Episode 280: For All Time | Tim Henderson | Good Friday

Alright friends, who can tell me how many books there are in the New Testament? Nice and loud, how many? 27, alright. Now the good news is, you get every one of them, they're all for you. And you can know them, you can read them, you can understand them and memorize them. But I want you to imagine a scenario in which you only get three, okay? And I'd love you to tell me as loud as you can, which three would you pick? If of all the whole collection, you could just grab three on the way out the door, what would your three be?

John, Romans. Romans, John, what do we got over here? John, Romans, and Hebrews. John, Romans, and Hebrews. I love that list because that's my list. Anybody else want to throw in an honorable mention? Luke, Acts, and Hebrews. And Hebrews. Alright, Hebrews is getting a little—I thought Hebrews might not get much love tonight.

The answer is, I think, Romans because it is the greatest thing ever written in the history of man. John because it is the warmest, most accessible, most theologically thoughtful of all the biographies of Christ, and Hebrews, which I'm excited to hear you guys mentioning Hebrews. I think Hebrews has unbelievable insights, and in particular, it peers with unmatched depth into the mystery of the cross. It is also incredibly complicated.

I recall distinctly the first time I ever read Hebrews, I was a freshman at JMU, and I read it and I felt the entire time that I was reading it like I was swimming through wet cement. And when I was all done, I had no idea what I had read. That was the first time through, and I was completely lost. And the reason I was lost, I think, is that Hebrews is a sermon, and it's basically an exposition of the Old Testament. It is fantastically complicated and I didn't know anything about the Old Testament when I read this thing, so I was lost from beginning to end.

What he's doing is he's writing this sermon and it really is an exposition of the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews is going to quote from Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Second Samuel, First Chronicles, eleven different Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Haggai and Habakkuk, okay? This thing is an absolute tortoise and I never read any of those, so I didn't know what was happening as I went through it. But if you take what he's doing, he takes all this gigantic pile of the Hebrew scriptures and he organizes it down to make one singular point.

Does anybody know what is the driving argument of the book of Hebrews? What is it? Jesus is better than all of us. Jesus is better than everything. That is it—it's the whole thing. It's a sermon about the supremacy of Christ, that he is better. And there's a whole bunch of things that he lists that Jesus is better than.

Maybe the most significant things are that Jesus is better than the angels, which means he's a better messenger and he has a better message. He's better than Moses and he takes his people to a better promised land. And probably most significantly of all is that he is a better high priest and he offers a better sacrifice.

The section of this sermon that really deals with that is Hebrews eight, nine, and ten. And so on tonight, on this night, on Good Friday, on the holiest day of the year, commemorating the most important thing that has ever happened, we're going to let Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 10 be our guide as it peers into the center of the cross. So if you have a Bible, and you want to turn there to Hebrews 10, we won't have it on screen, but I'll have it here for you to listen to.

The Superiority of Jesus and His Sacrifice

What he's going to say is that Jesus is superior, he is vastly superior, and his sacrifice is superior. He is a better high priest, better than all the priests that came before, and what he did on Good Friday is so dramatically better than all the sacrifices offered before. And we're going to take a look at why.

There's a number of things that he unpacks why, we're just going to look at really one thing in Hebrews 10 that is what makes Jesus' sacrifice so much better. Listen to this very carefully, chapter 10, I'll read a couple verses and we'll see if you catch it.

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. For this reason, it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. — Hebrews 10:1-4

What he's doing, he's got one single idea, and he's going to repeat it over and over and over so we can't miss it.

Do you begin to get a sense of what it is here from those few verses? What makes Jesus' sacrifice better, you guys? Again, you can play. What is he pointing to here? Sue, I can't hear you. Be loud. Once and for all, once and for all. What he's saying is, you guys, it worked and you don't have to do it again and then again and then again because it actually worked.

I want you to imagine that you have a leaky sink, okay? Your sink is leaky, you don't know what to do about it and so you call a plumber. The plumber shows up and he's got a roll of tape. So he just tapes off the pipe, tapes off the faucet. It's not a very elegant solution, but at least the water stops flowing and all is well and he leaves.

You go to bed, but overnight while you're sleeping, the water seeps into the adhesive, begins to break it all down, and by the time you get up in the morning, the water is streaming out again. So you call the plumber, and the plumber comes back, and he gets out his trusty roll of tape, and he tapes it up one more time. And as he does, the leak stops for a little while, but again, as the day goes on, the thing starts to get all soggy, and it stops being effective, and begins to leak again.

So you call the plumber, he comes back and he tapes it up again. Same thing, it works as long as it does, until it doesn't, and then it starts to leak again. So the next day he comes back and you know what he does? He puts on more tape. Okay, that is the sacrificial system. Because you guys, it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. So day after day, year after year, they keep doing it. And it doesn't actually solve the problem, it's a temporary fix, it's a patch, and it doesn't work.

Take a look at what happens in verse 11.

Every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. — Hebrews 10:11-14

I want you to imagine you're in a financial crisis, okay. You've borrowed a whole bunch of money, way more than you can pay back, but you're just kind of living on borrowed time until eventually the bills are so great that the obligation that you owe is so massive, there's nothing that you can do, you can't pay it back.

But not to worry, because someone arises to help you, and he steps into the situation, and he pays off the interest on the loan. He doesn't retire the principal, he just pays off the interest. But it's good enough for now, because all the wolves begin to back away, and it's purchased you some time.

But a year later, the interest has again accrued. And once again, you're absolutely unable to pay the debt. And again, someone steps forward, and again, he pays off the interest on the loan so that the loan sharks will back off and just give you just a little bit of breathing room. But the problem hasn't been solved. It's just been deferred. And you know that next year you're gonna be in the exact same situation.

That was the sacrificial system. There's an endless bloodbath of sheep, goats, bulls, but it was incapable of retiring the debt. Which is why, in verse 12, when Christ had offered for all time, a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Because what that means, this is why he's so much better. What it means is that he did not just pay the interest on your debt. That's all that was happening for centuries. But when he came, he actually paid off the principle of a loan.

And notice what he does here, is that he sat down. Because what does that mean? Why did he sit down at the right hand of God? Do you know why? Because he was done. Because it had been accomplished. The work was complete, utterly completely finished. It means that the faucet will never leak again. And it means that the loan sharks are never coming back because your sin has been entirely paid for.

Do you see why he is a better priest and why he offers to you a better sacrifice?

Application

I suspect that it is extremely unlikely that any of you have put any dependence whatsoever upon the Jewish sacrificial system. Right? I'm sure that none of you are like, well I wasn't really worried about the bulls and goats not working because I never did that anyway. I know you don't. Okay? And that's good. But I would be shocked if you did not have an equally worthless system upon which you depend.

It is very likely that while none of you are killing sheep and goats in your backyard, you almost certainly have some strategy. You're saying to yourself, okay, I'm—probably the number one strategy—I'm just gonna be good. I will just, I won't do it again. From this point, today I draw a line in the sand and from now on I will be good. And you're depending on that.

And my guess is you're gonna need to make that resolution over and over and over again, just like the sacrifices that were repeatedly offered. Because how long can you go? A day? A week? An hour? If you're depending on that, that's never gonna work.

Maybe another preferred strategy is secrecy. As long as nobody knows, then everything's fine. We're just gonna keep this thing hidden in the dark and what happens over time is the gap between who you actually are and the avatar that you project, it just gets greater and greater and greater until the whole thing collapses in on itself.

We've got all these sorts of strategies that we try, none of them work. I don't know if either one of those is yours. Maybe you just compensate. You know that you're just terrible at this and you frankly have just surrendered to it. Like I'm gonna be horrible at this and it's never gonna get better, but maybe nobody will know. But I'm gonna compensate over here. I'm gonna perform over here as a way to assuage my guilt from my failures over here and maybe the things will balance all out.

Maybe you've got your own strategies, maybe you're more clever than I am, but whatever you've come up with, I seriously doubt that it's working very well. You need a better priest than yourself, and you need a better sacrifice than anything that you've been able to cobble together.

The Better Priest and Better Sacrifice

Verse 19, the author of Hebrews goes on to delineate the impact of this. If we really knew, if the penny dropped and you really understood that Jesus is a better high priest and he offers for you a better sacrifice, what would happen? He goes on to basically say that it's the sufficiency of his sacrifice, the absolute supremacy of it is the thing that gives us confidence to enter in the presence of God, even to draw near to him, which is kind of absurd. I mean, who are we to walk into the throne room of God, even to get on his lap?

And the author of Hebrews would say, well the answer is: who are you? You are those whose sin has been entirely atoned. That's who you are. It's not been deferred, it's not been diminished, it's not hidden, it's not held at bay, it's gone. It is done, it is atoned, it's erased. And you have been cleansed from guilt for all time.

And therefore, what do we do? Look at what he says we do in verse 23. First thing is that we cling to him. We hold to him unswervingly. We say I will never let him go. I will never let him go. There's nothing you can say to me. There's nothing you can threaten me. There is nothing you can offer me. I will cling to him with all that I have because where else will I go? Who else can cover my shame? Who else can erase my guilt? I will never let him go. I will hold unswervingly to him and I will exhort you to do the exact same thing.

That we will exhort one another to say, what are you doing? What's happening? That what you should do for me is that if you see me just swerving down into some craziness, some idiocy, some folly, that you should slide tackle me and say what are you doing? That we come together, we make a commitment to each other that we will gather together. We will never let something happen that causes us to just slowly drift away. That we will watch one another's lives. We will love one another and say, no, no, no, where are you going, where are you going, where are you going?

There are a lot of people. Have you noticed there's a lot of people that come to church of the Holy Spirit some of the time when it's convenient? In two days there's gonna be about a million of them here. And then one week later, they're gonna be gone again. Do you know this phenomena? If any of them just happen to be your friend, what Hebrews says what we do is we pick up the phone and we say, where have you been? What are you doing? What did you find that is better than Jesus? Like what on earth? This makes no sense to me. Where have you been? Where are you going? What have you found? Come home.

Right? Because it's in him alone that all of our shame is erased. It is he alone that is the great high priest who offers a better sacrifice. It is because he is so great, so mind bogglingly great, and his sacrifice so utterly complete that we will never let the petty distractions cause us to drift away because he is our chief love.

And we worship him tonight as we reflect on his death. Jesus, you are the great high priest, the greatest high priest. And you offer a better sacrifice, the best sacrifice that could possibly be. Lord, not only that, but it's because you live forever that you are able to intercede for us. You have a permanent priesthood and you have come to save completely those who have come to God through you.

Lord you meet our deepest need. You're holy. You're blameless. You're pure. You are set apart from sinners. You are exalted above the heavens.

Unlike all the other high priests, you do not need to offer a sacrifice day after day because you offered for all time, yourself.

We love you, we exalt you, we worship you on this the holiest of days. Would you be our deepest joy?

We thank you that you drank the cup, that you finished to the dregs, the cup of agony. We thank you for trusting your father, for modeling obedience, for accepting the scorn of wicked men, and for dying in our place and for our good.

We thank you that you love us and you gave yourself for us. We love you too.

Amen.