Hebrews: Grace for the Heart and All Forgiveness

Well, this morning we're back in the book of Hebrews.

We've been studying and contemplating our way through the book of Hebrews.

We're in Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

We're going to jump in at verse 1.

We're going to work our way through these verses this morning.

We're going to read a little, make a few points, and work our way through.

Verses 1 through 4.

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 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, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Now let's talk about what this could possibly mean for us.

Point number one is this religious ritual and performancism will always exhaust you toward a grace-centered life.

That's where it's always going to lead.

Now, that performancism could be in a performance-based spirituality or faith, or it could just be in a performancism in the secular world.

Either way, this idea of earning your way unto validation or worth or approval with God, it will crush you and exhaust you.

I love that word in verse one, shadow.

So in this case, that word shadow, it speaks of a foreshadow, right?

You remember English 101?

You learn that.

And so we see foreshadows in literature, we see them in movies.

I'm like way deep diving into The Mandalorian on Disney Plus, so I'm into Star Wars right now.

Do you remember The Empire Strikes Back?

There's like five of you that remember The Empire Strikes Back.

And there was a scene where Luke sees his face inside the mask of Vader, right?

And then later he learns, sorry to ruin it, it's been like 30 years.

Sorry to ruin it.

He learns Vader is his father, right?

Like he learns that, right?

So it's a foreshadow, right?

The first scene leads us to expect and understand the second scene.

That's what this Hebrews writer is doing when he says it's a shadow.

So all of the covenant of law, we read that in the Old Testament, seems so strange to us, all these sacrifices and stuff, the blood of these bulls and goats, all of that, and the demands, right?

Just the demands of holiness.

All of that, it's a shadow, a foreshadowing.

It builds in us an expectation and an understanding of what's to come, and that's Jesus, the final sacrifice, the final priest, the covenant of grace.

So it gives us the law and its holiness and our imperfection to us.

It helps us understand that a performance-based life is just never going to work.

The law always leads us to Jesus.

The law always leads us to a grace-centered life.

Now, what's a grace-centered life?

What would that look like?

What would be some descriptors of that?

Well, we have eight descriptors in our church on our website.

If you go through our new member class, you actually learn these and we read these.

And so I want to read these to you, and not just by like reading it to you or you reading it, but sort of like, I want you to like contemplate it as I go.

Let it read you because there might be two or three that you really connect with.

You don't have to write them down, you won't be able to keep up, but they're all on our website.

Number one, grace-centered people understand that the gospel is not the ABCs of Christianity, the beginning, but the A to Z, the totality.

Meaning the gospel of Jesus is both for the Christian and non-Christian.

Number two, grace-centered people understand that obedience to God's ways and transformation of any kind, especially heart transformation, cannot happen apart from the good news of God's grace.

Number three, grace-centered people rest in and focus on what has been done by Christ, not on what we do.

Number four, grace-centered people believe the Christian life is about deepening the return to God's grace, not moving on to a list of what a Christian should do.

By deepening our return and abiding in Christ, fruit is born in the life of the Christian.

Number five, grace-centered people keep the focus of their faith centered on the riches of God's grace known through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the new life imparted to us by his Spirit.

Number six, grace-centered people believe the gospel must be understood from every text of the Bible because our human nature, in our human nature, we constantly are reverting to self-reliance and self-justification.

So that'd be a way to say we're constantly reverting back to that covenant of law, that which should be the shadow, the foreshadowing force.

Number seven, grace-centered people understand grace to be one way love from God to us.

It is this unconditionality that places us in a position of humility, granting us freedom, peace, and security.

Number eight, grace-centered people live as light in the world by repentance and continued astonishment of God's grace.

Now, this past Wednesday was quite a day, right?

I mean, what a disappointing and disturbing day for all of us.

I was personally, me, I was incredibly angry and sad about the reckless leadership and language of our president.

I was angry, I was sad about that mob, just that gross mob that disregarded civil authority, sieged our capital, damaged our capital.

And then there was this part of me that was so proud of Vice President Pence to stand up.

And then Pence and Pelosi together to unite so brave leadership and leading our Senate and our House, all of which were so brave during those hours, and for them to fulfill their governing duty, right?

I was so proud of that.

And then I was back into like anger and like being disturbed.

Just sort of like cycled through all those things over and over again.

Now, we would not probably agree on what caused that mob, right?

Like that's pretty clear.

We're not going to agree on that.

There's probably like four or five working theories in the room if we went around and be like, yeah, like I kind of agree a little bit about that one, a little bit about that.

We'd just probably end up arguing.

But what we know is we do know we would unite on the chaos we felt when we watched it.

Or you went back and looked at the pictures and the chaos that we feel with that.

And now the other thing that we'll always agree on is the chaos that we have in our hearts.

Right?

Like we know.

Like we know what it feels like to want to storm into a place or over somebody, like with our will to just like just impose that no matter what.

We know what that feels like.

We know what it feels like to be so upset about something, to exert our will when we shouldn't.

We know that chaos.

And that's where we all need to be calmed, right?

Like that's where we all need to be forgiven, right?

Even just a normal day.

Like not even insurrection day, right?

Like that's what Wednesday was, an insurrection.

Not even a day of insurrection, just a normal Tuesday, right?

Like just a normal day.

There's enough in a normal day for us to need full forgiveness.

Just the amount of just sort of like building our identity on things we shouldn't, and then like just defending it and doubling down, or just our jealousy and greed and lust and anger and impatience.

I mean, we can go down the list.

That's just normal human behavior because we're all we're all sinners.

And sometimes that's a major offense, like being in a mob.

Or just like the major offense that you don't talk about anymore, that one also.

And the message of the gospel is just so radical.

And it's just so offensive to my sense of justice, right?

Because what I'm seeing the pictures of like, and getting the names of the people now who are in the mob, and like it's just full justice for me right now toward them, right?

That's all there is right now.

And like, even toward them, now they will receive the justice of this world, mind you, but the gospel says to their hearts, all's forgiven, even to you.

And that's why it can say to me, right?

Like that's why it can say to me, and it can say to you, all's forgiven.

And Jesus, all is forgiven.

That's where this passage is taking us in verses 10 and 12.

Once for all, the single sacrifice, all that was needed, they don't have to work their way out of their sin.

President Trump has to work his way out of poor leadership.

I don't have to work my way out of all my issues in order to be forgiven with God.

All is forgiven.

Verse 5.

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me, and burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.

Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, and it is written of me in the scroll of the book.

Point number two is this.

That order really, really matters.

These verses pull from Psalm 40, and that's a psalm of David, and he's writing from his heart in that psalm, teaching us that God wants our hearts, not simply external behavior compliance.

Now, I see that so often in parenting.

For me, that's where I get it over and over again in parenting, right?

Maybe you said in parenting or grandparenting or you babysat or you have a niece or a nephew or whatever, you're tucking in that little person, right?

That little person, you're tucking that little buddy, and you're like, hey, buddy, uh, you how you talked to Johnny today, you can't do that.

You cannot do that.

Okay, good night.

Let's see in the morning, right?

Like that's option number one.

Like option number two would be, hey, buddy, you hey, tuck in.

You can't you can't talk to like Johnny like that.

What was going on in your heart for you to want to talk to Johnny like that?

Right?

I mean, that's two two different methods, right?

I mean, I mean, one stays in the external, the other goes to the heart.

Both are calling wrong wrong.

But the one begins in behavior, and therefore you never know if it reaches the heart, but the other begins in the heart, and it will always eventually affect behavior.

And that is how Jesus works with us.

That is how the Holy Spirit works for us in God's grace, in the covenant of grace.

Verse 8.

When he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings.

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.

So he's talking about these two covenants there.

Verse 10, and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, wanting from waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Point three, number three, last one, such good news.

In Christ we get to confidently walk, knowing it is God who actively sanctifies us.

It is the Holy Spirit of God that is actively sanctifying us.

Now that is in the already, but not yet.

We're already fully sanctified and holy in Jesus, and yet we're not yet that now, right?

And so the Holy Spirit is working in us to convict and comfort us.

Sanctification is one of those big Christian words.

All it means is you are in the process of becoming more like Jesus.

Verse 14 places us as the passive agent.

We are being worked upon.

So God is sanctifying us.

That's incredibly good news if you've ever tried to put yourself to work within a religious framework.

So we're active, but we're actively passive.

We're actively passive.

Here's how Steve Brown speaks about this notion of sanctification, is from his book, Three Free Sins.

One of the questions asked of those being ordained in the Methodist church, I was ordained a Methodist minister, is this Are you moving on to perfection?

When I was asked that question, I thought about it and decided that I might not be a very good and spiritual person, but I was, after all, being ordained, and that made me somewhat better than most others.

I figured that I was moving on to perfection, at least sort of.

So I answered, yes.

I was very young, and now I'm old as dirt.

Over the years, God has granted me the severe mercy of failure, pain, and an awareness of how I'm about as messed up as anybody I know.

If I were asked that question again, the question of getting better, I would have to answer that I hoped maybe I was getting better, but frankly, I would have to say, who the hell knows?

It's a good point, right?

Because how can you know?

And if you think you're getting better, you're probably not getting better.

And then if you think you're not getting better, you're probably getting better, but you're just probably not even aware of it.

Certainly, Paul's experience through the scriptures is a growing awareness of how he's not getting that much better.

And perhaps that's what it means to get better.

So who knows?

The point is, is we are called into a confessional life of falling into Jesus and having our hearts and our minds set upon him.

In college, my buddies and I, we love to go backpacking, and one time, one weekend, we went up to Cloudland Canyon in northwest Georgia.

Here's a picture of it, a beautiful picture.

This is about what it looked like.

It was wintertime when we went backpacking up there, and we hiked our way down in that canyon, and there's a river stream down there, and we were hiked along it, and we started late in the day, and we were in college, so we weren't thinking everything through, you just went for it.

But we didn't think about the fact that we needed to hike back out before dark to get up to our campsite, up on the rim, and so it got dark while we were down there, and eventually we lost the trail, right?

We just lost it, and we didn't realize it, because that's how it works when you lose a trail.

You just keep on hiking, you're having a good conversation, you keep going, and you realize it later, and then you go, oh my gosh, it's getting darker.

We're trying to backtrack to get the trail.

Eventually we go back and we get the right trail.

And the point is, is like it's easy to lose our focus.

It's just easy to get on a different trail, head down a different path.

And for us and the writers of Hebrews, he's building out for us this understanding to understand the difference of the covenant of grace and the covenant of law so that we understand that law is a foreshadowing to push us into and to live under the covenant of grace.

Now it's so easy, right?

It's strong in us to return to law.

Some performance.

We love that control.

Helps us feel better about ourselves.

But we have to allow it to guide us in what is right and wrong, and then also exhaust us into our great need of Jesus and God's grace for us.

This week my heart returned to the great hymn, Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

And I close with these words.

Oh soul, are you weary and troubled?

No light in the darkness you see.

There's light for a look at the Savior and life more abundant and free.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim and the light of his glory and grace.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that in the midst of a week of chaos that we can come before you in confession, we are no better.

We are no better.

There is chaos in our hearts.

And so we always begin with ourselves and say, forgive us of all the ways we have caused destruction in our personal lives and in our relationships and in our families, the ways that we cast judgment before we cast love.

Forgive us.

Thank you that your grace and kindness is so much bigger, perpetually bigger than any of our sin.

Thank you that Christ is once for all.

Once for all.

And that all is forgiven in Jesus, and that we rest in that forgiveness and we can enjoy that forgiveness as we walk with you through this world.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.