Sixty–seven-year-old Tomas Martinez was living on the street in Santa Cruz de le Sierra, Bolivia, when he was approached by police officers who had good news for him. His ex-wife (whom he had abandoned years earlier) had died and had left him her fortune of $6 million. However, Martinez thought the police were there to arrest him for his drug and alcohol related issues, and he fled without hearing what they had to say. Local newspapers called him the “new millionaire paradoxically not knowing his fortune.” Martinez has never been located.
This is an odd example of someone who forfeited a fantastic inheritance because of an assumption that He owed a debt to society, yet unpaid, for his sins, rather than the truth that a great gift had been given Him, once and for all, that was free and there for the taking. You’ve got to wonder how such a gift might have changed his life. What a tragic story!
But it’s the same kind of error and terror that millions of people make every day in the spiritual realm. They think they owe, they owe, they owe, so off to church they go. They have been taught or they presume that they owe a great debt to God which they must pay through continual sacrifices in order for their sins to be forgiven and to be right with God. But all along, now for 2000 years, the Good News that they somehow refuse to hear or understand is that that debt was paid once and for all by a person who offers them an incredible inheritance both of the forgiveness of sins and as His heir in the Kingdom of God.
What I’m talking about is the Last Will and Testament of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. By His death, by the shedding of His blood He inaugurated a New Covenant—a covenant that is the testament literally to His will—that at His death should be distributed to all who will come to Him in repentant faith both the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance as a co-heir of His in the Kingdom of God.
Yes, it’s a free gift. Yes, the debt for our sins has been paid once and for all. Yes, there is no need for further sacrifices to earn eternal life, either on our part, or on His. Repeated sacrifices, whatever they be, simply perpetuate the idea that a debt must be paid, rather than that a free gift has been given once and for all and is available for any who will apply through faith.
This morning we continue in Hebrews 9. We’re in the midst of a discussion addressed to Jewish Christians about why they should not abandon Jesus Christ and return to the Old Testament religious system that required repeated sacrifices of bulls and goats for the forgiveness of sins. The entire discussion has a broader application to anyone who would even think about falling away from faith in Jesus Christ. It also has great relevancy to anyone still enmeshed in any kind of religious system that insists that repeated sacrifices of any kind, or even supposedly of Jesus Christ, are still necessary for forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
The message is this: Don’t blow off Christ’s sacrifice. Don’t substitute any other sacrifices, or you abandon the only covenant & sacrifice that provides an eternal forgiveness & inheritance.
The writer to the Hebrews has just encouraged his readers to stick with their faith in Christ, noting that only Christ’s sacrifice on the cross cleanses us from sin. The sacrifices of the blood of bulls and goats was only a prefiguring, a foreshadowing of this ultimate sacrifice that would save us from our sins. Abandoning Christ would be returning to sacrifices that never really accomplished anything in cleansing the conscience of the worshipper.
And He provides yet another reason for persevering in the faith of Christ beginning in verse 15. He says not to blow of Christ, or His sacrifice because Jesus is the ultimate mediator, the ultimate priest of a better covenant that redeems even those believers who sinned under the Old Covenant. Yes, He’s saying that the New Covenant is the only covenant which is actually effective in saving people from their sins—that Christ’s death for our sins not only paid for the sins committed by believers who came after His crucifixion, but in retrospect, it also actually paid for the sins of believers who came before Christ’s death, people who followed God in the Old Testament were not saved by the sacrifices of bulls and goats offered back then. They were ultimately saved by the sacrifice of Christ which established the New Covenant as well.
Now verse 15 is a mouthful. Listen and follow along very carefully. “For this reason”—the reason being that only Christ’s sacrifice could really cleanse the conscience of the worship from the dead works or sins he had committed, “For this reason He (Christ) is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
O.K. Remember what a mediator is? A mediator is one who makes peace, brings reconciliation between two estranged parties. In this case, the two estranged parties are a Holy God and sinful mankind. A mediator is often called a priest when it comes to spiritual things. And the writer has already told us that Jesus is the Ultimate High Priest who alone has brought reconciliation between God and man. He has done so by His death on the cross, His blood shed in order to pay the penalty for mankind’s sins.
Christ is the mediator, the peace-maker, in this New Covenant which replaced the Old Covenant given by Moses. His death is the act by which He made peace between God and man, in that He took the punishment, the wrath of a just God, against Himself, to satisfy God’s just wrath against the sins of sinful mankind. That’s what the word redemption, or as the NIV has it, the word ransom refers to. It refers to a payment made to release someone from bondage, to free a slave. We are all slaves of sin subject to an eternal death because of that sin. Christ’s death on the cross was a payment that releases us from that bondage to sin and eternal death. It was the only effective payment for that sin, because as the writer to the Hebrews says elsewhere, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to pay the penalty for mankind’s sins. Only a perfect, sinless, infinite Savior could do so, and it happened when the Lamb of God was sacrificed on the cross to take away our sins. We were thus redeemed, ransomed, or purchased from our slavery to sin and death by the payment made through the death of Christ, who took hell on the cross so we wouldn’t have to.
But here the writer specifically refers to the sins of another group of people—the people who committed transgressions under the first, or Old Covenant. Did you notice that? The writer is saying that Christ’s sacrifice which inaugurated the New Covenant also applied to Old Testament believers. “Since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
In other words, the very Old Covenant sacrificial system these believers were contemplating returning to didn’t even save the believers in Old Testament times. It is the New Covenant sacrifice of Christ that paid for their sins and will result in their receiving the promised inheritance. So if the Old Covenant didn’t even ultimately save Old Covenant believers in their time, why in the world would these New Covenant believers, abandon Christ, the mediator of the New Covenant for an Old Covenant that never actually in eternity saved anyone.
Don’t go back, is the exhortation. The Old Covenant just foreshadowed the reality of our salvation and how it is accomplished. It prepared people to receive the sacrifice that was to come—the New Covenant sacrifice of Christ as payment, and redemption, for sinners of all time, past, present and future.
And the inheritance—eternal life and reward—has already been paid for. Don’t go on thinking you still need to pay the debt, that additional lesser sacrifices need to be made. The better and ultimate covenant has been given based on a better and ultimate and final sacrifice of Christ, now made 2,000 years ago.
Now it will seem to us that the writer shifts gears here, because of our understanding of what a covenant is. To us a covenant is simply a sacred agreement between two parties. However, the word used for covenant here in the Greek also referred at times to a will, as in a last will and testament. And so it was perfectly normal for the writer to assume that His readers understood this—that a covenant, Greek: diatheke, also often constitutes a will and a testament about what was to be done with the property of the person who had signed the will, but had died. He notes that with regard to a will, its directives do not go into effect until the person dies, at which time his possessions are distributed to His heirs.
And so he provides another reason for not abandoning Christ, or for not accepting any other sacrifices or works for salvation: Don’t abandon Jesus, because Christ is the better sacrifice whose blood alone cleanses sinners. Don’t abandon Jesus, because Christ is the better sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice that can cleanse sinners. Old Testament sacrifices only foreshadowed this better and ultimate sacrifice.
He begins His discussion in verse 16. “For where a covenant is”, in the event that it is the kind of covenant that is also a will, “there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. For a covenant (or a will) is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives.”
Then he jumps to the concept that he expects us to understand, but since our culture is removed from ancient culture, and an understanding of blood covenant, we often don’t. He jumps to the idea that even the Old Covenant was ratified, or inaugurated, by the sprinkling of blood.
Verse 18: “For even the first, or Old, covenant was not inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the Law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded.”
So your question and mine is what in the world does the sprinkling of the blood of calves and goats have to do with inaugurated, or ratifying any covenant, much less the Old.
Well, it all goes back to the ancient understanding of a blood covenant. A blood covenant was the most binding sort of sacred agreement that two parties could ever make with each other. It’s because the blood that was shed and used in making the covenant signified the deaths of each of the parties to the covenant, or sacred contract, if they failed to fulfill their obligations, their promises under the covenant. In other words, each party was saying, in effect, I will keep my end of the bargain, or I will die. Or may I die if I fail to keep the covenant. The blood of the animals sacrificed represented their own blood, and their giving of their own lives, if necessary, in order to keep the covenant, or the giving of their lives if they didn’t keep the covenant.
Now maybe some of you older folks like me remember Tonto, the Indian side-kick to the Lone Ranger, the cowboys and Indians series that ran in the early ‘50s. Do you remember that Tonto would make a blood covenant with people he regarded to be friends by slitting his wrist and theirs, and then mingling their blood? It was the same sort of thing—it was a blood covenant, committing each party to act as brothers in relationship to each other even unto death.
And so in the case of the Old Covenant, again, animals, calves and goats were sacrificed. After the law was recited in Exodus 22-24, and the people agreed to keep God’s covenant, which they didn’t, then Moses took the blood of these animals which had been sacrificed and sprinkled it upon the people and the book of the law. This was the way in which both parties signed the covenant—the way they ratified or indicated their agreement to the covenant. Today we ratify agreements by shaking hands, or most often, by signing our name to an agreement. But this was a blood covenant. The sprinkling of blood representative the signature of both parties given in blood that represented their own—their agreement to keep the agreement or the covenant on the penalty of death. Thus, a blood covenant was incredibly binding. So, that’s why writer says even the first covenant was not inaugurated, or ratified, without blood. It was a blood covenant just like the New Covenant, the problem with the Old Covenant is that the people didn’t and couldn’t keep it. It simply pointed out their sin, and pointed to a future, ultimate solution for their sin—the sacrifice of their Messiah, their deliverer, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, as payment for their sins.
Not only did this matter of sprinkling the blood of calves and goats take place to inaugurate the covenant, it continued in the tabernacle, which was next erected, and eventually the temple. Verse 21 tells us that Moses in the same way sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with blood, thus devoting them to this matter of maintaining relationship between God and the people.
And then he makes an important statement in verse 22: “And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
In other words, with few exceptions, under the Old Testament, all things were cleansed of defilement or sin, by blood. Again, the blood represented a life given but not only to ratify the agreement, but to cover sins. Specifically, on the day of atonement, the high priest annually went into the most holy place with blood for his own sins, and blood for the people which he sprinkled on the mercy seat in order to atone for, or cover the people’s sins for the next year. Again, the Hebrew word used in the Old Testament was the word kaphar, which means to cover sins. The Bible is careful to make clear here that sins were not taken away, they were merely covered for the time being, covered from God’s sight, whose presence was above the mercy seat, so that the people could be forgiven. The people were forgiven under the Old Covenant, but because their sins were covered, for a time. Their sins had not been taken away, because an appropriate sacrifice that could actually pay for an infinite number of human sins had not yet been offered. The blood indicated that a life had been given, the life of an animal under the Old Covenant, in order to cover sins. But that blood also foreshadowed and prepared the people for another life that would have to be given in order to completely take away sins, of course, the blood of the Christ of God.
Now verse 23 gets to the climax—the point, that the blood of Christ alone could take away sins. “Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. So once again the idea is introduced that the Tabernacle, and then the Temple, with their holy place and most holy place were only copies of a heavenly reality, about how we approach and can be reconciled with a Holy God. Yes, the copies of the heavenly things could be cleansed physically, so to speak, with the blood of bulls and goats. But these sacrifices would not suffice to cleanse men from sin in heaven. Only the blood of a perfect infinite human Savior could do so, and that’s where Christ comes in.
Verse 24; “For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but unto heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God.” In other words, for the way for man to be made into Heaven, the very presence of God, it took the sacrifice or the blood of the Son of God, the God-man, to satisfy God’s wrath and make possible our actual approach to the very presence of God in heaven.
Now, as a side note, this is why Old Testament saints upon their death did not go immediately to heaven. They went to a place various identified by Christ as Abraham’s bosom, or Paradise, until Christ’s death for our sins. Ephesians 4:8-10 tells us that when Christ died He went there to release the people there and took them to heaven, as a consequence and benefit that now the way had been fully opened for mankind to enter heaven, God’s very presence, by the death of Christ, which for the first time, in time and space, had taken away our sins completely.
Thus the New Covenant, and the sacrifice of Christ accomplished what the Old Covenant and animal sacrifices never could do—it completely took away and paid for sin, so that believers could now dwell in heaven in the very presence of God Almighty. Men were only completely cleansed of sin and guilt by the death of Christ, represented by His blood.
So again, the application to these folks—don’t go back to a system that could never take away sins in the first place. Don’t go back to an obsolete system, rendered obsolete by Christ’s sacrifice. If you do, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, because the ultimate and only sacrifice for sins has now been revealed. You will remain in your sins, responsible for paying for your sins before an Almighty and Holy God—a terrifying prospect, if you abandon Christ, the reality, for the Old Covenant and the blood of bulls and goats, which was a mere shadow of the reality.
At this point, the writer is about to draw another very important conclusion. Don’t abandon Christ, because Christ’s death is the ultimate one-time sacrifice that took away sin for all time. There’s no need for further sacrifices. There’s no need for repeated or other sacrifices. Christ’s death was sufficient, totally sufficient, to pay for all mankind’s sins for all time, unlike the repeated sacrifices of the Old Testament.
Now I must mention this. The next two verses are the death blow to all religious systems that insist that Christ must be sacrificed over and over again for the forgiveness of sins. It is the death blow to the significance of the Mass as Roman Catholics and Orthodox churches recognize it. They say that Christ is sacrificed over and over again in their mass and that you must physically partake of His body and blood to be forgiven. Listen to this, with reference to the need for repeated sacrifices, of Christ or anything else: Verse 25: “Nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not His own. Otherwise he would have need to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”
Wow! The writer here is referring to the Old Testament practice of the annual sacrifices on the Day of Atonement. The High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies only once a year, into the very presence of God, with blood from the sacrifices of animals that could only cover sin, and only for another year. His point is that these sacrifices had to be repeated because sin was only covered, it was never completely removed, God’s wrath was never completely satisfied, never satisfied at all, by the blood of mere bulls and goats. It remained for a much greater sacrifice, that sacrifice of the sinless God-man, to fully pay and take away, remove forever, the guilt of sin from those who accepted the sacrifice as being for themselves.
So He makes the point in verse 25 and 26 that Christ did not have to offer Himself often, but only once. Otherwise, as verse 26 says, Jesus would have had to suffer often, annually, since the foundation of the world to pay for our sins. No, that’s the not the case. Because of whom
He was, the sinless Son of God and Son of Man, His single sacrifice was sufficient to pay for and take away the sins of all mankind forever. Now this is a point that is emphasized by the use of the word once three times, in verses 26, 27 and 28: Let’s read these three verses consecutively as we find them here: “Otherwise, He (Christ) would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world, but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await Him.”
Do you see the parallel there? Men die once then comes the judgment. So it is only fitting that Christ died once for all to be judged for their sins. When He comes again, it will not be to die for their sins, but to bring the salvation that His death promised to all those who eagerly await His coming, when He brings in His kingdom.
Point? You got to keep waiting. You’ve got to eagerly expect the salvation that only Christ could offer. You can’t become impatient. You can’t blow Him off. He’s the only sacrifice, the only mediator representing the only Covenant that now matters, and ever mattered in terms of bringing about your salvation.
More than that, any system that purports that Christ must be sacrificed repeatedly to bring about your salvation is false; it is an insult to God and Christ, as though the one sacrifice that took place 2,000 years ago for our salvation was not sufficient. Thus it is a false gospel given by false teachers and false prophets which ultimately leaves its deceived worshipers without the one and only sacrifice for sins which they need.
All this corresponds to Christ’s own words. Matthew 26:27-28: “And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. And then in John 19:30 as He died on the cross, “It is finished!” Tetelestai, in the Greek, means it is paid in full. And then John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Don’t abandon Christ, don’t accept any other sacrifices. If you do you abandon the only covenant and sacrifice that counts—the only sacrifice that offers forgiveness and an eternal inheritance.
Don’t make the mistake that Tomas Martinez made, assuming He was a debtor when the gift that could set Him free had already been given!
Let’s pray.
