Chapter 9:23-28

“²³ Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴ For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; ²⁵ not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another— ²⁶ He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. ²⁷ And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, ²⁸ so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.”

Over the past few weeks, we have looked at the need for blood sacrifices. There is a movement that has come to prominence of late, and I suspect has been around a while, that decried the savagery of the blood sacrifice that bought our salvation. We have established over the past few weeks with various passages from the Old Testament and New Testament. God, from the very beginning, established a principle that death follows sin; in Genesis 2: 16-17 (Berean Study Bible), we see this pronouncement,

“And the LORD God commanded him, ‘You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”

Romans 6:23 backs this up: “the wages of sin is death”; the natural outcome of sin is death. In the case of the Garden in Genesis, instead of killing Adam and his wife, God killed an animal and made them coats of skin. While Adam and his wife did not drop dead right there, they physically began the process of dying and were spiritually separated from God. All through the Old Testament and even up to the day that Jesus died, the death of animals was a temporary covering for sin until the ultimate sacrifice came — the one that would put an end to all other blood sacrifices.

• A Copy of Heavenly Things, verse 23

I just finished reading through the Torah once again, and there is intricate detail about the Tabernacle that is included in the writing of Moses. If you study this carefully, you will see that it took a team of dedicated individuals about 12 months to do all the work necessary to have all the pieces of the Tabernacle in place. Later, a lot later, well over 450 years, Solomon would build an elaborate Temple that stood in Jerusalem until the days of Jeremiah when the soldiers of Babylon razed it and took its treasures back to Babylon. Yet, we are told that there were just copies of the Temple in Heaven. When we get to Heaven, along with the streets of gold, the patriarchs of our faith, and the angels, there will be a Temple, the likes of which no man on earth has seen.

When Jesus was lovingly accosted by Mary at the tomb that resurrection morning, Jesus asked her to stop touching Him, rather, stop holding Him (she did not want to lose Him again), as He had not ascended to the Father (John 20:17). He was going to perform the events of Hebrews 9:24-25. Jesus was going to perform the office of our High Priest and offer His blood as the final and perfect sacrifice for the sins of ALL MANKIND forever. Unlike the purely human high priests like Aaron and his lineage, Jesus was not required to first offer a sacrifice for His own sins; He never sinned. Thus, He was able to do for mankind what the sacrifices of animals could not do; He could offer permanent covering for sin and eternal life.

• Jesus Died Once for ALL, verse 26

Jesus came at the end of the age; this seems so weird to us to say. It has been 2,000 years since Jesus came; how could that have been the end of the age? Because God is eternal, and time does not register to Him at all. The end of the age, the age of sin, the age of death, and the age of Satan’s temporary rule of the earth began with the birth of Jesus. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, was His resurrection. Jesus came once, ONCE, to pay the price for our sins. He has ‘put away sin’ by the sacrifice of Himself. Jesus did not die often; He died ONCE. You cannot get saved often; you and I get saved ONCE, and this is for eternity. If we can lose the salvation that has been gifted to us in Jesus, then Jesus would have to come again and die for the sins that were not covered the first time, OR we could not get the salvation back.

You need to read that again. If you can lose your salvation, the one God gifts you (see Romans 6:23b), then you cannot get it back unless Jesus dies again. We are told that will NOT happen; He died once and is now at the Father’s right hand. Thus, you could not get it back, ever.

Once we are saved, our sins are blotted out by the blood of Jesus. Think about it: Jesus died 2,000 years or so ago. He paid for my sins and your sins before they were ever committed. Only Jesus’ blood could do that. The blood of bulls and goats covered sin after the fact, but Jesus’ blood was pre-emptive. This is why we needed not just any blood but Jesus’ blood to cover our sins to blot them out.

• Jesus Is Coming Back again, verse 28

When I was a young boy, sometimes I would lose track of my mom in a store, and I would wonder if the Rapture happened and I got left behind. I have been hearing about Jesus’ return since I was a lad. It does not take long for us preachers to begin talking about the signs of His return once we get together. I have begun a once-a-month talk on the return of Jesus using modern news clips and scientific studies like the growth of A.I., the movement toward what will become the ‘Mark of the Beast,’ and other things like even inflation and how it affects the poor like the Book of the Revelation says.

The Holy Spirit in us reminds us and encourages us with the fact that Jesus is coming again. Sadly, many churches no longer teach about the end and no longer talk about the return of Jesus. They teach that Revelation is just paraphrasing or allegorical and not to be taken literally. Thus, a lot of God’s people are not eagerly awaiting His return. But there are some of us that are awaiting His return. We long to be free of these bodies that fail our Lord, bodies that still sin and cause us to hurt the One who loves us so much.

One day soon, we will meet Jesus in the air (1 Thess. 4:17), and then sometime later, He will return (Revelation 19) and establish His kingdom on earth (Isaiah chap. 2 and 6). Soon our eyes will see the One, that beautiful One who died for our sins and bought eternal life. Are you excited about meeting Jesus? I am, and I am not; I long to see my Savior, and I am ashamed of my failures and sin. Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.

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 9:16-22

“¹⁶ For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. ¹⁷ For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives. ¹⁸ Therefore not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood. ¹⁹ For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, ²⁰ saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.’ ²¹ Then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. ²² And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.”

The New Testament churches are responsible for the purity and sharing of the Gospel. We must be careful to share the Gospel in its Biblical purity and with all the parts that are involved. There are several parts to the pure Gospel, and one of those parts is the importance of a Blood sacrifice. In the passage that we are exploring today, there is a reference to the consecration of the Old Testament Tabernacle and the priests that served in it. Moses performed a ceremony that dedicated the Law and the men that oversaw the execution thereof.

• The Old Covenant, Leviticus 8

I encourage you to read the whole chapter if you get the chance to do so. But we will focus on the dedication of the high priest and his sons, who became the future priests. Moses writes for us in Leviticus 8: 18-24,

“Then he brought the ram as the burnt offering. And Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram, and Moses killed it. Then he sprinkled the blood all around on the altar. And he cut the ram into pieces; and Moses burned the head, the pieces, and the fat. Then he washed the entrails and the legs in water. And Moses burned the whole ram on the altar. It was a burnt sacrifice for a sweet aroma, an offering made by fire to the Lord, as the Lord had commanded Moses. And he brought the second ram, the ram of consecration.

“Then Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram, and Moses killed it. Also, he took some of its blood and put it on the tip of Aaron’s right ear, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. Then he brought Aaron’s sons. And Moses put some of the blood on the tips of their right ears, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. And Moses sprinkled the blood all around on the altar” (NKJV).

These men were consecrated to the Lord with blood. This blood was the temporary covering for their sins as they were men who were fallible. God established the blood sacrifice in Genesis when He made ‘coats of skin’ to cover Adam and Eve. God also established with Abraham the need for blood to secure a promise in Genesis 15 when He entered into a covenant with Abraham using an old ritual of the area where two warring kings would sever an animal and walk through the pool of blood between the two pieces to make a covenant of peace. In this particular chapter, you will see that Abraham falls to sleep, and God makes the covenant with Himself.

From the very beginning, there has been blood required to cover our sins and blood required to secure the covenants that we have in the Lord. Now we have a new generation that wants to take the blood out of the Gospel. Out of the Covenants that we have in Christ with God. They want to sanitize the Gospel to make it more palatable, but the Gospel is designed to be offensive. It tells man he is hopeless and rotten to the core. It strips away any kind of self-reliance and places all men at the foot of the cross, all on even ground, lost, and going to eternal separation from God in Hell.

• The New Covenant, Hebrews 9:22

Without bloodshed, there is no remission or removal of our sins. If our sins are not removed, then we are not saved, and there is no hope for you and me. Jesus shed His blood for us, for the eternal removal of our sins, yours and mine. See Revelation 1:5:

“And from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (ESV).

Romans 5:9, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (ESV).

Ephesians 2:13, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (ESV).

We can go on and on, but one cannot separate the salvation we have in Jesus from bloodshed. There is no need to sanitize the Gospel. All men need to know that it took bloodshed; it took the brutal and painful death of Jesus to save them. They need to know that their sin was and is repulsive to God, and when God places our sins on Jesus, it repulsed Him, and He struck Jesus as He would us, with His wrath.

Matthew 26:28, “For this, is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (ESV).

Matthew 27:46, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'” (ESV).

God forsook Jesus and allowed His wrath to fall on Him so that when you put your faith in Jesus’ death, God will never forsake you and me nor pour His wrath out on us. Jesus’ bloodshed protects us from God’s wrath; more accurately, it removes us from being under God’s wrath at all. We have nothing to fear from God, our Heavenly Father. You and I are justified by Jesus’ blood, we are washed clean by Jesus’ blood, and we are at eternal peace with God because of Jesus’ blood. Nothing else was enough to pacify the wrath of God.

It is important that we keep the Gospel pure; men are sinners, and God is Holy. Stop trying to sanitize the Gospel. Salvation comes via bloodshed, Jesus’ bloodshed. There are no other means of salvation.

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