The Necessity of a Greater Sacrifice

Example of Clearfield Bible Church

Though it is not the main point of the text, it becomes obvious from this passage and from many other passages in the scriptures that our salvation is trinitarian in nature. God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit all three work to bring about our salvation. It was the will of the Father that He should save us, it is through the Sons obedience that we are saved, and it is through the application and efficacy of the Spirits work in regeneration that we are saved.

The will of the Father fulfilled (5-10)

Manifested in Christ incarnation

The old is abolished because the new has come. Once the reality has come, then by necessity the old must give way. Once a woman’s husband comes home from war, she sets his picture which she carried with her aside. She embraces her husband and looks at him face to face. How offensive to God and to Christ it is when we continue to hold to the old picture and shadow to things that can never save that are wholly inadequate, when Christ has come.

God never took pleasure in the sacrifices themselves, but in the one that they pointed to.

A body hebrew text says “ear you have digged”

Manifested in Christ’s obedience

If David could use theses words, from Psalm 40 “I have come to do your will” it is only with a will and hands and feet that are made to waver because of sin. But when these words proceed from the mouth of Christ, they are with out any wavering or hesitation. He had both the will and the desire and the power to carry out every point in regards to the will of God.

This brings about and important point , that it is not just the passive obedience that is his willingness to submit to suffering and the cross, those are things that happened to Him. But his active obedience is His perfect obedience to the law. It is because of this that we are not just forgiven but also given the positive righteousness of Christ.

John 6:38 ESV

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

1 Samuel 15:22 ESV

And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

God detests those who seek to offer external religion with out the inward heart that is changed like in verse 15. But we offer sacrifice not of bulls and goats but of a heart that is sincere and lips hands that have been cleansed, because Christ already offered Himself with the same.

Hebrews 4:12 ESV

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

So even in the case of David the one who penned the Psalm he was not excused from offering the sacrifices required by the law. But it was not in those sacrifices that He was accepted, but in what they pointed Him to.

Galatians 3:24 ESV

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

“As the Word who is immortal and the Father’s Son it was not possible for him to die,” explains Athanasius, “and this is the reason why he assumed a body capable of dying, so that, belonging to the Word who is above all, in dying it might become a sufficient exchange for all.… When he offered his own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all he fulfilled in death all that was required.” Athanasius

A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews Note on the Terminology of Hebrews 9:16 and 17

“He put on a body so that in the body he might find death and blot it out.”

It is by the unwavering and perfect will of Christ that we are sanctified. Notice here that sanctification on this verse is in the the past tense, that we have been sanctified. Christ’s obedience even His perfection and sanctification is ours. But this is not the progressive but a singular act whereby God having forgiven us our sin, now fits us and qualifies us to be in His presence.

When I was a kid one I remember going to some distant family members house and they had these dishes and bowls and silverware made of sterling silver I think. And before the meal they took them out and we had to rub them with a cloth to shine them up and to remove all of the stains and tarnish that had collected while they say there and this is what the Lord does for us. We would not dare approach the king in these tattered rags, having come from cleaning the pig stalls, but no like a king that has a servant that helps him dress each day only this is in reverse, the king has clothed us in His righteousness, His spotless white linens we have borrowed that we might approach the Father.

Notice with me for one moment the tense of the word sanctified in verse 14. It shown the nature of sanctification is both a once and done acts of the Lord Jesus Christ and a progressive act of the believer.

Philippians 2:12–13 ESV

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

The once for all Sacrifice of the Son

He sat down

The crazy thing about the priests of the old if you remember back several months ago, that when we go through the temple there are no seats.

Hebrews 1:3 ESV

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

The Epistle to the Hebrews J. The Enthroned High Priest (10:11–18)

A seated priest is the guarantee of a finished work and an accepted sacrifice.

Though He sat he still rises to interceede.

Romans 8:33–35 ESV

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

“Sinner, thou thinkest that because of thy sins and infirmities I cannot save thy soul, but behold my Son is by me, and upon him I look, and not on thee, and will deal with thee according as I am pleased with him.” John Bunyan

“And inasmuch as in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner the same Christ who once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, the holy council teaches that this is truly propitiatory… for the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different.”

1562 “22nd Session of Council of Trent” Doctrine concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass

Every enemy is destroyed.

After thousands and thousands and millions of sacrifices offered for thousands of years when the last sacrifice that was ever offered in the temple , the people were no closer to the absolving of their sins than the first.

1 Corinthians 15:24–26 ESV

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

The testimony of the Holy Spirit

The Law on their hearts

If God through the agency of the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of the blind in the New Birth so that they can see and enter His kingdom, does he not also unstop their ears that they may hear and believe. This is intimated in John 3:8

John 3:8 ESV

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Sins are forgiven