The Better Sacrifice

The Better Sacrifice

Heb 9:23-10:25

At the very heart of both the Jewish and Christian faiths is something that troubles many people today. At the heart of our faiths is blood, rivers and rivers of blood. Now in ancient times, animal sacrifice was a common ingredient in the vast majority of all religions, Jewish or heathen. Animals, and in some religions like the ancient Mayans or the worship of Moloch in Israel, even humans also died to appease some deity.

We have been in the books of Exodus and Leviticus for the last several weeks in Sunday School, and all throughout, we have read of various sacrifices of all kinds of animals for all sorts of occasions. We have learned of 5 different kinds of offerings: sin, guilt, burnt, grain, and fellowship. The sin and guilt offerings were sacrifices of expiation which means they were for atonement or the removal of guilt. The burnt offerings and grain offerings were for consecration which means for holiness or sanctification. And then the fellowship offerings were for communion or friendship or fellowship. These fellowship offerings included vow offerings, thank offerings, and freewill offerings. All of these sacrifices were required by the law for anyone to draw near to God.

So, with all these sacrifices, daily, weekly, monthly, annually--can you imagine the sensory overload of this experience? Think about it. The violent resistance by the animal, the spurting of blood, the feel of pulling the animal apart, piece by piece, the smell of that blood and the burning of its body parts. The emotional and spiritual impact of it all. Also think of this, the Jewish historian, Josephus, wrote that on any given Passover, it wasn't uncommon for upwards to 300,000 lambs to be sacrificed. So, if you add that to all the daily, weekly, and monthly sacrifices, the amount of blood that would be poured out might fill an ocean over the years.

Now, most of this blood would travel down a trough from the Temple into the Kidron Valley, and I'm sure you can imagine the red, stinking, flooded soil that never seemed to dry out which attracted and bred hordes of flies and other insects in that valley. All of this was a vivid illustration that man's sin brings death. It destroys the soul and the relationship between God and man. The oceans of blood, the smell, the stench of it was a constant reminder to the people of the high cost of sin.

Now, this was part of ancient Jewish worship from the very beginning. But blood is also part of our Christian faith. Sacrifice is at our center as well, because at the center of Christianity is a cross. We've sanitized the cross over the years. We wear it on necklaces. We get cross tattoos. We hang crosses on the walls of our homes, and we place them alongside the roads where loved ones lost their lives. We've sanitized the cross, but it was, it still is, a terrifying instrument of torture and execution. John Stott wrote: "The cross will always constitute an assault on human self-righteousness and a challenge to human self-indulgence. Its scandal, its stumbling block simply cannot be removed."

Just as animal sacrifice is offensive to most people today, the cross is also offensive to most people. The idea of penal substitution--that Jesus took the full punishment for our sins as our substitute, is rejected by many because their notion of God is that He could never be so angry with anyone or their sin, that He would require a sacrifice to turn away His wrath. But friends, that is at the very heart of our faith. It may be strange and offensive, but that's the message. Sin brings death and it separates us from God. We need a sacrifice in order to be right with God.

We've been studying about these sacrifices for weeks. We've learned that the priests, the tabernacle, and all of the tabernacle's furniture needed to be consecrated to God for its first use. But then year after year, the very same consecration sacrifices needed to be performed all over again to wipe away the accumulated guilt from the previous year. Over and over again, the priests, the tabernacle and the furniture needed to be cleansed because the blood of animals simply wasn't sufficient. Those sacrifice could never clear someone's conscience because day after day, year after year, those same sacrifices reminded everyone of their sins.

So, mankind needed a better sacrifice than bulls and goats, and so today, we begin by addressing our...

I. Necessity of Christ's Sacrifice

Hebrews 9:23-28 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. 24 For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; 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. 26 Otherwise, He 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. 27 And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, 28 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.