Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to pick up where I left off the
last time in the book of Hebrews, chapter nine. And I'm going to
repeat some of the things that I've said about particular scriptures,
but I'm going to, I'm going to focus on verse 15 on the phrase,
the promise of eternal inheritance. That's the title of the message.
It's where The writer of Hebrews was inspired by the Holy Spirit
to illustrate the benefits and blessings of salvation by God's
grace as an inheritance which God the Father has bequeathed
to his children through and by the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact,
it mentions a testator here. The testator is the one who earned
the inheritance. You know, if you receive an inheritance
from your father or your grandfather or mother or grandmother, it's
something that they worked for. You didn't work for it. You were
born into it. And that's the way salvation
is. Salvation is a work of God, not a work you do. If you're
saved, you are chosen by God to adopt it into his family. And in time, Christ come and
earned all the benefits and blessings of salvation, every bit of them
now. all of salvation, including our
justification, our sanctification, our regeneration, conversion,
the new birth, all of that glorification. Christ earned it all by his obedience
unto death as the surety, the substitute, the redeemer, the
intercessor, the preserver of his people. And it's a free gift
bequeathed to you as an eternal inheritance and you were born
into it by new birth, that's the new birth of the Holy Spirit,
the spiritual birth, Christ said you must be born again. And it's
all based upon the work of Christ. So let me go back to verse 13
of Hebrews chapter nine, where he talks about the blood of bulls
and of goats. Now you know it says, for if
the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling
the unclean sanctified to the purifying of the flesh. Now what
that's referring to is the old covenant law which one of the
signs of that covenant was the blood of animals that were offered
upon the altars, mainly the brazen altar in the tabernacle and in
the temple. where on the day of atonement,
they would sacrifice an unblemished lamb of a year old or a calf,
and the blood would be taken in a basin and taken back to
the high priest to be sprinkled on the mercy seat and the holiest
of all, all of that. Now, what he's saying is that
covenant, that old covenant law, law of Moses, the law of sacrifice,
What it accomplished was not an eternal spiritual salvation
or forgiveness or pardon of sin. It did not accomplish that. In
fact, over in chapter 10, he says in verse four of chapter
10, for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats
should take away sin. Those, that animal blood, what
did it actually accomplish? What it accomplished was a temporal,
which means earthly, physical, ceremonial, setting apart of
the nation Israel before God, but not eternal, not spiritual. You see, it didn't accomplish
salvation. There was no forgiveness of sins
by the blood of animals. But God held back His wrath and
He forbore, as the Bible says, ceremonially and temporarily
for that nation while that covenant was in effect. It was in effect
for about 1,500 years from Mount Sinai, where Moses received the
law. gave it to the Hebrew children, to the cross, and Christ accomplished
all the types and the shadows. See, the blood of bulls and goats
was a type, a picture, a shadow of the blood of the Lamb of God,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what he's saying here
is this, look at verse 13 again, for if the blood of bulls and
of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean
sanctify set apart to the purifying of the flesh ceremonially, temporally,
you see that? Temporarily too. Then he says
in verse 14, how much more shall the blood of Christ who through
the eternal spirit, see what Christ did was not temporal or
ceremonial or temporary, but it was eternal, who through the
eternal spirit offered himself without spot, without fault,
without blemish to God. How much more shall his blood
purge or cleanse your conscience The guilty conscience now from
dead works to serve the living God. Now the dead works there
are works that people by nature think recommend them unto God.
They're works. That's dead works. And that would
include the blood of bulls and of goats. Any Jewish person,
any Hebrew, who thought that the blood of bulls and goats,
the blood of lambs, physical lambs, cleansed them from their
sins before God, that's a dead work. That wasn't set forth to
do that. That was a picture pointing to
the Lord Jesus Christ. for salvation. So how much more
shall the blood of Christ? So in other words, let me put
it to you this way. If the blood of those animals
set them apart ceremonially, temporally, and temporarily,
how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
spirit offered himself without fault before God, purge your
conscience? the guilty conscious, from those
dead works to serve the living God. In other words, what Christ's
blood accomplished was an eternal spiritual forgiveness of sins,
which the blood of animals could not do. The forgiveness of all
the sins of God's elect was based upon the blood of Christ, not
the blood of bulls and goats. and the righteousness which Christ
accomplished in his obedience unto death that has been imputed
to all of God's people could never have been accomplished
by the blood of animals. Look at verse one of chapter
10, just across the page. It says, for the law, having
a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the
things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered
year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
Could not make them righteous. Now all the ceremonies, all the
blood on Jewish altars, All the high priests down through the
ages, they could not make sinners righteous before God. And that
was the downfall of the nation mainly because they sought righteousness
not by looking to the future in Christ, the Messiah who was
to come, that would be by faith. See, that's what seeking righteousness
by faith is seeking righteousness in Christ. But they sought righteousness
by works of the law. And they failed, they didn't
make it. Paul wrote about that in Romans chapter nine. So look
at verse 15 now. And for this cause, he, that
is Christ, is the mediator of the New Testament, the new covenant,
that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first testament, the old covenant, they which
are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."
Now, what does all that mean? It was by the means, not of the
death of animals, but by the death of Christ, that the Old
Testament, Old Covenant believers were saved and forgiven and given
an eternal inheritance. They were to look to the future
again. to the promised Messiah, the
promise of eternal inheritance, that Christ, the Messiah, as
God revealed it to them, would accomplish by His obedience unto
death as their surety, substitute and redeemer. So they were saved
just like the New Testament saints are saved, by grace, not by works. Now, I've heard men who've in
the past, some of them are called dispensationalists. They believe
that God saved his people in different ways at different times.
Not so. That's heresy. God has always
saved his chosen people by grace through the righteousness of
Christ. The Old Testament believers,
those who were saved, who were believers, they looked forward
to His coming. The New Testament believers look
back at the fact that He has come, but it's the same ground. It's the cross. God forbid that
I should glory save in the cross. That hold true for Abraham and
for the last one of God's elect who will be brought into the
kingdom. Now, back in the Old Covenant, there were very, very
few who really saw that truth of the gospel in these types
and shadows and pictures. The vast majority remained in
unbelief. And those who saw it and believed
it, looking forward to the coming of Christ, they are called the
remnant of grace, a remnant of the election of grace. You see,
God has a people, both in the Old Testament and the New, and
they're going to be saved, but they're going to be saved by
grace through the blood of Christ, His righteousness alone. And
so look at verse 15 again. And for this cause, because Christ
has died, offered Himself without spot unto God. Now, and let me
say this before I go any further. Christ was and is the sinless
surety, substitute, and redeemer. He had no sin, He knew no sin,
He was never corrupted with sin, He was never contaminated with
our sin, yet He was actually made sin by God. Now, what does that mean? The
sins of God's people, His elect, were imputed, charged, accounted,
reckoned to the account of Christ. They're sinned at. And that's
what that verse in 2 Corinthians 5 21 means when it says God made
him sin or to be sin. How? Not by contamination. He offered himself without spot
to God. He's the impeccable Christ. He
cannot sin, cannot be contaminated. He's perfect. All right. And
without spot, And in His perfection, the righteousness that He accomplished,
which is satisfaction to the law and justice of God for His
people. And Isaiah 53 beautifully illustrates
that. It talks about how the sins of
God's people were laid upon Him, made to meet upon Him. That's
a real thing now. It's a legal thing. It is. And people say, well, because
it's legal, it means it's fiction. Oh, no. No, no. You see, the
debt that God's people, God's elect have given up, the elect
that has stacked up on them because of our fall in Adam and because
of our own sin, that sin debt was laid on Christ. He's the
surety of the covenant. And He paid the debt in full
by His obedience unto death as our surety, substitute, and redeemer. So it says, and for this cause,
Christ is the mediator of the new covenant. And the new covenant,
I've made this statement several times. You need to get it in
your mind. The Bible speaks of the everlasting covenant of grace
made before time. between the Father, the Son,
and the Spirit. And that's where God chose a
people, gave them to the Son, the Son willingly agreed to be
their surety, their substitute, their Redeemer. And in time,
He had to come and accomplish that work by His obedience unto
death for them. So there's the everlasting covenant
of grace, salvation, now listen to this, salvation conditioned
on Christ. Now most preachers today who
claim to believe grace, sad to say, preach salvation in some
way, at some stage, to some degree, conditioned on sinners. And that's a false gospel. They'll
say things like God loves everybody, God's trying to save everybody,
Christ died for everybody, now it's up to you. And you have
to meet a condition in order to put all that into effect.
And usually the condition is faith, believing or giving your
heart to Jesus or something like that. Or some say being baptized,
others say other things. It depends on what false denomination
you're a member of. But that's not what the gospel
teaches. The true gospel teaches that all of salvation was and
is conditioned on Christ, who fulfilled those conditions by
His obedience unto death as the surety, the substitute, and the
Redeemer of His people. He said on the cross, He said,
it is finished. He did it. Now, what do we have
to do? Well, we who are saved by His
grace, the elect of God whom He chose to save before the foundation
of the world, we receive the benefits of it. the blessings
of it freely by His grace. And one of those benefits and
blessings is the new birth where we are brought to believe in
Christ. Must we believe? Yes. Why? Because we've got to meet that
condition? No. Because it's the gift of God.
It's one of the promises of an eternal inheritance. See, part
of that inheritance, all that inheritance is life from the
dead, you must be born again. Faith, the gift of God, for by
grace are you saved. Through faith, that not of yourselves,
it's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
Repentance is given, comes with faith. Faith is turning to Christ
alone for salvation and righteousness and forgiveness and life. Repentance
is turning away from everything else. that we thought would recommend
us unto God. It's called repentance of dead
work. So for this cause, verse 15, Christ is the mediator of
the New Testament. Now the New Testament, the new
covenant, is the accomplishment in time of all the terms and
conditions of the everlasting covenant of grace made before
time. And who fulfilled those conditions?
Christ did. Christ as God manifest in the
flesh. God-man, the representative of
his people, the surety, the substitute, the redeemer. He fulfilled those
conditions and he says, how did he do it? That by means of death,
for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Testament,
he died for those under the Old Covenant who came to believe. they which are called that is
called by the Spirit under the preaching of the gospel regenerated
and converted that holy calling that they might receive the promise
of eternal inheritance and that eternal inheritance again is
all the benefits all the blessings all the gifts of salvation conditioned
on Christ who fulfilled those conditions for His people, and
they shall be saved." They're going to get that inheritance.
Now, it was conditioned on the death of Christ. Just like when
a person accumulates a whole lot of wealth, And he or she
bequeaths that to their children. It becomes there in the last
will and testament. It becomes the children's when
the person who bequeaths it, the testator, dies. Look at verse
16. For where a testament is, a will,
you might say, there must also of necessity be the death of
the testator. That's the condition. Christ
fulfilled it. all by his obedience unto death.
He kept the law perfectly and he died under the wrath of God
because the sins of his people, his sheep, were imputed to him. Not everybody without exception
now. How do you know if you're one for whom he died? You'll
receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. You'll be born again.
You'll be brought to faith in Christ. You'll get, God will
give you that gift. You won't refuse it. It's not
a matter, a product of your free will choice. You will choose
Christ. Now left to yourself, if we're
left to ourselves, we will not choose Christ. We'll choose anything
but. We may choose a false Christ,
but the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God, neither can he know them. They're spiritually understood,
spiritually discerned. The Bible says there's none righteous,
no not one, there's none that doeth good, there's none that
seeketh after God. Left to ourselves, we will not come to Christ. No
man can come to me, Christ said, except the Father which has sent
me draw him, and I'll raise him up at the last day. How does
God draw them? He brings them under the preaching
of the gospel providentially, and then he sends the Spirit
to empower that gospel to their salvation. So that the gospel
is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believe it,
to the Jew first, the Greek also, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. That's the obedience unto death
of Christ, fulfilling those conditions from faith to faith, from knowledge
revealed to knowledge received and believed. The just shall
live by faith. So he says, look at verse 70,
for a testament is a force after men are dead, otherwise it is
no strength at all while the testator liveth. Now in the case
of God's bequeathing this eternal inheritance based upon the death
of Christ, it was always so sure and certain that Christ would
come and do the work as the surety, substitute, redeemer of his people,
that God empowered it to the salvation even of the Old Testament
believers. And you can read about that in
Hebrews chapter 11, how those Old Testament saints were given
the gift of faith. And what was the basis of that
gift? The death of Christ. Well, he
hadn't died yet, but there was no possibility that he wouldn't
die. God determined it before the
world began. It was sure and certain. And
in the fullness of the time, Christ came forth, made under
the law, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them
that were under the law. Even David, King David on his
deathbed, understood the sureness of it. He said, God hath made
a covenant with me that is ordered in all things and sure. And he
said, this is all my hope and all my salvation and all my desire. So it says in verse 18, whereupon
neither the first testament was dedicated without blood, that's
the old covenant, had the blood of animals now. but it did not
accomplish eternal salvation. Verse 19, for when Moses had
spoken every precept to all the people according to the law,
he took the blood of calves and of goats with water and scarlet
wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book and all the people,
saying, this is the blood of the Testament which God hath
enjoined unto you. That blood of animal seed typified
and pictured the blood of Christ. The blood of animals did not
accomplish the eternal inheritance, the eternal salvation, spiritual
things, but it did picture the blood of Christ, which has accomplished
all the benefits and blessings of the eternal inheritance. And
so he says in verse 20, saying this is the blood of the testament
which God hath enjoined to you. Verse 21, moreover he sprinkled
with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry.
And he says in verse 22, and almost all things are by law
purged with blood and without shedding of blood is no remission.
Now what he talks about almost all things, all things necessary
for salvation were purged with blood. Now again, the blood of
animals could not accomplish that. There were other offerings
that were under the old covenant. They were called thank offerings,
thanksgiving offerings, things like that, praise offerings.
But the blood of the bulls and the goats, the blood of animals,
were blood of atonement, and they did accomplish separating
the people in a ceremonial, temporal, temporary way. But they could
not accomplish salvation, eternal, spiritual salvation, only the
blood of Christ. Now, this promise of eternal
inheritance has to do with salvation that lasts forever. And anything
that is included with salvation, again, we can talk about God's
election of grace. We can talk about God justifying
His people, which means that He forgives them of all their
sins based on what? A just ground. And what is that
just ground? The blood of Jesus Christ, justified
by His blood. And He declares them righteous
in His sight, not by their works, not by their decisions. It's
not their faith, their believing that makes them righteous. It's
Christ who makes them righteous, His righteousness imputed. And
where righteousness is imputed, faith will eventually be given
by God to receive it. And that comes with the new birth.
giving of life from the dead. You see, we're all born spiritually
dead in trespasses and sins, depraved at enmity with God. But when God sends the Spirit
to bring us under the Gospel, He changes all that. And He gives
us a knowledge of the promise of an eternal inheritance, all
conditioned on Christ. That's the Gospel. And I hope
you'll join us next week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
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today and may the Lord be with you.