Okay, would you open your Bibles
to Hebrews chapter 9? Hebrews chapter 9. We'll read verses 27 and 28,
Hebrews chapter 9, verses 27 and 28. Just as man is destined
to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was
sacrificed once. to take away the sins of many
people. And he will appear a second time,
not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting
for him. I'll just jump into this without
introduction, because it doesn't really need introduction. The
first thing we see in this text that we have read is an undeniable
and inescapable destiny for every human being. It is appointed
unto man. Now, our translation says man,
generically, but it's in the plural, and the word is, Not what we would consider a
gendered word. It just means humans. Humans. It's appointed unto humans. Not
just humanity in general. Each individual human being is
appointed to die. And it's an undeniable and inescapable
destiny. Everybody knows it's true, though
we do everything we can to push it out of our minds. But we may
push it out of our minds, we may say things like, 50s, the
new 40s, 70s, the new whatever, and act like we're going to be
young forever and ever, but the years keep rolling by, and at
the time appointed by God, each of us will die. Tomorrow, some will gather here
at 4 p.m. and we'll have a funeral service
for our young sister, Caitlin Sandbolt, 32 years old. We normally don't think of people,
at least not in the United States, 32-year-old people don't die. And it's true. That's not common. But it happens. It's appointed
unto every individual to die. It's a certainty. Some die old,
some die young, and every age between. Some die of accidents
all at once. They're gone in the blink of
an eye. Some die of diseases that take years to bring death
to them. And all of us are dying from
a terminal case of old age. We die. Some of us die in terror,
and others die in peace. Some die in the midst of an active
day. Some go peacefully, as they say,
in their sleep. But however and whenever we die,
the certainty is this, each of us will die. When you read the
opening chapters of Genesis, there's a few chapters that contain
genealogies. And particularly, I think it's
Genesis chapter five, it gives the genealogies of these men
from Adam to Noah. And they lived hundreds of years.
Methuselah's in there with his 969 years. And we think, wow, that's a long
time. Yes, but the interesting thing to note about all those
genealogies is it says, and so and so lived so many years and
had, you know, incired this particular person. And then after that,
he lived so many more years and he died. and the end of every generation
that is mentioned in that genealogy. No matter how long they lived,
it ends with this, and he died. Now, death is a mystery to us. Nobody here has ever done it
before. You say, what's it like to die?
I don't know. I've never done that. I can tell you what the
scriptures say about it, and pretty much that's what I'm doing
here. What's it like to die? I'm not sure, but I know that
it's a certain thing that everyone here will experience. The only
ones who will not experience death are those who are here
when the Lord returns. Everybody else will eventually
die. Now, it's the better part of
wisdom to prepare for things that are certain. All of us kind of expect, you
know, in our younger years, we all expect we're going to live
long enough to retire. So most people make some preparations
for retirement, save some money, so that when retirement comes,
they don't have to resort to abject poverty to stay alive,
you know. OK, you're making preparations for what you expect will happen.
But there's certainly no guarantee you'll ever reach retirement.
But here's one thing for certain, you will reach death. And is
it not wise to consider that, to absorb the reality of it, to think about that, instead
of just saying, well, that's so far in the future. I don't
want to think about it. It upsets me. Well, better to
think about it and then see if there's something that can be
done about it. But that's not the worst of it. This undeniable,
inescapable destiny that all of us will die has a follow-up. And after that, to face judgment. Now, we all know that we will
die. I was not informing you of anything
you did not already know. When I read that scripture and
made all those comments about dying, you already knew that
you were going to die. And you already know that you're
going to face judgment. It is written on the human heart.
The scriptures say that God has written his law even on the hearts
of Gentiles. They know what's right and wrong,
in basic form anyway. They know what's right and wrong.
They know they've done wrong. They know that there's a God
to answer to. I can't prove it, but it's my
belief that no one is ever born an atheist. That's a persuasion
they come to later. At least they say they come to
that persuasion. I don't know whether they're really atheists
or not. You know, we who believe, we believe, but we have doubts,
don't we? Well, I think the atheist says there is no God, but inside
his mind he's saying, boy, I sure hope there isn't one. But I think
written in our hearts is this understanding, and this is where
the fear of death comes from. When we die, that's not the end
of our existence. We go on. We don't go on here,
but we go on. And the God who made us, we understand
instinctively. We must face Him. Bonnie and I watched a documentary
here this past few days, five-part documentary on the Chicago Tylenol
murders. If you remember that back in
1982, somebody laced some Tylenol with cyanide. Seven people were
killed. They never could prove who did
it. They have strong suspicion. And
the man that they believe did it died just last July. But he
never had to face justice in this world for what he did. the thing, none of us escape
justice in the next world. You can, in this world, you can
You can sin against man's laws and you can get away with it
as long as you're very careful about it or you have enough money
to pay people off or enough power to threaten people so that they
don't dare bring an accusation against you. Yes, people get
away with a lot in this world. No one gets away with anything
in the world to come. When we face judgment in the
world to come, we're not facing the judgment of other human beings,
that is, judgment by other human beings, no matter how good they
are. They may be very intelligent,
they may be very righteous, or whatever the word, but that's
not, if it was just other people that were going to judge us,
we might have some hope that things are gonna come out okay.
But in saying facing judgment, what he's really saying is you're
going to face God. God who made the heavens and
the earth, God who made you, God who gave you every breath
you ever breathed, who gave you all the foods you ever ate, who
is responsible for every time your heart beat, it was him making
it happen. You say, oh, come on, we're above
that. We know all the biology. Just because God works through
means doesn't mean it's not him doing the work. Here's this group this morning,
what, 30 of us here? And we're all breathing, hearts
are beating, we're thinking, or at least trying to. And all
of that is a gift from God. And we will face that God. And
according to the scriptures, give an account. for what we
did with all those breaths, all those heartbeats, all those years,
days, whatever. That should be very sobering
to all of us. You know, we who believe the
gospel, and who believe that there is no condemnation to them
who are in Christ Jesus. You've heard me say that we're
gonna be judged, and you might be thinking back to times I've
said that the believer will never face judgment, and that's true,
and we'll get to how both of those are true. Nonetheless,
it should sober us. It should sober us to know we
will face God. we're gonna come face to face
with Him. An undeniable, inescapable destiny. And the second thing
to notice then is a destiny fulfilled. Verse 28, so Christ was sacrificed
once to take away the sins of many people. Now we have said that there is
this undeniable, inescapable destiny. and that everyone must
fulfill that destiny. But the good news is this, that's
bad news, isn't it, that first part? I mean, if that's, if verse
27 is as far as the Bible went, we'd be in a real mess, wouldn't
we? It's appointed unto all humans, every human wants to die, and
after that, face God in judgment. And if we had to put a period
right there and close the Bible and that's all there was, well,
we may as well never opened it up in the first place. But there's
good news because that destiny which is pressed upon every person has
been fulfilled for some people by the Lord Jesus Christ. I've got a destiny to die and
face judgment. And here's what I know, if I
die and face judgment, I will perish because I am not good. God's judgment will find me to
be as wicked as I often feel I am and much, much worse. But
my hope is not in that I try to do the best I can or that
somehow or another I'll sidestep judgment or that God's an easy
judge and just lets things go. No, my only hope is this, that
someone else fulfilled my destiny. Christ was sacrificed, he died. And even though it doesn't use
the word die, it uses the word sacrifice, the purpose of that
is to combine the thoughts of death and judgment all in one
action. Our Lord, when he died, it wasn't
just a death, it's not like when you and I died, you know, he
just came to the end of life and that was the end of things.
His death was a special kind of death. His death, it says,
he died unto sin once. He died bearing the sins of many. You say, well, didn't he die
for the sins of everybody? Well, I know this. If he died
for all the sins of everybody, nobody's going to hell. I know
that. Because God is just. He doesn't
demand double payment. He's not going to make the Lord
Jesus pay for sin and then turn around and make someone else
pay for the same sin. How many did he die for? I don't
know. On the one hand, we read sometimes
in the scriptures, you know, that Only few will be saved. And then
at other times, it says he gave his life a ransom for many. In
the book of Revelation, it said a multitude that no man can number. But as we sit here this morning,
the essential question for you and me is not how many did our
Lord die for? The question each one of us needs
to consider is this, was his death for me? You know, we can get all wrapped
up in trying to figure out theology, and you know, we're like people
that are sick, and we got the medicine in our hands, and we're
sitting there trying to study all the pharmacology behind it,
and understand how the medicine works, and what chemicals are
used, and we never take it. We never think about the fact
that yes, there's medicine in the bottle, and it's got our
name written on the outside of it. It's for us. Christ was sacrificed. Who sacrificed
him? Well, on the one hand, we read
this. He offered himself without spot to God. He is our high priest. It's priests
that offer sacrifices. Our Lord was our high priest,
and he is our sacrifice. He is the victim of the sacrifice,
and he is the priest that offers it. Now this is a wonder. It's an amazing thing that a
man would consent to be killed, but that he would offer himself. That's beyond normal thought. However, the book of Isaiah chapter
53 describes the same event this way. It pleased Jehovah to crush
him. He, Jehovah, has put his soul
to grief. A preacher, famous a generation
or two ago, big televangelist. on TV one time and with tears
coming down his face, he said, if I'd have been there, I wouldn't
have let them do that. Really now? You're stronger than
an enraged mob of Jewish leaders? You're stronger than the power
of Rome? But more than this? You're stronger than God who
ordained that sacrifice. And according to Isaiah 53, he's
the one that did the killing. There was no stopping that. And
as much as we might hate to think that our Lord ever had to suffer
like that, that thought should not make us think I wish he hadn't
done that, or I wish they hadn't done that to him. If that had
not happened to him, if he had not gone through that, then we
would have to go through it. If he had not been sacrificed,
if he had not died and faced judgment, we would have to. He was sacrificed by God. How many times was he sacrificed?
Now for us, we know the answer is once. But the Jews were accustomed
to sacrifices being done over and over and over again. They
had an annual calendar. And there was the sacrifice of
Passover, and then six months later, the Day of Atonement,
the sacrifices associated with that. There were weekly sacrifices,
there were daily sacrifices. There were sacrifices at priests.
They looked at their temple and it was like a constant flow of
animals going in there being killed, sacrifice after sacrifice
after sacrifice. Why did that have to be done
over and over and over again? Why this annual repetition of
a whole liturgy of blood sacrifices? Because the blood of bulls and
goats cannot put away the sin of a human being. If you sacrificed every animal
God ever created, it would not satisfy the justice of God against
our sin. It required the blood of a human. And our Lord Jesus Christ was
God, manifest in the flesh, God become flesh, and as a man, he bore the sins
of many people, and by his suffering, he put those sins away. He did not, by his death, attract
the sympathy of God, God showed him no sympathy whatsoever. It
was not as though he said, Father, I love these people so much.
If you just don't outright save them, I'm gonna kill myself and
maybe that'll make you save them. No, it's not what this was. He
died because he was bearing sin. The wages of sin is death. He died not having any sins of
his own, that is, not having any sins on him that he had committed. He died as the spotless lamb
of God. He was without spot or blemish.
Therefore, he was able to take upon himself all the uncountable
spots and blemishes of his people. And in taking them on himself,
they were removed from them. After all, a thing cannot be
in two places at the same time. My sin cannot be on me and on
him at the same time. He took them, and he took them
away. He bore them in his body. He
bore the suffering that those sins deserved, and in so doing,
the sins were taken away. You know, on the Day of Atonement,
you had two goats, I believe it was. One was called the scapegoat,
and they sent him out into the desert. One goat died, another
was sent out in the desert, and those two goats together picture
what actually happened in the atoning sacrifice of the Lord
Jesus Christ. First of all, he died like that
one goat on whom the lot fell for death. He died, and his blood
was taken in there and was poured out on the mercy seat. But then
they came out, and here's this other goat, and those two goats
represent the same person, but what did they do? The sin was
put on him and he was sent away. Sent away. And what it pictures
is that Christ by his death sent or took our sins away out into
the wilderness. They're gone. People. Some folks anyway, some
professed Christians, they like to say, well, when you believe,
God forgives you for all the sins you've committed up to that
point, but you're on your own for the rest of the time. Now,
they won't say it quite that boldly, but that's what it comes
down to. Because if you sin a particularly, what they consider to be a particularly
bad sin afterwards, they think you're lost again. Well, it says
here that on the cross, he took the sins away. Did he bring them
back? Brother Donny Bell put it this
way. He says, and Donny, Brother Donny Bell came out of that kind
of religion. And he said, people say Christ just, you know, forgives
you of your past sins, not your future sins. And he said, when
the Lord Jesus Christ died for me, all my sins were future. When he put my sins away, all
of them were future. You, children of God, you who
believe, I know you hate your sin. Makes you feel bad when
you see it, recognize it. But you never need fear it. Because your sin never appears
in the presence of God. Because it appeared in his presence
2,000 years ago, he dealt with it then. Christ took them away.
They're out in the wilderness, they're gone. and they are never
coming back. Someone once said, a lot of people
have said this, they said, you know, in the Old Testament, there
wasn't really no justification, there was just an atonement.
And atonement means a covering. And they're right, it's a covering.
But then they'll say, you know, the sins under the Old Covenant,
they were just covered up. They weren't, you know, put away, and, you know, if something's
been covered, it might be uncovered. And I responded, that depends
altogether on what it was covered of. When the blood of Christ
covers sin, it cannot be uncovered. Cannot. Now, if you try to cover your
sin with your works, if you try to cover your sin with a whole
baptistry full of water, if you try to cover your sin by, you
know, even every day observing the Lord's table, well, wine
ain't gonna cover up your sin, bread ain't gonna cover up your
sin, water won't wash away your sin. But the blood of Jesus Christ,
according to the Apostle John, cleanses us from all sin. It can never be uncovered because
the blood that covers also washes clean. The destiny of death and judgment
has been fulfilled by Christ in behalf of the people of God. And then there's a glorious appearance. He was sacrificed once to take
away the sins of many people, and he will appear a second time.
He will appear a second time. Now, I imagine that This is a
reference to our Lord's return at the end of the ages, when
he shall return, and the dead in Christ shall rise, and any
of those in Christ who are yet living, they will be changed
in the twinkling of an eye, and all shall meet him, and be like
him, and they'll be with him always and forever. That's probably
what this is referring to. But I think we can apply it to
a couple of other situations in the experience of the believer
and in the progress, shall we say, of the gospel. First of
all, it says that he was sacrificed to take away the sins of many.
He'll appear a second time. And he did that three days after
he was sacrificed. Now, he had appeared before,
and they'd got to know him that way. But then they watched him
die. And so far as they knew, he was
gone and gone for good. But as we read at the beginning
of this morning's worship service, they didn't realize it, but that
wasn't the end of the story. He appeared again. He was put in a tomb. The stone
was rolled in place. He was put out of sight. When Abraham bought a cave in
order to bury his wife, he bought some property and he said, I
need a place to bury my dead out of my sight. Our Lord was
buried out of sight, but he appeared again. Sometime between sundown on the
Sabbath and sunrise on the first day of the week, our Lord came
out of the tomb. And he did not come out of the
tomb in the same kind of life he had before he was put in the
tomb. I've made this point several
times here. When the Lord Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb,
Lazarus came back with the very same kind of life he had before
he died. And what was the result of that?
Well, he died again. We don't know when. Scriptures
don't tell us because it's not important. But the resurrection
of Lazarus was not like the resurrection of the Lord. Lazarus died unto
sin. He died because of sin, not for
any particular sin he did, but just the fact he's a sinner.
He died. And the Lord Jesus Christ raised
him back from the dead. But when he came back from the
dead, he was still under the law. He was still under judgment.
He died again. Our Lord died unto sin once. And he died unto sin once for
all, because when he died unto sin, he put away the sin. When
he came out, there's no sin on him. It says he'll appear a second
time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation. He went in the tomb, as it were,
bearing sin. He came out without sin, bringing salvation. I think there's
a picture here for us of the high priest entering into the
most holy place with the blood of atonement. And he would go
in there, and he's burying that blood, and he's, you know, takes
several things together to fully picture Christ. There's the sacrificial
animal, there's the blood, there's the priest. All of these put
together represent Christ going into the most holy place not
made with hands. But in the old covenant economy,
that high priest would go in there with that blood, and he
would go into the presence of God there behind the curtain. He'd pour that blood out on the
atonement cover, commonly referred to as the mercy seat. And then
he would come back, and he would go out and appear again. You know, when he went back in
the temple, that was just like our Lord going into the tomb,
going into death, going into the presence of God, bearing
sin. But just as the high priest came
back out because the sacrifice had been accepted, he came back
out bringing word of God's acceptance and thus bringing salvation. And he would raise his hands
in blessing and say, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord
make his face to shine upon you and give you peace. I read that
when the high priest would give that blessing on the Day of Atonement,
that was the only time they ever pronounced the name of God out
loud. All the other times, if they
would come to the name of God, the name, we pronounce it Jehovah,
Yahweh, or however it's pronounced, when they would come to that,
they would say something like Adonai, which means Lord, or
they might say Hashem, which means the name. but they would
not even pronounce his name. But on that day of atonement,
the priest would go in there, he'd offer the blood, and if
he lived through that, that meant God accepted the sacrifice on
behalf of the national sins of Israel, and he would go out there
and bring a message of salvation and blessing, and then he did
pronounce the name of God. It could not be used in vain
in those circumstances. You know, there's a law that
says don't use the name of the Lord your God in vain. Well, you can't
use it in vain when you come out with an accepted sacrifice
and pronounce blessing. That's the proper use of the
name. Our Lord appeared. He came back out of that temple,
so to speak, and he came out bringing salvation. Our Lord doesn't bear sin anymore.
And there's no need for him ever to bear it again, because his
sacrifice was sufficient. To whom? Well, there's other
places. Regeneration, I think, is another
time we could apply this, because this is regeneration, what we
call the new birth. This is when the Lord Jesus Christ
makes an appearance, as it were, to an individual, one of his
sheep. appears to them bringing his
salvation. And then, of course, at the end
of the ages, he will come again. And I'd be just as happy if that
were today. When I was a kid, the church
I was raised in, they talked about the coming of the Lord
a lot. I don't think they understood much about it, but I'd hear them
say things like, you know, oh, what if it weren't today? Wouldn't
that be great? And, you know, I as a 10 to 20-year-old guy,
you know, I wasn't interested in leaving. And they'd put enough
fear in me. I always wondered if I was going
to be one of those left behind, as they say, you know. Brethren,
I've lived long enough. that life as it is here has lost
most of its luster. But it's not just that I'm a
little bit wary of this life. That's not the only reason. Over
the years, my heart has desired more and more to see him, to
see him, to experience the perfection of all that he did for me. To know not only by faith but
by experience, by sight as it were, I am my beloved's and my
beloved is mine. To live in the constant, absolute
assurance and experience of that reality. What a wonderful time that day
that will be. when the Lord returns, bringing
salvation. And then to whom does he bring
salvation? To those who are waiting for him. Now it doesn't just
mean waiting in the sense of passing the time. Often in the Psalms you'll read,
wait upon the Lord. Wait, what does that mean? When we wait on the Lord, what
we're doing is saying, I'm in trouble, I've got a problem,
it's a problem I can't handle. I'm not gonna try to fix it myself. I'm gonna wait for the Lord. And he will come at the right
time. And he will do the right thing
to remedy this problem that's beyond my ability. Now most religious
people, are not waiting for the Lord. They're busy trying to
prepare themselves to face God in judgment. And the fact of
the matter is, there is no preparation you can make for that. You can't make yourself good
enough to pass the judgment. You can't make yourself live
long enough to bypass the judgment. Rather, we wait. We wait in hope. And remember
in the Bible, hope isn't just a wish, it's a confident expectation. Unbelievers, they like to persecute
the people of God, particularly the religious ones, point out
their sins. What are you gonna do about that?
Again, they don't use those words, but that's what it comes down
to. They pile guilt on the people of God. What are you gonna do
about that? I'm gonna wait. I'm going to
stand right here. I'm going to stand on Christ
and I'm not going to move anywhere. I'm going to stand on a solid
rock. I'm not going to put one foot
on that rock and another one on the sand of my own righteousness
and my own goodness. I'm going to wait right here
until he comes to me. I'm not going to try to solve
it myself. I'm gonna let Him take care of it. I'm going to
wait. Is that what you're doing? Are
you waiting for the Lord? Or are you trying to fix it yourself? Are you resting in His finished
work, confident that at the appointed time He will come and perfect
that work in you? Or are you trying to hedge your
bets, saying, well, I think he's gonna come and save me, but just
in case, I'm gonna be busy as I can, being as good as I can. Wait. He is coming. The promise is as sure, think
on this, the promise is as sure as the curse was. It's appointed
unto man once to die and after that face judgment. That's pretty
sure, isn't it? This is just as sure. He will
appear a second time to bring salvation to those who are waiting
for him. God give us grace to wait.