Now Hebrews chapter nine, we'll
start reading in verse 11 and read through verse 15. When Christ came as a high priest
of the good things that are already here, he went through a greater and
more perfect tabernacle that is not manmade. That is to say,
not part of this creation. He did not enter by means of
the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the most holy
place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal
redemption. The blood of goats and bulls
and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially
unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How
much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences
from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living
God? I've entitled this message, How
Much More? That's from verse 14. How much
more then will the blood of Christ cleanse our conscience? Now,
man is born with a guilty conscience. Every person born into this world
is born with a guilty conscience. Of course, brand new infants
are unaware of it because, well, they are hardly aware of anything
in that sense of the word. But as soon as a child is able
to think about righteousness and sin, he realizes that he
falls under the category of sinner. He'll not want to believe it.
He'll not want to admit it. He'll do just like everybody
else. He'll lie about it. But the truth is he knows. that
he is a sinner. And this is nothing more than
that evil conscience created in Adam and passed down to all
his posterity when Adam sinned. You know the story. It's in Genesis
3, how that Adam, he was not deceived, but he chose to eat
of the forbidden fruit and the moment he did, both he and Eve
came under the condemnation of God, and they revealed their
knowledge of that condemnation by trying to put together some
clothes to cover their nakedness. Man-made religion always accents
and increases this guilt. Look back at 1 Timothy chapter
four. 1 Timothy chapter 4. Now, I talk about man-made religion. Man-made religion actually twists this scripture and uses
it to actually promote the very thing that this scripture is
teaching us is wrong. It says in verse 1, the Spirit
clearly said, now this is 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 1, the Spirit
clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and
follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such
teachings come through hypocritical liars whose consciences have
been seared as with a hot iron." Now man-made religion will look
at this and say, oh, okay, now this is doctrine taught by deceiving
spirits and demons, and it's those whose consciences have
been seared with a hot iron, and they will take that idea
of being seared with a hot iron, which is like a reference to
branding cattle, And they say, you know, that forms a scar and
it becomes insensitive. And they think that these people
who have been seared with a hot iron, their conscience has been
seared with a hot iron, they are those who have no sense of
guilt. But I believe that what Paul's
talking about is exactly the opposite, because notice what
is said next in verse 3, 1 Timothy chapter 4. They forbid people
to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods which God
created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who
know the truth." Now, if an animal is branded, sooner or later that
will scar over and that area will become without sensation,
because it kills the nerves there. But as soon as you brand it,
that is right after, just as you've seared it, it isn't less
sensitive, it's much more sensitive. And that's the kind of people
that's being spoken of here in 1 Timothy. Their conscience has
been seared, it is hypersensitive, For example, they become so aware
of their own sexual immorality that they will become or they
will think that all kinds of sexual expression are evil and
therefore they forbid people to marry. They think that there
is a higher state of morality to be obtained if a person abstains
from marriage and the sexual relationship that's allowed within
the covenant of marriage. See what they've done? They're
hypersensitive and they have completely called evil, that
which God called good under the right circumstances. And then
they're supposed to, they make rules about what you can eat
and what you can't eat. Why is this? Their conscience,
it's not dead or senseless, it's hypersensitive, like a burn. If you've ever burned yourself,
you know, you don't even wanna touch it because all the sensations
are magnified. Now that's what religion does
to a man. It causes him to be more and
more aware of his sinfulness, so much so that he thinks the
only way out is to pass ever more laws and rules and regulations. And hopefully, if he can bind
himself and obey those regulations, then nothing will be touching
that hypersensitive conscience of him. the scripture we read
at the beginning of our worship this morning. Paul spoke about
similar people whose general way of life, of religious life,
their way of approaching God consists of rules like touch
not, taste not, handle not. That's why he said don't let
anybody judge you with regard to what you eat or drink. or
with regard to ceremonial observances or new moons and Sabbaths. And
I find it alarming, not alarming, but fascinating might be the
right word, that there's that scripture right there in Colossians,
and yet that's exactly what people do. They will read that Paul
says, don't let any person judge you about what you eat and drink,
and then people make rules about what you can eat and drink. It
says don't let them judge you about ceremonial observances
and they will say we're responsible to fulfill the ceremonial observances. And Paul says don't let anyone
judge you about new moons or Sabbath days and they will heap
guilt on you if you don't observe the days that they believe should
be observed. Now this shows you the darkness
of the human mind, doesn't it? Right there in the face of obvious
scripture, people go exactly the wrong direction. A man-made
religion always turns to laws. It's always consumed with the
idea of what is right and wrong and binds people to these rules
and increases those rules. And they believe that by doing
so, as people obey these rules, that they are somehow or another
gaining themselves a better position in the sight of God. Of course,
this never works. Ever-increasing rules produce
ever-increasing guilt. But they write rules about morality. They make rules about diet, about
days, about ceremonies. I grew up with the religion that
I always like to talk about being separate. Separation was something
they were always telling us. We had to be separate from the
world. And essentially they said the
way to be separate from the world was, well, you don't drink alcoholic
beverages, and you dress a certain way, and
you don't go to dances, and you don't go to the theater. All
of this, which falls under the very category that Paul said
we should not submit to, touch not, taste not, handle not. Now, this does not mean that
the scriptures have no instructions about how we are to live, but
all the instructions that God gives His people to follow come
under the category of loving Him or loving our neighbor as
ourselves. And they are all useful commandments. That is, they command us to do
things that are useful and good. not just vain acts of outward
righteousness, which are done for men's eyes to see. These
vain acts of righteousness are impressive to men. And yet our
Lord said that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination
to God. The commandments, if we call
them that, that are given to us in the New Testament concern
things like forgiving one another, and caring for one another, providing
for one another, building one another up. Yet man-made religion
increases rules by which they separate themselves from others,
count themselves to be better than others, do what they can
to tear others down so that they can feel better than others,
but all of it is an abomination to God. Now this goes for any kind of
religion in the world, those versions of Christianity that
practice this, generally resort to the law which was given at
Mount Sinai. Now this is an easy trap to fall
in, for that law did come from God. You know, the Ten Commandments,
and the other ceremonial, religious, social, and civil laws, they
all came from God, and it would be easy to conclude that those
laws are binding upon all humanity for all time. Now, before we
go any farther, it'd probably be a good idea to do a little
explaining. When I talk about conscience,
or more importantly, when the book of Hebrews talks about conscience,
what does it mean? Because it says that the blood
of Christ will cleanse our conscience from, actually, it doesn't say
in the Greek language, from acts that lead to death. It says it'll
cleanse our conscience from dead works. And what does it mean,
what's it referring to when it says our conscience? Well, it's
not speaking of our own sense of guilt when we harm other people. That's not the conscience that
the book of Hebrews is talking about. If we do wrong to others, we
should feel bad about that. And we should do all we can to
fix the wrong that we did. The blood of Christ does not
purge our conscience in that sense. It doesn't make us uncaring
about how we treat other people. It doesn't make us feel as though
we should not try to fix the things we have, the harmful things
we've done to them. And when he's speaking of the
conscience here, it does not even speak of the sense of grief
that a believer has. when he is brought to face the
fact that he sinned against the God of his salvation. Now, David
was under the blood of Christ. David was a believer. I'm talking
about King David in the Old Testament. David was a believer. And yet,
when it was brought to his attention, that is, he was made to face
it, that he had sinned against God, it broke him. He described
his heart as crushed. He illustrated the condition
of his heart as like broken bones. He said, my sin is ever before
me. Now, before David said that,
and you find all those words in Psalm 51, before he said those
words, Nathan the prophet had already told him that God had
forgiven him and that he would not die for his sins. So David
said all these things about his crushed spirit and the broken
bones and how his sin was always in his sight. He said all those
things even though in the sense that the book of Hebrews is using
it, the word conscience, his conscience was clear. We who believe, we are no longer
slaves. We no longer serve God out of
a sense of guilt and bondage. But the blood of Christ will
not cleanse our conscience, if that's
the right way to use it. That is, it will not render our
conscience insensitive to those sins we have committed against
our God. So what does it do? What does
it mean here when it says that the blood of Christ cleanses
our consciences? What conscience is he talking
about? What he's talking about our conscience before God the
judge. He's talking about our conscience
as we approach God as the one who has the right and most certainly
will judge us. It's appointed unto man once
to die. We find that in verse 27 here
of chapter 9, just as man is destined to die once and after
that to face judgment, So we realize we're going to die sometime,
and afterward, we will face God in judgment. Now, a man has a
conscience with regard to that judgment. He has a sense of the
outcome of that judgment. And what is that sense? What
does he believe? He believes he's guilty. As I
said, he won't say that out. He won't admit it to you. He
won't even consciously admit it to God, but he knows that's
the truth. And how do we know that he knows
that's the truth? Because of all the things he
fears, he fears death the most. If a man had no guilt before
God and lived in 100% assurance of that, he would have no fear
of death. He would have no fear of coming
before God in judgment. So when we're talking here about
the conscience being cleansed, we're talking about that consciousness
of sin that brings a sense of guilt and condemnation before
God. Now, back in Romans chapter 3
and verse 20. It says, therefore, no one will
be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. Rather, through the law, we become
conscious of sin. Strictly, that word in our translation,
it says conscious, and that's a good translation, but strictly,
it's talking about knowledge. Through the law, comes the knowledge
of sin, the knowledge of its power to kill, the knowledge
of its condemning power in the presence of God. Now, if anyone
comes in the presence of God with guilt upon him, he will
be condemned. God says, I will not by no means
clear, that is justify the guilty. Now, when people turn to the
law as a means to remove guilt, all that the law will ever do
is tell them he's guilty. Guilty in the sight of God the
judge, guilty of all the law, for as one of the apostles said,
if you fail in one point of the law, you have failed in all of
it. And therefore, those who try to approach God through the
law are always hearing that which the law says. Now, Paul later
on in the book of Romans says, that which the law says, it says
to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped
and the whole world be held accountable or guilty before God. Now, the
law does have the message and it's a true message. but its
only message is guilty. And anyone who listens to the
law is gonna get that message because that's the only message
it has. Now, it says here in verse 14,
How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences
from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living
God? Now, there's some things Christ
did not do. He did not approach God through
the temple that had been built by man. Now, the Jews, the unbelieving
ones, put great confidence in themselves being that nation
that God chose to enter into covenant with. And he built the
temple and they had the priesthood and they had all the sacrifices
and all that. And they actually believed that
by offering those animals and fulfilling the obligations of
Jewish religion, that they were cleansing their sins away. Well,
Jesus Christ came and he did not go to God through that temple. He did not go to God with the
blood of goats. This is verse 12. He did not
enter by the means of the blood of goats and calves. Now, I don't know how many millions
of animals were sacrificed to God during the days of the Old
Covenant, and even previous to that, because animal sacrifice
was the common practice even before then. I mean, we see that
in the story of Cain and Abel. But our Lord didn't use that
method. Even though it had been commanded,
he did not use that method. What did he do then? Well, first
he came as a high priest, as a high priest. read that in verse 11, when Christ
came as high priest in the Jewish economy, the Jewish form of religion,
there were lots of priests, but there was only one high priest
and it was he alone that went into the symbolic presence of
God there in the most holy place. And he did that just once a year
and he did it with the blood of an animal. Well, when Christ
came, he came as a high priest. Now, what does that tell us?
Well, since he came as a high priest, it tells us we need one.
God never does anything that doesn't need to be done. If he
sent his son as a high priest, it's because we need one. Now,
this high priest, what is he? He is one who comes between the
guilty and then the righteous God. He comes between them, and
he comes between them with a sacrifice. and he represents the people
in the presence of God and makes offerings in their behalf to
reconcile them to God, to put away God's wrath for sin. That's what a priest did in a
symbolic sense in the Old Covenant, but Jesus Christ came as a high
priest and what the high priest of the Old Covenant could only
do by symbol, he did in reality. There's one God and one mediator
between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And this high priest,
it's a mediator. So he came as high priest and
he offered himself. He didn't offer bulls, calves,
goats, pigeons, whatever. He didn't offer any of that kind
of stuff. Why? Well, it's pretty simple. It
says, that such offerings can never put away sin. In verse 4 of chapter 10, it
says, it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take
away sins. And so the Lord didn't offer
that. He came in by His own blood. Now, it says that He came in
by His own blood, but it wouldn't be just any kind of blood that
would do. He said, it says there, he offered
himself unblemished to God. The blood that makes atonement
for the soul. And in the book of Leviticus,
God says it's the blood that makes atonement for the soul.
But not any blood will do. Not even human blood will do
in and of itself. My blood, if my blood was shed,
it wouldn't even make atonement for my soul. I would die and
I would die in my sins, even if I had been crucified. The only reason that Christ's
blood had the power to remove sin is because it was the blood
of one who is unblemished by sin. That's the only reason.
all his life he was conceived without sin. Remember David said,
in sin did my mother conceive me. Now it doesn't mean that
it was a sinful act that brought about his conception. What it
meant was the moment he was conceived he was a sinner. Now why is that? Because his father is a descendant
of Adam. And in Adam all die because in
Adam all sinned. But Jesus Christ does not have
a paternal ancestry going back to Adam. He has a legal ancestry
that goes back to Adam through his adoptive father, Joseph,
but he has no genetic connection to Adam. Rather, he was born
of a virgin, and it was not done that way in order, as some way
to say that Mary's state of virginity made her more suitable to be
the vessel in which the Son of God was conceived and brought
to birth. It wasn't because that made her
more moral. It was simply proof that he was
not the product of conception by a natural man. When the angel told Mary that
she was gonna have a child, she says, how can this be, seeing
that I don't know a man? Meaning she'd never had sexual
relations with a man. She says, how can I give birth?
And the angel said, the Holy Spirit shall overshadow you.
what is in you will be conceived by the Holy Spirit. So our Lord
Jesus came into this world without the stain of original sin, without
the stain of the imputed sin of Adam, and without the stain
of a nature that is sinful. And the Bible says that when
He lived that He did no sin, not once. Now, all you and I have to do is think
just a little bit, and we realize that we can't get through a minute
without sin. You say, well, you've been up
there preaching now for some time. You're not saying you were
sinning while you're doing that. Well, of course I am. You don't
have to do anything with your hands or your body to commit
sin. Sin is right up there in our heads and they're sinful
thoughts, sinful attitudes, sinful desires. Sin goes beyond. our actions and goes to the very
essence of what we are. In fact, we may say, according
to the scripture, there is never a time when we are not sinning.
But in the entire natural lifetime of our Lord Jesus Christ, there
never was a time when he was sinning. He offered himself without
spot. And that's why his blood can
cleanse us from all our spots because his blood was shed and
he himself was without spot. He offered himself to God. People
say we have to accept the sacrifice of Christ. You can't accept the
sacrifice of Christ because it was never offered to you. I wish I could, you know, like
everybody in the world was tuned in, you know, was picking up
our live stream right now, just so I could tell them that. Because
that kind of stuff was told to me. Oh yes, Jesus Christ died
for you, but you have to accept that work. I can't, because he
never offered it to me. He offered himself to God, and
only God has the right to accept or reject it. Now in faith, I acknowledge that
his work is sufficient, sufficient to put away sins even as great
and as numerous as mine, but I can't accept the sacrifice
because it was never offered to me. It was offered to God.
God is the one who's offended by my sin, and it's God's anger
and God's justice that must be satisfied by the pouring out
of blood in my behalf. So the blood was not poured out
in my sight, it was poured out in the sight of God. He entered the true tabernacle
to do this, not a tabernacle made with hands, which means
it wasn't even a part of this creation. You know, there were
a lot of people watching the crucifixion. Not a one of them
saw what was really going on because what was really going
on was not going on in the natural world in which you and I live.
Even as he in this world and in his flesh offered himself
in the crucifixion, there were things going on in the spiritual
world that the natural eye could not see. Jesus Christ did not
leave this earth in the flesh, and yet through the spirit, through
the eternal spirit, he offered himself to God. in the unseen
world, in that true tabernacle where God isn't present only
in a symbolic sense, but where he truly is. You see, that's
the thing to understand about our Lord's crucifixion. While
it was done so that we could see it and learn some things
from it, the actual work of death that put away the sins of God's
people was done in the presence of God even though Christ never
left this world to do it. It was a spiritual thing. He offered himself by the shedding
of his blood. Blood's the token of life. The
Jews were forbidden from eating blood because The life is in
the blood and therefore the shedding of blood is the giving up of
life. The wages of sin is death. Therefore, the shedding of blood
is the payment of those wages. And then here in verse 12, we
learned something about our Lord's sacrifice, something very important. It says he offered himself once
for all. Now those high priests under
the old covenant, they did it year after year after year. I
believe that it was about 1500 years BC, if I'm remembering
the right number, but I think it's somewhere in that neighborhood.
that Moses received the law. So for 1,500 years, with the
exception of the time they were in captivity, every year the
high priest went into the presence, the symbolic presence of God
there to offer a sacrifice. Why did they have to do it every
year? Because it never worked. It never put away sin. There
was no high priest of the line of Aaron who could offer a sacrifice
once for all. It had to be repeated year after
year after year, but Christ came. He entered the real tabernacle,
offered human blood, his own blood, blood not tainted by sin,
and he offered it once for all because when he offered himself
without spot to God, it actually did put away sin. And once a
job is done, you don't have to do it anymore. We don't apply the blood. I've heard people say that, you
know, you need to apply the blood to your heart. No. I don't have
access to the blood. Really, I don't. Nobody does.
He offered it to God. And he offered it to God in behalf
of a chosen people. Their sins were laid upon him
as the sins of God's wandering sheep. And as it's written in
Isaiah 53, for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
And such was the greatness of his person, the perfection of
his nature and the power of his work that when he was stricken
for his people, his people were made free of sin. Now what's
the result of that? Well, Once the Holy Spirit reveals
this truth to us, it cleanses our consciences in the sight
of God. And it cleanses our consciences
from dead works. What does that mean? It's all
those works that people do trying to curry the favor of God. It's all their touch not, taste
not, handle not. It's all their attempts to try
to keep the Ten Commandments. It's all their ceremonies, it's
all that. You see, once the blood of Christ has been revealed as
the sin cleanser, once we've been made spiritually alive to
understand these spiritual truths, we come to the realization that
there is nothing more that needs to be done to purify myself in
the sight of God. That because Jesus Christ died
as my substitute, there's nothing that I can do that'll make God
love me more, and thank God there's nothing I can do that's gonna
make Him love me less. Because His love comes to me
through the Lord Jesus Christ, because of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and Because of what Christ did, he sees me as one without sin. So we don't need to do those
dead works. Why are they called dead works? Because they're done
by dead men, spiritually dead people. Anything done, any work
of righteousness performed by a spiritually dead person is
a dead work, and a dead work has no power to give life. So we're free from all of that. And then that means that we can
actually serve, that is worship, the living God. You see, there's
people going through acts of worship all over the world today. But the only ones who are truly
worshiping God are those whose conscience Consciences have been
purged from these dead works, and they're approaching God entirely
upon what Christ has done. That's the only way to serve
him. It's the only way to worship him. And then we'll close with
this, the other result of Christ's work, offering himself without
spot to God, verse 15. For this reason, Christ has made
the mediator of a new covenant. that those who are called may
receive the promised eternal inheritance. Jesus Christ's death
disassembled the old covenant. It made it old and obsolete and
put it out of the way and established a brand new covenant. I say brand
new, it's not new in its, as though it hadn't been in place
already, The new covenant had been in place at all times, but
it was not fully revealed until this point. And therefore it's
called a new covenant. And it's a new covenant in which
God says, there's sins and iniquities I will remember no more. It's
a new covenant in which the law is no longer a matter of something
written in tables of stone, but it's the law of the gospel written
upon the heart. And here's the wonderful result
because Christ is the mediator of this covenant and not one
of the sons of Aaron. Christ, the Son of God, is the
mediator of the covenant. Therefore, those who are called
actually do receive the promised eternal inheritance. The Jews
were called, but almost none of them actually
received that inheritance. eternal inheritance, and that
was pictured in the fact when Moses led them out of the wilderness. And they were called to go to
the land of promise, but through unbelief they refused to go.
Though they were called, they never received that which had
been promised. Why? Because the only mediator
they had was Aaron, or Moses, the mediator of the old covenant.
and that's not a good enough mediator. But we have Christ
as the mediator of a new covenant. Therefore, all who were called
in eternity to Christ and called in time to Christ, all of them
will receive the promised eternal inheritance of life with God,
of being without spot and blemish themselves, full of joy and accepted
and approved by Him. How much more? Verse 14, how much more? Infinitely
more, infinitely more. The blood of bulls and goats,
sheep, and whatever else was offered there on those sacrifices
never put away one sin. but the blood of Jesus Christ
put away all the sins that were laid on him. And that means all
the sins of all of God's wandering sheep were laid on him, and by
his blood he paid for them. And God accepted that payment,
testifying to that acceptance by raising Christ from the dead
and then calling him to sit at his right hand. And there he
sits as our living mediator. And therefore, those who are
in him are assured of receiving the promised eternal inheritance.
All right, let us close in prayer. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you
for who and what you are and what you did. For in those things
is all our hope. We pray, Lord, and you would
seal this testimony to our hearts. In the name of Christ, we pray
it. Amen.