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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints of God, we’re headed to the epistle, Hebrews chapter 10, but just to say a quick word about the gospel lesson from our Lord Jesus. We’ll say more about this next week, the last Sunday of the church year, because to be ready for the last day is a – there’s a two-fold readiness and it’s a little bit tricky. We have to be ready for Jesus to come at any moment, like a thief in the night. So he sets us to beware, to be watchful, to be ready, because at any moment he could come. But we also have to be ready to wait, like the five wise virgins who had oil in their lamp and they were ready for the delay. Peter promises the Lord is not slow, as some count slowness, but is long-suffering. So we have to be ready to go now to meet the Lord in the air, but we have to be ready to wait for generations and to care for those who are coming after us.
Now, what that means is, and here’s the question that Jesus is getting at, how do we read the signs that we see in the world around us? The gospel text was from Holy Tuesday, and it was the last time Jesus taught publicly in the temple. And as they were leaving the temple, the disciples looked at this marvelous building. It was Solomon built the foundation, but then that was destroyed, but Zerubbabel had built it back, but Herod had renovated it. It was just this wondrous, marvelous, huge, big temple, and the disciples were marveling. “Lord, look at these buildings. Look at these stones here.” And Jesus says, well, the day is coming when not one of these stones is going to be on top of the other one. That day, by the way, was August the 10th in the year 70, when the Romans surrounded Jerusalem and finally overthrew it and set the temple on fire, and the gold melted, and they tore apart the stones to get the gold that had melted down between the stones.
But they get down, they’re walking out of Jerusalem and they go down to the Kidron Valley. They go up to the Mount of Olives. They’re on their way to Bethany, probably staying at the house of Mary and Martha and Lazarus during Holy Week. And as they get to the top of the Mount of Olives, they take a break and they look back over the temple and Peter, James, John, and Andrew say, “Lord, when’s this going to happen? How do we know?” And Jesus says this: He says, “Wars, nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There’ll be wars and rumors of wars, and then the end is not yet.” Now this is the wisdom that I wanted just to take away from this, because I don’t know how many times this will happen to me. You know, there’ll be a war that’ll start, or a nation will bomb another nation, or there’ll be an earthquake, or there’ll be a hurricane, or there’ll be some sort of disaster. And it, and the question that I’ll get is, “Pastor, is this a sign of the end?” And the answer from Jesus is, “It’s a sign of not the end.” When you see a war, you say, not yet. When you see an earthquake, you say, not yet. In other words, the opposite of the way we normally take it, this is a time to think about endurance and love and service, not for running away from these tragedies, but we, knowing that it’s not yet, run towards the tragedies, to love and serve those people who are affected by these things.
Jesus says, from the beginning that… from… from the moment that I ascend up into heaven into the moment when I come back in glory, the nations are going to war with each other. From the moment I ascend into heaven until the moment I come back in glory, the nations are going to grab you and persecute you and throw you in court and do all sorts of evil things against you. From the moment I ascend up into heaven until the moment I come back, families are going to be in distress because of my name and my doctrine and my teaching, and so be ready for that. Have endurance. Fight the good fight of faith.
When you see these things, we gird up our loins for patience and for action. We’re ready to go and love and serve, and we understand that these things, wars and rumors of wars are not an occasion for us to retreat from the world, but an occasion for the church to run into these troubles and serve those who are in the midst of them. So far, the wisdom from Jesus. Now, we’ll talk more about that next week.
But I want to unravel the riddle that’s there for us in Hebrews chapter 10. If you have your bulletin, you can see the Epistle lesson. It’s a tricky – Hebrews is a tricky text. And I’ve been meditating on why Hebrews is so difficult for a while now, but especially this week thinking about this for you guys. So I think it’ll probably be helpful for you to look at what the text says.
But here’s why I think it’s tricky. There’s kind of two layers to the problem that Hebrews is putting in front of us. On the top layer, on the surface, Hebrews wants us to see the similarities between the worship in the Old Testament and the life and work of Jesus. We want to see how the things that the Lord instituted with Moses are very, very similar to the things that Jesus has done. So, for example, we want to see how the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement is a lot like the death of Jesus. The sacrifice happened outside on the altar, like Jesus’ crucifixion was outside the city. And then the priest takes the blood of that sacrifice and goes into the tabernacle like Jesus took the blood of His sacrifice and ascended into heaven. To see these parallels between the earthly worship and the heavenly reality, and we’ve talked about this before, remember how in heaven there’s these four living creatures, and now in the tabernacle, which God gave Moses to build, there’s the two cherubim above the ark and the two cherubim carved in the curtain.
So that we start to see those parallels and how they’re similar to one another, but then once we see how they’re similar, we go to the next level and we start to see how they’re different. Jesus is like the sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, but his sacrifice is once for all. Jesus is the high priest, but his priesthood is of Melchizedek, not of Levi. And here’s the difference between Jesus and the high priest in the Old Testament that the preacher of Hebrews 10 wants us to see first of all, is that while the priest in the Old Testament stood, Jesus sits. Now, what is the difference? Take a look. Here’s verse 11, 12, 13, every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down.
The priests in the old covenant stand. And why do they stand? Because their work is never done, because there’s always more sacrifices to offer, because there’s always more lambs and goats and bulls and blood to deal with. But Jesus sits down. Why? Because His work is finished.
I don’t know how you imagine Jesus sitting down at the right hand of the Father when He ascends up there, but it might help in this context to think of Him sort of sitting down and kicking back his feet on an Ottoman, like a lazy boy. In fact, it’s going to get to the lazy boy in just a minute. He throws off his shoes because his work is done. There’s no more sacrifices to offer. There’s no more atoning to accomplish. There’s no more sins to wash away because he’s accomplished them. He sits down at the right hand of God from that time waiting until his enemies are made his footstool. There’s the Ottoman, the footstool. This comes from Psalm 110, but even before that it comes from what the pharaohs used to do and the kings of Babylon. You know these guys. They would go and conquer some place and then they would bring the king from whatever they conquered. Pharaohs would bring the kings from Syria or Damascus or whatever and they’d get their artists to make a little depiction of what that king looked like, and they’d take that image and they’d put it on their footstool.
So every time they sat on the throne, they would have their feet on the head of the enemies that they conquered. David says that the Lord Jesus does the same thing. Psalm 110, sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. So, under the feet of Jesus are the devil, and the sinful world, and sin itself. So Jesus, verse 14, by one offering has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. Now this is a wonderful verse, wonderfully theological because it, and it’s playing around here with the past tense and the present tense. There we are, you are right now being sanctified by God the Holy Spirit, but you are already perfected. You are already forgiven. You are already holy in the sight of God, even as He works that holiness in you.
If you guys can indulge me in just a little story. I might have told you this before, but I remember when this first struck me, this truth that the Gospel makes us perfect. We were on an overnight bus trip to Lake Okoboji, and we were driving in the middle of the night and I was looking at some passage from Galatians. Everyone else was asleep, including the pastor up front, and I realized that the forgiveness of sins means that the Lord has completely washed us clean and perfected us. So I ran up to the front of the bus and I woke him up, “Pastor, pastor, pastor.” He thought it was some emergency, the bus driver was falling asleep or we’ve missed our turn or something crazy like that. He says, “What’s wrong?” I said, “Nothing’s wrong. I’m perfect.” And he said, “Oh, really?” I said, “I am. I’m perfect. My sins are forgiven. That means I’m perfect in the sight of God.” And he said, “I’m sure you’ll still be perfect in the morning. Let’s talk about it then.”
This is what it says here, by one offering He has perfected forever those who He is sanctifying. You are perfect. Now I know that you’re a sinner. You know that you’re a sinner. We’ve broken the laws of God. We haven’t loved our neighbors. We ought to have loved them. We haven’t served and loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are sinners and that’s the problem, right? That’s the problem that the Lord was addressing with the worship of the Old Testament and with the death of Jesus on the new, that we as sinners cannot stand before the holiness of God, but He has made you holy. He solved the problem of your sin in His death on the cross. He solved the problem of your death with His resurrection. He solved the problem of your sickness and your weakness and all the things that troubled you in His suffering in your place.
Now this is important for us because there are a lot of people who, well, they have a spirituality that looks like this. They say, “Well, I’m a spiritual person, but I’m not a religious person.” And I think what that means, it means a lot of different things, but I think what that means is that most people want to have some sort of experience, some individual experience of the presence of God.
But we know better. We know that that not only is impossible apart from the life and death of Jesus, but that it’s dangerous. The presence of God, let me say that very clearly. For us sinners, the presence of God is dangerous. Remember, for example, the flame that came out of the tabernacle and destroyed the two sons of Aaron, or the hole that opened up and swallowed the people who were involved in the rebellion, or consider even what Moses… what the Lord says to Moses in Exodus 32. He says, “Nobody can see My face and live.”
So many people want to have… experience the presence of God, not knowing that the Lord is a consuming fire, that His presence is dangerous. Remember Mount Sinai where the Lord said, “If anybody touches the hill, any man, woman, child, even animal comes so close to me and touches the hill that they have to be put to death.” The presence of God is dangerous, and it’s not the problem of God’s presence, it’s the problem of our sin. But the Lord has taken away once for all our sin so that we can stand before Him.
Do you remember how in the Old Testament when the priest would go every year into the Holy of Holies, He would just go once, twice on one day, on the Day of Atonement, and they would put Him in this special robe that had bells all around the fringes, so they could see if He was still alive or not. And they’d tie a rope around Him, around His foot, so that if He died when He was in the Holy of Holies, they could drag Him out without going in there themselves. This place, the holy place, the holiest of holies, was a dangerous place to be, a frightful place to be, but the preacher here in Hebrews 10 says that that’s where we are. That’s where we go. And we go there, not with fear and trembling, without a rope tied around our ankle or any bells on our fringes, because we know that we belong there because of the blood of Jesus.
Once a year, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies. But you go there every Sunday. You are there right now. In fact, every time you bow down to pray and fold your hands in prayer, you go into that place. You stand before the Lord. Look at verse 19.
“Therefore, brethren, having boldness, confidence, freedom of speech to enter the holiest, that’s the holy of holies, by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us through the veil that is His flesh, having a high priest over the house of God.” It’s not just the high priest who goes in there once a year. You go there, you Christians go there every time you pray and every time you come to the Lord’s Supper. You come into the presence of God before His face.
So there are three concluding things. There are three lettuces here in the text, starting with verse 21. Remember how St. Paul says faith, hope, and love, these three and the greatest of these is love? There’s going to be a lettuce of faith, a lettuce of hope, and a lettuce of love that grow out of the death of Jesus for us. Look, starting at verse 21: “Therefore, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” There is nothing for you to be afraid of with God. Your conscience is clean. Your sins are forgiven. You are holy. Hold on to that faith.
Verse 23: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering because he who promised is faithful.” The Lord will come back soon for us and we know it, and so we can endure all sorts of trouble knowing that he will rescue and redeem us. The devil is always attacking our hope through our suffering, but the Lord uses our suffering to strengthen our hope because we know that God’s promises are true.
And third, verse 24: “Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the matter of some, but exhorting one another and so much more as you see the day approaching.” This, by the way, is the classic go-to-church verse, and I don’t need to preach it to you because you are here.
But if you see someone who’s not here, you should give them this verse, but we should remember why we come to church, because Jesus has given us this faith that we can stand before Him in boldness and, and so that we can encourage one another, so that we can bless one another so that we can stand beside one another as we see the last day approaching.
So Jesus strengthens us in faith, and hope, and love because he has done it, because he’s finished the work, because he is the faithful high priest who has offered once for all Himself so that you can be with Him forever. This is our confidence. And may it be your peace even as the day comes. Amen. And the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
