144 - Eternal Redemption: All Sins Are Paid For [B]

`Hebrews 144   January 1, 2009

^NKJ John 10:10 "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

We are in Hebrews 9. I want to take a little bit of time just at the beginning to sort of orient ourselves to where we are in terms of the structure of Hebrews.  As I have pointed out and as we've gone over several times as we reviewed and gone through Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews is writing this letter; but it has characteristics that are distinct from a letter that make it not quite your typical epistle. It doesn't have an address at the beginning to a specific set of people. It doesn't have a standard epistolary conclusion. There are other elements within it that make it a little more like it was originally an address, an oral address, possibly a sermon. 

Several books of the New Testament have that characteristic. James is one. I think 1 John also has that characteristic that it was initially something that had been taught or had been maybe a sermon or a Bible study that had been taught many times by the writer. Now it was put down in writing in the form of a letter and sent to someone, but it still has the characteristics of an oral address. So we've seen that with Hebrews. It has those characteristics and it will make a point, a teaching point, where the writer goes back and pulls in various doctrines, various teachings from the Old Testament. Then he pulls those together and makes an application. That application is couched also in terms of a warning passage. Now the warning sections in Hebrews are not the extent of the application. So you have what is called a hortatory section, which is just another way of saying an exhortation or challenge. 

So there is a teaching and then there's a challenge. Within the challenge there is often a warning to those to whom the writer is writing. He's challenging them because they seem to be based on these warning passages about to give up on their Christian life and fade back into Judaism. It seems from what we can tell from what is covered that they were former Jewish priests (Levites) who had become believers. They had left the whole system of Judaism, but now they seem to be questioning what they had done. So there are these warnings not to give up on their spiritual life, their spiritual growth, because it puts in jeopardy their future position, their future rewards that God has in store for us in terms of ruling and reigning in the Millennial Kingdom. 

So that has great application for any believer whether you come out of a Jewish background or not that there are all kinds of pressures in life to cause us to think that we have somehow arrived spiritually and that we've learned enough, we know enough; we've been in Bible class enough. We've heard this taught so many times that we think that we've arrived. 

It has appeared to me over the years that many people have sort of an invisible ceiling beyond which they will not grow. That's true for a lot of different things in life. The first time somebody explained that to me I was in seminary and I was working for a very brief time for an insurance company in sales.  The sales manager talked about the fact that you'll have some salesmen who will be satisfied making $20,000 a year. Some will be satisfied making $40,000 a year. Others will be satisfied only if they make $80 or $100,000 a year. Everybody is different. Once they reach what they believe is their monthly quota, then they sort of fade out and you don't see them doing a whole lot until the next month comes around. Everybody has made these decisions. Some people have consciously thought them out; some people haven't. 

But I see this again and again in their Christian life where people that were very consistent for a long period of time in their Christian life - suddenly you don't see them so much. You think well, maybe they are listening to tapes or listening to MP3's or watching videos. But they just seem to fade out and disappear and sort of coast through the rest of their lives on whatever amount of doctrine they learned in that set amount of time thinking, "That's enough." They understand principles about how to claim a promise. They understand confession of sin. They understand a few of the other dynamics and they sort of roll with that. Then there are others who have a little more motivation and they realize that if they're going to get anywhere in the spiritual life, then they have to be in Bible class on a regular basis. They have to be reminded of these principles again and again and again. 

I think that as we grow and mature as believers that motivation that we have as a young believer will necessarily change as you go through the different stages of spiritual adolescence into spiritual adulthood. 

From my own experience I know that when I was a young believer I was really driven by getting the answers to a lot of questions. How do we know the Bible is true? How do we know we can trust it? How do we really come to understand it? What does the Old Testament mean? What do all the sacrifices mean? How does all of that fit into the overall structure of the Bible? Then you get into the New Testament. Who were the apostles and what happened to them and what did they teach and why did they teach it the way they did? Those kinds of questions drive you, but you reach a certain point in study where you are satisfied with the answers that you've received. 

I think that's true for a lot of new believers. They want to know more about God. They want to know more about salvation. They want to make sure that they're secure in their salvation that they can't lose their salvation. They want to make sure that they understand at least some basic things about prophecy perhaps. But once they get those questions answered then their motivation has to shift. At that point motivation is no longer learning or getting the answers to those questions. Maybe you have a new set of questions you want to get the answer to and so that helps to motivate you. But at another level you realize that, "Okay I've learned the basics, I've got a foundation in terms of my spiritual childhood; but now there is something expected of me. There is a responsibility inherent in being a child of God that drives me toward a future goal and future position that God has for me." That's what we call having a personal sense of our eternal destiny realizing that God saved us for a purpose to serve Him not only here in this life, but also to prepare us for a future ministry as priests and kings in the Millennial Kingdom and then on into eternity and that each of us as Church Age believers today have a unique and distinct role within the body of Christ to serve within the framework of our spiritual gifts but also, when we return with the Lord as the bride of Christ during the Millennial Kingdom. 

So everything that we do now begins to affect what happens in the future so that each decision we make today shapes our future position, our future rewards, our future destiny as priests and kings in the future kingdom. That is the orientation of the message of Hebrews.

So as we have gone through each of these points we have come to the fourth section, which is the major section in Hebrews. It began back in 7:1 and extends down through the end of chapter 10. The teaching section or the doctrinal section is the section from 7:1 down through 10:18. Then beginning from 10:19 to the end of chapter 10 we have the exhortation section and a warning section that begins in verse 25 down through the end of chapter 39. That's the warning section. 

So this has been a lengthy study for us especially as we got into chapter 9. We had to look at a variety of different things related to the Tabernacle, Old Testament background information to understand what the writer of Hebrews is saying and the basis for his challenge to these Jewish believers. 

In chapter 7 he began to build his case by focusing on the Melchizedekean priesthood. Chapter 7 deals with the whole issue of priesthood: what kind of priest is Jesus Christ? Is He a Levitical priest? No, He can't be a Levitical priest because He's not from the tribe of Levi and He doesn't fit the physical requirements in terms of His family linage or tribal linage to be a Levitical priest. So if He's not a Levitical priest, what kind of priest is He? Well, we saw in our analysis of that chapter that He is a Melchizedekean priest, a royal priest. Therefore His priesthood is not only oriented to Israel but is oriented to all human beings. It's not restricted to simply a Levitical priesthood. But that change in priesthood reflects a change in a dispensation, dispensation being a marked out period of time in God's administration of human history. 

So the writer of Hebrews states in chapter 7 that when there is a change of priesthood there is necessarily a change of covenant. Also as you go through chapter 7, we were introduced to key words that were used and mentioned several times, one of the most important being the word covenant. But in comparison to covenant often in the same context, there's also an emphasis on promise leading up to the statement in verse 6 of chapter 8. 

^NKJ Hebrews 8:6 But now He

That is Jesus Christ.

has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.

Immediately following that, there's a lengthy quote from Jeremiah 31:31-33 which is the key passage on the New Covenant. Now we spent a lot of time last winter (last January and February right before the Chafer Conference) dealing with all the passages on the New Covenant. That seems like – jolly that was a year ago. We're only in the middle of chapter 9. We haven't gone very far very fast. But this is some extremely significant material and I don't know whether you realize it or not, but I'm putting my plow into unplowed ground in a lot of this. 

This last week I had a couple of very fun and engaging and challenging conversations with Dr. John Whitcomb. Those of you've been exposed to the Pre-Trib Conference a couple of times have been exposed to Dr. Whitcomb. He is sort of the patriarch of dispensational theology today and creationism because others such as Dr. John Walvoord and Dr. Henry Morris have gone to be with the Lord. In the early 60's Whitcomb's name became known among evangelicals because he co-authored a book called The Genesis Flood with Henry Morris. It was that book that really changed the focus and the direction of a lot of evangelicalism with respect to creationism and understanding origins. 

Out of the impact of that book, we had the development of various creationist ministries including the establishing of the Institute of Creation Research of which Dr. Henry Morris was the head. Then you had the development later in the 90's of Answers in Genesis and several other smaller creationist ministries came up along the way. But what really started all that was this book that John Whitcomb and Henry Morris wrote back in the early 60's. It really had an impact in evangelicalism. 

It wasn't accepted – or it did not find a friendly reception, so that in 1968 a young seminary student finishing up his master's in theology by the name of Charlie Clough wrote his maters thesis called A Calm Appraisal of the Genesis Flood. Charlie had known Henry Morris for some years and dialogued with him a good bit. He got to know both he and Dr. Whitcomb better. But he was looking at the response that the book generated at the seminary level and especially among the so-called scholars – your Old Testament Department scholars and others. Dr. Whitcomb was the head of the Old Testament Department (Hebrew and Old Testament Department) at Grace Theological Seminary up in Wynona Lake, Indiana. So he's very well qualified. 

Both men have fascinating testimonies and backgrounds. Dr. Morris was actually here in Houston and taught at Rice and went to Berachah church back in the 49-50's somewhere in there before he went to Virginia Polytechnic in Virginia. Dr. Whitcomb, I believe, was saved when he was a student at Princeton. It is fascinating to see how God worked in their lives. But Dr. Whitcomb has presented a couple of papers the last two years of Pre-Trib. One last year had to do with the role of the two witnesses in Revelation 11, which is a timely topic for us on Sunday morning as we're getting into our study on Revelation 11. Then this year he presented a paper on the sacrifices in the Millennial Temple based on passages in Ezekiel 40ff. 

In his paper on the two witnesses that he presented last year he was talking about some things related to the Tribulation temple. As I went back and reread it last week it caused my antennae to vibrate a little bit because he was raising some issues that I wasn't really clear about. 

The primary issue - a couple of people around here have asked me about this in the last two or three months - related to the legitimacy of the Temple in the Tribulation. Now that's a really interesting question. As I was reading Dr. Whitcomb's paper, he argued for and stated and had various passages that he went to taking the position that it was a legitimate worship in the Tribulation period. This is not an apostate temple, which is what I've taught in the past and what I've heard in the past. So I read through the paper a couple of weeks ago or last week and when I hit stuff like that I usually pick up the phone and call Tommy and say, "What do you think about this? I've always heard the Tribulation temple called an apostate temple."

"Well, I have too. You need to email Dr. Whitcomb and find out what his rationale is behind this." 

So that's generated several conversations. But what's interesting is this is an area that really hasn't been explored very well because there are passages that clearly indicate that the temple that is established in the Tribulation is not viewed scripturally as an apostate temple. If it's apostate or idolatrous, then how can the Antichrist desolate, desecrate the Tribulation temple? So it has to have some level of legitimacy. Hmm. Okay, but they're having sacrifices. What kind of sacrifices are they? Are they Levitical sacrifices? Or, are they New Covenant sacrifices?  Well, we studied the New Covenant last year and saw that the New Covenant doesn't get established – the foundation was at the cross, the sacrifice, the offering that under girds the New Covenant was at the cross – doesn't go into effect until the Second Coming. As we looked at all those passages (if you remember) we saw that there were various things that were always present when the New Covenant went into effect. There is a Davidic king on the throne in Jerusalem. That Israel is a regenerate people. They are reunited in the land. All of those things are part of what is present when God inaugurates and brings into effect the New Covenant. So how can these sacrifices in the Tribulation temple be New Covenant? I don't know the answer to that yet. I had a three-minute message on my answering machine yesterday from Dr. Whitcomb because I raised the question with him the day before; and he answered it and raised more questions. 

The point I'm making is that it's interesting a lot of this is sort of coming together in the various studies we have going with Hebrews on Thursday night and Kings because we've gone through a lot of different doctrines in Kings related to the Temple and sacrifices and things like that. 

But one of the things that Dr. Whitcomb didn't do in his paper on the millennial sacrifices was bring it out to quite the degree that I have, and I ran what I teach on it passed him the other day and he agreed and thought that it was right. He didn't state it quite as clearly as I have, and that is to understand that there is a difference between the ritual/ceremonial sacrifices in the Temple and real spirituality. Now this is something that is not made very clear by anyone. I began to clarify this about 9 years ago. I wrote a series of articles for Chafer Theological Journal dealing with the whole issue of confession of sin and its relationship to cleansing because the real issue in 1 John 1:9 isn't confession. 

Some people, when they come to 1 John 1:9 they'll say, "Well, that's the only place in the New Testament where it says to confess your sins. It doesn't use that word anywhere else."

But if you read 1 John 1:9, it says:

^NKJ 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to

And to what?

cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That word cleansing is the key word, not confession. Confession is what gets you to cleansing; but the word that you follow and trace all the way through Scripture is really that word "cleansing." There is a necessity to being cleansed before we come into the presence of a righteous just God. That cleansing we teach in two ways - is a positional cleansing which is what happens for Church Age believers at the moment of salvation when we're identified with Christ in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and we're placed in Christ. There's a positional cleansing. But then when we sin as we go through life, there is a need for an experiential cleansing. Now hold that thought. 

That word cleansing there (that was the first time I realized that the Septuagint in the Old Testament translated atonement), the Hebrew word kaphar, translated atonement, many times the rabbis who translated the Septuagint translated with the word katharizo, meaning to cleanse. 

So that was like taking another layer of blinders off of my eyes. I began to put that together realizing that you have to have cleansing in that sense in the future Millennial Temple because you have millennial priests who are born in the Millennium in mortal bodies with sin natures. So in the ritual sacrifices in the Millennial Temple they still have to go through ritual cleansing. But ritual cleansing isn't the same as real cleansing so that when you're out… Let's say you're David and you're out in the fields as a shepherd and you sinned. Does that mean you have to run back to the Temple (or with David it would have been the Tabernacle) and offer a sin offering and burnt offering to get back in fellowship? That would be real spiritual life. Then on your way back to the sheep, something happens and you sin again. Oh! You have to stop and turn around and run back. I don't know about you, but I would never make it back to the sheep. They would starve to death and get lost and die in the wilderness. 

So there is this difference between real spirituality in terms of real ongoing fellowship with God, between the individual and God, and what is depicted in the ritual and ceremony in the Temple. Now that's really important to help resolve some of these things that we're going to get into in working out some of the kinks as we get into not only Hebrews 10; but also when we get into looking at the issues related to the legitimacy of the Tribulation temple. 

The sacrifices there: are those Levitical sacrifices or are they New Covenant sacrifices? Now at this point my inclination is to say they're still Levitical sacrifices in the same way that you had Levitical sacrifices going on between 33 AD when Jesus dies on the cross and He's the end of the Law.  Remember all sacrifices are all pointing to the cross. And we have a tendency to think: Well, the moment He died on the cross from that point on these sacrifices became illegitimate. Did they? Paul doesn't seem to ever say that. Paul wrote a lot about this in Galatians and in Romans and then he swears this vow to go to Jerusalem. He goes to Jerusalem and offers sacrifices. But he doesn't see that to be a conflict with the finished work of Christ on the cross. 

The only way (Dr. Whitcomb and I talked about this the other day) we can see that that would work is if Paul understands this difference between real spirituality and what is depicted in the ritual. Only when you have that kind of distinction can you see Paul doing that. 

Now I've gone into all of that in terms of this review because as we went through Hebrews 7, we talked about change of priesthood. Jesus Christ is our High Priest. That's related to a change of covenant, which is the New Covenant; but we saw that it's not put into effect until the Second Coming. Then starting in chapter 9, we get into an analogy related to the Day of Atonement ritual in the Old Testament. 

So in the last few classes, I have focused on three key doctrines that we must understand to understand Hebrews 9 and 10. The first was the procedures on the Day of Atonement; the second is on the nature of redemption; and the third is that the purchase price is blood. So that's really the last three lessons. So I want to summarize that very quickly before we get into the present passage. 

The first is, related to the Day of Atonement we saw that there were certain procedures that had to take place on the Day of Atonement. We went into all the detail looking into everything in Leviticus 16. But when you boil it down, there were three things. 

Now before we get into that we have to understand the meaning of the word. The word atonement (and I pointed out four things.) 

1. First of all, atonement comes from the English phrase at-one-ment, which emphasizes reconciliation. There really isn't a direct translation of kaphar to atonement. It was a coined word in English, but the idea that they saw (the early English translators saw and they coined this word) was the idea that God and man being able to come together and man being reconciled to God.
2. The second aspect that we see is that the blood sacrifice relates to the substitutionary idea and the payment of a price, which brings in the idea of redemption. It's not just reconciliation, but you also have redemption.
3. Third, the mercy seat depicts the satisfaction or propitiation of God's righteousness and justice.
4. Then fourth, because God is propitiated and the penalty is truly, actually, objectively paid for sin, the debt of sin is cancelled for all mankind. That is called expiation and forgiveness. The canceling of the debt, the certificate of debt against us, was nailed to the cross historically. That occurred 2,000 years ago. 

So that led us to understand that atonement was a multifaceted concept that relates to all these different aspects of Christ's work on the cross – redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, expiation, and propitiation. 

So we developed this little diagram here of a pentagon with kaphar in the middle. Then each side represents one of these different doctrines. Depending on the passage that you're in and the context, the writer may be emphasizing one or another of these doctrines. But the word kaphar is broad enough to incorporate all of these dimensions of Christ's work on the cross.

Now on the Day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest first would go in and he would offer a sin offering for himself and his family and bring that blood in before the mercy seat because before he can minister on behalf of the people there has to be ceremonial cleaning for himself and for his family - his family being a reference to the Levites, the other priests. 

The second thing that we saw is he comes in and he returns again into the Holy of Holies and brings blood from the bull. He puts that on the mercy seat – one drop on the mercy seat and 7 drops in front of the mercy seat and that depicts propitiation, which really isn't developed as a doctrine until you get into the New Testament. But that's what that is a picture of. So the splattering of blood on the mercy seat depicts propitiation.

Then the third thing that happened is he went out and put his hand on two goats, recited the sins of the nation since the last Day of Atonement and he would then sacrifice one goat indicating the need for the shedding of blood to deal with those sins. Then the other goat was left alive. A trusted friend, someone who wouldn't be lazy, would take that goat off into the wilderness and would let it go somewhere where it wouldn't come back. What that depicts is that there is finality to the payment for sin. Those sins aren't going to come back. They're not going to have to be atoned for again. They won't have to be cleansed -those sins will not have to have a second cleansing.  It is a complete and total payment for those sins. Now it is not a permanent payment because every year they had to do this. It just covered the sins since the previous Day of Atonement. So it is not a permanent payment. That's why we have the verses we'll get to in this section that the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sins permanently. But they did have a real effect. That was real forgiveness, and there was real cleansing; but it was only for a short period of time – only for that year. 

So we move from understanding that to connecting that to the concept of redemption which comes up in the New Testament.

Colossians 1:13-20. The key verse there was verse 14.

^NKJ Colossians 1:14 in whom we have redemption

The "in whom" referring to Christ.

through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

Two points I've emphasized.

1. The payment price, which is blood.
2. The forgiveness of sins is appositional to the noun for redemption. That means that redemption is equated to forgiveness. 

We had to clarify the meaning there because forgiveness to many of us just means that we're not going to hold something against somebody. We're not going to be angry with them. We're not going to be bitter or hateful towards them. But the idea here is more the idea used in an economic sense, the wiping out or canceling of a debt. There is a different sense there. The canceling of a debt is more of an objective and not a subjective reality.

Furthermore, in those verses we saw in Colossians 1:20 that this redemption, this act of forgiveness that's accomplished at the cross is related to the Doctrine of Reconciliation which occurred at the cross, not a subjective thing, but an objective accomplishment by Christ's death. Again peace was made through the blood of His cross, the payment price being blood.

Colossians 1:21-22 again emphasizes the Doctrine of Reconciliation. 

^NKJ Colossians 1:21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled

Then we went in to Colossians 2:13-14 where we have the connection made between forgiveness here and the idea of canceling or wiping out a debt.

It needs to be understood correctly that you have your main verb in verse 13.

^NKJ Colossians 2:13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,

Everything else modifies or relates to that main idea. It should be understood in this way.

And you although you were dead in your trespasses and sins…

It's a concessive adverbial participle. 

and the un-circumcision of your flesh He has made you

Continues the second person plural there.

alive together with Him

The participle just translated as "having forgiven you all trespasses", but I think that when that is properly understood, it should be understood as a causal participle –

He has made you alive because He has forgiven you all trespasses.

The reason He can make us alive is because He has forgiven you of all trespasses. Now if that's all there was, we would think that happened when we were saved. But he doesn't stop there. He continues into verse 14 saying:

^NKJ Colossians 2:14 having

Again it's an aorist participle, past tense. 

wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us.

Now that's a participle so it's not just having. It could be a temporal participle meaning "when He wiped out the handwriting of requirements" or it could be a participle of means "because He has forgiven you all trespasses by wiping out the handwriting of requirements that was against us."

Either way the forgiveness is the result of wiping out or eradicating the certificate of debt that was against us, which was contrary to us. We're told when it happened in the second part of verse 14.

And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

So that's when it happened. It didn't happen when you trusted Christ as your Savior. It happened at the cross. So what we must conclude from this (and I've wrestled a little bit with the terminology here) is that there is a dual sense to forgiveness. There is an objective sense and a subjective sense. The objective redemption is paid at the cross. The price is paid objectively. It's not positional. It's not experiential. Don't confuse those two. I am going to develop three categories – objective, subjective, experiential. Positional - experiential only apply to the believer. The objective has to do with the fact that Christ truly paid the penalty for every sin of every person who ever lived on the planet so that sin is not the issue anymore. It is objectively paid for. The Father is propitiated and mankind is reconciled to God. It is an objective reality. It happened at the cross so that the certificate of debt is wiped out so that sin isn't the issue anymore. The issue is whether or not we human beings trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior. So the cancellation of the debt is viewed in this passage in terms of objective cancellation in relation to the satisfaction of divine justice. 

Then when we talk about it subjectively, there are two aspects. Subjectively the two aspects are positional and experiential. We are positionally forgiven when we are in Christ. Then when we sin of course we are out of fellowship. That has to do with experiential. So experiential forgiveness comes when we confess our sins.

Now when we look at the passage that we're studying in Hebrews 9 (just to tie this together for you) in verse 12. We are not quite there yet but we should be next time, which of course unfortunately will be when I come back from Kiev:

^NKJ Hebrews 9:12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place.

That is the heavenly most holy place.

once for all,

What's that next phrase?

having

Past tense

obtained eternal redemption

That is the objective sense. It doesn't mean everybody is saved. It just means that the price is paid for objectively which satisfies the righteous demands of God so that His righteousness and justice are propitiated and we can be forgiven in the sense of: all mankind is forgiven in the sense of the sin debt is cancelled, wiped out so that that is not the issue. 

Then the third thing we looked at in the past few weeks was the purchase price, which is blood. We saw that in the Old Testament the blood depicts life and the shedding of blood equals the loss of life. So this is a figure of speech that runs throughout the Scripture. 

I Peter 1:2 says that:

^NKJ 1 Peter 1:2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.

That is that sanctifying imagery there, but it has to do with the application of His death to the individual believer. 

Romans 3:25 and Romans 5:9 both talk about the fact that God displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation by means of His blood. When did that occur?  That occurred at the cross. That was the objective thing that God did. He's satisfied at the cross. It's through faith. 

^NKJ Romans 5:9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

So all these phrases pick up on the price that is paid which is termed blood but actually this speaks of His death, redemption. 1 Peter 1:18-9 is "with His precious blood". We saw this as a figure of speech. It was very complicated last time. I tried to simplify it here.

There are two ways in which this is used. It's called a metalepsis, which combines two figures of speech: a metonymy and a synecdoche. The metonymy is a figure of speech where one noun is used instead of another. One noun that stands in relation to another noun is used. So one noun substitutes for another. That's called a metonymy. 

A synechdoche is the exchange of one idea for another associated idea. So metonymy has to do with a related noun for noun; synechdoche is connected idea for idea. 

E W. Bollinger in his classic work on figures of speech states that:

In the New Testament, the expression "the blood of Christ" is a figure metalepsis:  because first the blood is put (by synecdoche) …

Now remember synechdoche is a related idea. Blood is put for blood shedding. So it's a related idea. Or death; we would say physically, physical death.  So blood is put for physical death. Those are related ideas. Then he goes on to say that:

i.e., the death of Christ, as distinct from His life

So he is talking physical.

Then His physical death is put for the perfect satisfaction made by it.

And I've inserted that means that physical death is put for spiritual death – not death for death. See those are related nouns so that's a metonymy. Now you've got two figures of speech – one piled on top of another. That's what makes it a metalepsis. That's all the technical terms so now you can impress somebody with how much you know. We use these kinds of figures of speech in everyday language. Nobody ever told us what we were doing. We just normally understand it when we hear somebody use them so that it's just a basic sense of the fact that the phrase "shed blood" means physical death. 

So that brings us up to verse 6, our next paragraph – Hebrews 9:6. Now having laid this foundation we can work our way through these verses fairly quickly because we have an understanding now of all this background. 

So in verse 6 we read:

^NKJ Hebrews 9:6 Now

The "now" there represents a conjunction in the Greek which indicates a change to the next topic, a shift to a new topic. In verses 1-5 he talked about the furniture and the arrangement of the furniture inside the Holy of Holies and the holy place. Verses 6 through 10 he's going to talk about their function.

when these things had been thus prepared,

The "these things" refers to all the articles of furniture in the Tabernacle when it became functional. 

the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services.

There's a contrast between the everyday priest and the High Priest—that's the significance in verses 6 and 7 that the priest went in every day, but the High Priest only went into the Holy of Holies once a year for the Day of Atonement. The focus in this whole chapter is on the Day of Atonement. 

So in verse 7 we read:

^NKJ Hebrews 9:7 But into the second part the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself

The once a year doesn't mean that's the only time he could have gone in because we saw the problem with the location of the altar of incense. I suggested it was actually inside the Holy of Holies during the tabernacle period. So the High Priest could go in for other reasons at other times, but only once a year for the Day of Atonement.

The use of the double negative there brings it to our attention that his entry on the Day of Atonement was on the basis of blood, which he offered first for himself. We saw that already. The first thing he had to do was offer the sin offering for himself and his family.

and for the people's sins committed in ignorance;

When we studied the Day of Atonement, we saw that the sacrifices only covered ritual sins where there was ritual uncleanness because somebody had touched a dead body or they did something that was ritually unclean. A woman would give birth. She would be ritually unclean for 7 days or 8 days – things like that. They're not sins at all, but they rendered a person ritually or ceremonially unclean or for sins that were committed in ignorance. They weren't willful sins or what the Old Testament calls sins of the high hand. There were no sacrifices for willful sins. That's covered by the grace of God. So there's that distinction there. The Day of Atonement only covers the ritual sins and the sins committed in ignorance. So on the Day of Atonement the High Priest goes in to take care of the unintentional sins of the nation from the last Day of Atonement to the present. It has efficacy. The blood of the bulls and the goats were efficacious, but only for that short period of time. 

Sometimes when we read these verses we think, "Do they have any value at all or are they just ritual?" No, it had a real value because over and over again you read in the psalms "God forgives." He forgave them. He was satisfied by that but it was only a temporary satisfaction. It only dealt with that limited period of time. 

We saw that the sacrifices also emphasized that God's justice was satisfied and the sin is completely removed by that scapegoat that's taken off into the wilderness, so that those sins are never brought up again. It's complete; it's full; it's total payment. That is what Jesus emphasized at the end of the day when He died for our sins and He said, "Tetelestai" – paid in full. The debt's wiped out. It is complete. Nothing more can be done. 

Verse 8 - now this is an interesting verse because it brings in an important doctrine for us, the Doctrine of Progressive Revelation. 

^NKJ Hebrews 9:8 the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing.

See what that tells us is that the Holy Spirit declared this much, at that time. The Greek word is deloo which means to make clear by word. So it emphasizes a propositional verbal revelation or to declare something. So the Holy Spirit as the divine author of Scripture declared these realities, but it wasn't clear to everyone what they actually pointed to. It's fuzzy; it's a shadow. That terminology will be introduced by the end of chapter 9: that this is just a shadow. So the Holy Spirit introduces this and this brings in the Doctrine of Progressive Revelation. 

1. What is progressive revelation? Well first of all, Satan always has a counterfeit to biblical truth and there's a Doctrine of Progressive Revelation at the core of the Baha'i religion. They have perverted progressive revelation to mean that everybody can now get to heaven because all these different religions where God revealed Himself differently in different religions. That's not what we mean by progressive revelation. The Bible clearly is based on progressive revelation. God didn't hand a completed canon of Scripture to Adam two minutes after he sinned. It took centuries to reveal the Scripture. So the first point is that God did not reveal all of His plan at one time or to one individual. 2 Peter 3:15-16 is an interesting passage because Peter is talking here about Paul. In verse 16 he says:

^NKJ 2 Peter 3:16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

2. There were things God revealed to Paul that He didn't reveal to Peter and when Peter read them in Paul, Peter was left scratching his head a lot.  He had a tough time understanding all that Paul said. It's progressive revelation. Not all of the apostles understood the whole picture. There were things that were not revealed to Paul that were revealed to Peter and that were revealed to John. So there's a distinction among the apostles. That's true for the Old Testament as well. In the Old Testament Daniel had more revealed to him that Jeremiah. Jeremiah had more revealed to him that Isaiah. Isaiah had more revealed to him than Moses. Moses had more revealed to him than Noah. But they all understood what was revealed them. Now they may have understood more, but it wasn't included in the Scripture. For example, if you read Genesis 22 which is the story of Abraham taking Isaac up to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him, there is no mention there of him there understanding the Doctrine of Resurrection. But when we get to Hebrews 11, we realize that under inspiration of the Holy Spirit the writer of Hebrews knew that Abraham understood that God could raise Isaac from the dead and if Abraham were to actually kill him; then God would bring him back from the dead and God would do so in fulfillment of the promises that God had made to Abraham. Also in Genesis 3 we have this creature called the serpent. Now we've heard it said for all of our lives that the serpent there was the devil. But there's actually an Old Testament professor at Dallas Seminary that says that was just a serpent. See he's a scholar and I think what happens to some people when they become scholars is that they'll believe anything rather than the truth. The reason they argue that is (and this is a perversion of progressive revelation by the way), is he would say that Adam had no way of know that that was the devil.  No, we're not told that Adam knew that. Adam knew that. We are told in Revelation 12 that the dragon the servant of old – the Devil, the accuser of the brethren. So it's very clear from the totality of Scripture that the serpent in Genesis 3 is Satan. Just because it's not stated in Genesis 3 doesn't mean Adam was ignorant of that and that later on everybody in the Old Testament was ignorant of that. The only people that are ignorant of that are over-trained academics today who don't understand the realities of progressive revelation. So the second point is that God revealed more to some than others, but not all that any one writer knew was written down. Just because they didn't write it down doesn't mean that they didn't have some perception. They knew more than they wrote. 

3. Some vocabulary developed after the closing of the canon, which clarifies what's taught in the Scriptures in ways that the New Testament writers couldn't have understood. We have words like rapture, hypostatic union, trinity, a number of other words have been developed – dispensations – that have all been enhanced in many ways that weren't even there is the Scriptures. Or if they were, it's not certain that they were used in a technical way; but we have made them technical and developed definitions. The term trinity isn't coined until the middle of the 2^nd century – 200 years after Paul's dead. So we can think about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a way that is clearer, more precise than Paul ever could. That doesn't mean that his thinking was wrong. It just means that we have a tighter focus on the doctrine than he did.
4. Later Scripture (this is important for any kind of hermeneutics or interpretation) doesn't correct or change earlier Scripture. It enhances it and expands it. So when we're reading these things in Hebrews where the writer of Hebrews is going back to Old Testament passages, he's not changing what they mean or correcting them; but he is brining out aspects under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He's bringing out aspects and dimensions of those passages that may not have and probably weren't that clear to the original author. But he can do it because of the Holy Spirit. I can't do it.  You can't do it because you don't have that kind of inspiration ministry of the Holy Spirit. But the writers of the New Testament can do it. 
5. We must be careful not to read later revelation back into earlier revelation. This is a problem with covenant theology. Covenant theology thinks that you have to read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. See we would say you have to read the New Testament in light of the Old Testament. They get it backwards and they're always finding New Testament doctrines in the Old Testament that aren't really there and never would have occurred to the original writer. You couldn't get them from doing normal exegesis of the passage in its original context. So we have to be careful not to read later doctrine, later revelation back into earlier revelation in a way that justifies making them ( that is Old Testament writers) know more or know it in a way that changed the original meaning or the context.
6. Writers in an earlier era may have understood more than what they wrote. They may have understood (as I pointed out earlier); but they probably did not have the clarity which came from later revelation. So it's fuzzy. It may be fuzzy to partly cloudy. But it's not crystal clear. Later revelation makes it crystal clear. It doesn't change it; it just tightens the focus. 
7. Though certain symbols were present, for example the wood and the gold in the construction of the Tabernacle. Now how well did they understand that meant the Messiah was going to be fully God and fully man? The New Testament church, the New Testament leaders in the church in the first three centuries of the church couldn't articulate that. So I don't think they understood what that symbolized. But that doesn't mean that the symbolism there means something else. That's what it was intended to communicate even though they might not have fully understood that it was a depiction of the hypostatic union. 
8. On the other hand other symbolisms such as substitution, i.e. the lamb were understood to some degree. They understood that the sacrificial animal was a substitute. So they understood that concept of substitutionary atonement as the priest recites the sins, lays his hand on the animal. They understand what that pictures. So some things were clear; some things were less than clear.
9. A writer did not need to perceive the full sense of what he wrote in order to communicate truth or a fuller sense than he himself understood at the time. See a writer can write, as Paul does when he talks about the fact that the antichrist is not going to appear until - now in your Bibles it will say an apostasy of falling away takes place. Now that word apostosia in 2 Thessalonians 2 means a departure. That's really a term for the rapture.  So when Paul writes that he says that the antichrist isn't revealed until the departure takes place. The apostosia. Now he may not have fully understood all of the dynamics of the rapture and the significance of that word in terms of the rapture in the way that we do because after 2,000 years of analysis we're able to unpack these words and phrases and bring out nuances that might not have been as clear to them as they are to us.  Well, we don't know that. We can't come in and say Paul wasn't sure what he was saying here. I can say that at times he may not have been and other times he might have been; but we just don't know. That's not only the progress of revelation; but once the canon closed, that's the process that the church goes through in studying and analyzing and thinking through the data that God's given us in the Word in order to fully extrapolate from the Word all the doctrines that God has for us. That forces us to constantly go back and dig and dig and rethink and revaluate and exegete and analyze. And the more we learn then all of a sudden we grow in our understanding in this area and it causes us to think back. "Oh, what about this over here?" Like what I talked about earlier in understanding the nature of the tribulation temple starting to raise different questions and put together different doctrines to try to understand how you can have a functioning temple in the middle of the tribulation that is not really an apostate temple. Jesus refers to it as the holy place. Paul referred to it in 2 Thess. 2 as the Temple of God. So that terminology suggests the legitimacy of that Tribulation temple. So we have to think through these things. That doesn't mean that I'll come up with all the answers when it's done.

Okay, Hebrews 9:9.

^NKJ Hebrews 9:9 It was symbolic for the present time

The "it" there is a translation of the feminine pronoun which goes back to the closest feminine noun which is the word tabernacle in Hebrews 9:8. So the writer is saying the tabernacle was symbolic for the present time. There "symbol" is the word parabole where we get our word parable and has the idea of image or shadow pointing to a future reality. 

in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience --

Now get this because I want to get all this in before I take off for Kiev next week. Then we'll come back and review it again, but at least you'll have these two points. 

The first point I want you to observe here is he says it was symbolic to the present time. What's the present time in which the writer of Hebrews is writing?  Not just Church Age. What's the present time in which he is writing? This is the early part of 60 to 65 AD. Jesus has been dead for 30 years. He was crucified on the cross. The Temple is still in existence in Jerusalem and they're still offering the morning sacrifice, evening sacrifices and the burnt offerings. They're still observing the Day of Atonement sacrifices. He doesn't say that's wrong, does he? He doesn't say it's illegitimate. He doesn't say it's apostate. This fits with what I was saying earlier that there is this distinction between understanding the sacrifices as only depicting a spiritual truth from a ceremonial or ritual point and not a reality. So he can say it was symbolic for the present time and it's in the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered. He doesn't say "wrongly." 

These apostate gifts and sacrifices…he just says they cannot make him who performs the service perfect in regard to the conscience. It has a ritual value as it always did in the Old Testament, but it isn't spiritually. It doesn't make him spiritually complete and it doesn't save him. So it helps us to understand that distinction and it's related only (verse 10) to foods and drinks (That is the things they could eat and not eat) that had to do with ceremonial ritual various washings and cleansings and fleshly ordinances. See they're only depicting a higher spiritual truth. There only symbols. These were imposed when? Until the time of reformation. That word reformation is a Greek word diothosis, which is only used one time here and it means improvement, reformation or a new order. That from context as we will see points to the death of Christ on the cross, not the Millennial Kingdom. So these were legitimate up to the time of the cross. 

Then we have to deal with this awkward thing for us to understand as Church Age believers now. This whole period of time between the cross and 70 AD was a transition period. There is still a legitimate offer of the kingdom to the Jews that if they had turned and accepted Christ as Messiah in 40 AD or 50 AD or 60 AD, then the kingdom would have come in. That's still Peter's message in Acts 2 and in Acts 3 is to repent and the times of refreshing will come.  So there is still a legitimacy. It's not an apostate temple even though say the High Priest wasn't saved. The leaders weren't saved; the priests weren't saved.  They weren't saved in the Old Testament either. Salvation and being spiritually right with God was never a requirement to be a High Priest or a priest. You just had to be related to Levi or Aaron. And, you couldn't have certain physical deformities because what they were doing had to do with ritual and ceremony not with real spirituality. The ritual depicted the other, but it wasn't identical with it. 

So that brings us up to verse 11, which states:

^NKJ Hebrews 9:11 But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation.

That's the heavenly tabernacle called the heavenly temple in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 11 we will see in 10 and 11 I believe I can't remember the exact chapter…the heavens open up. It's at the end of 11. The heavens open up and you see the Ark of the Covenant in heaven - the prototype not the one that Moses made.  .

Then verse 12:

^NKJ Hebrews 9:12 Not with the blood of goats and calves,.

Because that only had temporary value

but with His own blood

That is, His own death; spiritual death.

He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption

That's the objective redemption paid for on the cross. Then the point is made in verse 13:

^NKJ Hebrews 9:13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh,

See it did something. It's a first class condition, if and it does. 

That is it had a ceremonial efficacy.

^NKJ Hebrews 9:14 how much more shall the blood of Christ,

That is the death of Christ.

who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

That's where he's going in his argument. We'll listen to this message two or three times, pull it all together and be ready for when I get back from Kiev.

Let's close in prayer.

Illustrations