for His enemies to be made a footstool for His feet.

Now if you are an unbeliever, that should terrify you. If that is a Christian, that should comfort you. There's no in between.

You're either thrilled at that news that your Savior is waiting until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet, or you are terrified by the fact that the

Savior is waiting until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet because you're one of His enemies. You're either one of His children or you're one of His enemies.

If you're His child, then there's no fear for you that His enemies will be made a footstool for His feet. But if you are

His enemy, then fear. You ought to fear because this is going to happen just as certainly as He has offered one sacrifice for sins.

He will return and He will make His enemies a footstool for His feet. To the unbeliever, this is terrifying because you are an enemy of God in your mind through your wicked works.

And having sinned and violated His law, having stolen, having blasphemed, having lusted in your heart, having violated

His holy law, you are His enemy and you're under His wrath. And the death sentence hangs above your head like the sword of Damocles and it can come down at any moment upon you.

That's what you deserve is His enemy. You're hostile in your mind against God. You're hostile in your mind to His Word.

You hate Him and you must repent and believe or you will suffer the fate of receiving

His wrath. God offers you forgiveness.

He offers you clemency. He offers you acquittal in the wiping away of your slate, not because He will see to it that justice is not done in your case, but because justice has already been done in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

He demands of you repentance and faith. You come to God on His terms because He's the offended party and He offers you forgiveness on His terms, repentance and faith.

You turn and you believe and you're going to have your sins forgiven and you won't be His enemy, but His son because of what

Christ has done. This cannot be avoided. Look closely at the end of verse 13, until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.

That cannot be avoided. How can it not be avoided? Because He has taken His position at the Father's right hand where He possesses all power, all majesty, all glory, all dominion, all authority in heaven on earth.

It has all been given to Him. He will most certainly make His enemies a footstool for His feet.

He will bring to pass all His good pleasure. He will be victorious and He will triumph over His enemies and He will vindicate

His good name. But if you're a Christian, that should bring you tremendous comfort.

And here's why. Men are our enemies only because they are

His enemies. They hated Him first before they hated us. If we were of the world, the world would love us, but the world doesn't love us because we're not of this world.

We've been chosen out of this world and for that reason Jesus said, the world hates us. And the world hated

Him before it hated us. It hates us not because we are us, or we are we, however that sentence should end.

It hates us not because we are us, but because we represent

Him. It's His truth they hate. It's His kingdom they hate. It's His word they hate.

It's His rule and His righteousness and His demands that they hate. It's His justice that they gnash their teeth against.

They hate us because they hated Him first. But because Christ is waiting for all of His enemies to be made a footstool for His feet,

He is going to vindicate His name. He who died to redeem you will complete the good work that He has begun in you.

He will see it through all the way to the end. He will secure you everlastingly because all authority on heaven and earth has been given to Him.

And when He triumphs over His enemies, He will be triumphing over those who have allied themselves against the

Lord and His people, and He will vindicate His people, and He will establish our righteousness, and He will establish

His righteousness, and He will establish His kingdom, and everything He does will be in truth and in righteousness.

And no purpose of His can be thwarted. He will accomplish all His good pleasure because He is waiting until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.

He has forever sat down at the Father's right hand, and nobody can take that position from Him.

Daniel 7 .18 is this promise to us, but the saints of the highest one will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, for all the ages to come.

A couple of verses later, Daniel writes this, I kept looking, and that horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them until the ancient of days came, and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the highest one, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom.

He will make His enemies a footstool for His feet. He will complete what He has started, and you and I can rest in that,

Christian. You should be terrified by that, unbeliever, because it will happen.

He has forever sat down, and He is waiting until He is vindicated, and He will be, most certainly.

Let's bow our heads. Father, we thank You for the promises of Your Word, for the majesty and glory of Christ, for the depth of Your Word and the truth of it.

We're so thankful that our Savior sits enthroned in heaven. We are thankful that His judgment,

His vindication will also be our own vindication, the establishment of the righteousness of all Your people.

We thank You that we have nothing to fear and that these things are certain, and we pray that You would fix our hearts, our hope, and our minds upon these truths, that we may rest in them, and that we may then rightly know how to live and conduct ourselves among a wicked and perverse generation, that we may appear as lights to them.

We thank You for this grace and for that glory, in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Thanks, have a great week.