Dennis Tuuri

# Hebrews 9:15-28

Today’s sermon text is found in Hebrews 9:15-28. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

And for this reason, He is the mediator of the new covenant by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant that those who are called may receive the promises of the eternal inheritance. For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.

For a testament is enforced after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives. Therefore, not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.” Then likewise, he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry.

And according to the law, almost all things are purged with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. Therefore, it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavenly should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 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 blood of another. 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 that 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.

—

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text. We pray, Father, that you would help us to understand the truths of it. We know that this is the very heart of this book, Lord God, and the writer is very skillful and much more familiar with the things of the old covenant than we are. And we confess that we’re a people today, Lord God, that have kind of slipped from literacy.

And it’s hard for us to read these words and to understand what’s being said. Lord God, we need your Holy Spirit always, but certainly today as well. Reveal this word to us to help us to be transformed by this word, to help us to hear the gospel. And what wonderful words of gospel proclamation are here, Father, and we thank you for them. And then to understand our proper response to that gospel as well. In Jesus’s name we ask it.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Now we have a liturgy here at this church and other churches have different kinds of liturgy, but we don’t kneel at the confession of sins here. So I can use an illustration here and not hit too close to home, although it hits close to home as well. We come to church, let’s say, every Sunday, and we kneel. We confess our sins. We’re raised up. Then we stand, we hear God’s word, and then we sit.

We’re at peace with God, and we partake of this ritual, the Lord’s table. And we can sort of think, well, this is all neat stuff. Let’s think of our kids. Well, they’re humbled. You know, they know that they’re not the hot stuff that they think they are because they confess their sins and yet they’re forgiven of those sins. They get to rise up afresh and then become better people through the hearing of the word and sit and come to peace with the knowledge of how they’re supposed to act their lives and they get new knowledge and they become more and more moral and more and more upright. And then they have this Lord’s supper and that helps them because then they feel connected to everybody and psychologically it’s difficult for them to be excluded and so they’re going to be a lot better people if they take the supper with us.

And let’s say that’s the thinking as we come to church. That thinking, the way I think I’ve expressed it here, if I’ve done the illustration correctly, is worthless. And that liturgy is worthless. Does no good. In fact, it’s bad for us because we’re seeking all these things apart from the one I did not name, Jesus Christ. We are not here to make ourselves better people through ritual actions as well designed as they may be.

We’ve been discussing in the book of Hebrews the ritual actions that these Hebrews were tempted to go back to. And people, this was a liturgy that Moses saw in heaven and God made great effort and Moses made great effort to obey the word of God that he didn’t do anything apart from that pattern and had the perfect liturgy. You see, the best we can ever do is to try to well, we’ll mature as a church. But see, they didn’t have to.

They had everything spelled out for the liturgy. All the details were there and they could go through it and it could do them zero good. The heavenly liturgy could accomplish nothing for them if they weren’t trusting in the God behind it. If all they were trying to do was come up better people, somehow, because of this neat ritual and gee, the kneeling, standing, sitting thing is kind of cool and the kids psychologically partaking of the table—that’s good for them and all that stuff—you see, this is an illustration designed to get across again what I said for the last few weeks. This is why this scripture, this book, this sermon, and particularly the heart of it here, you know, is so negative or at least can be perceived that way in terms of the Old Testament rituals because he’s dealing with the people that we’re hung up with.

Now, we’re not tempted to leave Jesus out, are we? Or are we? Maybe we are. You see, I think we are. I think in our Adamic fall, that’s precisely what we’re tempted to do—go through a ritualistic action, as good as it may be, and we intend to keep it. You know, now if everybody gets idolatrous, we’ll burn it like, you know, God did with the serpent. Grind it up. Well, I’m not saying we’re going to change our liturgy.

We’re trying to do as best we can. It’ll mature. But my point is that, you know, you are also tempted in like fashion with these Hebrews to approach the liturgy, not in exactly a parallel fashion, but we’re tempted to leave Jesus out and just want to be better people and want to make our kids moral young upstanding men and women. That is not the goal.

The sermon to the Hebrews, if it’s about anything, it’s about the centrality of Jesus Christ. This man, this second person of God—God the second person—this one who came and accomplished what these liturgies back then were a foreshadowing of. And what we do now is built upon the realization of what he has accomplished once for all two thousand years ago.

So there’s a centrality of Jesus Christ that is clearly, over and over and over, hammered home in this book. This author was nothing if not thorough. Am I right there? It seems like you’ve heard the same thing over and over and over for the last few weeks or maybe even month or two. And in a way, you have. He’s giving us details, but this big central section—you know, the first two sections were a little simpler to comprehend. This big section: Jesus Christ came as high priest of good things to come. And it goes into great detail. It uses the illustration of the tabernacle and the priest and the blood and all this stuff.

And he goes over and over this, but don’t forget the central point. The central point is the supremacy of the person and work of Jesus. And if he’s not central to our liturgy, we’ve messed up. And even if he is central, even if we say Jesus, you know, for two hours here and you go out into the week and the only thing you remember is kind of the ritual actions instead of focusing upon the person of Jesus—see, we’ve still messed up and it’s not going to do any good.

Jesus is central now, today. And what this is supposed to be is a reminder of the need to serve Jesus for the rest of our lives and certainly the rest of this week.

This text is more detailed. Today’s text piles detail upon detail. It’s connected to what we just read in verse 15. It says, “And for this reason, he is the mediator of the New Testament.” So we’re this side of that central hinge pin of Hebrews 11. Verse 11—he’s talked primarily about the insufficiencies of the old covenant. They were bad because they wore out because the people were sinful, but even beyond that, they were provisional and could not accomplish fully what the coming of Jesus would accomplish definitively. They couldn’t accomplish anything apart from that.

But even focused on that, you see what is it? We said—we saw last week from the text—that the Holy Spirit has now shown something definitive in the coming of Jesus Christ that wasn’t seen as clearly in the rituals, as wonderful as they were, prior to the coming of Jesus. What is it? It’s the self-offering of God. It is the giving up of his life for us. That’s what we talked about in the gospel of John.

You know, the whole focal point of the Old Testament, the liturgies, the case laws, the way you lived—all the whole thing is all a picture of the coming of Jesus Christ. We were talking in our Sunday school class for the 12 to 14-year-olds about Song of Solomon today, or Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. It all leads to that consummation, right? The marriage supper at the very middle of that book is the central center of it. And so the whole Old Testament looks forward and then when Jesus comes, we see something that they could understand somewhat back then. But now the Holy Spirit has made manifest in much bolder, broader terms that God has come to die for us. The self-offering of God, I think, is very critical to this.

The way into the service of God was not yet made manifest fully in the Old Testament. That manifestation is the self-offering of Jesus Christ. The nature of our God is at the center of this new manifestation. And what we saw last week was that text culminated in a cleansed conscience.

Okay? So it says, “For this reason he is the mediator of the new covenant. So we’re a new covenant church, right? In a proper sense, we are. Well, to what purpose did Jesus mediate the new covenant? Well, we were just told in verse 14 from last week. Jesus Christ offered himself without spot to God. I’ll read the whole verse. How much more then shall the blood of Christ, who through eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from works that produce death to serve the living God. Cleanse your conscience to serve God.

And we said, and we’ve sung about it. We sang about it last week. We sang that song, “Five Bleeding Wounds He Bears,” he got on Calvary. It said this: “Now our heavenly Adam enters with his blood within the veil. Oh, that’s today’s song. I’m sorry. I got my songs mixed up. But when we sang about that last week, Oh, here it is. Okay. “From five bleeding wounds He bears, My God is reconciled. His pardoning voice I hear. He owns me for his child. I can no longer fear.” So the cleansing of the conscience definitively. “With confidence I now draw near. With confidence I now draw near, and Father Abba Father cry.”

So you know, we said it’s not just so your consciences would be clean but so that you could serve God. So that you could go through the purification, as it were, of the old covenant ritual and then enter into the ascension to the throne room of God and bring your tribute offering and be renewed again and how to change the world and have that peace offering with God. So the purification of our consciences is to the end that we would serve God.

So we don’t want to see it as the end-all and be-all. On the other hand, you know, the other ditch that we are likely to fall into, of course, is that purified conscience—we just sort of believe it now and don’t think about it. Well, if the text tells us that central to this book and central to the beautiful further manifestations of God’s grace of the new covenant, central to that—”for this reason, Jesus became the mediator of the new covenant to cleanse your conscience to serve God”—then we want to talk a little bit. We want to think a little bit. We want to focus upon the cleansing of our consciences, do we not?

Get your Bibles out. We’re going to go through some pick Bible verses on the conscience. In other words, you know, the appropriation of this wonder—it’s gospel. He’s purified and purged you definitively, right? To the end that you would serve God. Well, that means you can’t serve God fully if your conscience isn’t cleansed and purified. Okay, that implication is there.

Well, we read first of all—turn to Romans. Well, that’s not the right one. Turn to Acts 23:1.

Paul is talking to the Ephesian elders and he has something to say and what he tells them—go ahead, turn to Acts 23:1 and we’ll read that verse. Okay. “And Paul earnestly beholding the council”—this is the council of elders. He’s kind of, you know, this is kind of a farewell speech from Paul. This is a big deal. This kind of is the great farewell discourse of him to these Ephesian elders. And what does he, how does he begin it? “Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God unto this day.”

That’s what we want. We want, when we pass the torch to the next generation, when we finish any particular work, whether it’s a short thing or a long thing, we want to be able to make the declaration that Paul makes, that we’ve done the work that God has given to us with a good conscience. You see, that’s why, for this reason, Jesus is mediator of the new covenant.

Now, turn to Acts 24:16. He didn’t get there just because he woke up one day and said, “Gosh, I’ve got a pretty good conscience in what I’ve done here. I haven’t done anything wrong in Acts 24:16.” This is what he says: “And herein do I exercise myself.” So he’s saying, “This is what I work hard at. This is my daily exercise. I get up and do my exercise.” No, it’s the same idea. This is what he’s working at. It’s not something that’s just going to fall out of heaven to him. It’s not a gift in the sense of you just get it and you don’t do anything for it. He exercises himself for this particular goal.

And what is the goal? “That he does all this exercise and work himself up to accomplish to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man.”

Now, that’s what I’m calling you to. That’s the responsibility of the gospel—that Jesus has definitively purged your consciences. You are not to then defile them again. And just the opposite, you are supposed to work hard to maintain a good conscience both toward God and toward men. That’s our responsibility.

You see, it’s a goal. It should be a goal of our lives. Here at the center of Hebrews, the big message is that Jesus mediates the new covenant to the end that you have a clean conscience. And what he tells you is that you are then responsible to make sure you work along with that and you do the work that’s necessary to keep your conscience clean.

Look at Romans 13:5. Turn to Romans 13:5. How do you, okay, so in general, we exercise our conscience. We know that means—that’s enough. We don’t need more details. But let’s look at a couple more details here in terms of what that means.

In Romans 13:5, we read this: “Wherefore, you must needs be subject—what? Subject to what? He’s talking about the governing authorities in the land. Not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.”

So there are two reasons for obeying the civil magistrate. He’s saying one is because of wrath. If you don’t, he’s going to hit you. He’s going to beat you. So one reason you obey authorities—and here specifically in the civil arena—is because of the punishments that will come to you if you don’t obey them. And that means a civil magistrate, by the way, should punish people, right? And it should be hurtful to them.

But the second reason is for conscience sake. You see, so the civil authorities are ordained by God. And one reason to obey him is they might catch you doing what’s wrong and beat you. But the other reason is that you might have a good conscience toward God and toward man—toward God and to those he places in authority over you.

One of the specific ways we all should exercise ourselves this week to have a good conscience toward God and men is to think about our conscience relative to the authorities, the representatives of the authority of King Jesus, God has set over us. Not just in the state, but in the family, in the church, in the workplace. You see, in all the relationships we have where there’s an authority placed over us—wives to husbands, children to parents—you want to exercise yourselves to have a good conscience toward those authorities. You want to be subject to them.

You know, I mean, we are dominion men and women, and we want our kids to be dominion men and women. Next week, we’ll see that the implications of this priestly action of Jesus Christ is going to subdue all of our enemies. Just like we sang about this morning, right? The big flow of the text today that we read is that Jesus died. He’s established the covenant. He’s opened the door to heaven. The victory is accomplished. We enter in and we enter into making heaven here on earth as well.

So that’s all true. And next week we’ll talk about the conquering aspect. But see, the ditch that we tend to want to fall into is, you know, we’re free Christian men. We’re freemen. We don’t submit to anybody. And that is the opposite of the Christian faith. Paul says that will give a defiled conscience.

If you have a bad attitude toward authority—the church, the state, the family, the workplace, whatever it is—you see, if Jesus came to purge our consciences to the end that we might serve God, what happens to our service of God when we’re not subject to the authorities that God has placed over us? The logic is that our service will suffer. And it will. I don’t care how hard you try to serve God after that. If your conscience is defiled, it will hinder your ability to serve God.

And one of the big areas we’re to exercise our conscience in is relative to the authorities that God has placed over us. You see, there are always these tensions in the Bible. We are dominion men. We are powerful, strong. Gibbor chayil—mighty men of valor. And our wives are, you know, mighty women of valor. The Proverbs 31 wife—that’s what she is. The very first word. She’s a warrior wife.

But see, warriors are under submission to those with authority over them. Somebody’s always watching you and somebody is always watching the one watching you and somebody’s always watching them and giving you orders. So there’s no—see, we want to do one or the other and God says no. You are strong to serve him when you have a good conscience toward the authorities that God has placed over you.

Now I’m not picking these verses out for any particular reason. I just ran a concordance search on conscience in the New Testament. This word that’s used here, and these are the ones that came up and some of you—there’s quite a bit of repetition—but I’m just sort of talking about the ones that are there that tell us clearly what we should be doing.

Let’s see. Look at 2 Corinthians 1:12. For our rejoicing is this. So now we’ve talked about submission and now we’re talking about kind of the other thing, you know, another completely different aspect of our lives. We’re to have joy. And Paul says this is his rejoicing. “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world and more abundantly toward you.”

So he’s saying that our joy is linked to having a good conscience in terms of our walk. So if we don’t exercise ourselves as Paul did to have a good conscience, and our consciences get hurt, then it affects our ability to make war—Christian warfare in a proper sense—by servants. It affects our ability to exercise dominion, affects our ability to serve God, and it also affects the joy that we have in the context of our Christian walk.

And so, you know, for some of us it may be that our joy is diminished these days because our conscience is—we’ve not exercised ourselves to have a good conscience toward God and men. So conscience is essential to the warrior of God whose strength is the joy of the Lord. Conscience is central to our joy as well as to our service to God.

1 Timothy 1:19 is the next one I’d like us to look at. We’ll start at verse 18. “This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which were before on thee, that thou by them mightest war good warfare. So how do you war good warfare? Having or holding faith and a good conscience. So again, it’s a repetition that a good conscience is essential to waging warfare as Christians.”

“Which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck. So they’ve made shipwreck of their faith by not exercising themselves to have a good conscience toward God and men. You see the connection. Not only is your warfare going to be less effectual as your conscience becomes defiled and as you don’t exercise yourself to have a good conscience, but in actuality, you know, that thing that we talked about in Hebrews—the scary portions of Hebrews, right, where we can drift. Now, we’re not rowing the boat down the river, letting the river take us down the other way. We’re drifting.

There’s a waterfall down there for some of us, and we don’t know where it is, but at some point, God’s going to say, “Boom. He breaks your neck, and that’s it. You can’t recover, right? Impossibility of repentance.” That was an earlier warning in this book. Well, how do you get to that kind of shipwreck? You get to that kind of shipwreck by having a defiled conscience. You see, by putting away the exercise and the achievement then of a good conscience toward God and man. Do you see how important the conscience is in the Christian life?

One of the ways you do this is to not tell the truth. 1 Timothy 4:2—well, let’s just turn there. We’re real close. 1 Timothy 4:2. “Now the spirit speaketh expressly, verse one, that in the latter days some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and the doctrines of devils. Well, okay. But how does it end up by hurting their conscience?

Verse two: ‘Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their consciences seared with a hot iron and then forbidding to marry, etc.’ So when we speak lies in hypocrisy, when we are not people of truth but people who have, you know, hidden agendas, deceptions in our heart, saying one thing to one person, another thing to somebody else—when we speak lies in hypocrisy—that’s a specific way, one of the few that I could find in the Testament where God says this has, this is related to the searing of your conscience.

You exercise yourself to having a good conscience toward God and men by exercising yourself to speak the truth in love. To speak the truth in love. And if you don’t do that, then you end up with a seared conscience. You get weaker in your warfare for Christ. And in fact, you may make shipwreck of your faith through an inability or a lack of resolve to respond correctly to this wonderful gospel message.

Jesus has come to, looking at what he does—he definitively purges our conscience and we then defile them again through deceit, through disobedience to authorities, and then we end up having our weaker testimony. We don’t have the joy of the Lord in our hearts. We’re not making victory our base. We’re not having victory in warfare. Why? Because our consciences are defiled.

And if all you do is try to figure out how to do better victory and how to get more joy—let’s jazz the worship service up or let’s tone it down or whatever it might be, or let’s make my house cool and let’s get cable and let’s get satellite TV and let’s watch Lost a lot and let’s bring some joy to my life—you see, as opposed to working on your conscience, it’s not going to work. God says that the thing in back of much failures in Christian testimony, much failures in effective kingdom work, many failures in having Christian joy—you see, many failures in serving God.

Verse 14 of our text we looked at last week and that this text ties to inability to serve God comes because we’ve rejected the purification of our consciences by Jesus. We haven’t exercised ourselves to that end. Okay?

One last verse. It’s worse than that for you. If you’re feeling kind of bad already, it’s worse than that. Look at 1 Corinthians 10:29. Because now we’re going to find out it’s not just us that we’re responsible for in terms of conscience.

1 Corinthians 10:29. You know, this of course is the text where, you know, it’s big and long and you’ll find conscience used a lot in this. It’s used a lot in Hebrews, used a lot in 1 Corinthians 10, where the whole discussion of meat sacrificed to idols, right? And he says in verse 28, “If any man say unto you, this is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for their, for his sake that showed it. And for conscience sake, for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other. For why is my liberty judged of another man’s conscience?”

So we can work out the details of what he’s saying there, how we deal with the weak brother. But that’s not my point. One thing we know for sure from the text is that we are responsible not just to exercise our own conscience and have a good conscience before God, God, but we have obligations to each other to help each other’s consciences be pure—for conscience sake, not just your own. He’s saying you have an obligation not to ruin your brother’s conscience.

And immediate application: he’s thinking, “I’m, you know, denying God when I eat this food or when I have a drink of beer. And we, oh no, have the beer. It’s great for you. Hey, drink it up. Drink it up.” And we just cajole him into it as opposed to changing his truth system that says he shouldn’t drink that beer. And now, see, we’ve violated his conscience. Now we’ve done exactly the opposite. We’ve reversed the effects of what the Hebrews text tells us is the entire purpose—that Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant to purge men’s consciences. We’ve reversed that. We’ve gone against the blood of Jesus Christ.

And the implications, of course, is you’re going to—it’s a double sin because you’re not just going to hurt his conscience, but somewhere the conscience, the knowledge of God that he writes upon our hearts and minds—unless your conscience is seared—you’re going to know you did it too. So it’s going to defile your conscience too. You see?

So conscience, you know, it’s so important that, you know, Hebrews is thick doctrinal stuff, a lot of typology and things that are difficult to understand. And, you know, I felt like I, you know, might have confused people last week. And I wanted to sort of drive this home. There’s a wonderful gospel message that is the basis for the text we’re looking at today.

But the gospel response to that gospel message is this: working hard at our consciences. Okay?

So that’s the doctrine, some of the doctrine of the New Testament, the teaching about your conscience, its importance, and it all, you know, once we see that the purpose of Jesus shedding his blood is to purify our consciences, right, to the end that we might serve him, we see the reality of that in the work of Jesus.

Well, then all these other texts take on a whole new life. I think we believe them for what they say. But here we recognize that if we defile our conscience, if we have—or we defile other people’s consciences through foolishness or carelessness on our part toward our brothers, you see, we’re literally, you know, ignoring the blood of Jesus and acting as if it didn’t happen.

So conscience sake, what are you going to do with this? You know, I hope that you think about these areas: truthfulness—explicitly the scriptures tell us about that. Explicitly, authority. Explicitly, our obligations to each other. And then seeing the positive side: that victory, joy, all these things come from a cleansed conscience.

But you know, if that’s it, if you don’t go to your TV watching or your movie watching and what movies you listen to, or you know, the testimony of the Holy Spirit when you don’t do what’s right relative to your wife, or when a wife doesn’t do what’s right in submitting to the authority of the husband—if you don’t work on those areas, I don’t know what it is for each of you. I know what it is for a lot of you actually. I know more than I can say here. But you know too. You know the difficulties you struggle with. You know the besetting sins. And the point is, you got to drive a nail through the heart of that sin and get rid of it.

You young men, this is why I go over and over and over to you and I tell you and I try to remind you regularly: put away sexual sin. It is so prevalent in our culture. And you know, I say it to the young men and then I hope the dads hear it because there’s nothing that will destroy a husband’s leadership quicker, I think, than sexual sin on his part, because he feels defiled. You know, we feel defiled about sexuality if we’re doing it right, I think, in our culture. But you will really feel the judgment of God—not the culture, not our Greek kind of mindset that this stuff is kind of bad, the body’s bad. We want to fly away from the body. We’ll talk about that in a minute too. That’s opposite from what the scriptures say.

But then we have the condemnation, the positive judgment on our conscience by the Holy Spirit if we sin in these areas. And if we have a defiled conscience, what did the text tell us? We can’t lead well. We can’t wage war. We can’t lead men as Paul was leading men. And one of the biggest reasons for marital problems is a defiled conscience on the part of the father, or the husband rather, because he will not deal definitively with sexual sin—thoughts and actions.

So, you know, I don’t know what it is. I know what it is for an awful lot of you, but you know, these are big areas. And God says, you know, I want you to think about it when you come up and offer, bring yourself and your tribute offering to God today. Think about what it is specifically you want to commit. Which sin patterns that you want to really commit before God today and do some transaction, right?

We don’t purchase things on Sunday because the transaction—you know, buy from me, Jesus says. You know, clothing, righteousness—that’s what goes on in the worship service. God says, set that day apart for that transaction. Well, in that transaction today, you know, bring to him what sin is defiling your conscience, making you less joyful, less victorious for the Lord Jesus Christ, less of a leader in your family or in your marriage relationship.

So we need to take this seriously.

Young people, you know, be careful what movies you watch. It’s that simple. You can think of all the applications, right? Walk not in the counsel of the ungodly. I’ll tell you, you know, most movies you see are the counsel of the ungodly. Now, they use an awful lot of biblical imagery because that’s what resonates with people. That’s what sells tickets. But for the most part, these guys are not giving you Christian counsel.

Now, you know, mature people can watch this stuff and it reinforces biblical themes. You know, the wrath of man shall praise God. But young people and dads, I know fathers, or husbands, unplug their TVs. That’s not a bad thing to do. That’s a good thing to do to discipline ourselves.

So, and young people, you listen to music. Well, I don’t listen to words. Yeah, you do. Your mind hears those words. You’re thinking about those words. And then if you’re writing songs, I sure hope it, you know, my daughter is 13 and she’s starting to write a lot of songs and I really enjoy that. It’s wonderful. You know, may we write songs that glorify God.

I started Song of Songs today in Sunday school class for the 12 to 14-year-olds. There’s the love song of all love songs. That’s the song. I’ll tell you how to write songs. Supposed to write songs canonistically in seven parts. Only ones that are good. No, that’s not right. But it is the epitome of song. You see, in whatever we do, we don’t want to listen to the counsel of the ungodly and walk in it because it leaves us with a defiled conscience.

So, warnings here. You know, husbands, if you—the sin, the Adamic sin that the second Adam came to reverse was certainly first against God, but it was immediately against our wives. Right? Adam is standing there and he lets Eve take that fruit that God has said will produce death. I mean, he really is. We joke around, we use the term pig dog relative to him, and he was, but you know, all kidding aside, it is the sin of men to exercise improper leadership of their wives.

And you know, if you’re always cranking on your wife or what she’s not doing right, you just stop doing that, okay? Just stop doing it for your own sake, for your own joy, for your effectiveness as a Christian man. Just stop doing that. That’s what Adam does. He yells at his wife all the time, hits her, right? That’s what fallen men do. You look at Lamech—boy, he’s got two wives. He’s going to beat around and do whatever he wants to with. That’s, you know, there is nothing probably more pervasive in many homes in our culture that defiles the conscience as opposed to a lack of love, loving servant leadership in the home by fathers.

I tell you, you know, and I tell myself, we got to put that stuff away. Okay?

So hopefully you will, you know, work hard on that this week.

And now we look briefly at the text before us. We’ll return to this next week, but we look briefly at it today. And let’s just quickly do a few things here and set some thoughts in motion and get us ready for next week.

All right. So “for this reason”—I’ve been talking about that. I’ve been exposing those first couple of words and I think it’s important for us. “For this reason, he is the mediator of the new covenant.” And this first section, you know, the old—it matches the first section leading toward the center where the old covenant wasn’t able to bring completeness and finality. One of the words that John uses to describe the new covenant—well, here we have the finality, the establishment of the new covenant.

And the repeated refrain in this is blood and death, right? That’s this first section. And by that, verses 15 to 23, that’s what it’s all about—that the new covenant is established through the death of Jesus Christ. So he’s the mediator of the new covenant by means of death.

We’re told that right out of the get-go in verse 15. And by the way, this death is accomplishing “the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant that those who are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance.”

We’ve said that this author is not drawing a radical discontinuity between Old Testament saints and us. And here they’re linked together. Jesus cleanses the sins of the first covenant, but he also makes it broader to include us. “Those who are called may receive the promise.” So it’s comprehensive and I’ll just point that out.

Then what he does in verse 16 and 17 is give a general truth that when death occurs, the benefits of the will happen. We talked about this a little bit before when we looked at the matching section. But in verses 16 and 17, it’s a basic truth: “Where a testament is, or must of necessity be the death of the one who writes the will.” A testament, a will, a covenant—same word—”is in force after men are dead since it has no power at all while the testator lives.”

So Jesus dies that he might affect the new covenant and then give us all the blessings of that last will and testimony, so to speak.

And then he gives an illustration in verses 18 and following from Exodus 24. And it’s an interesting thing because once more, this is an illustration taken from the wilderness. And we’ve seen him do that again. You know, the Hebrews are on the edge of moving out of the wilderness. Everything’s going to change in AD 70. Those 40 years are going to come to an end. So they’re in the wilderness. Will they enter into the promised land or not? Same thing he talked about earlier.

So here he uses a wilderness example and this was the establishment of the covenant that God made with Moses and in this establishment of the covenant we have that Moses sprinkled all the people. “So Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law.”

That’s the law of worship, by the way. Law is first worshiped, then governmental and family and civil. “He took the blood of calves and goats with water, scarlet wool and hyssop. Well, we don’t read the account that he took scarlet wool and hyssop and water. Those are references in the cleansing of the leprous person or a leprous house. So he’s, you know, now apparently this is what Moses really did use, but we’re not given that detail in the inspiration of God too.

And that’s kind of cool too, because what God does in Hebrews is he shows how all this stuff focuses on Jesus. So he takes Moses—who really did use this stuff—but now he gives us the detail that Moses was essentially also cleansing of the leprosy. That’s what Leviticus says you use hyssop and water and scarlet thread for. You know, Moses made a brush. It’s what he did here. It’s a branch and it’s tied on there and he dips it in the blood and does that sort of thing.

So you know, he made a branch—but it’s a branch that reminds us. We could spend, you know, all talking about the implications of the red thread, and you’ve heard that sort of stuff, and it’s all true. It’s all wonderful imagery. But the point is it links Moses’ establishment of the covenant with the purification from leprosy. You see?

So again, the focal point is this purification of sins so that we might enter into the promised land. We’re cleansed and purified so that we can serve, not so that we can die and go to heaven. So that we can serve God. Now see, that’s the whole purpose and it’s reminded of that here too.

“Took the blood of calves and goats with water, scarlet, wool, hyssop, sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.’ Likewise, he sprinkle”—Jesus is going to die for your sins but it’s the covenant that God’s commanding you. See, it demands a response.

“Likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. See, it doesn’t tell us that he did that either in the account in Exodus. Nowhere in Old Testament does tell us that. So people have thought about that. But the imagery is what’s important for this writer. These are literally true facts. But he’s building all this up to draw the idea that what was cleansed here on earth, including the tabernacle, has now been cleansed definitively by the work of Jesus Christ, the covenant is established by his death.

“According to the law, almost all things are purified with blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.”

Always wondered what that verse meant, haven’t you? “Almost, you know, all things are purged. No, almost all things indeed—almost all things according to the law. So he’s talking about the law and according to the law, almost everything—not quite everything—was purified with blood. What wasn’t purified with blood? Do you know your Bibles well enough? I didn’t.

Well, remember that this purification links up with the purification offering, so-called sin offering of Leviticus 4 and 5, right? You know, there are several different offerings and we’ve been talking about how all that he’s really focused on here is the purification offering and he’s intending us then to move into the service of ascension and tribute and peace. But he’s focusing on the purification offering throughout this entire section.

And that purification offering—there were different things you could bring according to Leviticus, different kinds of animals depending on how poor you were. Well, in Leviticus 5:11, we’re actually told that if you were really poor, you didn’t have to bring an animal. You could bring some flour. There’s the thing. “Almost all things are with blood. But this”—the bloodless purification offering—was an accommodation by God to poor people who didn’t even have a turtle dove they could manage to buy, could just bring a handful of flour.

Now I think that’s interesting imagery because we’re coming here, right, to blood and flour. So in any event, if you’ve wondered about that, I think that’s what it is. And it shows again the great accommodation of God to our circumstances.

In any event, then verse 23: “Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices.”

This is an odd verse. If you think just a little bit about it, what is it saying? It’s saying that the things in heaven had to be purified. That’s what it says, right? “Necessarily the copies of the things in heaven should be purified of these, but the heavenly things themselves purified,” in other words, “with better sacrifices than these.”

Why? Why would heaven need purification? Well, I don’t know the answer to that question. I do know that we are a heavenly people. And I do know, you know, that we are associated with the temple and tabernacle. In the Old Testament, when you sin, the temple, the worship service got sinful. And we go into the worship service in heaven and somehow definitively Jesus cleanses that as well. And I think it has something to do with us as a heavenly people. But again, the main thrust: he’s given us little interesting details, but the main thrust is that Jesus died and this death accomplished the blessings of the new covenant to flow to us and accomplished the definitive purification or purification of our lives.

And then he returns in the next couple of verses to the heavenly motif that we saw earlier. This whole—and he’s kind of led into it with verse 23—and now verse 24.

“For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself. That’s where reality is. We’re crazy. We’re all nuts here. We try to deny reality. But he lines us up with the heavenly realities every Lord’s day. Okay? So this is where reality is—in heaven. And Jesus goes into heaven itself, not to appear in the presence of God for us.”

Wonderful gospel promise. Remember, he ever lives to make intercession for us. He’s gone into the heavenly places to appear to God for us. For us. Remember what the Holy Spirit has revealed in Christ is the self-offering of this God who loves us so much that he sends his son to die for us. And more than that, that son ever lives to make intercession for us. Jesus has ascended to appear in the presence of God for us.

Praise God. We can’t fathom the depths of that kind of love, but we can certainly say, “Praise God. Any worries or difficulties I have are, you know, washed away by this flood of love from God that should be revealed to us in texts like this.”

If Jesus is appearing perpetually in heaven to make intercession for you, do you have any ultimate worries left, folks? Uh-uh. No, you don’t. No, it’s accomplished. You see, it causes us to rest.

“Not that he should offer himself often as the high priest enters the most holy place every year with blood of another. 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.”

Oh, we’ll come back to this next week, but what a wonderful verse. What a delightful, soul-refreshing verse. One, it does away with this Roman Catholic nonsense that Jesus has to offer himself in the sacrifices of communion weekly—once for all, finished, accomplished fact. And if we ever start, because of our emphasis on liturgy, start slipping into the idea that Jesus has to be sacrificed somehow at this table, God forbid. This is a very important text to keep: “He appeared once for all to offer that to God.”

But look, he mentions “the foundation of the world, but now once at the end of the ages.”

Where does the world end? The old world—on the cross with Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. You know, we read these Old Testament prophecies of the last days. We got last days madness and the rapture is coming and all this stuff. And it’s so sad. It’s so sad for people to get hung up in that stuff because they lose the beauty, the joy of knowing that we live now in the new age, not accomplished fully. We’ll see that in just a minute. But the definitive, the hinge point of history—it, you know, the great hinge point of history is the coming of Jesus Christ, doing away with the old world and starting the new one.

The flood, the greater Noah brings rest to his people through his work on the cross. “He has appeared—he has at the end of the ages—and look at this next phrase: ‘He has appeared to put away sin.’”

Now some people think, well, this means purge sin again. It’s putting away by ceremonial cleansing. No, I don’t think so, because the particular Greek word for put away means to demolish, to tear down, to get rid of—not to cleanse. The purpose of Christ’s appearing is to purify us that we might serve him in increasing holiness, righteousness, dominion, knowledge, that he might put away sin.

“Behold the Lamb of God, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. That’s what’s going on. Sin is being rolled back. It’s being—the world is like you. It’s going through progressive sanctification. The purpose of Jesus coming, the first coming, his death on the cross was to put away sin. It is not needful for him to return at the end of time to put away sin. The first coming put away the sin.”

And again, there are men and women—when you go home, you know, C.S. Lewis said the home is the worst place you’d want to let be. Always talk about the home, how great it is to be a Christian in a Christian family, but we know what it’s like to be honest with ourselves: those four walls. Men think they can be themselves and that usually means they’re fallen, boisterous, domineering, crude selves. You see, that’s what we do.

May God put away more and more of your sin this week based upon the cleansing of your conscience, turning to him. Your response to this great truth that Jesus Christ has appeared to put away sin is to put away sin. Is to take the sins that you know you’re doing and confess them before God. Accept the cleansed conscience and commit yourself afresh to following him.

Jesus Christ has come to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

The last two verses: “And as it is appointed for man to die once, but after this the judgment, 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.”

A couple of things. This is Day of Atonement imagery in its first application. Remember, he’s talked about the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement is a purification offering. It’s the one he keeps referencing over and over in the details of the text. The goat reference always takes us to purification offering. That’s when the goat to take away the sins of the people was sent out.

And on the Day of Atonement, you see, that high priest would go into that holy place, you know, to cleanse the sins of the people, to purify, to wipe away. Once every year, all those sins piled up. They got dirtier and dirtier in spite of the ritual going out at the tabernacle. And once a year, he’d go in there, put the blood in there, and the sins would be purified. And the people would watch him go in, right? And then he would come out. “Yay. Praise God. Our sins are cleansed.”

This is what would happen. There’s descriptions of this. I mean, this is not you and we. I don’t know, we tend to think of this stuff differently, but imagine yourself, you know, the high priest is going to go in there and he’s going to cleanse you of your sins. He’s going to make your conscience good—at least for a while. You know, that’s the problem. You had to keep doing it. You make your conscience good. But, you know, if he doesn’t come out, well, then he’s died in there or something.

When he comes out, you see, it’s not in reference to sin. His second appearing to you is not in reference to sin. He’s already done that when he went in there. Now when he comes out, you see, it’s to tell you that salvation has arrived. Your sins have been purified and now it’s to announce salvation. That’s I think the initial imagery he’s using here.

Clearly, I think this is a reference to the second coming. And we could talk about AD 70. Maybe I will next week a little bit. But ultimately, Jesus is going to return apart from sin, right? Not in reference to sin is what it means, okay? “He will appear.”

And that word appear there has—it’s the like the word for optometry. It doesn’t mean manifest. It’s not epiphany and that kind of thing. “He will appear.” So that’s why I think it’s a second coming reference and its first immediate—what it’s pointing to: the high priest coming back out was a picture of the second coming of Jesus to the people. And Jesus’s second coming will come not in reference to sin but for salvation.

I was talking to a guy the other day, you know, all this Federal Vision stuff and people are getting confused and what this fell said, “I don’t even know if I’m saved anymore.” Well, you’re not. I mean, you are, but the definition of the word is everything. And if it confuses you that verses like this say that salvation will not be accomplished until Jesus returns, I’m sorry, but that’s what the text says, right? We’re saved from our sins. We’re saved. We’re going to go to heaven. I don’t mean all that. But what I am saying is that in the Bible, and particularly in Hebrews, when it talks about salvation, it’s not talking about that. It’s talking about the final consummation when everything is put right. Everything is put right. And at first, that bothers us. “Well, I don’t know. Am I saved? Am I not saved?” Well, yes and no. You’re saved and no, you’re not really saved. And it’s clear from your attitude that you’re not saved.

No. You know, I said this from mine: we all sin. We’re not saved. And see, that’s the good news about this. I mean, the bad news is it can be a little confusing to us and we take these terms that we’ve used one way and we got to relearn them. But think of the wonderful news about this. Aren’t you eagerly awaiting salvation? I am. I’m eagerly awaiting the time when I can see clearly, right? I can’t see clearly now. I’m eagerly awaiting much more than that—the time when I am completely removed from all my horrible sins that I commit. I’m eagerly waiting to the day when I don’t have to come and offer a prayer of forgiveness, you know, at the beginning of the worship service. I’m eagerly awaiting the manifestation of God’s judgment in the world. I’m eagerly awaiting the day when men don’t hurt little boys and girls. Aren’t you waiting for that? I am.

Don’t you want to be there when Jesus comes back and puts everything right? I do. And if the Christian faith is understood that we’re saved now and that’s it, that’s all there is—God says, “Wow, no.” You know, I told the kids in Sunday school class, Frank Sinatra today: “The best is yet to come, and baby, won’t it be fine? You think you’ve seen the sun, but you haven’t seen it shine.”

We’ll talk more about this next week, but we are in fact—Jesus, if you’re not eagerly awaiting for him, this is then you haven’t had your sins borne. That’s what the verse says. “He’s borne the sins of those who eagerly await his second appearing for salvation.”

If you’re not waiting for that eagerly, in anticipation, with anticipation, God says your sins weren’t cleansed. Now, you know, you just haven’t thought of it that way, maybe. And you know, we’re not waiting to die so that we can go to heaven. That is not what’s talked about here either, right?

You know that heaven is not the end goal. You know that, you know, I mean, we have this view—some people have this view, we tend to fall into this view—that we die and then our body, we’re freed. “I’ll fly away, oh Lord. I’ll fly. I’ll get away from the wicked body. I’ll fly to heaven and then that’s perfection.”

No, that is not. You’ll be singing in. You die here today from the shock of hearing me say these things and you go to heaven right now—you’ll still be singing with Frank: “The best is yet to come.” Because the best is the resurrection of your body. And the best is the resurrection of everybody else’s body. The best is the final coming, the second coming of Jesus Christ. The best is the consummation with tremendous community involvement and resurrection. Not your individualistic anti-incarnational flight to heaven when you die here. You see, the best is yet to come.

You too, you know that song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” That’s a great song from this perspective. Very Christian song. “All the colors bleed into one. Unity is accomplished through this thing we’re talking about—blood of Jesus Christ being shed.” And we have that now. We have all this great blessing, but we still haven’t found what we’re looking for. And we’re supposed to be waiting for that. And more than that, how did they wait? At Pentecost, Jesus said, “Wait for power from heaven.” And then they just sat and did nothing. Nope. It’s an act of waiting that God calls us to, from the text. They prayed. And they didn’t just pray. They elected. They replaced Judas, man. They got ready. They got the army ready. You know, Jesus said, “Wait, and I’ll give you marching orders.” And they took the time in between to form up the army.

We wait for the manifestation of these things in eternity. We wait for their appearing more and more in this life. But we don’t just wait passively. We cleanse our consciences. We serve God. We move forward. We’re going to move forward. Tuesday night, a couple of us—George Schubert Jr., Doug H., and Jonathan Burley—we can’t wait for the laws of this, well, we can wait, but we are eagerly waiting the laws of this state to reflect biblical law. How do we do it? Well, we have anticipation. We have to wait. But on the other hand, we’re working toward it. You see, God says great things are coming. The best is yet to come. We’re eagerly awaiting those things. And the way we get ourselves ready, the way we prepare the way, so to speak, is by focusing on the need to cleanse our consciences before God and get rid of those defilements. Have the joy of the Lord that you might serve him today and into the rest of this week.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the wonderful truths of this passage. Father, we thank you for the depth of it. We, Lord God, we could just spend years just focusing on this portion of your word as we could with most portions of your word, Father. All of them, I suppose. We thank you for it, but help us not to lose the simplicity of the message: that Jesus Christ has died and opened heaven. And he’s opened the gate so that heaven, our prayer, that heaven might be established here on earth, things might be done on earth as in heaven. This is now accomplished. Jesus Christ is doing this. He has come to put away sin.

Help us, Lord God, be those who follow Jesus. Grant us that we may indeed have clean consciences. Put away sin, Father, and more than that, serve you with righteousness and holiness. We know that Jesus warned us that if all we do is put away practices and don’t build in righteous practices, then seven demons worse than the first come back on us. Make us, Lord God, a people committed to serve you in our jobs, in our workplaces, in our homes, in our recreation and our political action. In everything we do this week, Lord God, grant us that we would exercise ourselves toward a good conscience and that we may positively serve you in the joy of the Lord.

In Christ’s name we ask it.

Amen.