About this sermon
A Morning Instruction class on Hebrews 10:1-18. The priests of the old covenant stood daily offering the same sacrifices, which could never take away sins. Christ came to do the Father’s will, offered his own body once for all, and sat down at God’s right hand, waiting until his enemies are made his footstool. By that single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. As Jeremiah promised, God will remember their sins no more, so no further offering for sin remains.
Sermon transcript
Good morning. Returning again to the epistle to the Hebrews, we’ll read from chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10, the first 18 verses. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.
Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sin every year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. When he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings. These are offered according to the law. Then he added, behold, I have come to do your will. He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.
And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us, for after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
All right, let’s pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we thank you for this marvelous revelation, for the greatness of our Lord Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that he has made for us, that we might be sanctified once for all. Help us that we may lay hold of Christ by faith, that we may not falter or draw back, but that we may have confidence to draw near to you and to continue in our pilgrimage day by day, serving you faithfully for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
All right, a couple of weeks ago, we did the first four verses of Hebrews. Last week, we did six verses. So my aim this week is to do eight. Let’s see if we can do that. Particularly last week, we covered Hebrews 10, verses 5 through 10. which consists of a quotation from Psalm 40 and an explanation of it. We found that the psalm is messianic in a very specific way.
It is the words of Christ himself. As the author says, when Christ came into the world, he said these words. The passage teaches us that the son of God took upon himself the human nature in order to do God’s will. And that includes the will of doing all of God’s moral law, the Ten Commandments and all that that implies. But it also included Christ’s special mission to fulfill God’s will for him as the Messiah, as the one who would offer himself for our sins.
And in both these ways, Christ was fully obedient And theologically, we can kind of categorize those two things. His obedience to the moral law, which he did all of his life, we call his active obedience. And his obedience to his commission to suffer for our sake, we call his passive obedience.
And that’s a way of distinguishing things, but they go together, they’re never separated. Christ is always the one who fulfills the will of God in all parts, in all ways. The result of this for us, we found at the end of verse 10, or in verse 10, that we have been sanctified by that same will. The will of God has many aspects to it.
And one of them is the purpose to save us, the purpose to sanctify us, meaning to set us apart for God. Now in the terminology developed by Professor John Murray of Westminster Seminary, this is our definitive sanctification, that we have been sanctified once for all, a definitive act that is already completed.
And that leads us into verses 11 through 14. And this section of the chapter returns to the same contrast that was brought out in verses 1 through 4. It’s as if the Spirit is saying to us, don’t miss this. This is important. It’s going to come at you again in somewhat different form, but basically the same message as the first paragraph of this chapter. Clearly, the basic contrast in these verses, 11 through 14, is the contrast between the Old Testament priest offering repeated sacrifices and Christ who offers a single, unique sacrifice. But the contrast is intensified or emphasized by a number of details, each one of which heightens the difference, makes it more clear, it’s more striking how different the two things are. So look carefully at some of these details. I think it will help you to see how strongly this point is being made and therefore how important it is.
First of all, the Old Testament priest offers his sacrifices daily. Christ offers his once for all time. Now this is an intensification Even compared to what went earlier in the chapter, in verses one and two, the author focused on the fact that the Old Testament priests offered sacrifices every year. And that once a year sacrifice is a reference to the Day of Atonement. That was the most important sacrifice, the most solemn sacrifice of the year.
Now he’s referring to the daily sacrifices that occurred And this intensifies the contrast between the many sacrifices and the one sacrifice. A second detail here is that the priest offers the same sacrifices, emphasizing a monotonous and ineffectual routine over and over again, yearly, daily, perhaps hourly, the same sacrifices being offered and never coming to completion. Third, as if daily were not enough, the author inserts the word repeatedly. Daily, repeatedly, monotonously the same, over and over again, in contrast again to Christ’s single sacrifice.
Yet another detail here is the description of the priests. Every priest, at the beginning of verse 11, every priest stands daily at his service. Now all of these unnamed priests, every priest, any priest, all the priests, it doesn’t matter how many there were or who they were, they do not add up to what one priest, Jesus Christ, accomplished. But perhaps this most important contrast here is the one that you might pass over, the contrast in the verbs in this verse.
Every priest stands daily in contrast to Jesus who sat down, end of verse 12. The way this verse is constructed We end up with the priest standing and always standing, never sits down. He’s always standing at his service, which emphasizes that the service is never done. It can never come to completion. It can never be finished.
But Christ, on the other hand, sits down. He sits down because his work is done. He’s entered into his rest. If you go back to the earlier part of the epistle in chapters three and four about entering into God’s rest, Christ has entered into God’s rest. He has sat down. He is finished. And of course, it’s not merely that he has sat down, but where he has sat down. He has sat down at the right hand of God.
This is a key theme of the epistle. The author mentions it five times. Just a little review here. Chapter 1, verse 3. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Chapter 1, verse 13. And to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Chapter 8, verse 1. We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven.
Here in chapter 10, verse 12, the simple statement, he sat down at the right hand of God. And then finally in chapter 12, verse two, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Remember, if you were hearing this letter read, and it was probably intended to be read in one whole sitting or standing or however you would have listened to it, would have been read to you in its entirety. If you were paying close attention, you would have heard this theme repeatedly as you went through the letter. It’s important. It teaches you volumes about what Christ has done and what he has accomplished.
Where is the throne of God? Is it not the central feature of the heavenly holy place? Is it not the central feature of the sanctuary in which the sacrifice or where the sacrifice must be presented? By sitting there, Jesus demonstrates that his sacrifice is not only complete but perfect and eternally effective.
To state the obvious here, but striking nevertheless, Jesus never has to leave the holy place. The high priest in the Old Testament went in once a year, and then he left. And he had to go back in next year, and then he left. And he had to get another sacrifice the following year, and then he left. But Jesus never leaves the sanctuary.
He never has to go out and get something else to sacrifice. His sacrifice is finished once for all. And he sits there in testimony that that sacrifice is eternally effective for his people. He’s always there, as it were, presenting the marks of his slaughter, presenting the wounds in his hands and feet and side. as the evidence of his sacrifice, always effectual for his people. Now verse 13 goes on to add yet one more feature of this, that Christ is sitting there until his enemies are subdued, until they are made a footstool for his feet. Now clearly this is an allusion to or a reference to Psalm 110, verse one, which he had quoted earlier in chapter one. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Sitting at the right hand of God is not only the high point and end point of Christ’s priestly service, It’s also the high point and end point of his kingly service and office.
In this respect also, Christ far exceeds the dignity of the Old Testament priests. In the Old Testament, the king could not serve as a priest. The offices were separate. It was sacrilegious for the king to serve as a priest, as one of the kings found out to his cost But in Christ, the offices are combined, and the office of prophet as well. But here in Hebrews, the focus is on the office of the priest and the office of the king.
This gives us yet one more reason to have confidence in the priesthood of Christ. It’s a royal priesthood. The authority of the king supports and reinforces the effectiveness of the priest’s sacrifice. This is not just the priest who’s made the sacrifice, it is the king, the one who has rule over all things, who has made this sacrifice. How then can this priesthood fail? How then could there be anything more reliable than resting on Christ’s sacrifice.
There will be a practical outworking of this in the subduing of Christ’s enemies. The Spirit is pointing out here that the effect of Christ’s sacrifice is to divide humanity, in a sense. You are either one of those for whom Christ died, or ultimately you will be one of those who are made his footstool, those who are his enemies. Christ’s enemies will not forever be free to pursue their rebellion. There will be a judgment day. And the whole of human history is pointing to this end. Christ is seated there at the right hand of God waiting until this is accomplished. Waiting until that time when his enemies will be subdued finally.
Now verse 14, completing this paragraph and this section. Verse 14 returns to the effect that Christ’s sacrifice has on us. And this is stated in striking language, just like almost everything in the epistle to the Hebrews. The striking language, again, emphasizes the single offering. And this single sacrifice is effective for all time. But now it’s not merely the effectiveness of the sacrifice in general, but its effectiveness for us. You see, it’s not simply a perfect sacrifice, but this sacrifice has perfected us.
You don’t normally think of yourself that way, do you? That you’ve been perfected. You’re perfect because of Christ’s sacrifice. Now remember, as I’ve explained before, in the epistles of the Hebrews and commonly in the New Testament, when you encounter this word perfect, whether it’s a verb or an adjective, it doesn’t mean faultless. Its point is not to say that we are already faultless. The meaning of this word is more along the lines of to be made complete or to be brought to one’s intended goal. to be brought to the end, to the destination that you were intended for. So in saying that we have been made perfect, this text is not saying that we are now faultless, but it is saying that we have already been brought to our intended goal.
We have already been saved. We have already been seated with Christ at the right hand of the Father, as the Apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 3. Now it’s this understanding of salvation that underlies the reformed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Why is it that you cannot be lost? Why is it that your salvation is eternally secure?
Because it is already complete. Because Christ has already accomplished it perfectly. Because Christ himself has already perfected for all time. The author appears to love to emphasize things here by reiteration or by even redundancy. Perfected, not only perfected, not only completed, but for all time. So you don’t miss it, so that it stands out there and shouts at you that this is something that is already done. Our salvation cannot be lost because of the perfection of what Christ has done for us, and he has perfected us in what he has done.
Now finally, notice the last clause in this verse, and then I’ll pause for some questions or comments that you might have. Who has been perfected? Those who are being sanctified. Now this is exactly what it sounds like. It’s something that is ongoing.
Another striking feature of this passage is that we have the same verb in verse 10 and verse 14. But in verse 10, we have been sanctified. In verse 14, we are being sanctified. I’ve had occasion more than once in these lessons to talk about the already and the not yet.
But here it is again, staring us in the face. We are already sanctified. It has been done. But we are being sanctified. It is ongoing. There are two sides then to our sanctification. And according to Professor Murray, the way he would explain this is, I think, two very helpful terms. A definitive sanctification and progressive sanctification. The definitive, that which is already complete, once for all.
The progressive, that which is ongoing. And while we can and must distinguish between those two sides of sanctification, notice the wonderful connection between them. They are distinct, but they are not separate. They are distinct, but they always go together. Those who have been sanctified are also those who are being sanctified.
The definitive provides the foundation for and the beginning of the progressive part of sanctification. In other words, we cannot separate these things any more than we can separate any of the blessings of redemption. You get the whole package. You get all aspects of salvation in Christ. They are not separated. But we distinguish them so that we can understand them better, so that we can see what it is that God is doing for us and in us.
Another way of stating this is who are those who have been perfected forever, for all time. Who are those who have been sanctified? They are the same ones who are being sanctified progressively. This eternally perfect salvation has a present effect in our ongoing sanctification.
Now this ongoing sanctification is sometimes more visible in us and sometimes less. And we do go through periods in our lives in which we wonder, am I being sanctified at all? We stumble, we go through the wilderness as it were, and we question ourselves.
I bring that up for you to understand this, but it’s not the focus of what the author is saying here in Hebrews 10. The focus here is on the finality of that sanctification and its inevitable effect in God’s people, even when you’re doubting it. even when you’re in the darkness, even when you walk in darkness and have no light, that God is accomplishing this in your life. And persevere, hold on, even in the darkness, and God will bring you into the light. God will grant you the comfort of your salvation if you persevere. All right, let me pause there if you have questions or comments on what I’ve done so far. Yes, Tammy.
Can you repeat again the distinction between passive and active obedience? Okay, the distinction between passive and active obedience. The active obedience of Christ, this is a distinction we use specifically to speak about Christ. His active obedience is his fulfilling all of God’s commandments, all of the Ten Commandments and all of their implications. In other words, he never sinned. He obeyed actively all that God commands. And his passive obedience was his submission to his need to sacrifice himself for our sins, his submission to his father’s will that he should be the offering for our sins.
So he passively suffered. The reason the word passive is used there is that Christ becomes the object of other people’s actions. He suffers passively as others nail him to the cross and do the various other things in humiliating him and making him suffer. That doesn’t look good. Yes, seal. this sanctification in him. We didn’t know until 10 days before he died that he was terminal.
And during that time, Pastor McLeod from the yard of the church came and blessedly ministered with him and read the scriptures with him. He spent 10 hours during those last few days in seminary was a great lover of the Reformed faith and loved the book of Hebrews. And so after, one day when he had been there for actually a couple of hours, he turned to my husband and he said, Mr. Ott, that’s what he always called me, he said, is there anything else that you would like to do? And he said, yeah, let’s talk about the book of Hebrews. And I could see there was something.
My husband had been very emotionally grounded. as a child, and there were things that he never was able to overcome. But I witnessed how the Lord sanctifies even when we, the loved ones, are sitting by his bedside and see that he can’t even say to his grown-up sons how much he loved them, things that he was not able to do. But I saw God finished the work of sanctification. And on the morning that he died, I was sitting by his side, and Doris was on the other side. And he couldn’t close his eyes, but he looked over to me, and he looked up above the door where we came in and out of the room, and he was gone. But he was at perfect peace.
And so I saw also that when we’re in the darkness, sometimes as those who are dealing with one another. And we’re seeing that it doesn’t look like I’m doing a good job today. I’m really on the path. Our Heavenly Father sees that we’re on the path, and it is office work.
And I just wanted to share that because this church was praying for us and loving us. And then, of course, I came here nine months ago. But I just wanted to just testify about how I saw this happen. and reality right in front of my eyes. And it was just a dream. We can only say that God works in mysterious ways, isn’t that? Thank you for reminding us of that. Thank you. Mark?
Well, he’s done again. I was looking at my inscriptions from my coordinates when we studied from Hebrews. In the author of Hebrews, we started on the Jewish questions. And the whole book of Hebrews is about the Jewish faith. Okay. I’ll be ready to move on to the next section here. All right.
Verses 15 through 18 have a special significance. We’re coming to the end of a major section in the epistle. from chapter five, at least from chapter five, the author has been focusing specifically on the priesthood of Christ. And that section of the epistle is coming to an end here at chapter 10, verse 18. It’s not that the theme of Christ’s priesthood has no relevance to the rest of the epistle. by no means, but the specific focus on that will be coming to an end in this section. And it’s striking to see how that ending is brought about, how this skilled orator, this great preacher, brings this section to a close.
He does it by quoting for a second time from Jeremiah 31, verses 33 and 34. As usual, the author uses his characteristic way of introducing scripture quotations. He ignores Jeremiah altogether, the human author, and he attributes the words directly to the Holy Spirit. And that should be an example to us when we think about and refer to the words of the scriptures. Now it’s not wrong to say that Jeremiah said thus and so, or Paul said thus and so, but keep in mind it is equally correct and more important to say the Holy Spirit said it, God said it. And the author of Hebrews does that relentlessly throughout this epistle.
Now one of the odd things about this is that the Epistle to the Hebrews is the only place in the New Testament that quotes this prophecy of the New Covenant. Ironic, isn’t it? The very thing that is being spoken of, the New Covenant, only refers in this one book to the prophecy of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31.
And likely the reason for this is that Hebrews is the one book in the New Testament that focuses on the theme of covenant. Elsewhere in the New Testament, that concept has become the concept of the kingdom of God or of the church, as Professor Voss points out in his little book on Hebrews. But in this one place in the New Testament, there is a concentrated focus on the theme of the covenant. Interestingly, it is all wound up with the concentrated focus on the theme of Christ’s priesthood. Hebrews is not only the book in the New Testament that focuses on covenant, it’s the one book in the New Testament that focuses significantly or at length on the priesthood of Christ.
But this quotation is far from being peripheral, even though it is referred to only here in Hebrews. And that comes out at least in the fact that this is the second time that he quotes it. Half of chapter eight, almost, is the first time he quotes it, where he quotes a longer section of the prophecy. And that’s, in fact, the longest Old Testament quotation in the whole letter. So when he quotes it here in chapter 10, it’s a repetition. If this were a song, we would call this the refrain. It’s the repeated part, the part that comes back.
And sometimes I think, at least I have fallen into the habit of looking at this prophecy in Jeremiah 31, as simply a proof text for the superiority of the new covenant to the old. And certainly the epistle to the Hebrews has that in mind to tell us that the new covenant is superior to the old. But that’s a very formal or abstract way of looking at this prophecy. All right, one thing is better than another. The quotation, however, enters into the substance of the author’s whole argument about the nature of the new covenant and the nature of the priesthood of Christ. In other words, it’s not just telling us that one thing is better than another, it’s telling us why, and it’s revealing to us the stupendous nature of this new covenant.
Now the quotation follows quite aptly from what he had just said in verse 14. This is an extremely well-constructed argument in this letter. It’s not just that he comes back to this because, okay, it’s time in the song to go to the refrain again. He has brought us back to this by the way that he’s been speaking about the benefits of the priesthood of Christ to us.
Because the prophecy that he quotes focuses precisely on the same benefits. Not only on those benefits in general, but in fact, the specific two aspects of those benefits that we’ve been talking about under the heading of definitive and progressive. They’re both there in the quotation from Jeremiah. They’re there in the reverse order, however.
After stating the fact of the new covenant in the beginning of verse 16, what is said at the end of verse 16 has to do with our progressive sanctification. God says, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. That’s another way of speaking of our progressive sanctification, speaking of how we will now be, how we will now live.
We will live as those who have God’s laws written on our hearts and minds. No longer will the law be something merely external to us, written on tablets of stone, hanging over our heads with its impending judgments and its threats of wrath. Now, the law will be our friend and companion. Have you ever thought about the law of God as being your friend and companion?
Okay. It’s in our hymnody. It’s in our psalmody. We sang last week in one of the hymns in church, oh, how I love your law. Oh, how love I thy law. It is my meditation all the day. When something’s written on your heart, isn’t that a statement that it’s something you love? If you said my sweetheart’s name is written on my heart, my wife’s name, my husband’s name is written on my heart, isn’t that a way of saying I love them, they’re there, they’re with me forever? The law of God is written on our heart. We love it.
That means the law is our friend. The law is not hanging over us to condemn us. As Paul says it, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And yet the law is still with us, though marvelously we are delivered from the condemnation of the law, but we are not delivered from the law, that would be death. We are delivered to friendship with the law so that it is in our hearts. Now the second aspect of the new covenant’s value to us appears in verse 17. And this returns to the definitive idea of our salvation. I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. This is our justification. This is definitive. This is once and for all. Our sins and our lawless deeds are put away. They’re done with. Now God does not literally forget, of course.
This is a figure of speech that the Bible often uses that we call an anthropomorphism. Now that’s a fancy word to say speaking about God in human terms, speaking about God as though he were a man, a man who could forget. When the Bible talks about the strength of God’s arm, That’s another anthropomorphism, talking about God as if he were a human being. So the figure of speech has its limitations.
We don’t want to imagine God as physically having an arm. God is spirit. Nor do we want to imagine God as literally forgetting. But the point is, What does it mean when God forgets or when God will not remember our sins and lawless deeds? The point is that he will not use his knowledge of them against us. He will not hold them over us. And we can understand that use of the word forgetting. It’s a sort of forgetting we ought to be able to do as well when we’re forgiving each other.
When you say forgive and forget, the forget part is pretty essential there, right? When you forgive somebody, you don’t go around reminding them every day of that bad thing they did. You know, I’ve forgiven you, but I’ll never forget. And I won’t let you forget that I don’t forget. God isn’t like that. When God forgives us, he puts them aside. He puts those sins aside. He will not use his knowledge of our sins against us. He will not hold them over us as a threat, as a threat of wrath and judgment.
Now think about that in the, well, yeah. You cannot literally forget, but you can keep your mouth shut. You can, you can. I mean you, meaning all of us. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to direct that directly at you. It’s for all of us. We can close our mouths and not bring it up again. If it’s a matter that has truly been forgiven and done away with, then that’s the way to handle it. And that doesn’t require us to erase our memories.
There’s some movie about that recently that I didn’t see, but as I recall, the theme of that movie was if you were to erase your actual memories of all the bad things that ever happened in your life, you would lose your life. Your life would become meaningless. No, you cannot erase things out of your memory any more than God can.
But the reality is forgiveness means restoring that relationship with the other person so that you’re not constantly harping on that event that you have supposedly forgiven. All right, let’s finish this up and see if I can fulfill my purpose of finishing eight verses today. Verse 18. brings this whole section of the epistle to an abrupt conclusion, somehow seeming almost too abrupt, where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. So abrupt that at first glance it doesn’t seem to say enough, but as I’ve reflected on this more, it says much more because it sums up everything that has gone before.
This in effect is another figure of speech known as understatement. To say explicitly less than what you really mean. It’s a way of subtly getting attention to a point by saying less than what you fully mean. And it’s not any way of concealing the truth because the author has already said these things that need to be said for the past four or five chapters. But here he is saying them implicitly in this very brief statement.
This ties forgiveness to Christ’s offering of himself. And this is clearly something the author has said explicitly before. In chapter nine, verse 22, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. The direct connection between the shedding of Christ’s blood and the forgiveness of our sins. That’s a fundamental biblical doctrine, a biblical truth. There must be an atonement in order for our sins to be forgiven. But what is this curious statement? There is no longer any offering for sin. You need to understand this in its context. There has been a sacrifice for sin. There has been an offering for sin. But it is complete. It is finished.
There is no longer any offering for sin means there needs to be no further offering. There is no need for any other sacrifices. The implication is just as there is no longer any offering for sin, there is no longer any need to worry about forgiveness. Forgiveness is just as complete as the offering that has been made. That is, once again, as bears repeating, our forgiveness is a full forgiveness of all our sins, past, present, and future. It’s a full forgiveness that is complete and irrevocable.
Now one reason to beat on this is that, sadly, the church in many times and places has missed the point of this completely. Or to put it another way, has taken this verse completely out of context. As if it were saying, once you’ve been forgiven, there’s no more forgiveness. Once you’ve been forgiven, there’s no second chance. That would be an egregious blunder in understanding this verse.
Now we’ll need to come back to this as we look at the second half of chapter 10, but I’m trying to prepare you for this. That there are going to be things that the author says in the second part of chapter 10, which if you don’t bear in mind the correct way of understanding verse 18 here, you’re going to go completely in the wrong direction. And there are places in the history of the church where this has sadly taken place.
So one more time, don’t miss the meaning of this. Don’t lose your grasp on this. Forgiveness in Christ is complete. It’s decisive. It’s once for all. The reason there is no longer any offering for sin, the reason that we have no ritual in the worship of the church that constitutes an offering for sin. The Lord’s Supper is not an offering for sin. Keep that in mind as we observe it. The reason that there is nothing in the practice of the church that we can now describe as an offering for sin is that that offering has been done, and it’s complete, and it never needs to be repeated. In that faith, have confidence. And we’re done for today. We’ll take on that second half of the chapter beginning next week.
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