“What Hope Might A Sinner Possess?”
Hebrews 10:5-10
Have you ever tried to fix yourself, on you own—with no help?
Ever have an addiction or a bad habit that you wanted so badly to rid yourself of, but you just couldn’t pull it off…
…you just couldn’t kick it?
I think we all have things in our lives that we have tried to fix on our own, but to no avail.
Perhaps it is a bad temper.
Maybe it is an addiction to food or something else.
Perhaps it is a judgmental attitude or a prejudice toward someone of a different race or culture that we just can’t seem to get over.
Maybe we have a hard time loving certain people.
Perhaps we are stingy, greedy, fearful of losing your money—always worrying no matter how much we have.
Perhaps we have hurt someone so bad, done something so horrible that we don’t think we can ever be saved.
These kinds of things make us miserable.
These kinds of things make us human.
These kinds of things also make us sinners in need of a Savior—in need of forgiveness, a clean slate, a clear conscious, a feeling of peace and joy which transcends all understanding and anything this world has to offer.
Let’s face it; we are all in the same boat: we are all broken, we are all lost.
We all have things about us that we would change if we could…we would fix if we could.
(pause)
This is the 4th Sunday of Advent and it might seem strange that we are talking about sin and the need for a Savior rather than Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Angels.
After-all Christmas is this Saturday.
But, when you think about it, this is actually a very fitting passage of Scripture to be talking about a few days before we celebrate the Savior’s birth.
Not only is this passage about Christ’s birth, but it also gives us a profound perspective on the reason He came.
I mean, why did God become a human being?
Here in Hebrews 10 we get the answer straight from the lips of Jesus Himself: “When Christ came into this world he said sacrifice and offerings you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.
Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, my God.”
Jesus came into this world to do His Father’s will.
God prepared for Him a body—a human body just like yours and mine.
And in this body, Jesus experienced pain, grief and the temptation to sin—the temptation to take things into His own hands.
The temptation to take the easy way out…
…the temptation to follow the prince of this world…
…to give-in to evil.
But He never did.
Jesus was the only human being who has ever and will ever do this.
And that is because He is God-Made-Flesh—the perfect Sacrifice for our sins.
But why do we need a sacrifice for our sins?
To understand this, we must start at the beginning.
Genesis Chapter tells the story of the fall of humanity, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, bringing sin into the world.
Genesis 3:21 then tells us about the first death in the Bible, when God made clothes for Adam and Eve out of animal skin.
This would have been shocking and horrifying to the first couple.
It was a graphic demonstration of the nature of their sin.
Because they sinned, they now had to be clothed, or covered.
That covering could only be accomplished by the shedding of blood, a metaphor for their spiritual death and a foreshadowing of things to come.
And things only went downhill from there.
By the second generation of people, Cain killed his brother Abel in jealousy, which was the first murder.
And it goes on and on and on.
But God never gave up on us.
When God called Israel to be God’s people, He gave them a long list of laws to live by, laws against murder and stealing and laws about taking care of widows and the poor.
But, the people couldn’t live up to these laws.
They still sinned and fell short.
They needed a covering.
Therefore, God instituted animal sacrifice.
This was a deeply symbolic ritual.
Blood, representing life, had to be drained from the animal, reminding the people of death.
The way animals were prepared for different types of offerings was also deeply symbolic, as in the case of the “scapegoat,” in which one goat was slaughtered and another released into the wild, metaphorically carrying away the sins of Israel.
The sprinkling of blood around the Tabernacle (and later the temple) represented life cleansing the death of sin, since blood was a symbol of life.
Rebellion and sin required death.
In order for the people to gain forgiveness, something had to die in their place.
But the fact that those sacrifices needed to be offered over and over again—showed that they didn’t work so well.
And so, God sent Jesus, the Savior to offer His body as a once-for-all sacrifice for sins.
Only a perfect human, entirely free from sin, can be offered in place of our fallen nature, absorbing our guilt, shame, and punishment.
In Jesus, God has come to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
What we experience because of our sins, Jesus experienced for us in spite of His sinlessness.
Now, some of us might be wondering, if the sacrifices of the Old Testament ultimately didn’t work, why did God require them?
One reason can be found in the verses in Hebrews 10 right before where we started reading for this morning.
Starting in Hebrew 10:1 it says: “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.
For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.
Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered?
For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.
But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.
It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
It was an annual reminder of sins…
…lest we forget we have sinned against a holy God.
God gave us these sacrifices to remind us that we are sinners in need of salvation.
They were simply a shadow of what was to come.
And what was to come was God-made-flesh—Jesus Christ—the perfect Sacrifice…
…the only One Who can save us…
… “For God so loved the world.”
Have you ever done something you just could not forgive yourself for?
Have you ever done something you felt so bad about you could hardly stand it?
And in these cases, what hope might sinners like us possess?
How can we possibly get-right with God and ourselves?
A couple weeks ago I told you a story about a time, when, as a young teen a friend of mine and I kept stealing the mailboxes from the home of a family who had come to America from Beirut.
When we were stealing the mailboxes, I thought it was just a harmless joke.
But, what I later found out was that they thought someone in the neighborhood was trying to get rid of them because of their race.
They were terrified.
They thought they were hated.
They didn’t know what was going to happen next.
And when I found this out it cut me to the bone…
…it broke my heart.
I was aware of my utter sinfulness.
After that sermon Caleb Lambert sent me the following text: “Great message today pastor!
It reminded me of two of my favorite verses.
Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.’
And Ephesians 2:8: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.’”
And how true that is.
God created us to do right and to seek justice.
But how can we do that without the saving grace that comes through the gift of faith in Jesus Christ as the atoning sacrifice for our sins?
It is impossible for us to rid ourselves of sin.
If we could fix ourselves, we would not need a Savior.
How many ways have you tried to take away your sins, but to no avail?
We can use all the classic defense mechanisms of denial, rationalization and projection.
We can blame it on others…
…but it does no good.
Some of us might think we can save ourselves in other ways:
“If we just educated everyone, then the human race could be saved.
What we call sin is simply ignorance.
Knowledge will lead us home.”
And that might sound right until we consider the fact that a lot of highly educated people have done some incredibly immoral things.
Some people might think science can save us:
“Discover that cure, and all will be well.”
But for all the good that science does, it has also given us the ability to annihilate one another with nuclear war.
With all our scientific advancements in the past 100 years, we haven’t been able to make a dent in immorality.
Some might say that trying to be perfect can save us.
Trying to follow a bunch of rules and regulations to the letter will do it.
But along with that comes self-righteousness, judgementalism and a blindness to our own sinfulness.
Jesus had a much easier time talking with someone who knew they were a sinner than with someone who thought they were better than others.
We all need to be saved.
We all need to be forgiven.
We all need to be restored.
We all need someone to come and find us because we are lost.
We need to be reconciled with God; made new, born again.
The blood of bulls and goats does not work.
We all must rely fully on the grace and forgiveness and atoning sacrifice of Christ.
I once had a dream; it was very realistic.
In the dream I died and went to hell.
And the only way I could get out of hell was to say the words: “Jesus died for my sins.”
And so, I tried and I tried and I tried to say these words throughout this horrible dream but I couldn’t say them…until finally, right when things were getting the very worst—I said it--woke up and escaped.
You know, the kind of lives God has created us to live—the only way we can be fulfilled in this life is to live lives according to the will of God.
“I have come to do your will, my God” says Jesus in Hebrews 10:7 as He quotes Psalm 40.
But we can’t do God’s will without Jesus.
Somebody sitting here in this sanctuary this morning on this Fourth Sunday of Advent is in desperate need of salvation.
Someone is sitting here lost.
Somebody is trying to hide from it all, but on the inside they are weeping, desperate, hurting, scared.
If this is you, Jesus is saying to you right now: “Here I am.”
Come to me.
I have been searching for you for your entire life.”
Is this you?
The chancel rails are open during this time.
Jesus has provided the way to the Father.
He has given His body to save you and to save me…
…to forgive us…
…to set us free.
That is why we celebrate Christmas.
Come forward; ask Jesus into your heart.
Trust in His grace and be made holy through the sacrifice of His body once and for all.
Let us pray:
Dear Lord, we are all sinners and we all fall short of your glory.
Forgive us we pray.
We thank you that Jesus knows how serious, how dangerous, how deadly our sin is.
Thank You that He loves us so much that He didn’t get sidetracked with thinking He could save the world some other way.
Thank You God for Jesus Who laid down His innocent life so that we might be live.
Forgive us our sins once and for all through the offering of the body of Christ.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
