A Better Redeemer

Hebrews 9:11-28

Introduction:

Last time, we saw that Jesus is our Mercy Seat…our atonement…and that the Throne of Grace is His throne: that the Mercy Seat covers all of our sins, and, in fact, all of the sins of the human race from beginning to end.

Finally, we saw that, today, we are invited to approach His throne with confidence, knowing that our standing with Him was made perfect at the Cross. We have entered into this relationship by faith, and we are to continue to walk by faith.

Now the writer is making even more powerful statements concerning the Person of Christ

Jesus is Better than the Old Testament Sacrifices.

¹¹But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;
¹²Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

This is an astounding statement: Jesus, in contrast to every priest of the Temple who ever lived, has accomplished what those priests could only dream of:

In the first place, the Temple into which He entered was not the Old Testament structure, nor did He enter into its priesthood at all.
Secondly, the sacrifice He brought was not the blood of animals which were in no way connected to our guilt. Those animals served as a temporary substitute for the sinner, down through all the ages. God ordained the Law of the Substitute, in Genesis chapter 3. The animals in the garden, whose blood covered the sins of Adam and Eve, were substituted for the fallen pair. All the sacrificial animals, under the Law, served as substitutes; but only until the chosen Lamb of God appeared. There was a substitute involved in every sacrifice for sins, because the Law of Sin and Death demanded the death of the sinner. Jesus took the place of (substituted himself for) every human who ever lived, when he went to the Cross. He is our substitute… and there is no substitute for him.
He has provided a permanent, eternal redemption for us. In this particular passage, the Greek word for “redemption” is “lutruosin”. It carries the idea of being “set free.”

There are three words used in Greek, to complete the concept that we call “Redemption:”

Agorazo: to be “bought in the market (the agora)”
Exagorazo: to be “bought out of the market…taken off the market, not be re-sold”, and
Lutroō: to be set free.

So, the whole meaning of the concept of Biblical Redemption begins with the “bad news”: the fact that we have been sold into sin: so that is where God had to go to rescue us—to the slave-market of sin. That is where Jesus went as our redeemer. We have been bought out of that market-place, never to be sold again. And, finally: we have been set free. He bought us for the purpose of setting us free.

Now: with that in mind, consider the importance of verse twelve: it says that Jesus, at the cost of his own life-blood, being tortured to death by the barbaric people for whom He died, has bought eternal redemption for us. It says we have been eternally bought out of the marketplace of sin, to be eternally set free. It simply cannot be stated in stronger terms! Your position in Christ cannot be more secure than it already is. You have been eternally set free. Read verses 13 and 14:

¹³For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:
¹⁴How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Whatever effect the Old Testament sacrifices had upon the believer, the effect of the sacrifice of Christ is far superior: His death and burial and resurrection brings eternal redemption. Notice, too, that it says that he did all this “through the Eternal Spirit:” He lived a sinless life by the Holy Spirit, and he sacrificed Himself by the Holy Spirit. His whole life was lived out in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the result is that we are permanently bought out from our former slavery to sin, and have been permanently set free to serve God.

The Mediator of the New Testament…the New Covenant

¹⁵And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

Notice the tenses, here: he sacrificed himself (past tense), and because of that, He is (present tense) our High Priest—the Mediator between God and Man. Bear in mind that a mediator is always a “go-between” of some sort. God says in 1^st Timothy 2:5 that “…there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” In this specific case (the mediator between God and Man), the mediator is the priest; the one who represents God before men and Man before God. So Jesus is identified clearly as the High Priest of the New Covenant.

This serves as a reminder that, in the truest sense, the New Testament did not begin with Matthew chapter one. Jesus himself said, “…this is the New Covenant in my Blood….” So, the real beginning point of Jesus’s ministry as the Mediator of the New Covenant, (in spite of what we refer to as his “high Priestly prayer”, in John 17—and that is what it was) was the sacrifice he brought as the High Priest: his death at the Cross. He appeared in the real tabernacle with that sacrifice, once for all, and consummated his eternal position at the right hand of God the Father.

So, when our Bibles start the New Testament with the four Gospels, it is only because the Gospels introduce the New Testament. It actually began with the crucifixion, and really got rolling at the day of Pentecost, 50 days later. The Church-age is the beginning of the New Testament. The full New Covenant as promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34, will be ushered in after the Lord’s return.

¹⁶For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.
¹⁷For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.
¹⁸Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood.
¹⁹For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people,
²⁰Saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.
²¹Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry.
²²And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

These are perplexing things to read, unless you remember that every blood-sacrifice in the Old Testament was, in one form or another, a picture (or pre-figuring) of Christ and His one sacrifice that was to come. Some are more clearly stated than others. But the closing comment on that passage is this key statement: …without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

This is a clear explanation of what was wrong with Cain’s offering, in Genesis chapter four by the way. I have heard several preachers make the statement that “there was nothing wrong with Cain’s sacrifice—it was his heart attitude that was wrong.” They were pretty adamant about it, too, saying that to claim otherwise was to insert doctrine that just wasn’t there.

Well—sorry, but this passage says that the non-blood character of the sacrifice was what was wrong…that, apart from the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. No forgiveness! And, if we skip ahead to Hebrews 11:4, the same writer clearly states that “by faith, Abel brought a more excellent sacrifice…” It does not say, “God liked Abel’s attitude better”: it says the sacrifice was better.

Abel obeyed by faith, and brought the blood sacrifice about which he had apparently learned through Adam’s testimony. (Remember, God attempted to reason with Cain, and effectively reminded him that he, Cain, also knew what the problem was, and that if he obeyed, he too would be accepted. But Cain chose to rebel…and we know the result.)

A Better Sacrifice

²³It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

The logic, here, is that while it was necessary for “all things to be purged with blood”, here on earth, it was even more necessary in the heavenly tabernacle. But, as the heavenly tabernacle is infinitely superior to the Earthly one, so the sacrifice also had to be infinitely superior. And it was! The Sacrifice which Jesus brought was eternally ordained by God (see Revelation 13:8…Jesus is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the Earth.”) Jesus is “Plan A”, and there is no “Plan B!”

²⁴For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:

I have a hard time picturing this, because, honestly, I realize that I have no idea what the presence of God is like beyond the very limited descriptions in God’s Word. Perhaps someone might say I lack imagination; but, in this particular case that is a good thing. God says (1^st Corinthians 2:9) “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” In another passage we are told that we are to cast down “…imagination and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.” It seems to me that if God is silent on a subject, then we ought to be silent, too; but there are many books available today giving glowing, detailed description of heaven, and the throne room, the angelic hosts, etc. It leaves me to wonder about the real source of such things.

²⁵Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others;

²⁶For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

²⁷And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

²⁸So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

Jesus made a once-for-all sacrifice, to take away the sins of the World (John 1:29), and we look for his second coming; not hoping that we may be good enough, or that our works will be sufficient, but knowing that He was “good enough”: knowing that His one sacrifice is eternally sufficient.

Some churches teach that, through the Eucharist, Jesus is continually suffering for the sins of the World. This passage flatly states that to be the worst form of falsehood. That teaching denies the truth of God’s Word, and relegates Jesus to a continual “victim of God’s Wrath”, rather than the valiant and victorious Lord of Hosts, Lion of Judah, and conquering Lamb of God that he truly is. He voluntarily stepped forward to be our savior, and his Sacrificial work was completed once for all, at the Cross.

This is how we know that Jesus is not physically (or mystically) in the Eucharist…that the bread and the cup are only representative of His body and blood, and are emblems of how we have been born again.

They are not the means of salvation, nor are they in any way effective to put us in a right standing before God. They are strictly a reminder of how we entered into a right standing with a Holy God, and of who we are as a result. Living in a world that is antagonistic toward the Creator, it is easy to forget who we are in Him, and struggle along in our flesh, instead of trusting Him day by day, allowing Him to live through us.

This has been a fairly persistent false teaching, and many otherwise sound apologists have been snared by it, because it is an attractive idea. I enjoy the writings of C.S. Lewis, but in his early book “Mere Christianity”, he states that one becomes a Christian by taking communion. That is absolutely false. I hope that C. S. Lewis later realized his error, but I still have that book, and there have been millions of copies sold over the years.

One becomes a Christian by coming as a guilty sinner, and placing one’s personal trust in Jesus’s blood as full payment for one’s own personal sin. His literal blood at the Cross is what paid for sin, not the commemorative ritual. We enter in by placing our faith in his real shed blood: his real death, his real burial, and His real resurrection. We commemorate that reality in the Lord’s Supper.

By the way, this is also an important passage in refuting all teachings of “reincarnation:” do you see it? (Hebrews 9:27) It says we are appointed to die once…and after that the judgment. That rules out “coming back for seconds”, so to speak. You get one life, here on earth: no “do-overs”.

Jesus also had one life—and it was given to him specifically for the purpose of going to the cross in the place of the whole human race, to provide the way for us to have eternal life.

Conclusion:

So how do we respond? What do we do with all this information? Is it just “fun stuff to know and tell?” Or is there a practical response involved? What kind of response is Jesus looking for?

Let’s go back to verse 14:

¹⁴How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
There is your “Purpose clause” for all that we just read. Jesus did everything for the Glory of God, and in so doing, He freed us from Sin– so that we could do the same.

He finished His work in order that we might be eternally set free from sin and so that we can join Him in glorifying the Father through service. In John 14:21, we see that the mark of one who loves Jesus Christ is that they obey Him, through faith…and the result is that God, in the person of Christ, engages in a continuing love-relationship with the believer, and deliberately makes Himself known to the believer, in an ongoing, living experience, as that person continues to serve the living God.

We frequently quote Ephesians 2:8, 9, in regards to how we are saved. But we seldom quote Ephesians 2:10, which suggests why we are saved:

We are his workmanship
Created in Christ Jesus
Unto good works, which God has before ordained
That we should walk in them.

If you have trusted in Jesus as your savior, then you have been born again; and your new nature is created in the righteousness and holiness of God. (Ephesians 4:24) Because of that, you are free to serve Him. God has things for you to do! Don’t miss out on the opportunity! We only get one life, and it is our one opportunity to serve the King.

Lord Jesus, stir our hearts to serve you. Change the way we see life. Help us see it as our one chance to walk with you and to work with you. Strengthen and encourage our hearts to follow you. Draw us along as your flock, and teach us your way.