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Thursday, April 25, 2024
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Monday, April 8, 2024
The Benefits of Christ's Sacrifice; Hebrews 9:11-22, Titus 3:4-7
On
this second Sunday of Easter, we celebrate that Christ, though His death and
resurrection has secured our redemption.
Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the new covenant, a covenant not of
dead works, but of love and grace, a covenant which the Holy Spirit applies to
us.
If you remember, a covenant was a
binding agreement that if broken, required the death of the party who broke the
covenant. The “signing” of the covenant
was done by the sacrifice of animals cut in half. The parties agreeing to the covenant would
walk through the carcasses to say, “May it be done to me if I break this
covenant.” When God made the covenant
with Abraham, only God walked through the animal carcasses, showing that God
alone would take on the death penalty for the broken covenant, a covenant which
we broke time and time again. In the Old
Testament, God commanded Moses and Aaron to set up a sacrificial system. This system was the way that the death
penalty for the breaking of God’s commands was met. Animal substitutes were used in place of
people. As animals were sacrificed, the
people were made aware that it should be them who were killed, but even this
was poor, since God already promised Abraham that God alone would take the
death penalty for our sins. We know that
Christ instituted the new or renewed God’s covenant at the Last Supper. He explicitly said that covenant would be
sealed in His blood. The concept of
covenants cut in blood are gross to us, but how often do we consider that
before God, we really deserve the death penalty? For all the times it had been broken and
would be broken again, Jesus paid the price.
He fulfilled the requirement of the covenant that God must die. And because Jesus is also fully human, His
blood covers us. We have taken a lot of the “blood hymns” out of modern
hymnals, but sometimes we need to remember how precious it was that Jesus shed
His blood for us and how powerful that blood is to wash us clean and secure our
redemption. Jesus fulfilled all the
requirements of the covenant by His death and resurrection.
Our Hebrews passage tells that Jesus
acted as both High Priest and Sacrifice.
And not only is He High Priest, He is the perfect sinless High
Priest. Sacrifices already had to be
without blemish or spot, but the High Priest first had to sacrifice for his own
sins before he could offer sacrifices for the people. Jesus is the once for all sacrifice. Sacrifices no longer need to be repeated. Hebrews 9:13 mentions “the ashes of a red
heifer” that was used to sprinkle those who were defiled. There are people who want to restart the
sacrificial system. Many of you are
aware that there are plans to sacrifice a red heifer during Passover in a few
weeks in Israel so that it can be burned and the ashes used to purify people
and instruments to rebuild a temple.
God’s people are the last temple.
We are living stones. Any
Christian participating in this is doing the devil’s work, not the Lord’s
work. Jesus doesn’t need us to help Jewish
zealots set up a sacrificial system.
Jesus needs us to help proclaim that He is the true and only Messiah and
that the time to believe in Him is now! If
you haven’t picked up any of the information on the back table that the Jews
for Jesus missionaries left, I would encourage you to do so. They need our prayers as they witness to the
truth of who Jesus is. Jesus’s blood
paid for our redemption. That is, the
debt we owed to God that we could not pay, Jesus paid it all and did so for
everyone! Jesus died to redeem the
world, not just one people group, but all people. His sacrifice is complete. No others are ever needed again. The Jews cannot be saved by reinstating
temple sacrifices. They can only be
saved by the blood of Jesus, just as we are.
The people living in the most isolated places in the world can only be
saved by the blood of Jesus. Jesus
fulfilled the Law so we don’t have to.
With redemption comes forgiveness. All of our sins are forgiven. Both of our passages today tell us we are
washed clean by the blood of Christ. Our
consciences have been made clear. We
don’t have to continually beat ourselves up for the wrong things we have
done. We simply need to confess what
Jesus has already forgiven. When we lay our burdens at the feet of Jesus, we
don’t need to pick them back up again. We
might be called to make amends to someone we have hurt, but that is living into
the forgiveness which we have been given, which brings us to the next benefit
that Jesus by His sacrifice has given us.
Not only did Jesus redeem us, He
cleanses us from dead works. We don’t
have to try to earn salvation by merit.
We don’t have to worry that we have or haven’t done enough to gain
eternal life and entrance into heaven. Our
Titus passage tells us that our works of righteousness don’t save us, but it is
the mercy of God our Savior who saved us out of love for us. However, it doesn’t mean we don’t do
anything. The rest of Hebrews 11:14 says that Christ freed us from dead works
“to serve the living God.” We can serve
God freely. I think back to the story of
the Prodigal Son. The older brother kept
working for his father, but he resented it.
He was trying to prove something to his father, his worthiness, not
understanding that as a son, he didn’t need to prove anything. He had access to all that the father wanted
to give. In fact, when the younger son
asked for his share of the inheritance, the father divvied up the inheritance
to both sons, of which the older brother would have gotten double. Yet, he never accessed what was his. He kept trying to earn it, and kept building
more and more resentment. God wants us
to serve freely. God did create good
works for us to do. God wants us to
participate with God in God’s work. In
fact, we were saved for service; our salvation is not simply acquiring “fire
insurance” so that we don’t go to hell.
At the same time we don’t have to do works to pay off debt. We serve out of gratitude. This also frees us from worrying about
outcome. When we serve God freely, the
results are up to God. Faithfulness is
the measure of our success. Do you know
that the word “serve” and “worship” are the same word? To worship God is to serve God and to serve
God is to worship God.
Eternal life of course is another
benefit of Christ’s sacrifice. This
means that there will never be a time when we are separated from the presence
of God. It means that physical death is
not the end for us. We will live with
God in a new heaven and earth where time does not exist. We will live where there is no more death,
pain, grief, fear, worry, or evil. We
will live where everyone not only gets along, but really and truly loves one
another.
Another benefit of Christ’s sacrifice is
sanctification. That is, we are made
holy; we are made saints. We have the
capability to become more and more like Jesus, and when God looks at us, God
already sees Jesus in us. Sanctification
means transformation. We are being
remade into the people that God always intended us to be. It takes our cooperation. As people of the Reformed tradition, we call
this the “perseverance of the faith.” We
cooperate with the Holy Spirit. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we have all the
blessings that God has promised God’s people.
We joint-heirs with Jesus of all God’s good gifts. We are made siblings of Christ, children of
God by believing in Jesus. We are Christ’s
brothers and sisters as well as His bride.
Speaking of the Holy Spirit, the
Holy Spirit is the greatest blessing we have been given as a result of Christ’s
sacrifice. God gave us Himself through
Jesus Christ, and then God gave us Himself again in the person of the Holy
Spirit, who was sent to us by Christ.
Jesus is God with us—Immanuel.
The Holy Spirit is God in us. The
Holy Spirit gives us full access to all the benefits secured by Christ’s
sacrifice. Without the Holy Spirit, we
would have no faith. We would not be
able to confess Christ. It is the Holy
Spirit who illumines our consciences, who convicts us of sin and opens us to
our need of a Savior. The Holy Spirit
teaches us by helping us to understand God’s Word and applying it to our
lives. It is the Spirit who gives us the
power to resist temptation, who enables us to keep God’s commands, who empowers
us to do good works for the glory of God.
The Holy Spirit reveals the will of God to us. The Holy Spirit is eternal life—the Fountian
of Living Water welling up within us.
The sacrifice of Jesus is
everything. In Him we have redemption--we have no debt to God. We have forgiveness. We don't have to earn salvation through good works, rather we are free to worship and serve God by doing good works for God's glory, leaving the results to God. We are made saints. We have eternal life. We have the Holy Spirit. We are never alone. Jesus has bought our salvation through His precious blood! Amen!
Monday, April 1, 2024
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