The Great Sacrifice

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A number of years ago I had the opportunity to travel to India. Really was a life changing experience in many ways. Any of you who've been there can understand that. But probably the most indelible imprint that I have left on my mind from my trip to India was a visit outside the city of Calcutta to the Temple of Kali. Kali is one of millions of Hindu gods. One of the greatest in a God of fertility. It was an awful place in one of the most wicked evil places I've ever been. But I remember as we walked outside of the temple complex itself and came to the courtyard, we came upon a priest who was about to offer animal sacrifice. My guide explained to me that a couple who were connected to that temple in some way had developed a hatred for one of their neighbors, and they had come with a desire to purchase a temple goat to have the priests kill that goat and pronounce a curse on their neighbors. I stood there not six feet away from the priest, as he held the goat with one hand and grabbed a large knife with the other and slit the throat of that goat and the blood poured out everywhere. It was an awful mess.

Paul said, I witnessed the sacrifice to demon. But as I stood there and watched that animal sacrifice, my mind went back to the Old Testament sacrifices. Those animal sacrifices that were instituted by God for the worship of His people, not to some pagan God but to the true God Himself. Because animals sacrifice, like the one I witnessed, has been a part of many of the false religions of the world, some skeptics have argued that Israel's animal sacrifices were simply copies of what they saw in the nations around them. In reality, the opposite is true. Just as in many cultures of the world, there is a skewed version of the flood story that points back to the true events recorded in Genesis 6-9. Even so, pagan animal sacrifices have in them faint echoes of the original understanding from the beginning of the world that there must be sacrifice to come to God. The sacrificial system of the Old Testament was intended by God to teach us profound lessons.

And this morning as we prepare to take of the Lord's table, I want us to consider those lessons together. I want us to look at the foundational truths contained in that Old Testament sacrificial system and the reality that those truths pictured. So, let's look at a series of propositions or truths about that system that'll help us understand even what we celebrate and partake this morning together.

The first truth I'd like for us to look at together is this. God demands sacrifice from every person. God demands sacrifice from every person. You go back to the Book of Leviticus, and I realize that's not a popular book for one's devotions, but if you go back to the Book of Leviticus and you look at the things that are laid out there, the first 16 chapters were crucial in the life of the nation of Israel, because the first 16 chapters mapped out the only approach that they could have into the presence of God. In Leviticus 1-7, God prescribes five specific kinds of sacrifice and all five of those sacrifices were to be a part of the worship of every single Israelite.

If you had lived in the Old Testament, you would have been expected to have offered every one of those five sacrifices at some point to God. They were to be offered repeatedly throughout every year. Those are the individual sacrifices. Leviticus 1-7 records the five that individuals were to offer. But if you were to turn to Numbers 28 and 29, you would discover that four of those five were to be offered as national sacrifices. Daily, every Sabbath, every New Moon, every Feast of Israel. National sacrifices were to be offered. Now, underneath God's demand that every person bring a sacrifice were some basic doctrinal realities. First, there was the reality, and you find it repeated throughout Leviticus that God is holy. God is absolutely perfectly pure and cannot countenance or tolerate the slightest bit of evil without judging it, without consuming it.

The second sort of doctrinal reality that underlies this demand of God is that we are sinful. Our problem is that we're exactly the opposite of God. God is perfectly holy, and we, on the other hand, are utterly sinful, able to offer Him nothing that pleases Him.

And so, the third sort of reality that underlies this whole system is because God is holy, because we are sinful, the only way to approach God is through sacrifice. Long before Sinai, God had made it perfectly clear that no one could come before Him except with a sacrifice. You remember in Genesis Chapter 3 right after the first sin. What does God do? God Himself kills an innocent animal to make clothes for Adam and Eve.

And then they had two boys in Genesis 4. Those two boys understand the importance of sacrifice. Both of them bring sacrifices before God. Cain of the work of his own hands and his sacrifice was rejected by God. Abel of a lamb and one that was received by God. But they understood at the very beginning of mankind, Adam and Eve, their two boys, sacrifice was required. Here's the point, through this complex system of individual sacrifices in Leviticus 1-7 through national sacrifices and Numbers 28 and 29, God was making something clear, and that was the only way anyone can ever approach Him is on His terms, and His terms always demand sacrifice. And let me tell you, that has not changed.

If you want to approach God, if you ever want to enter His presence, it will always and only be through a sacrifice, not the sacrifice of animals any longer, but through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God has not changed this essential requirement, His absolute demand of a sacrifice. Turn to Hebrews Chapter 10. Let me show you this. The writer of Hebrews in Chapter 10, as we'll see in a few minutes, is laying out the case that the Old Testament sacrifices are no longer necessary. But he gets to Verse 19, and he makes this profound statement. Hebrews 10:19.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkle clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

What is the writer of Hebrews saying? He's saying, God's requirement for a sacrifice hasn't changed. The only way you and I can come into the presence of God is through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, through the blood that He's poured out, Verse 19 and through the death of His body, Verse 20. Because God is holy, and because we are sinful, we can approach God only through sacrifice. No longer through the sacrifice of some animal. But now through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But because we don't approach God every Sunday and come and kill an animal, don't lose sight of the reality that that is still God's requirement. That a sacrifice must be made for anyone to approach His presence. And as you sit here this morning, if you're in Christ, the only way you can approach God in prayer now and come before Him, or the only way you'll ever come into His presence is if you come clinging to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So the first foundational truth the sacrificial system teaches is that God demands sacrifice of every person.

But why was the sacrifice so important? That brings us really to a second foundational truth and is this, the required sacrifice is for God, not the worshiper. The required sacrifice is for God, not primarily for the worshiper. Let me show you this in Leviticus. Turn back to Leviticus Chapter 1. And I just want to highlight this truth for you. I won't show you every time this occurs, but let me just give you enough, so you get the feel of how Moses puts it in the Book of Leviticus. He begins in Chapter 1 with the issue of the burnt offering.

Verse 9 he concludes that discussion at the end of the verse with this:

And the priests shall offer up in smoke all of it on the altar for a burnt offering, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the Lord.

Verse 13 at the end of the verse:

And the priest shall offer all of it and offer it up in smoke on the altar. It is a burnt offering an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the Lord.

Verse 17 the end of the verse:

It is an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the Lord.

Verse 2 of Chapter 2:

A soothing aroma to the Lord.

You get the picture? And it goes throughout these chapters. What does that mean? Think about that for a moment that sounds nice and cozy sitting here in our pews, but how in the world does a burning animal, burning flesh rise in the nostrils of God and be a soothing aroma. What does that mean? Well, literally, it means a smell of satisfaction. An aroma that calms or soothes My wrath. By the way if you were to turn to Numbers 28 where you find the national sacrifices, says the same thing in Verse 2, they're to be offered as a soothing aroma to God. You see, man's sin, had greatly offended God and had stirred His wrath, and He must be, to use the New Testament word, propitiated or have His wrath satisfied.

There's an important misunderstanding about Old Testament sacrifice, and that's that there are some who believe that God justified sinners in the Old Testament on the basis of their sacrifices. That because they offered sacrifices, God declared them righteous. Now that makes sacrifice a work. Paul tells us that all Old Testament believers were justified as just as we are through what? Faith! In Romans Chapter 3:20, he says by the works of the law, including sacrifice, there will be no flesh declared righteous in the sight of God. In Romans Chapter 4:5 Paul is talking about the issue of justification, and he says that. "To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith will be credited as his righteousness and then what examples does he use? Abraham. David. Did they offer sacrifices? Absolutely, but were those sacrifices the grounds of their righteousness? Absolutely not. Sacrifices at their root, were merely an external expression of an internal reality. The person who offered the sacrifice was saying God, may your wrath be satisfied against my sin?

There's a profound picture of this in Luke Chapter 18. Turn there with me for a moment, Luke 18. You remember the parable that Christ tells beginning in Verse 9 of these two people who went up to the temple to pray. Verse 9, he told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and viewed others with contempt. Two men went up to the temple to pray. Now, when did Jewish people in Jerusalem go up to the temple to pray? Essentially two times a day, at the time of the morning sacrifice and at the time of the afternoon or evening sacrifice. And so, he says they went up at the time of the sacrifice to pray. One of them was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector, one well respected religious, fastidious in his keeping of the law, the other a Roman collaborator, a traitor, sinner. Verse 11, the Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: God, I thank you that I am not like other people, swindlers, unjust agricultures, or even like this guy standing next to me, this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of all that I get. And he might have added, and I sacrifice with all of the requirements of the Old Testament law. I do it all. Verse 13, the tax collector standing some distance away was unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breasts, saying God be merciful to me the sinner. In the original text, this prayer literally says this: God be propitiated to me the sinner. May your wrath be satisfied toward me. That's what he was praying. What was going on at that very moment that he was in the outer court praying, in the inner court the daily sacrifice was being offered. You know what this man was saying? He was saying God, may that arise in your nostrils as a soothing aroma, may it satisfy your wrath against me. You see if you don't know God, in this very minute, the scripture teaches the wrath of God is on you. God is angry with you. Psalm says that God is angry with the wicked every day. The Apostle John, whom we think of as the apostle of love, in that great chapter, John 3, says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him would have everlasting life. But in that same chapter, he concludes it this way, but the one who doesn't believe, the wrath of God abides on him. In other words, it's as if the wrath of God were hanging over your head right now, like a thunderstorm, ready to burst in full fury at any moment. All the Old Testament sacrifices and their ultimate fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice were for God, to satisfy His wrath against sin. The sacrificial system teaches us that God demands a sacrifice from every person. You and I are not exempt from that. And that the sacrifice is for God, not primarily for us.

And that brings us to the third foundational truth. And that is that sacrifice is always substitutionary. Substitutionary you see if you go back to Leviticus 1-7. One thing stands out as you read that passage, and that is that the Israelite was offering that sacrifice in his place. In fact, imagine for a moment that you're an Old Testament believer, and you want to offer to the Lord a sin offering. You know what Leviticus teaches would happen? Well, first you would go, and you would pick from the flock, an unblemished, perfect, physically perfect animal, a goat or a lamb, and you would bring that animal with you on a little rope trailing behind to the temple courtyard, and there you would join up with a priest, one of those who was serving during that period of time, and you explain that you're there to offer a certain kind of sacrifice. If it were a sin offering, here's what would happen. You would take your hands and you would put them on the head of that animal as you stood there in the temple court. There was a symbol in that of the reality that that lamb was now your representative, that that Lamb was going to be offering its life in your place. And then you the worshiper, not the priests in the case of the sin offering would take that little animal by the neck, take a large knife in the other hand, and you would slit its throat and take its life. The priests would be there with a bowl to catch the blood as the blood poured out. He would take that blood and he would splatter it against the base of the altar. And then he would take the rest of the animal whatever parts were specified for that particular offering, and he would put it up on the altar in this continuing blazing fire. The rancid smell of burning flesh would ascend to God. The point of this entire process and especially of your laying your hands on that animal, was to symbolize that that animal was dying in your place.

You're the one who deserved to have your throat slit. You're the one who deserved to be dying because of the sin that you had committed. The guilty worshiper actually killed the animal as the substitute for his sin. The innocent animal died in the place of the sinner who deserved to die. This is exactly what the Scripture teaches Christ did. Turn to Romans Chapter 5. As Paul lays out the wonderful results of the justification we have in Christ he says in Verse 6: "For while we were still helpless at the right time Christ died for," (in the place of) "the ungodly." Verse 8: "But God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners," Christ died in our place. "Much more then, having now been justified", having been declared righteous, "by His blood" - that's theological shorthand for his sacrificial death. Having been justified by His life being poured out in death, "we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him." He took the wrath of God, and there's none left for us. He died in our place.

Yesterday was the 63^rd Anniversary of the death of Maximilian Kolbe. Maximilian was a Polish friar who was detained in that notorious Nazi prison camp Auschwitz. Two weeks before, early in August, a prisoner had escaped. Now there was an absolutely inviolate rule in Auschwitz, and that was for every prisoner who escaped, ten prisoners would die. As the record is written of that account, when they discovered that a prisoner had escaped that was unaccounted for, they forced the men of his particular building, weak and hungry to stand outside all day without food or water waiting for one of them to confess if they knew where he was and searching the compound for him, and when he wasn't found, the prison guard began to read the names of the ten men who had been selected to die as a result of that one escape. As the names were read, one of the names on the list of those who would die was a young Polish Sergeant. When he heard his name called, those who witnessed it said he cried out "have mercy I have a wife and children." Well, mercy was in short supply Nazi Germany and particularly in Auschwitz, and so no one heard his cry except for Maximilian. Maximilian was standing there in the back. His name was not on the list. But as he heard this young man cry out, Maximilian moved silently forward and when he got to the front, he simply said, I'd like to die in his place. The Nazi commandant paused for a moment struck by the offer of this man and then he accepted it. He agreed. So, Maximilian and nine others were carried away to a terribly dreaded hole in the ground, no window, dark underground cell with nine others where they would starve to death. They reached the end of two weeks and only four were still alive. Maximilian was one of those, and he was the only one still conscious. While the guards needed the space for other prisoners and so they decided to go ahead and kill the four by giving them an injection of carbolic acid. The guard who witnessed it was so struck with what happened that he recorded it. Maximilian too weak really to do anything else as he saw them come to him last - actually raised his arm for the injection. In 1998, that Polish Sergeant, whose life was spared by Maximilian's offer, celebrated his 95^th birthday. For almost 60 years every morning, he woke up and opened his eyes. He realized that he had another day of life because someone had volunteered to die in his place. The Old Testament sacrificial system reminds us that each of us had our names written on the divine list of those who deserved eternal punishment. Appointed to eternity without God, our only hope was for a substitute, for someone to step forward and to offer to endure the wrath of God in our place. That's the point of the Old Testament system. The sacrifice was always substitutionary.

The fourth foundational truth we learned from the sacrificial system is that animal sacrifices have never been the grounds for forgiveness. Animal sacrifices have never been the grounds for forgiveness. Turn back to Hebrews 10. The writer of Hebrews at the end of Chapter 9 has just made the point that Christ is the perfect sacrifice, and so therefore, when he comes to Chapter 10, he's going to argue that because Christ died, the Old Testament sacrifices are now obsolete. Verse 1, he says: "For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form (or substance) of those things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near." You see the laws of sacrifice contained in the Law of God, in the Mosaic Law were merely shadows of a coming reality. Verse 2: (Otherwise if they could make perfect believers) "Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers having once been cleansed, would no longer have had a consciousness of sins." In other words, the Old Testament sacrifices had to continually be offered because they weren't a permanent solution. Don't misunderstand this verse. The Old Testament believer enjoyed forgiveness and understood a sense of that forgiveness. But he also knew that his sins were not yet objectively dealt with because he knew an animal couldn't do that. So, he had this lingering consciousness of sins, a lingering sense of guilt. Verse 3. "But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins year by year" Here to go back to Numbers 28 and 29. And look at the national sacrifices as I did this week and total up the number of animals that were offered by the nation. About 1,200 animals every year died in national sacrifice, two every day, one every Sabbath. You had the annual festivals. You had the New Moon festivals, and all of those occasions' animals were offered in varying numbers. 1,200 through the year. Then you add to that all the individual sacrifices. Remember, there are five sacrifices that you're supposed to offer. And so, hundreds of thousands of sacrifices and once they were made for the year, the entire process began again.

What was the Old Testament believer supposed to learn from that reality? That sin was ever present. They served as a reminder of sin. All the animal sacrifices could do was remind the worshiper of his guilt. In fact, in Numbers 5:15, sacrifice is called a reminder of iniquity. Why was that constant message necessary? Notice Verse 4. "For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin." Animal blood can't expiate sin. An animal can never be an adequate substitute for a human being made in the image of God. In the Old Testament, there was no real relationship between a person's sin and an animal sacrifice. An animal sacrifice was only symbolic, typical. Their faith was not in the death of the animal. Their faith was in God, and in the fact that one day He would provide a sacrifice that would permanently deal with sin. It was never in the animal.

How do I know that? Well, what's the worst example you can think of Old Testament an Old Testament believer sinning? What pops into your mind when I say that? If you're like most people, you think of David. You think of David's sin with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband. We read this morning Psalm 51. What did David say as he repented of that sin as he acknowledged his sin before God? In Psalm 51:16 he writes. "For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering." You know what David was really saying. He knew that as an Old Testament believer he needed to offer sacrifice, it has been commanded. But David understood that an animal sacrifice could never deal with his sin.

So, if animal sacrifices have never been the basis of forgiveness. What is? That brings us to the final truth we learned from the Old Testament sacrificial system. Truth number 5. Ultimately, God is only satisfied with a perfect human sacrifice. I read a couple of years ago of a shocking annual ritual in a temple in India. In the Piero village, which is not a place I visited when I was there. Once a year, all of the families gather together their prepubescent girls, about a hundred plus in the village, and for a one-minute period they bury them all alive. They first render them unconscious and then they wrap their heads in yellow cloths and then they put them in makeshift graves. And then all at once they cover their bodies entirely and completely for one minute. The purpose of this terrible ritual is to appease to female Hindu deities in hopes that their wishes will be granted.

You still can read as I did this week about places in the world remote places where occasionally human sacrifice actually happens, where people's lives are taken in human sacrifice. In fact I read this week about a temple in India, where they really want to practice human sacrifice, but it's outlawed by the Indian government. And so, they have instead begun a process whereby they offer, an effigy, the human sacrifice and effigy of a human being regularly in the worship of their god. You know when we hear about that we're repulsed by it. Aren't we? were repulsed by the concept of human sacrifice and honestly, we should be.

But the concept of human sacrifice is not repulsive to God. That is exactly what he demanded of Christ. What is repulsive to God is when human beings disregard his plan to offer his perfect God man, His Son as the sacrifice, and they instead try to appease God by offering themselves or some other sinful human being or even their own children. That angers God, that's repulsive to God. But while God finds all such human sacrifice repulsive, and it's clearly forbidden, He fully intended, listen to this, He fully intended that His Son, the sacrifice of His Son, would perfectly fulfill and replace the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament. The only sacrifice God would receive that would deal with sin permanently was the God man, His own Son. And He had to be both to offer a perfect sacrifice, fully God and fully man.

Notice Hebrews 10:5-7. These verses quote from Psalm 40. And they quote them, notice Verse 5 as what Christ said when He entered the world. Therefore, when He comes into the world, this is what He says. The quotation that follows includes four of the five Old Testament sacrifices. Notice Verse 5, these God didn't desire. Verse 6, he hasn't taken pleasure in them. Note to contrast with those Old Testament sacrifices. Verse 5 "But a body thou hast prepared me." In other words, God would be pleased, He would delight in Christ's own body as the sacrifice. You come to Verses 8-10 of Hebrews 10, and those are really the author's commentary on the Psalm quotation. Notice how he interprets it. Verse 9, when Christ said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will." Here's what he was doing. He was taking away the first, that is all the Old Testament Levitical sacrifices, in order to establish the second, that is, the sacrifice of His own body, the sacrifice of Himself. Verse 10: "By this will", that is, God's will, and in making Christ the ultimate sacrifice, we have been sanctified. Not made holy in the sense of progressive sanctification, but here that permanent once for all act of a change of our status. We have been set apart by God. How? How was this permanent change in our status affected? Notice Verse 10 again, through the offering or sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

You see the New Testament everywhere identifies Christ and His death as the perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifice. You remember when John the Baptist saw Christ coming. It's recorded early in John's epistle. He sees Christ coming and he knows who He is, and he responds by saying – "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." 1 Corinthians 5:7, Paul says, Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Ephesians 5:2: "Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us an offering." Now listen to this, this comes right out of the language we saw earlier and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. When you imagine Christ, the Son of God dying in shameful agony on the Cross of Calvary, it's hard to imagine how it could be true, but just like the burning flash of those Old Testament sacrifices, it arose in the nose of God as a soothing aroma, as the satisfaction of His wrath.

1 Peter 1:18-19. "You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life, but with precious blood as the lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ." Turn to 1 Peter 2. Peter sort of puts it in a nutshell for us in 1 Peter 2. Begin Verse 21. He's explaining that we're going to follow the example of Christ's suffering. And he lays out Christ's suffering, and in many ways, we can follow it. Verse 23. We can when we're reviled not revile in return, and when we suffer, we don't have to utter threats. We can entrust ourselves to God who judges righteously. But here's how we can't imitate Christ. Notice Verse 24. Here's how His death was unique. "He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross" (literally on the wood) "so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."

Back in Hebrews 10, when you come to Verses 11-14, the writer of Hebrews sort of draws his conclusions from everything he's described. He says, "Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins; but Christ, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD." The Old Testament priest could never sit down because that symbolized that his work had been completed and it never was, but Christ's work was. He was able to sit down when He finished because it was done.

Verse 14 "For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." The writer of Hebrews says, Christ's one sacrifice atoned for all the sins of every believer for all time, and that means the Old Testament sacrifices are no longer necessary. The priests of Israel offered literally hundreds of thousands of animals up in sacrifice, but never one time did the death of a single animal deal with sin. Never did it take away sins, never did it appease the wrath of a holy God. All of them pointed to the one event that would. Christ satisfied the wrath of God for every sin, of every person who will ever believe for all time through one sacrifice. And Verse 10 tells us what that sacrifice was. It was the body of Jesus Christ.

Now the implication throughout this passage is that what the Old Testament sacrifices couldn't do, the sacrifice of Christ did. I want you to see this. It's just a couple of encouraging things for you to be aware of. Chapter 10:1, Christ provided us with perfect standing before God. In verse 1, the writer of Hebrews says those sacrifices in the Old Testament could never make them perfect. The implication is the sacrifice of Christ did what? It did! It made us perfect. You know this speaks of our standing before God. You have if you're in Christ a perfect standing before God. God looks down at you and He sees you as perfect, as righteous as His own Son.

Notice Verse 2. Not only are we perfect in God's sight, but Verse 2 says, we've been personally cleansed. He says the Old Testament sacrifices never cleansed the worshipers. The implication is, but we have been cleansed by the sacrifice of Christ. You remember on the night of the Last Supper in John 13, Christ said to the disciples as He washed their feet? He said to them, you already have been bathed. In other words, you've already been cleansed. Your hearts have already been cleansed, and now you just need me to wash your feet. That's what the apostle said in Acts 15:9. God has cleansed our hearts by faith. So, what the Old Testament sacrifices couldn't do, Christ has done. He's made us perfect with God. He cleansed our hearts.

But notice also Verse 2. He's removed our constant sense of guilt. Worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had a consciousness of sins. But guess what? In the Old Testament they still had it. They still had that consciousness that their sins hadn't been finally and ultimately dealt with. That animal sacrifice couldn't do that. But you and I today, God through Christ has removed the guilt of sin. We have no more consciousness or guilt for sins. This is talking about our emotions. We understand now that when we confess our sin to God, when we are forgiven by Christ, that it's been finally and ultimately dealt with. And we no longer have to have that consciousness or guilt for sins that have been confessed. And in Verses 15-18 of Hebrews 10, we find that Christ has provided final and permanent forgiveness. Not only has He given us a perfect standing before God, not only Has he cleansed us once forever, not only has He removed a sense of guilt from us" that constant sense of guilt, but He has provided final and permanent forgiveness.

Notice Verse 15.

The Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying (In Jeremiah 31 in the New Covenant) This is the Covenant I will make with them after those days, said the Lord: I will put my laws upon their heart, and on their mind, I will write them, then He then says. And their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more. (The conscious choice on the part of God, I will not hold their sins against them. They're gone)

Verse 18.

Now where there is forgiveness of these things, (that is, for sins and lawless deeds,) there is no longer required any offering for sin.

Listen folks, if you're in Christ, your sins have been finally permanently forever forgiven. You will never stand before God in judgment for your sin again because He judged them on Christ.

Isaac Watson in his magnificent old hymn, explains it well, he said, "Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altar slain, could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain, but Christ, the heavenly Lamb takes all our sins away, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they." The Lord's Table is a graphic reminder of the great once for all sacrifice of Christ for us. It's our joy to take it this morning.