A Sacrifice for Us

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Well, some of you know Miss Maria that cooks for the school, and sometimes she helps out with things here as well. She’s helped prepare the food for our teenagers when they go to camp and that sort of thing. She makes some incredible things.

I had some of her spaghetti sauce one time, and spaghetti sauce is one of those things I can take or leave. I don’t hate it, but I just as soon have the plain pasta sometimes. I tried hers, and it was incredible.

I could not stop eating this stuff And one day I found out she was going to be making it And I walked in there and said I want you to show me what you do Because I want to know how to make this And I won’t tell you what her secret is Because it’s not mine to tell you, you can ask her But I said no wonder Because the stuff she puts in the sauce is delicious And bad for you on its own And as things tend to be That tend to be both of those things Delicious and bad for you But no wonder the sauce is so delicious But I said, I want you to show me what it is you do. Because I’ve never been able to make sauce that tastes like that. If I have time, I tend to ask people, show me how you do this.

Or walk me through how this works. You know, when I was in high school, I had problems with the brakes on my car. And I called my grandfather.

I didn’t ask him, though, would you fix the brakes on my car? Would you change out the brakes and rotors? I said, I want you to show me how to change out the brakes and rotors.

I want you to explain this to me and walk me through it so I can learn, so I can understand. Sometimes I will even ask people to explain to me what they’re going to do or show me what they’re going to do, even if I have no intention of ever doing it myself. You know, Bob will be up here working on some leak on the roof, and not every time, but I have gone up there with him and said to him, show me where this spot leaks and explain to me what you’re going to do.

Now, my answer is just climb up there with a bucket of flex seal and let’s do this. And he’ll explain to me, now, y’all don’t want me to fix the stuff on the roof, but I have gone up there and said, show me just for my own curiosity, because I want to understand how this works and some of you are the same way you you want to understand when uh when now we have to be careful not to try to understand too much or we get asked to do things but there are some things here I don’t want to know how they work but I’m that way a lot in life I want to understand how this works even if it’s not something I can do anything about I want to understand this last week I talked to you about what Jesus mission was as we’re going through this series, who is Jesus?

And understanding not what particular churches say about him, not what world religions say about him, not what the world says about him, but what does his word say about him? Who does the Bible say that he is? As we’ve been going through this, we talked last week about what his mission was.

And I shared with you that there are all sorts of ideas, very wrong ideas, about what his mission was, that he came to be just an example. He came to teach us to be nice. And some of these things are not wrong in and of themselves.

They just don’t go far enough. Now, some of them are very wrong. Jesus came to be an example of how we could become gods too.

Okay, that’s completely against God’s Word. But one of the examples I talked about was he came to be an example. Well, he did, but that’s not all he came to be.

And so we looked at what God’s Word says about his mission, and it was to save sinners. That’s taught all throughout the New Testament. This morning, I think it’s helpful if we dig into why that is, because it helps us understand more deeply who he is and what he came to do.

And so as we’ve talked about already, that he came as a Savior. He came with this mission of saving sinners. I want us to look this morning at more at what the Bible says about how he did that, and what it shows us about him.

And so this morning we’re going to be in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 9. If you’ll turn there with me in your Bibles as you have the opportunity. If you don’t have your Bible or you can’t find it in your Bible, it’ll be on the screen for you as well.

But we’re going to look at what the Bible says about how he came to fulfill this mission, and he did it by becoming a sacrifice. And so we’re going to look at what that means. Once you’ve found it in your Bibles, if you’d stand with me, if you’re able too without too much difficulty as we read from God’s Word together.

We’re going to be in Hebrews 9 starting in verse 23 and going through verse 28 this morning. The writer of Hebrews says this starting in verse 23, therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. Leading up to this he’s writing about the sacrifices that had taken place in the temple, the blood sacrifices, the offerings of animals.

And he says, the copies in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things, I’m sorry, the copies of what was in the heavens would be purified through these actions, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. And I’ll explain more what that means in just a moment. He says in verse 24, for Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

Not that he should offer himself often, as the high priest enters the most holy place every year with the blood of another. He then would have had to suffer one. .

. Excuse me. Hebrews is tricky.

All right. Even in English, it’s tricky. Verse 26.

Let’s try that again. He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once at the end of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. And you may be seated.

So this talks about Jesus being a sacrifice. That’s how he saved us, by becoming a sacrifice. And we hear this term sacrifice and often we think of giving something up.

You know, I’m sacrificing sleep for my kids because they wake up in the middle of the night wanting milk or a drink of water or something. We’re sacrificing that sleep. We sacrifice our time.

We sacrifice this and that. But here’s the thing. Jesus didn’t just make sacrifices.

The book of Hebrews tells us that he became a sacrifice. And that is a very different thing altogether. to become a literal sacrifice, an offering for sin.

And so to understand who Jesus is and what he did, to understand that better, we need to look at the Old Testament system of sacrifices and understand that. And it’s a deep subject, it’s a tricky subject, it’s a subject that I still come to from time to time and say, oh, I didn’t understand that part of it. So this morning, I’m not going to pretend that any of us are going to become experts on the Old Testament system of sacrifices.

But we need to at least have some basic understanding of what’s going on here in order to understand what the New Testament teaches about what Jesus did. Because it calls him a sacrifice, it even refers to him as a lamb, John the Baptist. In John chapter 1 said, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The apostle Paul referred to Jesus as the Passover lamb.

The apostle Peter referred to Jesus as a lamb without blemish. In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John talks about Jesus coming back as the Lamb, conquering. And so there’s this idea of Jesus being a Lamb and being a sacrifice.

And some of the things that we need to understand about the Old Testament sacrifices, again, I said we wouldn’t get too deep into the details, but there are some big highlight things we need to understand. A sacrifice was supposed to be blemishless. It was supposed to be without any kind of blemish or defect.

So God didn’t want you to bring your three-legged sheep to be sacrificed because it wasn’t as much of a sacrifice. He wanted something that was going to be precious to you. He wanted the best of your flock.

So it had to be blemishless. Also, a sacrifice had to be blameless. If the sheep had any sin of its own, then it couldn’t bear responsibility for the persons.

And so that’s why, thankfully, there was never an instance of human sacrifice in Scripture that was commanded by God. I know there was the situation with Isaac and Abraham, but that was a test of faith, not a legitimate sacrifice, because God didn’t allow him to follow through with it. So the sacrifice had to be blameless.

That’s why sheep were chosen and bulls and goats instead of humans. It had to be without blemish. And the sacrifice bore the guilt for the guilty party.

There were some instances of sacrifice where the priest would come to the animal and place hands on the animal. And it was a symbolic moment of transferring the guilt of the people onto that animal before that animal was sacrificed. So sacrifice had to be someone or something that could bear the guilt and the subsequent punishment. When you think about it, it’s not fair that a lamb would have to die in our place.

It’s not fair that a bull would have to be sacrificed. It’s not fair. They are not the ones that did anything wrong.

Now, I’m not Mr. Animal Rights, but I’m just saying they’re not the ones, they’re bearing the punishment, but they’re not the ones that committed the crime. So a sacrifice was made to bear the guilt and the punishment on behalf of somebody else and to cover the guilt of the sinner.

There were instances, and again, all these sacrifices were different. There were different offerings for different reasons. In some of the sacrifices, the priest would come in and sprinkle the blood on the altar as a covering for sin.

And all of this is wrapped up and tied up in the idea of Jesus being a sacrifice, or being the sacrifice for our sins. All of this fit within this sacrificial system. But in this Old Testament system, it required constant sacrifices.

I mean, you had to stay on top of it. there were sacrifices going on every day in the temple just about. They were offering animals, they were sprinkling blood, they were doing all of these things every day because you had to constantly atone for sin.

Do you and I just sin occasionally or do we do it every day? Okay, I was going to say some of you are afraid to answer. Got this wide-eyed look.

Every day, yes, every day right here. As much as I try not to, it’s an everyday thing. And so if we had to go and atone for that every time, I mean, you would think eventually you’re going to get to a lamb shortage in Israel.

But they were having to offer offerings every day to deal with the problem of sin. But the New Testament, as much as it portrays Jesus as a sacrifice, it does not just portray Him as any old sacrifice. It doesn’t just portray Him as one of many in this long line of sacrifices going on and on and stretching back as far as the whole system went, it portrays him as the ultimate sacrifice.

It portrays him as the reason behind all of those. It portrays him as the fulfillment of all of those. It portrays him as the last one that’s necessary.

And so for us to understand Jesus and who he is and what he did, we have to understand that what all of those little sacrifices were supposed to be about, he really accomplished those things. He’s the one that did them once and for all. And we see in the book of Hebrews that Jesus’ sacrifice accomplished more than any earthly sacrifice ever could.

You know, the whole book of Hebrews is about the superiority of Jesus Christ over all these religious things that they had done. It was making the case to people who were saying, yeah, Jesus sounds like a good idea, but I still think following the law ought to get me there. I think the sacrifices ought to get me there.

I think the temple, the book of Hebrews is making the case, listen, if any of these things could do any good for your relationship with God, if they could really fix the problems that stand between you and God, then Jesus’ coming was unnecessary. But Jesus has not only done better than any of these, He’s fulfilled everything they tried to do and failed. And we see in the first verses we looked at this morning that Jesus’ sacrifice was conclusive in its fulfillment.

It was the final sacrifice that was needed. When we look at verse 23, and again, the wording can be a little challenging. I love Hebrews.

I love this book because it is so challenging. I come to it every time and learn something new and see something. Not something that no one has ever seen before.

Because if you see something in the Bible no one has ever seen before, red flags should be flying in your brain. But I’m talking about I see things that I have never seen before every time. And the wording here can be a little bit confusing.

when he says, therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things, the copies of the things in the heavens are the sacrifices here on earth. They’re saying that what has taken place in the temple all these years is merely a picture of what is going on in heaven and dealing with the problem of sin. It was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

So he teaches here that there’s a spiritual reality in heaven and that it’s merely copied here on earth. That so much of what they were putting their trust in was just the picture to point them to the reality. These sacrifices were the picture designed to point them to the reality of their need for Jesus’ sacrifice.

And so as important as the animal sacrifices were, they were merely shadows of this sacrifice Jesus was going to make. So why hang on to the shadow when you now could see the real scripture is the case that he’s making. The sacrifice of Jesus dealt with the spiritual reality in heaven, which is our standing with God.

There is a reality to whether we are right with God or not. See, all of us have sinned. All of us have disobeyed God.

Our sin is anything we think, do, say, or don’t do. Think, say, do, or don’t do. Did I say that right?

I’m using the definition they gave to our preteen kids because it’s the best definition of sin I’ve ever heard, but I sometimes get it out of order. Think, say, do, or don’t do that displeases God. And you know what?

We’re all guilty. Oh, the preacher called me a sinner today. Yeah, the preacher said the preacher was a sinner too.

We’re all guilty. And that sin separates us from God. And there is a reality in which you and I are either right with God or we are not right with God.

And he says that reality is only affected by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ dealt with our standing with God. It dealt with whether or not we were right with God, where those sacrifices really did nothing other than point us to the real sacrifice. The whole sacrificial system then is kind of like the training wheels.

And Jesus fulfilled the plan that the sacrifices pointed to. And so it treats Jesus’ sacrifice as final because after he’s done the ultimate sacrifice, what is there left to do? What can the blood of bulls and goats and lambs and pigeons and turtle doves, what can the blood of these created beings accomplish that the blood of the creator could not?

Let me tell you this this morning, if Jesus’ blood was not enough to save you, there’s not a lamb in creation that’s powerful enough to do it. And if the work that Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross was not enough to save you, there’s nothing you can do that’s good enough to be more powerful or more cleansing than what he’s done. If Jesus couldn’t do it, you and I don’t have a prayer of doing it.

So his sacrifice was conclusive in its fulfillment. It was complete in its effectiveness. It was only required once.

It was so powerful that it only had to be done one time. In verse 25, it talks here about how the high priest would enter into the holy place and make sacrifices for the people every year. Now this is referring to a specific sacrifice.

They did sacrifices more often than that. But he says even with this big sacrifice, the high priest went in one time a year. Every year.

It had to be redone every year. Imagine losing your salvation and having to go through this every year. It would be really stressful for one thing.

But imagine having to go and get right with God once a year. And having to make sure you belong to Him once a year. And so they’d go and make this sacrifice every year.

Other sacrifices were made more frequently. But it says in verse 25, Jesus did not have to offer himself often. And that word there for often in the Greek, even though it can mean dozens and dozens and dozens of times, it really is just a word that means multiple times.

So when it says he didn’t have to offer himself often, it just means he didn’t have to offer himself more than once. Jesus didn’t have to make this sacrifice more than once. Once was enough.

The sacrifice wasn’t needed a second time. And we get to verse 26, and he explains to us why it’s so important to know that the sacrifice wasn’t needed a second time. He says, because if it was, if he had to go like the high priest and make this year after year, he then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world.

So the writer of Hebrews is making the case that if he had to do it more than once, if the sacrifice was not powerful enough, that once was enough, then it would be needed over and over and over. If you even needed a second sacrifice, you’d need it over and over and over and over. Jesus would have to die continually.

And this goes back to what he talks about in Hebrews chapter 6 with the idea of if the sacrifice of Jesus were not enough, there would remain no sacrifice for sin because we’d be requiring, we’d be putting Jesus to death over and over and over again. If the death of Jesus, if the sacrifice of Jesus wasn’t enough in one shot, it was never going to be enough. He’d have to be sacrificed like these animals over and over.

But he didn’t need to be. It says there in verse 26 that he showed up, he appeared, and his one sacrifice was enough to cancel the sin. When we see that word put away, the Greek word talks about canceling a debt.

Talks about canceling, annulling the effects of that sin. And Jesus, with His one appearance, Jesus, with His one sacrifice, did everything, everything that was necessary to cancel out the sin of those who believe. His one sacrifice was enough.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here trying to explain. It was enough, but it’s such an important point, we can’t afford to miss it. And if it takes until the seventh time I say it was enough for somebody to understand it was enough, then I guess saying it seven times is worth it.

And we see also here that Jesus’ sacrifice was broad in its scope. It was enough for everyone. Verses 27 and 28 tell us this.

It talks in verse 27 about every human being destined to die. Now, if the Lord tarries, if the Lord delays His coming, everybody in this room will die. I spent some time thinking about my own mortality this week because of the death of the Queen, and I know some of you all are tired of hearing about it.

Some of you are at home watching the coverage and can’t get enough. But it just struck me weird because she was one of those figures that had been around for so long, I thought maybe she’s immortal, she’s never going to die, maybe she’s part robot or something. And I don’t mean to be disrespectful.

But when she died, I thought, huh. I mean, I know in my mind I’m going to die, but that just kind of brought it home all over again. Kind of a downer of a thought.

But the Bible says it’s appointed to all of us to die once. And after that, the judgment. See, that’s not all there is.

There is a point where that reality of whether we’re right with God or not comes into play. We’re all destined to die and then the judgment. We’re destined to stand before God and give an answer.

And that applies to everybody, verse 27 says. But looking at everybody, verse 27 also says, I’m sorry, verse 28 says, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. Jesus was offered a single time to bear the sins of a multitude.

That one sacrifice was good, not just for him and not just for a few other people. When somebody would bring sacrifices to the temple, they would be good for them or for their family. When the priest would bring the sacrifice once a year, it would be good for the nation for that year.

Jesus, his sacrifice doesn’t have those kinds of limitations on it. And when you look at the times in this passage that he uses words like often or many or once, you know, we can look at this and say, well, he came to be a sacrifice for many. I thought he was a sacrifice for everybody.

He’s not saying many in the sense of not everybody. He’s saying many in contrast to the discussion of once. It’s appointed once to die, and yet everyone dies.

He was offered once, even though these sacrifices were offered many times and were good for a limited number of people and a limited scope. He was offered once a limited offering with an unlimited scope. It’s a play on concepts here, I believe.

We don’t want to read too much into it and say he’s saying it’s not for everybody. But these many offerings were very limited in their scope, whereas the one offering was not. It applies to many.

In Christ, there is a limited number of sacrifices. It’s limited to one. Again, as I’ve said, once was enough.

But as far as being effective, it’s limitless. it can save any of us it can save any of us who are willing to come to him I talked last week about paul’s description of himself and how he started out and he told timothy you know I’ve come to this place where I’m an apostle and I’m a servant of the lord but I started out as this blasphemer I started out as this wicked guy and what made the difference was jesus christ he talks about this in first timothy chapter one and he says what made the difference was jesus christ and he saved me as an example. Meaning, He took me, who I call the worst of sinners, and He saved me.

And this shows a pattern to you all, that if He could save me, if He could take me from being here and put me where I am, then there’s nobody else that He can’t save. Because even today, we hear it. You don’t know what I’ve done.

You don’t know how far from God I’ve wandered. I don’t know of anybody in this room that’s been out rounding up Christians and executing them, so unless somebody wants to fess up right now, you know, you’re not as bad off as the Apostle Paul. And here we see again that the Scriptures are making the point that there’s nobody that He can’t save.

His sacrifice is enough, not just for one or two people, but it’s enough for many. It’s enough for everybody who will come to Him by faith. This morning we need to understand this is how He did it.

When I told you last week, or better said when the Scriptures told you last week, that Jesus’ purpose in coming was to save sinners. His mission here was to save sinners. This is how he did it.

He didn’t do it by showing us an example of how we could find it ourselves. He came to become a sacrifice. He didn’t come to make sacrifices, although he certainly did.

We’ve talked about this in our study of the book of Mark. There were times that I’m sure Jesus in his humanity just wanted to go take a nap, or just wanted something to eat, or just wanted to be left alone for a minute, and still he went out and dealt with the crowds. He made sacrifices, but his purpose was not to come and make sacrifices.

His purpose was to come and become a sacrifice, to take the guilt that you and I bore. You and I are guilty before God because of our sin. And if we go off into eternity with that guilt on our accounts, then we deal with the consequences.

We deal with the punishment. We deal with continued eternal separation from God in a place called hell. And I’m not saying that to you as a scare tactic.

People talk about, oh, you preach fire and you preach this, you try to scare people. The fire to me is not the scariest part. The scariest part is being separated from God.

And we will deal with that for eternity, that separation from the God who created us and loves us because we’ve allowed sin to come in between us. If we die with that guilt on our accounts, That’s what we have to look forward to. But Jesus took responsibility for that sin.

He was willing to die in our place. And He became that sacrifice that we put the guilt on. And we enlisted to bear the punishment.

Just like a lamb or a bull or a goat would have done in the Old Testament system. Except in His case, once was enough. And once covered it all.

There was a sacrifice required to pay for your sin. And to make you right with God. and Jesus Christ became that sacrifice.

Folks, it is not about all the good you can do. It’s not about all the religious rituals you can perform or how much you can come to church or how much you give. All of those are good things to varying degrees.

But the only thing that is going to get you right with God, the only thing that is going to bring you peace with Him and a relationship with Him and forgiveness of sins and a clean slate is not being a part of Central Baptist Church. It’s not giving money. It’s not trying to be a good person or being baptized or participating in the Lord’s Supper or any of these things.

It is recognizing that the Son of God came and became a sacrifice for you. When He was nailed to the cross, He took responsibility for your sins. And I believe that’s why He cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Because when He took responsibility for our sins, He experienced the separation from the Father. I can’t explain to you how all that works, how God became separated from God, but I believe that’s what happened. He tasted that separation for us, and then He was punished in our place.

He shed His blood and He died as a sacrifice. But you know, anybody could claim to be that sacrifice. Anybody could claim to deal with our sins.

Jesus backed it up by rising again three days later like He promised He would. He walked out of that grave and He left no doubt for those who saw Him dead, saw Him buried, and then saw Him alive again. He left no doubt for them that He really was able to do the things that He promised He would do.

And this morning, if you recognize that you’re separated from God, Jesus Christ was the sacrifice for your sins. If you know you need a relationship with Him, if you know you need a relationship with the Lord, that what you’ve got is not right and it’s not working, don’t come to Him through all your religious rituals, through all your efforts, your good works, and all your trying. Come to Him through Jesus Christ. This morning, it is as simple as believing that Jesus Christ died in your place To make you right with God because you couldn’t do it on your own.

Believing that Jesus rose again to prove it. And then asking God for the forgiveness He’s already offered to you.