One Priest, One Sacrifice, Once For All Series

Have any of you gotten any unwanted phone calls this week? Yes, I assume all of you have!

Have any of you gotten any scam calls this week? Yes, those things have become as daily an experience as most any other part of our lives.

Have you gotten the one from someone who sounds like they’re calling from India, as in East India, with a thick Indian accident announcing their calling for Microsoft Windows, and they need access to your computer to fix something? That’s an old one, a call I’ve received dozens of times, but the first time I got it I wasn’t sure what to do. I happened to be at my computer and looked up the issue to find out that it was indeed a scam to gain access to your bank accounts or other personal information and I hung up. But who knows what might have happened had I not been informed?

And one of the most recent ones is the call announcing that your social security number has been suspended. This one is sure to cause panic among those who are dependent on Social Security. Only problem the Social Security Administration doesn’t do that sort of thing, neither does it notify people by phone, but by mail, but you can imagine the little old retired lady who is totally dependent on her social security check, and on one’s there to tell her any different who gets this call. She could end up losing everything.

That’s unfortunately the way the world is. If you aren’t informed, if you haven’t become savvy to how things work, and how people are working on scamming you out of your money, you could be tricked, you could be scammed out of everything you have.

And the same is true with regard to spiritual matters. Like it or not, there is an invisible spiritual conspiracy directed by Satan and his fallen angels to deceive all us, to steal and kill and destroy human souls, and it’s all done the same way, by deception. And these spiritual scams, unless you are informed by the truth of God’s Word, threaten to rob you not only of everything you have, but your very soul, and your eternal life.

And that’s the concern of the writer to the Hebrews this morning. He’s concerned that because the believers he’s writing to remain spiritual babes in a spiritually dangerous world, full of deceiving spirits and spiritual scams, that because of their ignorance of the truths of God’s Word, will fall away from Christ and lose the very eternal life that Christ had come to give them.

And that’s why he’s so dedicated to the proposition that they must partake of spiritual meat, solid food for the mature, and not be content to continue to be undiscerning spiritual babes, content only with the milk of the Word.

And so we continue in his meaty explanation about why these first century Jewish Christians needed to persevere, and why they could not abandon Christ and go back to Judaism and the Old Testament forms of worship.

Now this morning, you may not be concerned with falling back into the Jewish faith. But you do face spiritual scams, false gospels, false Jesuses, and as it turns out counterfeit priests, and counterfeit sacrifices. In other words, Christian religions and cults which to be sure have the appearance of spirituality because of their likeness to Old Testament worship practices. However, as we shall see, those who offer priests and sacrifices other than Jesus Christ, who claim that Jesus Christ did not once and for all pay the penalty for our sins 2,000 years ago represent spiritual scams present today that are as dangerous to our spiritual and eternal welfare as the Microsoft and Social Security scams are to our pocketbooks.

So, this morning, you desperately need to be informed. You desperately need to know the truth about priests and sacrifices and the one sacrifice that matters so that you might not be deceived. And what Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 7:18-28 this morning is this: Don’t be fooled. Don’t be scammed. There is one priest, and one sacrifice sufficient for salvation given once for all time and forever—His name is Jesus Christ. Never forget this—it may save your soul. There is one priest and one sufficient sacrifice for your salvation, who is Jesus Christ, given once and for all time and forever 2,000 years ago.

So we return to Hebrews 7, this morning, and we’re going to pick up again in verse 18. We partially covered this verse and verse 19 last week. But it’s hard not to begin here again. And in verses 18-22 the writer is emphasizing Jesus’ eternal priesthood—that He is now our High Priest forever by the very oath of God Himself. In other words, don’t miss this! Jesus is not just our High Priest Forever, but God has doubled-down on this truth. He has made it abundantly clear not just by promising it in Scripture, but by swearing to this fact, making a sacred oath and covenant to this—that Christ is the only High Priest we will ever need because He is now our High Priest forever.