you Hebrews 9:11 through 22 is what we're reading today. We're making our way through chapter 9. As you're turning there, remember what's happened so far. Our author, so far in chapter 8 and now in chapter 9, has said very plainly that Christ is inaugurating a new covenant. He's doing something special and different from the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant, of course, was a situation where worship, as we saw last week, had certain limitations to it. You remember last week we had that diagram, right, of the Old Testament tabernacle, and that diagram of the Old Testament tabernacle highlighted the way worship worked in prior generations. The way it worked in prior generations is that there was a big barrier. You couldn't get in. It was a theological reminder that the way is not open, but it's not open yet until Christ comes. So last week was what's limiting about the Old Testament worship. This week he's gonna use the very first word in the passage. It's gonna be the word but, okay? But when Christ

appeared. Things changed, right? So there's our contrast. So let's listen and hear what God wants to teach us today. We have 11 verses today, so this is a lot, so we'll need to really bore in deeply here, starting in verse 11. But when Christ appeared, but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tenth, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls in the sprinkling of the filed persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God? Therefore, he's the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called

may receive the promised eternal inheritance since the death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death; it is not enforced as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the Covenant that God commanded for you. And in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. Here's the big line, the crescendo: And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Let's pray and ask

God to bless that very important passage to us today. Let's pray, Lord, that last line in particular echoes in our heads, that there has to be the shedding of blood if sins are going to be forgiven. Lord, we have to struggle to wrap our minds around that, Lord, but we ask today that you would, by your Spirit, help us to do it. And, Lord, help us to see the great, glorious good news that Christ has shed His blood for us to pay for our sins so that we might find our way into the real Holy of Holies. So, we commit this time to you in Christ's name. Amen. Not sure you've ever really thought about it before, but I was thinking about it this week, and that is how much Christians talk about blood. Ever noticed that? It's actually kind of peculiar when you think about it. I often think what a non-Christian thinks when they come into church with us and hear Christians talking about blood all the time. Now, from our perspective as Christians, we don't think that's at all

unusual. That's not odd, but I want you to think about it from the non-Christian's perspective. Christians are talking about being saved by the blood and even washed in the blood. That's a pretty gruesome image, right? Washed in the blood, and the blood of Jesus covers my sins, and there's blood all over the place in the Christian world. You might think, Well, these Christians are obsessed with blood. In fact, we even sing about blood, you know, so much we sing about blood. I pulled up a few hymns this week just to remind myself. They're all over the place. There's a hymn called Washed in the Blood, that gruesome image again. Saved by the blood of Jesus, another hymn. There's also a hymn, There's a Fountain Filled with Blood, so it's not just a little bit of blood, there's a whole fountain of it, right? And then one of my favorite hymns, actually Nothing but the Blood of Jesus. In fact, you know one of that line's very famous line, Oh precious is the flow that makes us white

as snow, no other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Now, when we listen to things like that, we think, Wow, Christians are a peculiar bunch, obsessed with blood. Why would that be? What's interesting about this passage today is that we realize why that's the case, because that's exactly what the Old Testament worship was obsessed with. It was very, very bloody, and we're gonna learn today that Old Testament worship was very bloody because it was looking forward to what was going to be the center of New Testament worship, and that is the center of New Testament worship is beholding a man bloodied and dying on a cross for our sins. As strange as it sounds, that's the Christian hope, and our passage is saying if you don't have that, this man in particular dying and shedding his blood for your sins, then you do not have an inheritance, and you do not have a way into the Holy of Holies. This is the way you get in. Now, as soon as you say that, so non-Christian

they're like, I don't get it. What? Why? Why's it got to be like that? Can't God just say, 'Well, look, I know you made some mistakes. I know you didn't mean it. Tell you what, we're just gonna forget all that. Come on into heaven, and we'll come on into my holy of holies, and we'll be fine. We'll buddy up together, and we'll be friends. Not a problem. I just, I just forgive you.' I feel like, why can't God do that? That is the whole point of this passage today. This passage is actually gonna answer that question: why do we need blood at all? What is the point of it? This is why we're so confused by the Old Testament sacrifices, 'cause it seems so bloody, and we don't even realize we actually have blood in the New Covenant, right, shed by Jesus for us. And that last line I read for you, that I put them business on, is the whole, the whole enchilada: without the shedding of blood, there's no

forgiveness of sins. That's gonna be the point of our message today. Look at your outline. We're gonna break this down. It's a long passage, I know. As I read this passage, that you're thinking, Oh my, we're gonna be here to noon on this passage, but we're gonna break it down and make it simple so we can make our way through it. Roman numeral one is you're gonna see there's you want to first ask the question about the need for Christ's blood. Why do you have to die at all? Why does anybody have to die? Can't God just say, Don't worry about it? We're gonna talk about that in Roman numeral one. And then Roman numeral two, the superiority of Christ's blood. What makes it better? We're gonna ask why did it have to be Christ's blood. In other words, okay, so fine, blood has to be shed. I can see point one, but why Christ? Couldn't be my buddy over here who loves me very much, and he died for me. Cannot

die for myself. Why does that to be Christ? And then the third Roman numeral we'll look at today, which is the big payoff here, is the purpose of all of this, the purpose of Christ's blood. What does it really do? And we'll talk about this. This is really where the good news kicks in, is that you have a past, present, future good news here by what Christ has done for us today. So, this is gonna be a bloody day, right? This is a weird thing, but I want this to soak in with you today, huh? No pun intended. Um, by the way, I want this to soak in. Did you get it? Okay. What I do want it to soak in, because there's a sense today in which I don't think we think about this enough. We have sanitized the crucifixion in such a way that we hang it around our necks in this cute little cross, and we use it as jewelry, and we hang it on our walls. We don't realize what it really meant. It meant when you look at the

cross behold the effects of my sin. That's what it took right there. And I think we don't think about it like that, but that's exactly what it is. And it's not just behold the effects of my sin; behold the glorious love of a father. I'd be willing to give his son like that for me. All right, so let's dive into this. There's a lot we want to cover. Let's start with the first one then, the need for Christ's blood. Why die at all? Of course, this is the fundamental question, right? People all the time, I talk to non-Christians all the time about the guy, and they're like, This whole die for your sins thing, this is weird, right? Can't, isn't God too forgiving God? What's wrong with God? Candace, let bygones be bygones. What's his problem? We realize this passage actually begins to answer that question, and it does it in two ways. Why did Jesus have to die? The first way our author's gonna tell us.

is it's kind of like the way a will works. Wills don't kick in until the person that made the will dies, okay? And then the second thing we'll see here is that you got to have the shedding of blood if you're gonna have the forgiveness of sin. So let's take those one at a time. First, the will. Look at verse fifteen in our passage. I'm gonna go a little out of order here, okay? So we're gonna flip around in the passage and come back to those earlier verses later. Verse 15: Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance. He uses that language very particularly, eternal inheritance, because he's gonna make the will analogy here. Since the death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. A death has occurred. Look at verse 16: For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will, it takes effect only at death since it's not

in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Okay, here's what's going on here. You can't see it in your English Bibles, but the word for will and the word for covenant are the same word, okay? Da fak in the Greek. And our author is making an analogy. He's explaining the covenant that Jesus brought. Remember we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. It's called a new covenant. And it's almost like our author says, Hmm, what connection with the word covenant might my audience resonate with if I were to draw an analogy here? What might they get? And so he uses the same word da fak, which we translate in English euros will. He, in a sense, has drawn an illustration here. He's saying, Look, why did Jesus have to die? Because it's kind of like a will. Jesus has this great inheritance for you, this amazing inheritance stored up for you, and you can't get to it unless the person who made the will passes away. And you know when it comes

to illustrations. That's a pretty good one. We think about it. I mean, even on a worldly level, inheriting something that's amazing that you're waiting for. It's not that you want that person to die, right? But you realize you don't get it until they die. Death is the pathway to inheritance. It's a very simple analogy, actually, that he gives. In other words, he's saying Jesus had to die to get that inheritance. Well, of the way he puts it here in verse 16, or actually, and sorry, middle of verse 15, A death has occurred since a death has occurred. Then we get this inheritance. This is an analogy to Jesus then as this person who is delivered a will. Now, as soon as you say that, here's the point, is that Jesus's death gets you this tremendous inheritance that's waiting for you. Now, our author doesn't actually highlight what this is in this passage, but I want us to think about it for a moment because this is what helps us absorb the greatness of what Christ has done for us. Is it

there's this huge, massive, eternal inheritance that is the word waiting for us. What is it? I want to throw that back to you a little bit here this morning as we talk about this. What is our inheritance? And by the way, there's many answers to this, and don't just say heaven, alright? We know that. What particularly are you looking forward to that you know Christ has for you, that you get by virtue of him dying? Okay, I heard it in the back, eternal life. We're gonna come back to that later. And at the end of the passage, we're gonna say it's not that you get this inheritance for a temporary period of time. This is an eternal inheritance. Notice when you get an inheritance on earth, people always think, Is it gonna last? Is it gonna run out? Is it enough? This one never runs out. It's absolutely eternal. Okay, that's one thing. What else? What else is the inheritance? Yep, forgiveness of sins, that you're reconciled with a God that is holy, even

though you're sinful and the relationship is restored. Reconciliation, that is a wonderful thing. What else is in our inheritance? Yep, hope. Say more about that, right? We are in a hopeless world. We need something to look forward to, and that's actually part of the future component here. Yep, what else? Oh wait, we will. Good, now we're getting specific. Yeah, everyone in the room's like, I can relate to that. You are gonna get a new resurrected body, and you're gonna get not just a resurrected body, you're gonna get a new world, right? A new heavens and a new earth. Yep, amen. Here's the thing that you realize about Jesus is that he has a body, and it's physical, and you'll get a new body like his. That's physical. And you know what your inheritance is, and this is one of the things that I think is always important to remember, is sometimes we think of inheritance, we think of what Jesus is going to give me, right? And there's a sense in which that's true, and we've listed some of those things, but

you know what your real inheritance is. Your real inheritance is Jesus himself. He is the great reward. Don't miss it. It's the giver, not the gift. You're looking forward to being with the giver, is actually the gift in this sense. What is the great inheritance? It's that you'll be with your Lord forever. Now, for Christians who love Jesus, that's great news. For people who don't know it, love Jesus, like, That's not that great of news. I don't even know who this Jesus guy is. Why would I care about spending eternity with him? But if you love him, and that is glorious, great good news. The reward is Christ, a great inheritance. Now, we could go on in a list, right? There's so many more things we can mention here. I want you to realize here, an inheritance is waiting for you, but you have to have the death of someone to get it. It's a will analogy. Now, before you leave this point, I was, and I came across a story this

week that was remarkable about someone with inheritance who didn't know he had it. And this was a fascinating story of a man from Bolivia, actually by the name of Tomas Martinez. He was actually a homeless man, and he lived on the streets for most of his life, just scraping a living, living off the refuse and trash of people and the city he was in. They knew who he was, and it turned out he didn't realize this, that he actually had family who had left him a great fortune. And the police learned about this, and legal authorities learned about this, and so they went to go find Martinez to tell him the great news. You're living off the scraps here, but you have this great inheritance you don't even realize. And when he saw the police coming, he thought they were coming to arrest him for doing drugs and being just a guy on the streets. And so he, for many, many days, ran from the cops. And it turns out that when they finally grabbed him, he thought it was bad news.

It turned out it was good news. Now look at that story. I'm like, Golly, isn't that what most people do in their life? They run from God in a sense, thinking, 'Uh, you've got nothing for me but bad news for me,' and God's like, 'No, through Christ, I've got a great inheritance for you. Stop running. You've been living off the scraps here. This glorious, great inheritance awaits you, but you only get it not because you're a good person, not because I'm a good person, not because God looks down and says, 'You're a great law keeper. Here's your inheritance.' It's not merited. It's totally by grace because someone shed their blood, and this is the point that the passage is making. Now, this isn't the only reason that Christ has to share his blood. Look at point B under that first Roman numeral. This is the fundamental, even more poignant purpose here, and that is, 'Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.' Look at verse 22 again. I realize I'm hopping around, but I'm

doing this on purpose to frame this passage for you. Verse 22, the very end: without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Now lurking behind that verse are two very fundamental principles of theology that you need to get, and if you don't get these, that verse makes no sense to you. This is like the non-Christian that says, I don't understand why God just can't forgive me. What does someone have to die? Now put those two principles there in your notes. First principle: your sins are a bigger deal than you think they are. We think our sin is fairly minor. We think God can just say, I know you didn't mean it, not a big deal, and we were looking at God going, What's your problem? Ah, but when you realize that your sin is a much bigger deal than you think it is, that it's cosmic rebellion against the rightful king of the universe, then you realize that there's only one penalty that that deserves, and that's the penalty of death. To put it another way, your sin and my sin deserve the

shedding of blood, our blood, that's the rightful penalty. You can see where this is going. If the rightful penalty of our sin is death because it's a bigger deal than we think, then if a person's gonna pay our penalty, what does he have to do? Shed his blood. Either we're shedding our blood or someone's shedding their blood in our place. What you realize then is that the reason someone has to shed their blood is because your sin is a bigger deal than you realize. In fact, this was true in the garden. I put a reference there in Genesis 2:17. We won't turn there, but when Adam and Eve were told not to eat of the fruit, they say, If you eat the fruit, you're surely will die. Death, bloodshed, is the penalty for sin. But there's a second principle lurking in that verse. I put it there in your notes, and it's not just that our sin is a bigger deal than we think, but that God is more holy than we think. We have

shrunk down our sin, and at the same time, we have shrunk down God's holiness. And we think of God as sort of a bigger version of ourselves. Just relax, God. Why are you so grumpy? Why are you taking this so seriously? It's not such a big deal. And we sort of look at God like he's the problem. Here's the reality: God is pure holy righteousness. This is gonna come up later in the book of Hebrews, where he talks about God as a consuming fire. This is a God who's so holy he cannot dwell with sin. So holy that you can't just say, Well, you know what? I know you sin against me in cosmic rebellion. Just forget about it. I'm not gonna do it. That would be unjust of God. If God's a just judge, he must punish sin. So here's the thing about verse 22, and I put it there at the end of that. Is it, and if you haven't thought about this, I want this to sink in this morning. Do you realize that there's not a single sin in

the universe committed. There's not even one in all of a trial at all time ever committed that will go unpunished. Every single sin ever committed will be reckoned and punished by God's justice. Every single one of them because God's perfectly holy. Either God punishes that sin in us or He punishes it in our substitute in Christ. But not a single saying goes unpunished. That's a remarkable thing. What that means, that is the secret to forgiveness. It's not God just sort of saying, I think I'm not gonna worry about it now. The secret of forgiveness is that is a monumental problem, your sin, and it's gonna require a monumental solution, the shedding of the blood of my own son. Here's what we're tempted to do. We're tempted to diminish our sin and diminish God's holiness in order to make people feel better. What you end up doing when you do that is you actually end up diminishing what Christ has done for us. You're actually not diminishing the

gospel right. If you want the gospel to be great, glorious good news, then keep your sin big, which it is, and keep God holy, which he is, and you will realize how great the good news of the gospel is. If your sin is small and God isn't holy, then Jesus is on the cross and accomplished very much. In fact, honestly, you probably didn't need him to do it at all 'cause you're a pretty good person, right? You could probably work your way back. This is one of the fundamental theological truths of the Bible. And here's the thing: this is why the Old Testament system had blood everywhere. You know, we talked about the limitations of the Old Testament sacrificial system, and there were many, and we've talked about them. Here's one thing that got very clearly in your brain, though, if you were to participate in it, is you realize that God was holy and that blood had to be shed for sin. Because everywhere you looked in the Old Testament sacrificial system, there was blood everywhere. Once you look down in

the passage and see this in verses 18 through 21. Here's where he talks about how there was also blood in the Old Testament system all over the place. Verse 18: Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. In other words, he's basically saying it's always been this way. God's always been super holy. Sin has always been a big deal. Someone had to pay. Verse 19: From when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled the book itself and all the people, saying, 'This is the blood of the Covenant that God commanded you.' In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. What's going on here? Here's what's happening. When a sacrifice happened in the Old Testament order, they would take the hyssop branch and they would literally dip it in the blood so

it's dripping with blood, and then they would shake the and sprinkle blood over all kinds of things to signify God's purification through that blood over the things that need to be purified. They sprinkle the people, in effect, symbolically, not every single person. They sprinkle in the direction of the people. They sprinkle the altar. They sprinkle the tabernacle. There you go, even in sprinkle inside the Holy of Holies of the Ark of the Covenant. I'll come back to that later. What's interesting about it is that if you were to participate in these sacrificial things in the Old Testament, there was blood all over the place. Do you realize that during the feast days in the temple, so many animals were slaughtered on the Temple Mount? They had literally built a trough off the Temple Mount to carry the river of blood that would run off during feast days. There was blood on the floor. There was blood on the altar. There's blood on the hands of the priests. There's blood all down their garment. There's blood inside the tabernacle. It's blood on the book.

blood everywhere, and this is where we started today, and that's a gruesome scene, is it not? The whole point of that scene is a very clear theological message, and it's in, and we want to look away, don't look away, stare at it, let it in, and realize, behold the effects of sin. That is what's required, and when we look at the cross, we see the same thing, behold what my sin has done, but behold an amazing God would be willing to give his son for it. You know, in our modern day, we still experience this in the Lord's Supper. You'll notice in your notes there that the language of Moses here in verse 20. Look at verse 20 again. Moses says, This is the blood of the Covenant God commanded for you. That's what Moses said in the Old Covenant when they shed blood. You know what? That's the exact wording that Jesus uses when he institutes the Lord's Supper. Now put it right there next to it, but you notice one word that changed.

look at the two quotes. Notice what Moses says: This is the blood of the Covenant. And notice the one word that Jesus adds: my. By the way, could Moses have said that? Could Moses have instituted the Old Covenant, said This is my blood? It wouldn't work. It's not enough. But Jesus could say, This is the blood of the Covenant I'm making with you, and it's mine. It's my blood. We're coming back to that point in a moment because that's the whole kit and caboodle, right? It has to be the right blood. When you take the Lord's Supper next time you do, I want you to think about what you're doing. You're drinking wine or grape juice or whatever happens to be, and obviously it's not blood, but it's called symbolically the blood of Christ. In that whole ceremony, it has a very clear message: remember the high price of your sin and remember why Christ died for it. Because he loved you so much, he would give him

for it okay what's the point of this whole first from a new normal. It's very simple. You can't just God can't just say, Well, I forgive you. He is a holy God and sends a big deal, and His holiness requires justice. Every sin has to be paid for. Someone's blood has to be shed. So, point word is very clear: someone had to die, and someone has to pay for forgiveness to happen because God is a just and holy God. That leaves a Roman numeral 2 then Roman, and we'll do then is, Well, which blood? Whose blood? Which blood? We'll get it done. Roman numeral 2 says the superiority of Christ's blood. What makes it better? In other words, if blood has to be shed for forgiveness of sins to happen, well, who's is gonna get it done? Whose is enough blood or whose is the right blood? This goes back to the question I asked earlier. I mean, if blood has to be shed for my sins to be forgiven, can I just tap my friend to do

it had been bad for him, right? Maybe my friend loves me enough that he'll volunteer. I love Mike enough. God, I'll take it. Well, that'd work. Well, no, because what about his own sin, right? God's like, sorry, pal, you got your own sin to pay for. You can't pay for his. You realize that. Even if you realize that blood has to be shed, there's still the second question. Whose is gonna get it done, right? Here's where we go back to then the person of Christ, and we realize what Christ has done and who Christ is and how his blood works is why he is the only one that can do this. So here's where we go back up to verses 11 through 14. Remember, I'm taking this a little out of order, and we're gonna ask the question why Christ's blood is special, distinctive, unique, and better. Better than what Moses offered, better than blood, bulls, and goats, better than anything else. We see this at the very beginning. The first reason you can see point A there is that his blood was

sprinkled in the real Holy of Holies. Look at verse 11. But when Christ appeared, the word but there, of course, is to have already indicated contrast with the first 10 verses we did last week, right, of chapter 9. The first 10 verses of last week was basically saying, Hey, you know, you can't really get in. There's all these blockages. You can't go there. Ah, but verse 11 says, But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that come, he did something that can get you in. Look what it says then. Through the greater and more perfect tent, not the one made with hands, that is, a tent not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood. The location then, back to this issue, matters for what Jesus did. He took his blood, and this is an interesting observation, and I pointed this out three, four weeks ago now, that when Jesus died as our great High Priest, you notice he

didn't go into the earthly Holy of Holies; he went into the heavenly Holy of Holies. Here is a hint in this passage at the Ascension of Christ, okay, that he took his blood, so to speak, effectively applying it in the presence of God himself, the real holy place. This girl's gonna come back up next week, by the way; we're gonna talk even more about that great throne room of God next week. But there's a sense in which Christ sprinkled it there. When Moses took the blood from the hyssop branch, he actually went inside the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the ark, okay? But remember, the Ark was just representative of God's throne. But remember this from last week called the mercy seat. Jesus goes into the real Holy of Holies, God's real throne. By the way, the cherubim up there aren't made of gold; the cherubim are real. And he went into that presence of God, and he, in effect, sprinkled the blood there.

not literally, of course, but represented him as the Lamb being slain in the presence of God himself. So, what is it about Christ's blood that makes it distinctive and different? Well, one is that he can actually take it into the real, leave all his right, not just an earthly tent, but the real heavenly tabernacle. But flip your notes over, there's another thing here that's even more important, and that is Christ's blood. And this is the real catch. Christ's blood is unique because he, and only he, was a perfect human being. In fact, not just a perfect human being, but a perfect human being who was also divine. We'll look at that in a second. I want you to notice that repeated language in verses 12 through 14 of how the emphasis is on Jesus's blood in contrast to the blood of bulls and goats. Look at verse 12 again. He entered into the holy places, not, look at this, not by the means of the blood of goats and calves. That wouldn't get it done, right? But notice what it says, but by the

means of his own blood. Then verse 14, same principle: how much more with the blood of Christ, who through Eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish. Now for those of you who can think back to earlier chapters from last year and even earlier on in this study, the language used to describe Christ is Old Testament Levitical language. When it says he's the sacrifice without blemish and he's perfect, he offered himself, that he's there presenting Jesus as effectively, symbolically, a Lamb of God. But what's different about this lamb is that he's absolutely perfect, absolutely sinless. And if he's absolutely sinless, then guess what? A substitute can happen. Remember, my buddy can't come and just die for me because he has his own sin to worry about, okay? Jesus is perfect and can't. And in a prior study, we talked about something that we never really think about in Christ, that Christ saves us as much by his life as by his death. Put it another way, it's not just him dying on

the cross that saves us. It's him living an obedient, perfect life that saves us, so he could be that sacrifice. No other human being has ever done this, by the way. Not a single human being ever lived, has ever lived a perfect, sinless life, and it's not even been close. Jesus has done it. When you read that passage of him in the temptation of the wilderness for the devil, you need to think about it again, because it's not just, Ya beat the devil, Jesus, yeah, yeah, yeah. You realize if he didn't, you're done, right? It's over. He has to do that so he can die for you, right? His perfect obedience matters. His blood makes all the difference. But then our author adds something interestingly here. Look at verse 14. He says, How much more with the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish. There's a sense here in which the text, with this phrase eternal spirit, I think is nodding towards another reality about Christ's blood. It's not

just perfect human who never sinned, blood who died for you, but also a nod towards his divinity, this idea that Jesus did this by the power of the Eternal Spirit, that he died not just as man but as God, the Divine Son of God. Together, I want you to think about this with me for a moment. Why do you think Jesus, for his death to be effective, had to be not just human but also God? We talked about the human side. Why does he have to also be divine? Who theological conundrum? I mean, what if someone just got lucky and lived a perfect life? Could they die for me? Yeah, uh-huh. Oh, very good. Uh, yeah, the distinctive of distinctions of Jesus is not just that he didn't personally sin, but he didn't inherit Adam's sin because he was born of a virgin, and there was a unique situation there in his birth that prevented that from being the case. And I don't know who else he was born of a virgin to, you okay? So that limits that.

We can ask the question this way: what if someone says, How valuable would blood have to be to satisfy the wrath of God for countless people? It would have to be blood of infinite worth. The blood of almost eternal worth. Could a mere human have done that? Scholars and theologians will look at this and realize, Look, there has to be something about Jesus' blood. Yes, he's human, unless he's perfect, but there has to be a sense in which the value of this blood is distinctive. It's an eternal, unlimited value that could, in principle, save an unlimited number of people. Whose blood could do this? Ah, the eternal Son of God's blood could do this. So, here's the catch: here is that it's not as simple as saying someone had to die. You need a particular kind of death here. You need the death of a perfect human, divine Son of God, to accomplish this for you. Now, one of the questions I get from people all the time, I'm sure you've heard this too, is this sort of question, You know, you Christians are so

sort of arrogant about what you believe about Jesus. How is it that you think Jesus is the only way, right? Couldn't people be saved in other ways? Why do you think Jesus is the only way that you can be saved? That's a good question, right? And it makes us sound like we're sort of exclusive and we got it all right and everything, but it's not so much about our own knowledge. This passage explains it, right? This passage explains why there's such an exclusive sense here. Why is it that the book of Acts says there's no other name under heaven by which a man may be saved? Why does Jesus himself say, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Why the exclusiveness? Here's the answer, okay? If blood has to be shed, you ask the next question, Whose blood's gonna get it done? I'm open to other contenders here, other candidates. Is there any other person who said they've died for me that could stand before holy God, who can take the

blood in the Holy of Holies, who's perfectly righteous life and who's also divine. Is there anyone else you realize then that the claim for exclusivity for Christianity isn't just that I happen to like Christianity so much, therefore I'm gonna claim it is exclusive. That's not the argument. The argument is there's something about Jesus that's different, right? Make sure that when you get in discussions about the exclusivity of Christianity, the focus isn't on you, focuses on Jesus. It's him that's different. And by the way, I'll take that bet. I'll put Jesus' distinctiveness up against anything and anybody. There is nothing like him. What makes Christianity unique? Why is it the only way? Because there's nothing like Jesus. There's nothing that can do what Jesus did. And this is what the good news is here, right? You've got to realize that there's a sense here in which the great glorious good news is it there was only one option on the table for us to be.

saved is it in a sense. God had to do it himself. What if God didn't do it himself? We haven't really do it whatever you think much about this either. If this is the Divine Son of God sent by the father to die for our sins, could not of God just decided I'm gonna leave people in their sins? You didn't have to save right. The remarkable reality here. You're short of remarkable realities here. You could look on 1/2 the equation of the great holiness and the great amount of our sin and the problem that creates. But the other reality this passage that should stun you is it Jesus or rather the thing it's just thing is that God sent Jesus at all. The God did anything is remarkable. He could have left us right where we are know what that means. That means that you and I and I encounter this are often surprised by the wrong things were shocked that God would judge and we're not at all shocked that he would save. I would suggest to you it should be flipped around. If God were to

judge. We should say, Yep, I should expect that I'm a great sinner, and he's all God. Judging should be standard. I should expect that. Oh, did you just tell me that God would save me, that God would send his son to die for me, that God would redeem me? That is shocking and unexpected. Here's the question for you: Are you shocked by the grace of God at Christ? If you're not, then you're asking the wrong question, right? Don't be shocked at his judgment; be shocked at his mercy. It's incredible that he did anything at all, and this is the great good news of this passage. Yes, it's exclusive that Christ is the only one who could do this. Let's move on to Roman numeral three then, as we head towards the end of this passage. All this is going somewhere, okay? Roman numeral one is, Well, why there has to be blood. Roman numeral two, Why is there have to be Christ's blood. We've answered that question 'cause he's the only one that could do this, and then Roman numeral

three. What's the big endgame? What's the purpose? What's it do? Once you know that, notice that in Roman numeral three, there is a past-present-future dimension to what Christ has accomplished here with his shedding of blood. And this is what I love about this, is that it's watertight. There's no missing piece to this. You know, people say, Well, the past is solved. If you were to say that to someone, they're like, What about the future? And if you say, The future is solved, like, What about the past? And then if they could always say, Well, what about the present? What's wonderful about the good news of Jesus Christ is his forgiveness has solved all three problems here. Let's take a look at these just briefly. First, the past. The forgiveness of sins. We've talked about this. All that you've done, and implicitly all that you will do, been paid fully by the finished work of Christ on the cross. It's once and for all, as verse 14 says.

Christ doesn't have to keep doing it over and over again; it's done and completed. I want you to notice a second thing here in this passage that's key, and that is the presence. And here's what I want to just say a word about verse 14 again. Look back down at that passage: How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, and look at this language, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God. What is Christ's blood doing? It provides the type of internal cleansing that allows us to serve God in a fresh way. And this is in contrast to the types of cleansing the Old Testament provided. You may not have picked up on this in verse 13, but verse 13 describes the kind of cleansing the Old Testament provided. Look at that verse again: For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer. I know there's a lot there, but look what it says: If those

things sanctify for the purification of the flesh. Then in contrast, Jesus is going to purify the inside. I want you to realize that in the Bible, there's two kinds of cleansing going on here, okay? In the Old Testament, the type of purification mentioned here is what we might call ritual purity, okay? Ritual purity is that if you wash in a pool and you put on the right clothes and you wait for a sunset and you go through the right rituals, you can be declared clean. So, we read the Book of Leviticus, you're gonna read all about this, right? If you touch the corpse, you got to get washed and get clean. If you interact with the Gentile, you got to get washed and get clean. If there's these things that happen, you got to get washed and clean. That's all ritual purity, and our passage is saying under the Old Testament order, that was all just washing the flesh, by the way. That's what happens when you just bathe in a pool, right? Just washes the outside, but

notice the contrast here is like, but Jesus has done something on the inside. He is gonna sanctify you internally. This is a really fundamental point I want you to get this morning, is that all of this blood talk has a very clear purpose in mind, which is so that you might more faithfully obey and follow Jesus because he has redeemed you, forgiven you, and done something on the inside to allow you to obey Him more faithfully. Notice how I asked the question there in your notes: how exactly does Christ's sacrifice lead to new obedience? Or probably a better way to say it: how does Christ's sacrifice actually empower you to obey in fresh ways? I'm gonna ask you that question: how does what Christ does on the cross empower you to obey in fresh ways? Maybe in contrast to the way you might have obeyed under the old covenant. Thoughts? Yes, yes, because of what Christ has done, you now have power within you in a distinctive way, and then the joy of the Holy Spirit. This came up actually in a

prior class right on new covenant. What's new about it so that your obedience flows more naturally. Other things about what Christ is don't empower you to obey. Why do you obey? I love that. If you didn't hear it, the love of God compels us. Why do I want us this morning to behold a bloody cross? Because it's a symbol, yes, of the high price of sin, but it's also an amazing symbol of the love of God that He would do that for us. Do you watch the cross? It does both things. If you know what it is, it shows you how ugly your sin is, and it shows you how loving your Father is, both at the same time. You know what compels you to obey? Not duty. Duty has a role, and I'm not saying you never do anything in Christian law because you're supposed to, don't misunderstand, but what really empowers people to obey is love, affection. And we love God because He first loved us. This is the thing about the blood of

Christ, as it empowers you to obey in a fresh way. I want you to notice the contrast in the old in the cup. Old Covenant, the New Covenant is not in the Old Covenant. God cared about law-keeping, and in the New Covenant, he doesn't anymore. No, no, no. God cares about law-keeping in both instances, but now he's giving you a fresh power to obey. Look at the way I put it there in your notes. We're not saved by good works, but we're safe for good works. That's probably a good way to think of it. Good works are not the reason you're gonna get your inheritance. No, no. Someone had to die for that, but the result is you now have fresh reasons to obey. So, you realize then that there's a sense in which what the cross does is it realizes how forgiving you are and empowers you anew to follow God's law. This is the payoff of the whole thing. God wants you to be a faithful follower of him. The future there, we've seen the

past and the present. The future is just eternity. This comes up numerous times in the passage I put it there in 12b. He's secured by his blood and eternal redemption. Your inheritance will never perish, spoil, or fade, right? Because Christ is eternal, you are going to have eternal security. This is another reason why Jesus had to be divine. You have to have an eternal mediator, right, that can live forever to intercede for you. Actually, that's coming up again in the book of Hebrews later. Okay, so what have we seen today? It's a very simple but challenging message, right? There's a lot of blood flying around in the Old Testament, a lot of blood in the new, but all of it is going somewhere. And remember, the three points are very simple. Blood has to be shed for forgiveness to happen. Second, has to be Christ. Can't just be anybody's. His is unique. And then thirdly, what's the end product of all that? You have both past, present, and future security, and now empowered freshly to obey God in new

ways book of Hebrews is wonderful, isn't it? So good and so rich. Great good news today. Let's talk about that in our groups then as we transition more questions for you to dive into deeply there, and you'll see that I also want you to probe more into the obedience question, which will be number three, which we've started, but I know you can finish in your group times. All right, let me pray for us. Lord, thank you for a great message today from this text. You always have great things to teach us, Lord, and we were eight 'full for it, Lord. May every time we take the Lord's Supper and see a cup of read that we think differently about the blood, that it was for us, it was necessary, it's hard to look at, but great news to remember. We pray you now bless our conversations, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Charlotte: Women’s Bible Study (Hebrews) w/ Dr. Michael Kruger; (Episode 21)

In the fall of 1966, Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) opened its doors for resident studies in Jackson, Mississippi with an enrollment of seventeen students.  Since that time, RTS has grown to eight campuses and an online program. RTS Global Education offers three fully online distance education MA programs. Today, RTS teaches more residential MDiv credit hours than any seminary in North America. In addition, RTS offers classes at international locations in partnership with other ministries and schools.

Reformed Theological Seminary is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada and by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award the MDiv, MAR, MATS, MABS, MAC, MACC, and DMin.

Charlotte: Women’s Bible Study (Hebrews) w/ Dr. Michael Kruger; (Episode 21)

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