Good morning, the very Merry Christmas to you all as we come before God's word this morning and consider doing this 4th Sunday of Advent we are going to be reading from Hebrews chapter 10. While I'm going to concentrate on verses 5 through 10 I actually want us to read from verses 1 through 10 just so that we can get the context of what the author of Hebrews is writing. So if you're able would you please stand with me and let us honor the reading of God's holy word that he's given to us this morning. Hebrews 10 1 through 10. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who will draw near. Otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshippers having once been cleansed would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year what is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. And over us the author finishes his conclusion. Consequently when Christ came into the world he said sacrifices and offerings you have not desired but a body you have prepared for me in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said behold I have come to do your will or God as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. But when he said above you have neither desired no taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings but these are offered according to the law then he added behold I have come to do your will. He does away with the first in order to establish the second and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The Word of the Lord this morning. Dear Lord we do come to you praying in this perfect pure holy name, the name of Jesus Christ. Lord we know that on our own we are completely enabled to understand, to hear, to believe these words that you give to us. And so we come to you asking that your Holy Spirit would allow us this morning, illumine our hearts and minds that we may be completely transformed by your word. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Please be seated. There is a difference between a shadow and an image, right? If you were standing outside and there were sun and you stood and you saw your shadow someone else could stand next to you and you probably couldn't tell who is depending on where the sun is and reflection of the sun and all of that. Without being too technical a shadow is basically a shadow, right? It's just a shadow. It doesn't really give us a real image. It doesn't really give us a good idea of what something truly is. Look yourself in the mirror, however. You can tell who that is. You see a real image of who you are. That an image is an exact replicate. You will a manifestation that is adequate to the reality itself. It's interesting that the author or this chapter of this book in Hebrews that we just read is describing the sacrificial system in the Old Testament. God's people are practicing as only a shadow of reality. He says that they were only a pale copy of the true worship that God required of his people. He says that this system, this is a medical system, cannot bring a real and close relationship between man and woman and God, but only a distance, only an occasional contact with the living God. In essence that these sacrificial systems, this sacrifice that people were giving were just a vague reflection, a mere silhouette, if you will, a form without reality. And I think in essence the author of Hebrews is saying this without Jesus Christ, you cannot get beyond the shadows of God. And that's what Advent is all about, isn't it? Why do we celebrate Advent? Why do we celebrate Christmas? What do we really focus on during this season of life? The incarnation of Jesus Christ, God made man. And the author is beginning here by showing us, at least in verses 1 through 4, as he finishes his argument, showing us that these things that were shadows were really insufficient. And so I want us to put on our thinking caps this morning and do an investigation through this version that we just read. And begin to look at why the sacrifices that God himself had instituted were insufficient and then end by looking at the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice. Which is what the ark of Hebrews is telling us. And then by looking at chapter 10 verses 1 through 4, we see he is outlining his argument, isn't he? Isn't he? Is it verse 1 through 4, providing his argument, made an argument of how these sacrifices were insufficient before providing for us this, this verses 5 through 10, which are actually the glorious crescendo, if you will. This is like the ending of his argument that started from the very beginning of this old book. And in verse 5 through 10 we see Christ speaking for himself. Think about this for one second. When we talk about Christmas, when we celebrate Advent, we only get to hear the story about Christmas through other voices. What do I mean? Even in our songs, we think about the magi and the wise men coming to see, we read about Simeon holding the baby and saying, behold, I have seen the salvation of the Lord. We are hearing the story of Advent through other voices. But here we get to go behind the scenes and hear the story of Christmas from Jesus himself. As is quoting, Psalm 46 through 8. Again, the author of this book is in fact writing to a Jewish audience. And so as he quotes the Psalms, as he talks about sacrifices and all these things, they know what he's talking about. They can identify with them. They know this little bit of course sacrifices. And in verse 1 he says, these things are insufficient because they are not able to perfect. They cannot bring perfection to the one who draws near. Why? Why can they bring perfection? Well, by perfection here he means they cannot bring access to God, direct access to God without the constant necessity of removing the barrier that stands between man and God. They have no intrinsic power to save. And by perfection is not talking about their own lack of flaws. There are no flaws in man or woman or anything like that. But he's actually talking about the right relationship with God. The sacrifices are unable to bring a close perfect unrestricted relationship between God and his people. But they're not able to cleanse once and for all, to deliver once and for all. But they're not able to remove the nagging sense of guilt and shame. Again, why? Because people have to constantly go back because that nagging sense of guilt and shame is still there. Every year you're going to go back and then you send again and you go back and you send again if you go back. So this is an imperfect copy of what God ultimately desired for his people. See, while they may have limitations, I don't think the author of Hebrews is saying that they were useless. He's not saying that they do not have a point. He's basically saying that they pointed to something greater, to a greater and heavenly, a better reality. He continues that this sacrifice does not possess true cleansing efficacy. If you were meaning they were not able to cleanse someone's conscience to make them feel like as they came before God that they were completely and pure and fully forgiven. It is the presence of sin in our hearts as the psalmist cries out, right, that hinders our communion with God. The psalmist cries out in psalm 66 verse 18. He says, if I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. What was standing in the psalmist heart, the barrier that was there between him and God was his sin. The implication is, if any true inward cleansing is going to happen, it has to be permanent. Otherwise, it's really not there. If it has to be repeated, then it cannot be a true and inward cleansing that has really happened. Again, Jesus, remember Jesus talking to Peter in John chapter 13, what does he tell Peter about the being washed? He says, Jesus said to him, the one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet. But it is completely clean and you are clean. He tells Peter, you are clean. He says, but not every one of you. The whole idea of the recurring day of atonement as they brought their sacrifices to God. Again, the author of Hebrews reminds us that this was supposed to be a remembrance of their sins. Every year you came to the day to bring your sacrifices before God, verse three, and every year you were reminded that your sin stands before God. And so you had a choice. You come before God either to repent of your sins and ask for expiation, or you just continue living with your sins. But God did act even through those sacrifices. God would act on that behalf, either to pardon them or to give them punishment for their sins. And so the idea there is you cannot compare a conscience that's been cleansed once only to return tomorrow with a piece that comes with a conscience that's been cleansed once and for all. In chapter eight of the same book, the author of Hebrews will say that God is looking forward to cleansing his people's sin and you will remember their sins no more. So an effective thing doesn't need to be done again. It doesn't need to be done again. If it was effective, then the people don't need to come back and ask for forgiveness. Someone gave an example of, and I thought this was really telling me, give an example. If you get sick, if you're sick and you go to the doctor and the doctor prescribes medicines to you and you bring that bottle home with you, you start taking that prescription medicine. If you get better, that bottle stands as a sign to you that the prescribed cure actually did work. What if that medicine doesn't work? That bottle will stand before you every day reminding you that that cure was useless. It didn't work. It was never effective. That's why it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats in verse four to take away sins. It will not cure a spiritual disease. It will not remove sin. It will not purify his people, bring them closer to God. And so what happened in the day of atonement, not that it was unnecessary. The author's point is not that. The author's point is that the old covenant and what happened in those sacrifices, that there was never an absolute removal of sin. There was never a complete wiping out of sin. And their record was never cleared from God's divine record. It was never cleared. It was still then. That's why they had to go back. That's why they had priests for them to keep approaching the priest. The whole book of Hebrews is actually speaking about the whole priesthood. The Jesus thing that the great high priest and the fact that even the priest that too stood to offer sacrifices also needed to ask for forgiveness. But Jesus is the perfect high priest who does not need to ask for forgiveness because he is the pure Son of God. And so for God's people, the condition of this spiritual imperfection was inevitable. It was inevitable. They just couldn't get away from it as long as the people's idea of forgiveness was bound up with their sacrificial system. No wonder. Again, the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away their sins. Let's continue the analogy of going to the doctor. When you get a headache, if you take Advil and that's what works for you. If you get a headache today and you take Advil and it works, if you get a headache next week and you take Tylenol and it doesn't work, if the following week you get a headache, what medicine are you going to go back to? You're going to go to the medicine that works. Our problem is a spiritual problem. It's a moral defilement. And the other Hebrews is trying to communicate to us that all along, God's intention was to resolve our moral, our spiritual condition and that the sacrifices that were being offered could not absolutely take care of the problem. For example, what if you worked, if you were a greasy monkey, if you worked on a car and you got your hands super dirty and someone brought you a sandwich and said, it's time to eat. Would you choose to say, or give me a napkin, let me wipe my hands out and then my hands will be clean. Would they be clean? You can spend a whole day wiping your hands out with the napkin but they will never get clean. Our problem is a sin problem. There is no solution, there is no place, there is no sacrifice, there is nothing that we can do to fix it unless we go to Jesus. He is the only one who can fix our spiritual problem. And so we may wonder in verses 5, then what was the purpose then of the sacrifice? Look at verse 5, says he neither desired them. Look at verse 8, they were not even pleasing to God. Now what was the purpose? How can it be that they were not desired, and pleasing to God when it was God himself who instigated the whole sacrificial system? Again the point is clean, we're not going to spend so much time talking about it here. God desires obedience. It wasn't sacrifices that God was looking for. God was looking for His people to hear His voice and obey Him. God is saying that His sacrifices were not meant to be a substitute for obedience. God doesn't accept sacrifices offered to Him if they are not an expression of a wholehearted devotion to Him. They don't matter. God cannot be bought by our sacrifices or our gifts. That's what he's saying. The sacrifices give no pleasure to God. That value was only in what they represented. So God is requiring this wholehearted commitment, devotion to Him. And you know who fulfills that? Perfect obedience. It's not you. And it's not me. That's what Jesus comes to do. That's exactly what Jesus, the Son of God, comes to do. Jesus comes to achieve for us something much more better than the sacrifices of the old covenant. Which is why His sacrifice is sufficient. Unlike the sacrifices that were made in the Old Testament. And so we get into verses 5 through 10 and look at the ineffectiveness if we're aware of the insufficiency of the animal sacrifices combined that with the witness of scripture. And they point to one sacrifice. The one full pure and perfect sacrifice through which sin can be forgiven. And that's the sacrifice of Jesus. Again, if you really think about it, if this text was written to the Jewish people who understood what was going on there, you can almost imagine how revolutionary this was for the author of Hebrews to come in and say, oh yeah, they're done. No more. With the incarnation of Jesus Christ, yeah, those things are done. Imagine what are you saying? Are you trying to change God's law? This is what God commanded. What are you trying to say? You cannot do that. But in order to show them that he wasn't saying anything that they did not know. He did not say anything that was not already in the books in the law that they were talking about. He quotes some 40 verse 6 through 8. I mean, if you believe in the Old Testament, that is the Old Testament right there. And he shows them how the word of God even in the Old Testament predicted the end of these sacrifices. And this quotation from some 40 is evidence of this that God all along do not desire sacrifices according to the law. That's not to say that the word necessary again. It's not to say that, but to say that ultimately God desired the will of God was that a sacrifice would be performed and that sacrifice would be performed by his son. You look at this conversation, if you will, as Jesus applies these words that seem to be the Vedic, but they can only be, they can only think Jesus. He's almost having a beautiful conversation with his father, which is a foreshadowing of this effective sacrifice that he's going to achieve. And what do we know from the sacrifices? One thing we do know is that people do understand that blood was a requirement if sins were going to be wiped away. Again, on the day of the tomb, and they would bring two animals, right? One of the animals would die and they would take the blood and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. And then the other animal, they would lay their hands on the animal and boom, chase it, take it away, go take the sins of people away. They knew the blood had to be shed for there to be forgiveness of sin. But God is saying here, someone had to die. Someone had to shed his blood in order for their sins to be wiped away. And then interestingly in verse five, he says, a body sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but then he says, but a body you have prepared for me. Jesus is speaking of his own body here that he was born so that his body may do the will of God so that he may lay it down for the sins of his people. The body was broken for us for the forgiveness of our sins that those who trust in him may have eternal life. But I'm actually reminded is I think about the sex reminded of Jesus doing the last supper with his disciples. Do you remember that occasion as Jesus is with his disciples and he takes the bread and gives thanks to his father and he breaks it and it gives it to him saying, this is my body. I wonder if they really knew what Jesus was saying. I wonder if they really understood exactly what Jesus was saying to them. Was he just thinking of this bread? He wasn't just thinking of his bread that Jesus was presenting to his own disciples and saying, this my body is going to be broken for you for the forgiveness of your sin in a very real and graphic sense broken for you. Or how the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways. Paul says that God all along planned for this to happen that Jesus says, I have come in order to do the will of my father, which is to surrender my body for the work of God that you have called me to accomplish. That it was Jesus desire. His whole desire was to fill the father's demands indeed. His desire was to fulfill what had been written to him. He says, according to the scroll of the book, according to what has been written about me, that Jesus was determined to fulfill God's purposes for him and to complete it. Jesus was his whole desire was to fulfill what was possible for him to accomplish the salvation that God declared before eternity, throughout eternity. And that meant perfect obedience, even obedience to the cross to die on a tree. Jesus willingly surrenders his body to the saving plan of God. If you think about the sacrifices, no animal went to the altar willingly. No goat or cow is going to go to the altar willingly. Jesus goes to the cross willingly. You see, it's amazing to just think about it, isn't it? To think about the redemptive fisherman that this was God's plan all along, that Jesus not just pop out of nowhere, that it's not like after the fall or in the New Testament as Jesus shows up or before he shows up, the God just went like, oh, wait, the sacrifices are not working anymore. So the blood sacrifice is really not working. So let's create something. Let's, oh, wait, I have a son. I can send him to earth to come and bear the sins of man and women. That's not what happened. God, throughout eternity, always had a plan that his son, when the fullness of time had come that he would send his precious son Jesus Christ to die for our sins. And so again, by using the quotation from the Psalms, he's reminding us that what God requires is obedience to his will. And that obedience is accomplished by Jesus himself. You know, if we really think about sacrifices for one second and obedience, when God's people brought their sacrifices, they were expressing their love to God in a sense, right, in a sense that you brought something that was special to you to make a sacrifice to God. It was something that was important to you, that you, well, it's a cow that you raised. It was important to you, but human nature being what it is, but you know what happened, right? So the moment I'm bringing something before God and saying, well, you know, I raised this cow and I'm bringing it to you as a sacrifice. So I may have forgiveness from sin. We simply begin thinking that there's something we're bringing to the table in terms of forgiveness, right? But just think about the beauty and the amazing love of God that he would say, I require for you to bring nothing to me. I am the one who is going to bring my only son and he's going to make this sacrifice so that your forgiveness is going to be received free of charge. You have nothing to come back to me and say, oh, I brought this cow. I provided this sacrifice for you. And the gift is free. I love that, but you cannot buy God's forgiveness. Because how do you buy that which you haven't given? So Jesus by saying a body you are prepared for me in verse five, Jesus saying, I've come to do the will of my father, as it written of me. Jesus is saying, I have come to obey my father, even to the cross. I have come to take her with a barrier that stood between God and man's sin come to take you over. And by doing the Lord's will, Jesus is presenting himself to his father and saying, due to me as you will, not my will, but yours be done. So on our behalf, Jesus brings to God what no one could ever bring. On our behalf, Jesus makes the sacrifice that you can never make. And you know, he says, he takes or sin was sanctified once and for all. And Jesus sacrificed not only reveals God, not only redeems us, but as he speaks about the plan that God had for him, he's saying, I have completely taken care of your problems and your problem was in. Now, we got to pause here for one second and ask a question. If you're not thinking about it, I will help us think about it. So how was the Jews saved in the Old Testament? How was anybody saved before Jesus? If we're saying that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, the Bible teaches that there's only one way to God, right? Jesus is the way to God. So how was the Jews saved before Jesus? God's work is just amazing, isn't it? And I would say the Jews were saved by believing in the promises of God, just like we are. The Jews were saved by looking forward to something that they had never seen by faith and received just the same way. But we look backward, we never saw the cross, but we believe it by faith and we are saved by it. And the Bible teaches us too. Galatians 3, 8, Paul speaking about Abraham, he says, and God foreseeing that he would bless the nations through him. The gospel was preached to Abraham. What? The gospel? Yes. And elsewhere in Romans chapter 3 verse 4, again speaking of Abraham, he believed in what was contact to him, righteousness. What a gracious, amazing God. That Jesus blood was shed not just for those after he showed up, the preeminent and preexistence of Christ even before Jesus was there. His blood, his sacrifice, was still atoning for the sins of man and when and continues to do so until he returns. What an amazing thing. So he says it's because Christ came to do, his father's will, to understand that we have been sanctified, that our sanctification was a costly affair because the Son of Man had to give his life for us. But he takes the place of the sacrifices because he is the perfect sacrifice and he comes to make that sacrifice once and for all. A one time event precisely because Christ did a tone for our sins fully and finally we don't need any more blood to be shed for our sins to be forgiven. It's been done. It's been accomplished. It is finished. Jesus cried out. Done. See the one thing with the sacrifice is good and do was that the sacrifice is not have the power to break the power of sin. Jesus sacrificed did that. And because of his sacrifice because of his perfect obedience, God sees us as holy in his sight. That doesn't mean that we don't fall. It doesn't mean that we don't make mistakes. It doesn't mean that we don't disobey. It doesn't mean that we don't rebel against God. It means that every day we are working out of salvation with fear and trembling. You know what else it means to us. See our sin hasn't really been dealt with unless we live a life of perpetual repentance and confession of sin. Every single day of our life is a day to repent. So God throughout eternity had a covenant with his son. That his son would one day come to satisfy the demands of the law by laying down his life for us. Jesus was born as a man so that he could sympathize with us. He hungered. He felt pain. He cried. He was anxious. He was tempted in every way yet he was without sin. Not even a smidge. He was perfect. But his obedience was not just in the sense that he could feel all those things that he could sympathize with us for. The fact that he lived a perfect life that we couldn't live. His obedience was that he was also willing to take the cost and go to the cross and do that which none of us could do for you and for me. It had to be a perfect someone that could take and finally destroy the power, the minion and presence of sin. And his name is Jesus. He came to take you or what you could never take you or yourself. He came to fix that which nothing and no one can fix in your life. He came to deal with our sin. And for that we can praise him all the days of our life because from the moment we receive that power and that salvation that only comes by faith in him we are free in Christ. That's the good news of Advent. That's the good news of Christmas. Father, we do thank you this morning for your words that you've given to us. Thank you that you came and you gave your body for us on the cross broken on our behalf. Doing that which we couldn't do for ourselves and dealing with our sin we are so grateful to you Lord even during this Advent season that we not forget the sacrifice that you have made for us that you are born born to die for our sins for all this in Jesus name. Amen.