Now the outline, basically, of
these verses that we have before us is this. We have the efficacy
of his blood, then we will see the necessity of the blood of
Christ, and then we will see the blood illustrated, and then
we will end with the blood applied in heaven. And that's the message
I'm going to bring after this. Now he says here, let me start
back here in verse 11. It says, But Christ, being come
a high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more
perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not
of this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves,
but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place.
And I like, I like the way this is written. Having obtained,
not trying to obtain, our Lord never tried anything. I try a
lot of things. He never tried anything. Everything
He did, He accomplished. It says, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. Then it says, for if the blood
of bulls and of goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling
the unclean sanctified to the purifying of the flesh. What
he's saying here, there was a ceremonial cleansing provided in these offerings
and these bulls and these goats and the atonement and then in
the ashes of a heifer, that red heifer. I want to read that to
you over in Numbers chapter 19. So you'll get an idea here right
from the word of God of what he's talking about. In Numbers. Chapter 19. Let me read this
portion of scripture to you. It says, And the Lord spake unto
Moses and to Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance of the law which
the Lord hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel,
that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish,
and upon which never came a yoke. And ye shall give her unto Eleazar
the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and
one shall slay her before his face. And Eleazar the priest
shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle of her
blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation seven times.
And one shall burn the heifer in his sight. Her skin, and her
flesh, and her blood with her dung shall be burned. And the
priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and
cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer. Then the
priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh
in water. And afterward he shall come unto the camp, and the priest
shall be unclean until the evening. And he that burneth her shall
wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and
shall be unclean until the evening. And a man that is clean shall
gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp
in a clean place. And it shall be kept for the
congregation of the children of Israel, for a water of separation. It is a purification for sin. And he that gathers the ashes
of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until
the evening. And it shall be unto the children
of Israel and unto the strangers that sojourn among them for a
statute for ever. He that touches the dead body
of any man shall be unclean seven days. He shall purify himself
with it on the third day. And on the seventh day he shall
be clean. But if he purifies not himself the third day, then
the Seventh day he shall not be clean. Whosoever touches the
dead body of any man that is dead and purifies not himself
defiles the tabernacle of the Lord. And that soul shall be
cut off from Israel because the water of separation was not sprinkled
upon him. He shall be unclean. His uncleanness
is yet upon him. So that's where Paul is referring
to. He's saying here there was a
ceremonial cleansing provided in these offerings. But it never
cleansed. This ceremonial cleansing never
cleansed that inner man. It never cleansed the conscience.
It never cleansed the soul. It never went that far. It only
made an outward purification. What it did, it allowed the person
who was unclean to be made clean again and remain among the community
of God's people. That's what it did. But it never
touched, it never touched that inward soul, that conscience
at all. The bulls and goats made no inward
change. They made no inward change whatsoever.
They only pointed to the one who can truly cleanse us from
our sins. And then he says here in verse
14, after pointing this out, how much more? How much more? That is just seems to be a favorite
word here in Hebrews. How much more? How much more
effective, how much more efficacious, this is what he's saying, is
the offering of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. How much
more is his? It purifies the soul. That offering
that we just read here only purified the flesh. Only it made the outward
man clean. It pronounced it clean. It's
all that it did. But it never purified his soul. Ever. And then it says it cleanses
the conscience. Nothing, absolutely nothing can quiet a guilty conscience. except the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. We do a lot of things. People
do a lot of things to quiet their conscience. There's a lot of
things going on this morning in religious services and ceremonies
that are being done to quiet the conscience. But nothing can
give you a quiet conscience. Nothing can give you a clear
conscience. And I'll tell you what we would
give for a clear conscience. But nothing will give you a clear
conscience but the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ applied by
the Holy Spirit and received by faith. Nothing can do that. We are truly clean in God's sight. The blood, it says, of Jesus
Christ cleanses us from all sin. And then his offering was of
a spiritual nature. It wasn't like those in the Old
Testament. That was just of a natural offering
It was bulls and goats, but the offering of the Lord Jesus Christ
was of a spiritual nature. Listen, how much more shall the
blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, that's how
he did it, not with hands of flesh. Those bulls and goats
were offered by the high priest, but that high priest was nothing
but a mere man. And he was just a sinful man
like me. But this offering is offered through, he says here,
the eternal spirit. Now, some say that was the Holy
Spirit, and some say that's the divine nature of Christ, offering
up his human nature unto God. But whichever, it was a spiritual
offering to God Almighty. His offering. It was a spiritual
offering. It says in Acts 20, 28, that
it is the blood of God that was offered. He offered himself, it says here,
without spot unto God. And his offering was of a spiritual
offering to God. It was himself, and it was of
a spiritual nature. And he offered himself to God
as a sacrifice, as a sacrifice and atonement for sin, the sin
of his people, his elect. He is the sacrifice. And his
blood is the blood of atonement. Now how much more, he says here
again, how much more shall he purge your conscience? You see
where this one leads to? The other one just purged and
purified the flesh. This one purges and cleans the
conscience of a man. How much more shall he purge
your conscience from dead works, that is, from sin and transgression? He purges your conscience from
sin and transgressions to serve the living God. You and I, who
have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, can serve God with
a clear conscience. We can serve God with a clean
conscience. That's what he's saying. We're
able to do this. The powerful work of Christ for us and in
us Enables us to truly worship and serve God from the heart. We are not serving God with outward
form and outward show and outward serve. We don't go through that
here. And the reason we don't go through that, we don't need
to. It's been put away. We worship God. We gather here
together and we worship God from the heart. From the heart, and
we worship him with a clear conscience. Washed in the blood of the Lamb.
A new heart. David said, give me, create in
me a clean heart. That's what he does here. It's
a clean heart. It's a new heart and it's a clean
and clear conscience. Paul told Timothy, he said, I
serve God with a pure conscience. God knows my heart. That's what
he's saying. God knows my heart and I serve
him with a pure conscience. And the blood of bulls and goats
could not do this. The blood of bulls and goats
could not give me a clean, a clear conscience and a pure heart.
The blood of bulls and goats, he said, was not able to do this. It only affected the outward
cleansing. That's all it did. It affected
the outward man, but never that conscience and never that inward
man. Then he gives us the necessity
of the blood here in verse 15. For this cause, That is, for
this reason, because of who he is, and because of his perfect
sacrifice, and because of his blood, his blood of atonement,
because of who he is, he became the mediator of the new covenant. Because he's able to purge the
conscious from dead works to serve the living God, he's able
by his blood to make a real atonement for sin, a real atonement for
sin. And because of his purity and
holiness, God made him the mediator. God made him the surety of that
new covenant. He became the mediator, it says
here, of that new covenant. He assumed human flesh and a
real human soul so that by means of his death he might pay for
the transgression of all God's those in the Old Testament and
those who are after the Old Testament. His blood, his sacrifice cleansed
and put away every sin of every saint that will end up in glory.
The blood of bulls and goats never put away the sin of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. It never put their sins away.
I had someone tell me years ago, they said, well, those of the
Old Testament, their sins were put away by the blood of the
bulls and goats, and our sins are put away by the blood of
Christ. I said, no, no, no way. Their sins are put away by the
blood of Christ as everyone's sins are put away by the blood
of Christ. He is called the Lamb slain before the foundation of
the world. He's always been before the Lord.
He's always stood for God's people forever. He's always done that.
He's the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world.
God always saw His people, His elect, always saw them, always
viewed them in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's never been a
time that He looked upon them any time outside of His Son,
ever. His redemption reaches every
one of His saints. And all sin that has been put
away has been put away by the sacrifice of himself. Put away
by the sacrifice of himself. Now, here's the necessity of
him being the mediator. Here's the necessity of him coming
and doing this work, is they which are called might receive
the promise of eternal inheritance. His atoning work, it says here,
this is what it means. is a means to a greater end.
His atoning work is a means to a greater end. All the blessings,
all the blessings of the New Testament, that is His new covenant,
come through Him. They come to us through the Lord
Jesus Christ. Not the ceremonies, not the law. They all come to us through the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's how they come, every one
of them. Here is the great end of his death and meditatorial
work. Here it is, they which are called might receive the
promise of the eternal inheritance. They which are called, called
by the Holy Spirit, called by grace, born of God, called effectually,
here's the reason why God made him the mediator of this new
covenant, that they. which are called might receive
the promise of the eternal inheritance." There is no doubt they're going
to get it. He secured it for them. He bought faith for them. They're going to have it. They
who are the beneficiaries, I'm looking, those who believe God,
I'm looking at the beneficiaries of heaven. We can't put enough words out
there to explain the blessings of that, that we are the beneficiaries
of all that God is and all that God has. That's amazing. We are the beneficiaries of God's
call, and we receive the promise of that eternal inheritance when
we die, when we leave this life. We are going to receive the promise. of that eternal inheritance that
God promised His Son and promised us in His Son. We're going to
have it. We are going to have it in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He secured it. It's His. It's in His hands.
We have all that He has. All that He has. Now, for us
to enjoy this new covenant and all its promises and blessings,
it says here in verse 16, for where a testament is, There must
also of necessity be the death of the testator. This is spoken
of here in two ways. This word can be used in two
different ways. This testament, it can be used
as a covenant, as agreement, or as a will. It has both meanings. As agreement, and that's the
covenant of grace, is the agreement between the Father and the Son.
But it's also a will. It's a will and testament from
God to his people. He's saying here, for us to enjoy
this new covenant, this new testament, this will of God, and all His
promises and blessings, there must first be the death of the
one who made it. Well, the one who made it is
God. God can't die. God as He is,
God who is holy, God who is spirit, cannot die. So therefore, the
Son of God became a man. He became a man, and in order,
he did this in order to die, and in dying, listen, he released
the blessings of this will. In dying, he released the blessings
of the will of God to his people. You have children, some of you
have children, and you've left what you own, all that's yours,
you've left it to them in a will. You've willed it to them. But
they're not going to get it until you die. That will is no good
while you are still alive. My dad gave us a will the other
day and sealed it, and he gave it to us to keep and put up.
He said, now don't open that until we die. I said, well, you're
trying to mess with me, aren't you? Don't open it until I die,
until we die. Don't open this envelope. When
he dies, he and Mom, when they pass on, then we can open it,
and all that's in there belong to the kids. And that's what
he's saying here. If there's anything I want to
get across this morning, this is where I really want to get
to. This will that God Almighty has made, it's His will. It's your father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom. But in order for him to give
you the kingdom and all the blessings that go with it, the death of
the one who made it must happen. Well, for that to happen, the
Lord Jesus Christ has to come into this world, assume flesh,
become human, become a man so that he can die, so that the
testator, the one that made it, can die. And that's what he did. That's what he did. He came into
this world. That's what happened at Calvary.
The Son of God was put to death. And when He was put to death,
that released every blessing of the covenant. I'm trying to
put it in human language we can understand. That released all
that God has for us, which is everything He is and everything
He has. And you know what the best part
of it is? He now lives to enforce His own
will. There's no crooked lawyer. There's
no upset child in the family. You've seen families fall apart
over these things. I've seen families fall completely apart,
split up over these earthly, temporal things. They just split
up over it. Our Lord lives to enforce His
own will. You're going to have what he
has promised and purposed to give you. You're going to have
it. And then we have here the blood illustrated. Now he's going
to refer back to the Old Testament to illustrate the need of this
blood for this testament. Now look back in verse 18. It says,
Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood.
That is the first covenant. 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. Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and
all the vessels of the ministry. When I was reading that, I thought,
what we are doing this morning, right now, we're gathered here
to worship God. We're gathered here to hear the
gospel. We're gathered here to preach, to sing. You know, all
this is cleansed by the blood of Christ. He couldn't receive
this apart from His blood. It says He sprinkled all the
vessels of the ministry. It's all clean and purged by
the blood. And what we are doing this morning
is cleansed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And God can
accept our worship. God can accept our praise. God
can accept our singing because it's cleansed by the blood of
the Lamb. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood. Without shedding of blood is
no remission. Even the old covenant, he says
here, was dedicated, purified, and put into force by blood. And without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sin. Now there were some things that
was purged by fire, some by water, but there was never forgiveness,
ever forgiveness of sin without the blood. Never. Never without
the shedding of the blood. We not only have the death of
the testator here, We also have in Christ the blood that cleanses
us from all sins and enables us to worship the living God.
He enables us to do it. Now he says here in verse 23,
Now it was necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens
should be purified with these. It was necessary that the patterns
be cleansed with patterns. That's what he's saying. They
were not the original. They were just prints of the
originals. I have prints in our house. I used to work down there
and buy coffee down at the art gallery. And we bought several
prints. Never did I buy an original.
The original was worth too much. These were just patterns. These
were just prints off the original. That's all it was. They were
nothing more than just prints. And he said, it's okay. that
these patterns be purified with patterns, but the heavenly things
themselves, I'm looking at the heavenly things themselves. Those
who will dwell with God, those who will be in his presence,
they must be purified with better things. They must be purified
with the original, not the pattern, the original. All that these
could do was represent the original. They could not purify the soul.
They could not cleanse the conscience. They couldn't go that far. Heavenly
things themselves could not be cleansed and cleared by just
the offerings of bulls and goats and ashes of an heifer. It had
to be the original that cleansed them. It had to be. Paul wants
them to know that the mosaic system here was no more than
a representation. This is all that it is. It's
a representation of the true priestly work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Remember, remember who Paul's
writing to here. He's writing to Hebrews. He's
writing to these Jews who spent their lives. Now you think about,
think about who Paul's writing to here. They spent their lives
every day, every year going through these rituals. They were there. Paul was And all those services
when they were offering up those bulls and those goats and the
ashes of a heifer, they were right there. They were going
through this. And he's saying to these Jews
who put their, many of them put so much stock in it, they put
their acceptance with God in it. He said these things are
gone. These things are over with. He said the original has come. These were just patterns. These
were just types. Now let them go. Just let them
go, because we have now the original. We have the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have the true blood of atonement. We have the true sacrifice for
sin that cleanses not just the outward man, not just the outward
of the flesh, not just the purification of the outward person, but this
one purifies and truly cleanses the soul. It truly cleanses and
gives you, listen, a clear conscience. You cannot have a clear conscience
apart from the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't care what
you do. I don't care what we do. It's
the blood that makes atonement for the soul and it's the blood
that cleanses the conscience and makes it clear before God
and enables us this morning to truly worship God in spirit and
in truth. All right, I'll finish the rest
of this here. After I got into this, it was
just too much to... I wanted to take my time with it this
morning, although I feel like I rushed through that. But we'll
pick up there after we take a break.