"The Final Sacrifice" Hebrews 7:27 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Let me read for us beginning in verse 22.

This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing office, but he holds this priesthood permanently because he continues forever.

Consequently, he's able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

It was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.

He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests.

But the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.

This is the word of God.

I have shared this with you before, but I was at a family member's house with my family, and we'd spent some time there over the week or so that we were there, and they asked me as the resident pastor to pray for dinner.

And right before I started to pray, this family member said, Oh, and by the way, can you not mention the blood of Jesus in your prayer?

It seems like every time you're praying, you're always talking about the blood of Jesus, and it's a little bit weird at dinner.

And uh I received that and said, Okay, here's a blood-free prayer for dinner.

It until he said that, it had not occurred to me.

That was kind of my subtle evangelistic technique, praying over, you know, the meal where we're so thankful for this salmon and but more than salmon, we're thankful for the blood of Jesus Christ that forgives us of our sins and the final and complete payment of his blood, which was delivered on the cross in our half and for the green beans.

Amen.

It is a little bit out of place, I'll grant it, and yet every Christian understands that.

When you want to talk about Jesus, or when you just want to pray and give thanks, or you want to say something that you hope will resonate in the ears of a non-believer, you often turn to the blood of Christ.

It really is the focal point of our faith, the center point of our religion is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

And it's not just that he died on the cross, the Bible has lots of other martyrs in it.

But that his death or his death paid atonement for our sin.

That we are guilty of sin, our sins were transferred to Jesus, and through his death, our sins are forgiven.

His death held back, propitiated the wrath of God.

That happened as he died, bearing God's wrath for our sin.

And so the Bible speaks of that as the blood of Christ.

All through the book of Hebrews, that's just referred to as the blood of Christ, that the blood of Jesus makes atonement for our sin.

Now, this part of Hebrews is really the pinnacle of this argument, where the author is contrasting Melchizedek and his priesthood with that of the priesthood of Levi.

And I won't uh drag you all through a study of Melchizedek, although it's one of my favorite things to talk about.

I love Melchizedek, but he stayed home tonight, just for most the most part.

But for one minute, he's here as a visitor.

And Melchizedek had a priestly order that goes back to the book of Genesis.

Melchizedek was the priest that met Abraham.

He was a priest, but his name means king of righteousness.

He was the king of Salem, which means peace.

And so here's a person who is acting as both a king and a priest.

He's not from Abraham, he's not in that sense Jewish.

He doesn't descend from Abraham, but he is a true priest and a true king of the king of heaven.

Now, Psalm 110 picks up on our friend Melchizedek and refers to him as the type of Christ, that Melchizedek comes first and then Jesus.

Jesus comes filling in the pattern of Melchizedek.

And the Old Testament kind of leaves the rest of the details murky, but then you get to Hebrews chapter 7, and it's a long treatise, really, on how the Melchizedekian priesthood is better than the priesthood of Levi.

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

Now there are a lot of differences between the two.

Levi, uh, you know, he's one of the twelve tribes.

He was um the founder of the priesthood, the le the tribe of Levi.

They didn't have land.

Uh they were spread throughout uh Israel because they were supposed to minister as priests all around Israel.

The high priest who served in the temple, who brought the sacrifice into the center of the temple and put blood on the Ark of the Covenant once a year, he had to be from the tribe of Levi.

And so there's a long pedigree there for the worship of the high priest.

That is very different than Melchizedek.

Melchizedek does not come from Levi.

It's not a priesthood that's passed down by genealogy.

And in fact, Hebrews points out, uh, we don't even know when Melchizedek died.

Everybody in Genesis has a start date and end date except Melchizedek.

He walks onto the pages of scripture, walks off the pages of scripture.

Now, I'm not suggesting the historical person of Melchizedek did, in fact, never die, but it's noteworthy.

The Bible doesn't tell you about his death or his genealogy because that's not what's important.

In that sense, he's eternal.

And that's why the priesthood of Jesus Christ is patterned after him and not after Levi.

Jesus was born to a virgin birth, so in that sense, his genealogy is not what gives him his pedigree.

He is from the line of Judah, which is not the line of the priesthood, it's the line of the king.

And so forth.

That's all the argument in Hebrews 7.

But this argument pinnacles here at verse 27 that he has no need.

Jesus in the Machizedan priesthood has no need like those high priests.

Those high priests, just it's almost a dismissive way he says it, isn't it?

Those high priests, meaning all the priests from the tribe of Levi that served on the Day of Atonement, went into the Ark of the Tabernacle, went into the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies in the temple, did that every year.

It was the high point of the Israelite religion.

Here, the author just dismisses it as those priests.

Like referring to the president or the list of presidents of the United States as those politicians.

It's a dismissive way of saying it.

And that's what the author here does, that Jesus has no need, like those priests, to offer sacrifices daily for his own sins and for the sins of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

This is really the high point of the argument here.

And he makes it into prongs.

And I think this is the best way to understand this passage.

It's the final sacrifice that is the Brooks Brothers logo, by the way.

God bless America.

By negation and affirmation.

There's two ways that the argument is made here in Hebrews chapter 7: negation and affirmation.

He says it negatively, and then he says it positively.

The negation here is about what Jesus, because of his identity, nullifies.

And he nullifies three things in particular.

First, the son's dependency.

The son's dependency is nullified by his identity as a priest according to Amachizedek.

It says he has no need in verse 27.

And it's the same word order in the Greek, and it does sound, you know, it is being led with here.

He has no need.

And you can almost put the period there.

Jesus has no need.

It almost doesn't matter what comes next.

Jesus has no needs.

Yes, in his humanity, he was dependent.

Yes, in his humanity, he had a true human nature.

He required food and he required sleep and he prayed.

Angels had to minister to him.

He experienced abandonment from his friends.

He mourned the death of his friends.

He himself would be abandoned, and he himself would experience death in a true way.

He went through death all the way to the end, descending down to Sheol.

So he, in that sense, was dependent as all human beings are.

But the Son's dependency here, when you get to the cross, is nullified by his identity as an eternal high priest.

He's not dependent.

He's not dependent.

Now, this is contrasted with all those other high priests.

All those other high priests came and went, and they all died.

One of the funniest lines in Hebrews 7, you might not think it was funny when I read it earlier, but when you look at it, I think you'll see the humor.

Why were there so many in the tribe of Levi?

Why did you need so many candidates for priesthood?

Because they were prevented by death from continuing in office.

That's kind of funny.

Like why why in our country do you need so many presidents?

Well, they are prevented.

George Washington, sadly, is prevented by death from running this year for president, sadly.

That's the way Paul, or the author of Hebrews, who I'm going to call Paul the rest of the night.

That's the way he describes this.

The high priests were prevented by death from continuing forever.

Now that's more than a throwaway footnote.

That really gets to the heart of the matter.

Those high priests were were weak.

Those high priests were creatures.

Those high priests were human beings with human natures, and that's it.

They were sinful.

So they, the wages of sin being death, they too sinned, they too died.

The priesthood of Jesus is not a successive priesthood.

It's not a line of priests that are still in effect today.

We are all, there's a priesthood of all believers.

It's not a line that is passed down one to the other.

There's no apostolic succession of the priesthood, so to say.

So it could be concentrated in a unique person.

All the eggs can be in one basket here.

All of our hope for salvation can be in Jesus because he's not dependent like all of those other priests were.

The son has no need, is the way Paul says it.

He has no need.

But he goes on there.

This passage nullifies the sacrifice's insufficiency.

The sacrifices of the Old Testament were insufficient.

The sacrifices themselves are insufficient.

It's the blood of a bull or a goat.

You deserve eternal hell and eternal wrath from God because of your sin.

And instead, a sheep is offered.

A bull is offered.

A goat is offered.

And yes, the animal is innocent.

The animal didn't do your sins.

There's a sense in which your sins can be imputed on the animal, certainly.

The hands were laid on the scapegoat and he was chased away.

There was a real sense in which imputation was taking place even in the Old Testament.

Your sins are transferred from you to the animal in some sense, but those animals could not provide true atonement.

It's just a shadow of atonement.

That's it.

And you know this because they had to always be offered.

It's not like the sheep should have tried harder to be a better sacrifice.

The bulls or goats should have been better bulls and goats, so God would have accepted it more.

It's not that.

It's just that they're weak because they are bulls and goats.

There's this tension here, described in Hebrews 9.22, that without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins.

But the other side of that tension is that the blood of bulls and goats is powerless to take away sins.

It's not like for like.

So the blood in bulls and goats can't actually do the trick.

These are frail, creaturely sacrifices.

When you consider the frailty of the high priest, you have a frail creature offering another frail creature as a sacrifice to an eternal and thrice holy God.

The math doesn't add up.

And this is why verse 27 says the priest has to offer these sacrifices daily.

Now, some of these sacrifices were only commanded but once a year.

And so daily here doesn't mean literally every day, but it just means it's a constant, ongoing cycle.

Constantly ongoing.

Constantly ongoing.

You think of the little child who celebrates Christmas.

The first Christmas he's old enough to celebrate it.

And he asks, What is Christmas a celebration of?

Oh, it's a celebration of the birth of Jesus.

And then next year Christmas comes around.

And the child asks, What are we celebrating this year?

Oh, also the birth of Jesus.

But wasn't he born last year?

We get around that in our children's mystery here anyway by referring to Christmas as Jesus' birthday party.

That makes more sense for a kid.

They have a grid for a birthday party every year, but not as birth every year, because it happened once for all.

These sacrifices happen on an annual basis.

You don't need to study Jewish theology to recognize the fact that they're happening every year means they're not working.

They happen all the time, daily, is the language here.

Every day, it seems like.

Because they don't work.

The sacrifices were made in faith.

It doesn't mean that the high priest lacked enough faith to make the sacrifice successful, or the lamb perhaps had a blemish in it.

It's through no fault of their own.

It's not the priest's fault he has to make the same sacrifice tomorrow.

It's not the lamb's fault he wasn't a perfect sacrifice.

These sacrifices were made in faith, but they could never ease the conscience of the one rendering it.

That's the language in Hebrews 9.

Doesn't matter how many times a sacrifice is offered, it doesn't clear the conscience.

So the worshipper is convicted of sin.

The worshipper has the law and is convicted that they have broken God's law.

They stand worthy for judgment.

But fortunately, the law directs them to a sacrifice.

They are supposed to offer a sheep, let's say, on the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for their sin.

And so in faith, they offer up the sheep.

The sheep is then put to death by the priest, the blood is sprinkled, everything happens, the entrails are burned, all that goes on with the sheep happens, the smoke rises, it's a pleasing aroma before the Lord.

Everything takes place perfectly.

But then the worshiper turns around.

At that moment, is his conscience less convicted than it was before the sacrifice?

And the answer is no.

The blooded bulls and goats could not purify the conscience.

And so the worshipper leaves still with that burden.

And he comes back tomorrow.

And he comes back the day after that.

And the day after that, over and over and over again.

Oh, I'm sure they found some peace in it.

There's always obedience to God always brings some element of peace, but it couldn't bring perfect peace and it couldn't purify the conscience from the inside out.

It couldn't silence the doubt.

It couldn't change the heart.

No matter how many times the priest dips his fingers in the blood and splatters the blood, it could even the priest's heart couldn't be cleansed.

He's the one doing the sacrifice.

So why did God demand that the sacrifices be offered?

Well, as a pattern for Christ.

As a pattern for Jesus to fill in.

These sacrifices were insufficient.

When Jesus arrives, he nullifies their insufficiency.

That's the language of verse 27.

It's nullified.

The sacrifice will not be offered daily.

Now notice why in verse 27 they had to be offered daily, first by the priest for his own sins, and second for the people.

This leads to the third negation.

The priest's sins are negated through Christ.

The son's dependency is negated through him being the eternal priest.

The sacrifice's insufficiency is negated by Jesus being the perfect sacrifice.

And thirdly, the priest's sin is negated.

In this instance, when Jesus offers himself on the cross, Jesus negates the priest's sin.

All of the priests in the Old Testament had sin.

They were weak, infirm sinners.

Note the order here in verse 27, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people.

The priest had to first atone for his own sins.

The order is important.

The priest couldn't atone for other people's sins, and then his.

Why not?

Because then you have a person with unconfessed sin, so to speak, making atonement for other people's sins.

The vessel is dirty, it can't produce clean water.

So first the priest has to make atonement for his own sin before he can step in for other people.

We understand this in principle.

We have a parallel for this in the New Testament worship.

In principle, if you have unconfessed sin, you're not supposed to take communion.

You're supposed to confess your sins before the Lord.

If you have separation from another believer, you don't take communion.

You go and you make things right with that believer, and then you take communion.

It doesn't mean that you're in a real sense sinless between the moment of confession and communion, like hurry up and pass the tray.

I just confess my sin.

Let's go.

But you recognize conceptually how this works, that you confess your sins before the Lord, then you have fellowship with him.

This is how it worked with the high priest.

Conceptually, the high priest is to make atonement for his sins and then the sins of the people.

The problem is that the high priest kept sinning.

He wasn't sinless.

The priest was sinful.

Notice the desperation in the priest's condition.

He knows his own sin.

And yet he's required to make sacrifices every day.

Do you think the priest knew he was a sinner?

Of course.

Did he know he needed to sacrifice?

Also, of course.

His soul was dependent on atonement.

But he had no one to make atonement for him.

The priest was in a desperate condition.

And one that multiplied.

Notice the priest knows he's a sinner.

He has to make atonement for himself, which just drives home the idea of the inadequacy.

This is one of the reasons that religions often make their priests dress up in these, you know, bombastic, pompous ways.

Big hats and big things and big sensors and all this stuff.

Because you're clinging on to some hope.

The worshipper in those false religions is clinging on to some hope that by the gown and by the hat and by the incense and by the staff and all that, that that guy is different than I am.

He's different than me.

Look at him.

He's got to be godly.

I have to have some hope through his worship.

Of course I do.

Look at him.

He's got to be different than me.

But the truth is, and you get a little window into this in verse 27, the truth is, he's not different from you.

He's a sinner just like you.

It doesn't matter how many gowns and big red hats and big censors they wave, they're still a sinner in their heart.

And that's the high priest's dilemma.

It doesn't matter how big his robe is, all the tassels, all the pomegranates sewn in his robe, which were commanded by God, by the way, that he's wearing what God commanded him to wear.

It doesn't change who he is.

He knows he's a sinner.

In fact, flip over, if you will, keep your finger in Hebrews 8, but flip over to Leviticus 4.

I want you to just get a little sense of the desperation of this priest.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, chapter 4 is the main passage of this comes from.

Leviticus 4 · chapter mention

You get the broad instruction in verse 2.

If anyone sins unintentionally in any of Yahweh's commands about things not to be done, or he does any one of them.

So sins of commission, sins of omission.

That's very broad.

In other words, if anybody sins accidentally, by either doing something they weren't supposed to or not doing something they were supposed to, they got problems.

Verse 3.

If it's the anointed priest who sins, he brings guilt on all the people.

Well, then he's got to offer for the sin that he's committed, he's got to offer a bull from the herd without blemish to Yahweh for sin offering.

He's got to offer a sinless sacrifice, a flawless bull.

He'll bring the bull to the entrance of the tent of the meeting before Yahweh, lay his hands on the head of the bull and kill the bull before Yahweh.

The anointed priest shall take some of the blood of the bull and bring it into the tent of the meeting.

The priest shall dip his finger in the blood, sprinkle part of the blood seven times before Yahweh in front of the veil of the sanctuary.

He'll put some of the bull of the blood on the horns of the altar of the fragrant incense before Yahweh that's in the tent of the meeting, and all the rest of the blood of the bull shall pour out on the base of the altar of the burnt offering that's in the entrance of the tent of meeting.

All the fat of the bull of the sin offering he'll remove from it, the fat that covers the entrails, the fat that's on the entrails.

So you're up here with the kidneys.

Let me look at verse 9.

The two kidneys with the fat on them, and the loins, and the long lobe of the liver will be removed along with the kidneys.

The skin in verse 11 of the bull and its flesh, with his head and its legs, its entrails, its dung, the rest of the bull, he'll carry that outside the camp to a clean place, to the ash heap, he'll burn it up with firewood, and on the ash heap it shall be burned up.

That's what that's a lot of work.

I've killed a goat before.

That was hard work.

I can't imagine what it'd be like to kill a bull.

I've gone after the goat liver.

I imagine it's similar to go after a bull.

I'll tell you this, it's not something you can do secretly.

What's the priest gonna do?

Sneak the bull around the corner so nobody sees and slaughter it?

Come back with the lobe of the liver?

This is a very public event.

This is what he has to do if he sins unintentionally.

In other words, all the time.

And he's dipping his fingers in the blood and going into the he's sprinkling it on the horns.

The altar on the curtain.

All the time he's doing this.

You can go back to Hebrews 8.

Daily is the language in Hebrews 8.

Oh man, the poor priest.

And he's the one to make atonement for the people, but he's got to make atonement for his sins first.

So you take all of this picture together.

The priest needs his own sacrifice.

The sacrifice could not actually perfect the priest.

The motives of the priest were themselves subject to sin, hence the lack of perfection of the whole system.

And the sacrifice had to be repeatedly offered because it couldn't be perfect.

Every day the priest wakes up with us.

Every day.

Notice those are the things that are expressly denied about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

All of them are negated.

They're denied.

Jesus' death is different than the Levitical deaths in all three of those ways.

So what's affirmed about Jesus?

This is the affirmation part of this passage.

That's the negation.

Now the affirmation.

What's affirmed about Jesus here?

Well, first, his sovereignty.

The Son is affirmed as sovereign.

Look at the rest of verse 27.

Jesus did this once for all when he offered up himself.

You've never seen a sacrifice to do that.

You've never seen a sacrifice, offer up himself.

The sequel to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a book called The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

A book which I've read and loved.

And there's a scene in the book where they have crossbred talking cows.

And they use them at the high-end restaurants.

The cows walk to the table, they introduce themselves to you, they tell you all that they've eaten, and they offer a particularly scrumptious part of their body.

And you choose it and you tell the cow how he wants it, and he goes and does himself in and he's served.

I found that chapter exceedingly funny.

Less so you apparently, but that's okay.

It's fiction.

You teach their own.

One of the reasons it's funny is because of the absurdity of it.

Of course, the animal doesn't offer himself up.

But that's what Jesus does here.

He offers himself up.

He's not subject to the action.

He's not the cow taken from the herd.

He is both the priest and the sacrifice and the Lord of the whole system.

He designed the system.

He's sovereign over the system.

The priest is only following orders.

The sacrifice is only following the priest's orders.

They're both being acted on, but not here.

Jesus is the one who designed the system in his deity, who enacts the system in his humanity, and he offers himself up to die.

He is both priest and sacrifice.

He is both the resurrected savior and the victim.

He's the subject of worship and the object of worship.

He's both sides of the equation.

The priests were so frail and just subject to a system, but not the son.

The son is the Lord of the system.

He does this to himself.

Secondly, this passage affirms the Son's sufficiency.

His sacrifice was singular, final, ultimate, and perfect.

It was only offered once.

That's the language of Hebrews chapter 9.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

Jesus is appointed for man once to die, after that comes judgment.

So Christ was offered in Hebrews 9.28 once to bear the sins of many.

Jesus only died once.

It was a singular sacrifice.

It's so interesting that today in Roman Catholicism they had the sacrifice of the Mass, the perpetual sacrifice of the Mass.

The idea behind the doctrine of transubstantiation is that the host is, in a sense, literally Jesus' body, and it is re-sacrificed, perpetual, the perpetual sacrifice of the Mass.

It's very much contrary to this system.

I point that out because this goes in two directions.

It was John Owen, I read his commentary on this passage this week, and John Owen compares the Jewish system to the Roman popish system, he calls it, the Roman Catholic system, and it is really stunning all the similarities.

The frailty of the priests, the inadequacy of the sacrifices, their constant repetition, and all of that.

Both of those systems are condemned by this verse.

The Jewish system is nullified by this verse, and the perpetual sacrifice of Jesus in the Mass is rendered void by this verse.

Jesus was sacrificed once and finally.

He did this once for all, is the language there.

Watching it ongoing makes no sense.

It's not reenacted, it was finalized.

For the 2006 World Cup, Dieter and I were uh out of cell coverage.

We were down in South America and we we couldn't tune in to the final.

We were uh backpacking out in the a rugged part of Chile.

It was amazing.

And we got to the closest town only to find out the final of the game.

We got to our uh hotel room and turned on the TV, and we we thought I was expecting to see you know highlights or whatever, but uh there was a bit of a delay in it being shown there, and it was still showing the overtime.

So we got to actually watch the last part of overtime of the World Cup final.

So in a sense, it was anticlimatic because we already heard he won, and then we just watched the end of the game, but it was the Danes you know, famous red card for headbutting the guy and all this.

And for soccer people, it was it was an important game.

Less, again, less so for you, but to each their own.

After the game, we know who won.

We watched the end of overtime.

Well, now what?

We're not gonna go watch the pre-game show.

We're not gonna, you know, watch the players be introduced again, and we're certainly not gonna do that every day.

It's over.

We know the results.

It's done.

I mean, I'm sure if you were a diehard fan, you could watch the highlights again.

You might even watch the gamer a second or third time, but you wouldn't watch it as if it was really being played in front of you.

Of course not.

You know it's just a fickle attempt.

So it is with the sacrificial system.

It makes no sense to do ongoing representations of the death of Jesus Christ in that regard.

Because his death was final and sufficient.

Thirdly, the son's sinlessness is proclaimed.

The son's sinlessness.

Jesus has no need to offer first for his own sins.

So that is going to, it's a little bit of begging the question here.

When you say he has no need to offer first for his own sins, isn't that assuming into the argument that the son is sinless?

And lo and behold, it is.

Because verse 26 says that he is innocent, holy, unstained, separated from sinners.

And then verse 28 says the son has been made perfect forever.

So between verse 26 and verse 28, it's sandwiched this idea that Jesus has no need to make atonement for his own sin because he is sinless, holy, and undefiled.

The Bible makes that point clear over and over and over again as well.

Jesus is constantly referred to as the Holy One.

2 Corinthians 5, 21 says he knew no sin.

He knew no sin.

Peter says in 1 Peter 2, 22, he committed no sin.

John says, 1 John 3, verse 5, in him there is no sin.

1 John 3:5

The woman, Pilate's wife, called Jesus righteous and innocent in Matthew 27.

And the angel in Luke 1.35 declared that Jesus was the Holy One of God.

Judas, who is Jesus' sworn enemy, committed suicide, confessing that he was guilty of betraying innocent blood.

That's Matthew 27, verse 4.

Matthew 27:4

Matthew, verse Matthew chapter 4, Jesus endured his temptation in the wilderness without sinning.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

John 8 46, Jesus asked a group of lawyers, which one of you accuses me of sin, and they were silent.

Romans 10, verse 4 says he kept the whole law of righteousness.

Romans 10:4

You have the testimony of women, kings, attorneys, friends, enemies, apostles, and angels that Jesus was sinless.

It was a few years ago during some of the uh the rioting in the May of 2020 where a television they were tearing down monuments and all I'm sure you remember that.

A television anchor made a theological argument on national TV.

I love it when news correspondents make theological arguments.

He said, Jesus Christ, if that's what you believe in, admittedly was not perfect when he was here on earth.

Therefore, it's okay for Christians to analyze the flaws of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people bringing theology into part into politics.

I just wish it was better theology.

Jesus Christ, if that's who you believe in, admittedly was not perfect when he was here on earth.

I mean, that's so contrary.

That would make, if that were true, that would make our religion like every other religion.

Pointless.

But here the scripture confirms that Jesus was holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners.

Why is that important?

That means he had no need to make a sacrifice for his own sins.

He never had to do it.

Because he had no sins.

This is why he could offer himself once and for all, is the language at the end of verse 27.

Once for all, he can do it to himself because he is sinless.

He doesn't need to be perpetually sacrificed.

It was the final, complete atonement for sin.

And you think if the Lamb was insufficient and it had to be offered every year, how could Jesus' death truly atone an infinite amount of wrath for all of God's elect?

How could it do that?

And the answer, of course, is that Jesus is an infinite person.

A singular human being could never fully atone for God's wrath.

He would spend your whole eternity in hell and still have guilt to pay.

But Jesus, because he's sinless and eternal, can propitiate all of God's wrath that is aimed at you.

He has no sin of his own, so he does not have to make a sacrifice for himself.

He's the perfect sacrifice, in other words.

Everything the Old Testament pictured about the sacrificial system is fulfilled in Jesus.

Even if you were to study the Old Testament closely, you'd come away with flaws of the sacrificial system.

That had to happen over and over again.

The high priest himself was guilty of sin, and that it was hereditary.

And Jesus nullifies all of those by being the perfect sinless sacrifice with an eternal priesthood that doesn't need to be passed down.

A singular priest with a singular sacrifice.

All of the weakness of the Old Testament system is nullified to the perfections of Jesus Christ.

Lord, we're thankful that you are the perfect sacrifice for sin.

Giving your life as a ransom for many is what you said in Mark's gospel.

This was written, you told your disciples, that the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem.

He must be crucified, delivered over into the hands of sinful men, and put to death.

This must take place, was Luke's language.

It must take place.

And we understand why.

There's no other way to salvation.

A creature cannot be sacrificed by a creature for another creature.

Instead, you designed a better way.

The eternal Son of God taking on a human nature to experience death in all of your sinlessness, all of your righteousness, fulfilling Allah, dying the perfect death in our place once and for all.

This validates atonement.

That without the shedding of blood there's no forgiveness of sins.

It nullifies the sacrificial system by completing it, fulfilling it, and being the perfect sacrifice.

And so today, Lord, we give you thanks that you are our high priest, reigning in heaven, eternal, without beginning or end.

Your humanity certainly from David and your deity from the Father.

And we worship you because of your perfect sacrifices.

In the name of Christ we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.