Your Restoration Story

Good morning!

Last week we dove right into Hebrews chapter ten and talked about the problem of sin and the solution to that problem, which is Jesus.

We are born in sin and its effects are as strong today as they were with Adam and Eve.

It still separates people from God.

Sin is an act of rebellion and the sad part is that many believe that working to make themselves a better person will bring them closer to God.

However, that is also rebellion and actually further separates them from God.

You see, Jesus is the way to restoration.

The problem of sin was fixed by Jesus through his life, death, and Resurrection.

The problem’s only solution is Jesus, not our good works or our good works plus Jesus.

The only way we can experience that restoration is by believing in Jesus.

It doesn’t matter how hard you try, your rebellion cannot make God love you more and will not bring you any closer than you already are.

God doesn’t desire for us to do stuff for him, his desire is for us to know him by obedience.

Doing what God says, following His lead is what he wants.

Remember that His goal for our redemption is the restoration of the relationship He created us to have.

When we are making the decisions about how that restoration takes place, we are still messing up the dynamics.

He is God and we are not, but when we try to be the one making the decisions, we are placing ourselves in God’s place and putting him in ours.

Imagine you are needing an appendectomy, but right before the surgery you decide that rather you getting the operation, you are going to perform the operation on the surgeon.

you don’t know the first thing about removing one and, more importantly, he doesn’t need his appendix removed!

When we try to fix the problem of sin in our own power and wisdom, this is what we are doing.

We don’t know the first thing about what it means to be Holy AND God isn’t the one with the problem of sin, we are.

Jesus fixed the problem of sin by living in obedience to the father, even to the point of death, and because of that, He is the perfect priest and perfect sacrifice.

Today as we move forward in chapter ten, we are going to see the author continuing his case of why Jesus is greater than the earthly priest and the sacrifices that they offer.

Let’s read together and see what God has for us today.

Hebrews 10:11–18 CSB

11 Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins. 12 But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. 13 He is now waiting until his enemies are made his footstool. 14 For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified. 15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. For after he says: 16 This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, the Lord says, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds, 17 and I will never again remember their sins and their lawless acts. 18 Now where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.

1. Daily sacrifices cannot remove sin.

Last week, one of my main points was that our attempts at good works are equivalent to daily sacrifices.

Not only are they not needed or wanted, but they are pointless.

In verses eleven through thirteen, he is reemphasizing this point.

Hebrews 10:11 CSB

Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins.

The author is making a very specific point.

There were sacrifices that were required to be repeated daily.

Numbers 28:3–8 CSB

3 And say to them: This is the food offering you are to present to the Lord: “Each day present two unblemished year-old male lambs as a regular burnt offering. 4 Offer one lamb in the morning and the other lamb at twilight, 5 along with two quarts of fine flour for a grain offering mixed with a quart of olive oil from crushed olives. 6 It is a regular burnt offering established at Mount Sinai for a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord. 7 The drink offering is to be a quart with each lamb. Pour out the offering of beer to the Lord in the sanctuary area. 8 Offer the second lamb at twilight, along with the same kind of grain offering and drink offering as in the morning. It is a food offering, a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

This doesn’t include the sabbath, monthly, Passover, festival of weeks, the festival of trumpets, day of atonement, or the festival of shelters offerings.

Literally, every day, there were sacrifices and offerings being made, but none of this removed sin.

They were just a reminder of the sin that every person had.

Knowing how many sacrifices were required, you can now see how significant it was and is for us to understand that it is no longer required.

Before we just cruise past this, bring this home for yourself.

How often do you realize your guilt and decide that you should offset that by doing something “good”?

That may not be a struggle for you, or you may not realize it, but that is a thought that many in our area struggle with.

There is this idea that one day when we stand before God that he will weigh our good against our bad and whichever way the scale tips will determine how we spend eternity.

That is not how it works!

If you are waiting until you die to know how you did, spoiler alert, you are didn’t do well.

Romans 3:10–12 CSB

10 as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one. 11 There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one.

Romans 3:20 CSB

20 For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.

The law is the plumb line.

It is what decides what is good and what is not.

Verse twenty of Romans 3 makes it really clear that no one will be justified by the law.

All it can do is show us that we are not good.

Daily sacrifices or good works will not bring us closer to God or earn his approval.

Forgiveness and removal of sin only come through Jesus.

2. Jesus’s work is done and now He sits, waiting for the time for His return.

Hebrews 10:12–14 CSB

12 But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. 13 He is now waiting until his enemies are made his footstool. 14 For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified.

You know, I never thought about this until I read it this week, but have you ever noticed what is not shown in any of the drawings of the temple or the tabernacle?

There are no chairs in the tabernacle…

Hebrews Vol 1&2—An Anchor for the Soul (Hebrews 10:1–18)

Significantly, there were no chairs in the Tabernacle—no provision whatsoever to sit down. Priests stood or kept moving, because their imperfect work was never over. But Jesus, in exact fulfillment of the Melchizedekian prophecies in Psalm 110:1—“The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’ ”—sat down forever at the right hand of honor and power (cf. 1:3, 13; 8:1). Jesus rests. Our salvation, as we have said, is a “done deal.” Our perfection is accomplished. And in the timelessness of eternity our holiness will go on and on.

This mention that Jesus is seated is no small thing.

It shows the completeness of what Jesus has done.

If we are still not convinced about the lack of need for us to work for our salvation, consider that the earthly priest, who just like you and I, had to daily make atonement for sin.

If you are relying on that idea for your salvation, not only will it not work, but you will spend your whole life worrying about keeping your scale balanced or tipped in the good direction.

You, just like the priest, will never have an opportunity to sit and rest.

OR, you can trust in Jesus and accept the complete work that he has done on your behalf.

Jesus completed the work and allows you to rest in Him.

Romans 3:21–25 CSB

21 But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. 22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. 23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.

We read this passage last week, but I wanted to bring it out again because it helps us understand what the author of Hebrews is saying in verse fourteen.

Hebrews 10:14 CSB

14 For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified.

When we see this word perfected, we think of something different than what the Greek word means.

This is important because when the author says we have been perfected, and then we look at the sin that still exists in believers' lives, it can be confusing.

That word that is translated as perfect means complete, whole, adequate, or have arrived at the desired end.

The author isn’t saying that we are perfect, he is saying that the work of Jesus, on our behalf, has been perfected.

The work has been completed.

The desired end has been reached.

We have been made wholly acceptable for a relationship with God.

If you have chosen to trust Jesus’s work instead of your own, the work has been completed and you are wholly acceptable!

And guess what else happened, not only did the relationship get restored, but something happened with the law as well.

Now instead of the law being external that acts upon us, it has been moved into us.

When we put our faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives in us and the perfect law is now part of us.

Hebrews 10:15–17 CSB

15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. For after he says: 16 This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, the Lord says, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds, 17 and I will never again remember their sins and their lawless acts.

Hebrews Vol 1&2—An Anchor for the Soul Hebrews 10:1–18

Instead of putting his laws on stone tablets, they are placed in the very center of the believer’s being, so that there is an inner impulse that both delights in knowing his law and doing his will.

The very thing that had enslaved us, because of Jesus, now gives us life.

But the most important part of this is that instead of us, in our power, trying to fulfill an external set of requirements, the Holy Spirit is working in our hearts and as we obey His leading, we are fulfilling the law.

Jesus fulfilled the law by walking in obedience to the law, and we too, because of the Holy Spirit, can walk in obedience.

Hebrews Vol 1&2—An Anchor for the Soul Hebrews 10:1–18

This is what happens when God writes his will on our hearts. The new life within purges the deadness from our lives. Our renewed hearts pump fresh blood through us. The life of Christ in us—the same life that said “Here I am… I have come to do your will, O God”—animates us!

I love that.

The life of Christ in us animates us.

Christ did all the work to restore us and continues to work in us so that we can fully appreciate it!

Then finally to end with verse 18.

Hebrews 10:18 CSB

18 Now where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.

3. His forgiveness is complete and final.

In his closing thought in this section, he is more or less repeating what he already said.

As we saw a few moments ago, Jesus is now sitting down.

His work in bringing us back is done.

Prior to Jesus, the priest worked day after day to no avail.

Nothing ever got better and the cycle was without end until Jesus.

Because He fulfilled the law and offered us his forgiveness, there is nothing else to be done.

No daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly sin offerings are needed.

He did it once and for all.

The daily grind that so many of us accepted for years has been rendered useless as well.

This is a message that we need to hear and share.

When Bethany was in Fort Worth last week she and the rest of the class were asked to introduce themselves to the guest speaker.

She shared with me that when she told the speaker that she was from TGP West, a Southern Baptist Church, and the leader, Marko, chimed in and said “yeah, but y’all are far from a typical SBC.”

Bethany was telling me that this week and I’ll have to say, that made me so happy.

Not because I want to be known for being different, but because what he is talking about is what he has seen of us from afar.

Marko was referring to the way in which we approach God and there for our relationship to him.

What I love about this people that we call TGP, is the desire and willingness to walk with Jesus.

There is no expectation other than each of us being genuine in our relationship with God.

What we have all discovered is the grace and the freedom that comes when we finally give up trying to be something and be ourselves and be God’s.

While we may still have some struggles with walking in Grace from time to time, that is our desire.

I’ll be the first to admit, this was a long hard road for me to get here.

This may also be true for you.

What I know for sure is that, without a doubt, knowing this truth about God has been worth every bit of heartache and struggle that it took for me to get here.

It was hard to give up what I perceived as control over my life.

When I was on the works treadmill, I thought I had it all figured out and that I was doing well.

Even though I thought I was doing well, there were significant parts of my life that were crumbling.

It wasn’t until I discovered that God loved me because I was his child and not because of what I could do for him that I truly began to experience freedom.

I was sharing with the Felter’s life group last week that I often fear that you guys feel like I am pushing too hard.

They quickly corrected me, but I want you to understand that what I want for each and every one of you is for you to experience the freedom that comes from not having to try so hard.

Jesus has already done the work and the only way to experience that freedom is to live in obedience to the Holy Spirit.

I want you to experience the amazing life that awaits you when you learn to walk in obedience.

AND I want you to get to experience your friends and family realizing that reality as well.

There is nothing in this world that compares to someone you love getting a taste of what it means to abide.

Next week we are going to look at more benefits that come from experiencing God through this perfect relationship.

But this week, take some time to reflect on your own journey and ask God how you can share that with someone.

Your story of discovering the truth about what Jesus has done and the freedom it offers to all people is one that is worth sharing.

You have a tale to tell and there are people around you who are waiting to hear it.

Jesus has done what seemed impossible, He restored us back to God.

Share your restoration story.