Being Sanctified and Filled by Christ

Over the past several weeks we have been walking this path of Empty and Filled together, and during this time so far we have been focusing primarily on the sinfulness of Man, how our actions and behaviors remove us from the presence of God and keep us from a relationship and right standing with Him.

This week we are going to take a shift from Empty to Filled. So far we have been focusing on the fact that all of the things that we try to fill ourselves up with, pride, works, anything......ultimately leave us still empty. This week, and continuing next week as we celebrate Palm Sunday we will be studying and learning not how to empty ourselves of ourselves....but how to be filled with Him.

Another important aspect of the observance of Lent, similar to Advent, is that we are observing a period of waiting for God to fulfill his promise. Advent reminds us of the yearning of a people for their Savior, Immanuel, God with us. Lent reminds us of the yearning of a people waiting for true salvation. Jesus’s birth was certainly a joyous and important event, but his death and resurrection was the real fulfillment of God’s promise and the requirements of the law.

This morning I want you ti turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 10

The first thing I want you to be aware of this morning is a state of being.

Waiting to be Filled

In scriptural times, both before and immediately after the life of Christ, the focus was on the system of sacrifices. Here in Hebrews we will see some thoughts about the system of sacrifice.

Hebrews 10:1–4 ESV

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

In this passage, we are reminded of the endless repetition of sacrifices (v. 1)—a continual reminder of sins that could not be taken away (v. 3) without God’s divine rescue plan.

The language in verse 1 is a good picture of the whole Lenten season: the law is only a shadow of the truly reconciled relationship God desires with his people. As Thomas Constable explains, “The very nature of the Mosaic Law made it impossible to bring believers into intimate relationship with God, since it dealt with externals”

Up until the time of Christ, and specifically His death and Resurrection, the entire world and all of humanity was in a state of waiting, waiting to be filled. The law could point out how empty we were, it could point out how we were unable to fill ourselves correctly, but nothing in the law was able to fill up that place within us that yearns for God.

We Were Made to Be Filled with Christ

Understanding that we are unable to fill ourselves, and that the law could not provide fulfillment, Hebrews now will begin to tell us what Will fill that place within us.

Hebrews 10:5–7 ESV

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ ”

So here in verses 5-7 we see Jesus speaking to God the Father, and He states that the sacrifices and offerings, God didn’t actually want, and that He took no pleasure in the burnt offerings, and so because of this thing, this state of being, this state of action or inaction, that led to Christ coming to do His Father’s will. A real body was sent to earth, Christ himself, to replace the sacrifices that could only reveal sin, not truly forgive it.

In this season, we are reminded of the people living under the law and are reminded that we ourselves are still living in a shadow of the good things that are yet to come.

The sacrificial system was not just a reminder of our sin, but its repetition was a reminder that the system itself was ultimately imperfect (vv. 2–3). As Dr. Constable explains, “The incompetence of the old Levitical order is set forth in four particular respects in verses 1 through 4: (1) the insubstantial (shadowy) character of the Mosaic system, (2) the repetitive nature of the old sacrifices, (3) the function of the Levitical sacrifices as repeated reminders of sin, and (4) the ineffectiveness of the blood of animals” (114). This passage presents the sufficiency of Christ by contrasting it with the insufficiency of the sacrificial system, just as a season of Lent contrasts our insufficiency with Christ’s.

Image - Giving Up

It’s obviously tongue-in-cheek, but it’s actually exactly right. Part of this season of emptying ourselves, facing our sin, and stripping ourselves of easy comforts is to help us realize how helpless we are on our own.

Hebrews 10:8–14 ESV

When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Even the highly respected and publicly righteous priests were incapable of offering sacrifices that could take away sins (v. 11). We are emptied of our pride and the illusion that we are capable of saving ourselves, and then we are filled with gratitude for our great High Priest whose ultimate sacrifice was able to take away sins.

The priests were unable to stop the repetition of sacrifices because the sacrifices were ultimately unable to fill the void that Sin had left in the soul of Man. Christ points to the fact that the sacrifices had to be continual year after year as proof that the were ultimately ineffective.

As we near the end of our Lenten season and approach in the next two weeks the Joy of His procession into Jerusalem and His triumphant Resurrection, we recognize that it is He who has filled us, and perfected us.

In Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, the philosopher describes a world where people live in a cave, viewing the entire world by the shadows that dance in front of them. The shadows are projected from the world behind them, but they think that the shadows are the “real” world—they give names to them, and they live as if this is reality. Eventually, the prisoners break free and enter the real world, discovering that everything they were watching was but a distortion of the real thing. The allegory has prompted philosophical discussions about the nature of reality for centuries, but in Hebrews we learn that the reality is much greater than the shadow we’ve been limited to in the past. Whereas the law was merely a small trace of the real embodied reality of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, it still pointed to the ultimate reality that became real to us.

We remember and celebrate, just as in Plato’s allegory of the cave, there is a world of Joy and color beyond the imagining of those sitting staring at shadows....there is a world of Joy and Life in Christ that is beyond anything that we can imagine in the depths of sin and shame. We are brought to life in Him, and He perfects the life that we now live to be lived in and for Him.

As we come to a close this week, we recognize and realize that just as we cannot fill a vessel that is already full, we cannot truly fill ourselves with Christ until we have emptied ourselves of ourselves. We have to give up and realize that nothing we can do is sufficient. As we empty ourselves of us, we can be Filled with Him

As we conclude this morning and prepare for Palm Sunday, we celebrate the fact that we are and can be Filled with Him