Chapter 10:11-18

¹¹ “And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ¹² But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. ¹⁴ For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. ¹⁵ But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before ¹⁶ ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,’ ¹⁷ then He adds, ‘Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.’ ¹⁸ Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.”

Hebrews 10:8-10; “Previously saying, ‘Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them’ (which are offered according to the law), then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.’ He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.'”

It has been a few weeks since last we were together. Sadly, one of my dear sisters here went home to be with the Lord. I say sad, but we know that the sadness is tempered by the realization that she is home; she is no longer in pain, and cancer can’t get her there. We miss her, but we are not sad for her; we rejoice for her. I pray that you know this kind of hope and that you live in this kind of hope — a hope that transcends the trials, pains, and losses of this life.

At times it may seem that we are repeating ourselves, but we are not. The writer of Hebrews wanted us to be sure beyond any doubt that Jesus was and is the only means of our salvation. Hebrews is the New Testament version of Daniel in a way. In the Old Testament, Daniel was written to the Gentiles primarily in a section of the Bible that was mainly to the Jews and the founding and expansion of Israel.

Daniel lived in a Gentile Kingdom (Babylon), and God told him of the things that would happen to the Gentiles for all eternity right into and past our time if the Lord tarries. Hebrews is written primarily to the Jews in a part of the Bible that is primarily about the Gentile church. This book dispels for the Jews any and all sentiments that may have them believe that salvation comes by keeping the Law.

It is astonishing that there are some sects that still hold to the Law as their means of salvation. They still think that if they keep the Law faithfully, it will be counted to them for righteousness before God. There are still many devout Jews who feel the same way; they see God, acknowledge God, and know the Law but deny and refuse Jesus. John tells us that anyone who denies Jesus does not have God.

1 John 2: 21-23; “I have not written to you because you lack knowledge of the truth, but because you have it, and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar, if it is not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well” (Berean Study Bible).

If you deny that Jesus is the Son of God according to John 5:18, which makes Him equal to God, then you do not have God the Father. These are sobering words to many sects and to many Jews; they are damning words. There will be many who know God but deny the Son, Jesus, and they will die in their sins and spend eternity in Hell. This is why the book of Hebrews was written to dispel any myths and doctrines about being able to be saved by keeping the Law. This passage we will explore is so clear that I do not need to do much explaining at all. I will try to be brief and do all I can to let the simple statements of the Scriptures jump off the page.

• The Rituals of the Laws can NEVER take away our sins, verse 11

This is one of the clearest statements in the Bible. In Romans 3:20 and Galatians 2:16, we are told that a man cannot be justified (declared righteous) by the works of the Law. We have three very clear verses that reinforce this doctrine. There are no persons who have ever walked the planet who are justified by keeping the Law. No one will ever come before the Throne of God and offer obedience to the Law as a reason for being justified and thus being saved from eternal doom. Jesus was never lost; He kept the Law not for himself but for us.

In Galatians 3:24 KJV, Paul tells us the purpose of the Law; please recall that this man was a Pharisee. He kept the Law from the time he was a very young man.

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”

The Law, Paul says, was designed to show us we need Jesus to justify us. The Law was never designed to save us but to show us that we need to be saved. Keeping the Law never changes our nature. We are born sinners separated from God forever, but when we are ‘born again, John 3:3, then we have eternal life given to us by faith, and we are saved forever. The Old Testament and New Testament priests had to repeat the ritual of sacrifice over and over, again and again. There were no chairs in the Temple or the Tabernacle because their work was never finished; they never got to sit down while performing the duties of the high priests; their temporary atonements could not save anyone, not even the priests.

• Jesus Sat Down; the Job was Done, verse 12

“It is finished” – only Jesus could make that statement. His sacrifice was the one to end all others. His death was the one to end the sting of death, His resurrection was the one to take away the fear of the grave, and now He is simply waiting to come and get His bride. God is gradually making the enemies of Christ and His bride come to a place where Jesus can come back and deal with them. We, you and I, have the Holy Spirit in us, and God has fulfilled in us, the Gentile Church, the promise of verse 16.

“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds, I will write them” (NKJV).

The Holy Spirit living in us has put God’s law into our hearts and minds, and He is the down payment of our salvation, Ephesian 1:14-16, and we have this even greater promise from verse 17, God does not remember our sins any longer because we are in Jesus and the Holy Spirit in us, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

One day soon, this will also be true for Israel, and the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be all fulfilled to their entirety. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How To Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/
Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca; support@mmbchurch.ca

Chapter 10:1-10

“¹ For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. ² For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. ³ But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. ⁴ For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.

⁵ Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. ⁶ In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. ⁷ Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—In the volume of the book it is written of Me—To do Your will, O God.’”

⁸ Previously saying, “Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the law), ⁹ then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.” He takes away the first that He may establish the second. ¹⁰ By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

Last week, we talked about the specific need for Jesus’ blood to wash away our sins. There is no way around this. The local New Testament church is charged with the protection and the proclamation of the Gospel. When the Gospel is tainted, then people go to Hell. Let me say that again, when the Gospel gets tainted, people go to Hell. There are myriads of people who sit in churches every week, and they are not saved. Further, there are people in a myriad of ‘Christian’ religions that are not saved. They do not trust in Jesus as Savior, and they rely on baptisms and rituals for their salvation.

What, then, is salvation? This is a very important question, and for the most part, many of us do not understand what it means. Yes, we know about trusting in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. There is a legal happening that occurs when we are saved. The passage we will explore today will help us, hopefully, to see this.

• The Yearly Sacrifice, Temporary Covering of Sin verse 3

We have forgotten the legal stance of God. He is the Righteous Judge.

Psalm 7:11-12 “God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation each day. If one does not repent, God will sharpen His sword; He has bent and strung His bow” (Berean Study Bible).

We often do not take this part of who God is very seriously. We love the grace part, the kindness part, and the mercy part. We love the giving God, the supplying God, and the nice God. But our God is a Righteous Judge first and foremost, and this is because of His Holiness. He is Perfect.

Leviticus 11: 44-45 “For I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy. Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth. For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (NKJV).

God requires perfection and Holiness, separation from sin, for us to be in His presence. In the Old Testament and right up to the death of the sacrifice of Jesus, the sins of the people were temporarily covered by the yearly sacrifices. We know that people did get eternally saved; we can see that in the writing of Moses, King David, and others; just look at this verse from Psalm 32:1-2,

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit, there is no deceit” (NKJV).

In these verses, David lays out what happens when we are legally right with God. He covers our sins, and He removes our sins, and sin is no longer imputed, accrued, or attached to us in any way, shape, or form. We become perfect, Holy in Jesus. Paul, while writing Romans, puts it this way in Romans 5:1,

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (NKJV).

We are justified and declared righteous, and we no longer have sins imputed to us. There is nothing to separate us from fellowship with God. Then because of this justification, we are no longer condemned to suffer God’s judgment.

Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (NKJV).

• God’s Will to Permanently Cover our Sin, verse 9

The older I get, and the more I struggle with my flesh, the more real and precious the grace of God is to me, and the more merciful I find myself becoming to those around me. The mere fact that God had it in His will from before Creation to make a wretch like me His perfect son is mind-blowing. It is God’s will to make me perfect, and to do so, He sent His Son Jesus, who came of His own free will to die a gruesome death so sinful wretches like me can be the children of God.

1 John 3:1 “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore, the world does not know us, because it did not know Him” (NKJV).

This wonderment should never get old. Every day that you awake, your first statement should be a statement of gratitude for God’s grace and kindness, that He, the Holy Judge of the Universe, should be mindful of a sinful, good-for-nothing wretch like me and that He should want me to be His, a part of His family. It is God’s will to save people.

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

It is God’s will for all people who are alive to be saved, to have their sins removed forever, and to be declared justified and no longer be under His condemnation. This is why the Gospel needs to be pure and perfect; people’s eternal standing with God depends on hearing and responding to the truth. There is only one name whereby we must be saved; that name is Jesus.

Acts 4:11-12 “This Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’ Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/
Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca; support@mmbchurch.ca