The Indestructible Life

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sacrifice hit this wall of exile, his life reaches past it. That's what an indestructible life is for. Ordinary blood could never cleanse a conscience of this deep, deep pollution. He can. And the author of Hebrews makes the same argument. If the blood of bulls and goats could purify the flesh, the outward ritual impurity, how much more does the blood of Messiah reach the conscience? The greater life reaches what the never could. That is the whole reason the distinction between Jesus and a sacrifice. We spent a lot of time here. But people will then take all of that and run in Hebrews 10 toward a terrible conclusion. For by one offering he's perfected forever those being made holy. The Ruach Hakodesh also testifies us. For after saying, this is the covenant, I will cut with them after those days, says Adonai, I'll put my Torah upon their hearts and upon their minds I will write it. And then he says, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. That's Jeremiah. And Hebrew says, now where there is removal of these, there is no longer an offering for sin. And that announcement is read as the fact that the entire sacrificial system has been eradicated by Jesus, abolished. [00:01:36] Speaker B: That is not what the author is saying. [00:01:46] Speaker A: Last week we tackled a single verse, [00:01:49] Speaker B: which is actually how many, many, many messages are constructed around the world. It's one, let's take one verse and make it say whatever we want to say. Anyone ever heard a message like that before? [00:02:02] Speaker A: Well, that a little differently. [00:02:04] Speaker B: Last week we did take one single verse, the one that penal substitution treats as the smoking gun. Right? Romans 3, 25. [00:02:15] Speaker A: And we worked that out in a [00:02:18] Speaker B: very different way with the introduction of the word hilasterion and the mercy seat, and also the. Well, either you were here or you haven't heard it. And if you haven't heard it, go hear it. Okay, so today brings, as requested, epilogue number two, which, as I was preparing and reviewing my message this morning, I realized I've done something that's. I'm attempting something here that is impossible. Actually, we brought you one verse last week. This week I'm supposed to bring you [00:02:55] Speaker A: the entire book of Hebrews. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Just to contrast, you know, the level of difficulty here. I have roughly 30 minutes to do that. So it's not actually possible. But if there is one book that people will go to to say that everything we said across the entire Atonement Explained series was, what's Balaghan? Is the Hebrew craziness, just wackiness that. That couldn't possibly be true. This is the book that people would go to. And the whole discussion in Hebrews basically is summarized by saying, well, Jesus is the sacrificed lamb who took his blood into the holy of holies to satisfy God's wrath, to buy your access. Case closed. That's what Hebrews says. We can't. We can't do that. We have to take that reading apart this morning, okay? [00:04:01] Speaker A: Because it's far, far, far too small [00:04:05] Speaker B: a picture of what Messiah's work actually entails. [00:04:09] Speaker A: Now, the reason that I can tell [00:04:13] Speaker B: you it's too small a reading is [00:04:15] Speaker A: because the author of Hebrews himself has already said that this book is very, very large. There is a lot going on, and the author of the letter stops right in the middle of it. And he warns his readers that it's going to be hard to understand. [00:04:37] Speaker B: So I feel like I'm in good company attempting this task today. [00:04:41] Speaker A: But he says about this subject, there's much to say. It's hard to explain since you've become sluggish in hearing. He says, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone again to teach you the basics of God's word, you've come to need milk, not solid food. [00:05:02] Speaker B: That's pretty harsh, really. [00:05:04] Speaker A: I did an entire series on the [00:05:07] Speaker B: book of Hebrews that's called A Better Covenant. [00:05:11] Speaker A: Well, no, yeah, I did do that. I also did a series on this that the author is talking about these elementary principles, because you should know them. [00:05:24] Speaker B: The elementary principles. Daniel Lancaster also has a fantastic book called elementary Principles, which is worth a read. [00:05:34] Speaker A: But look at why the author says [00:05:37] Speaker B: of Hebrews, that is, says it's hard. [00:05:39] Speaker A: Look at what he's about to ask the people to understand all at the same time. The earthly tabernacle and its furniture, a heavenly sanctuary that the earthly one copied a high priest, not the one, you know from the line of Aaron, but from the line of Melchizedek. Blood and more than one kind of blood, doing more than one kind of work, the making of a new covenant, the forgiveness of moral sin and the cleansing of conscience, the kind that the old system couldn't manage. That's a lot to try to undertake. And he's going to take all of that and make his argument and bring it into one individual. [00:06:26] Speaker B: That's a lot to carry. [00:06:28] Speaker A: And it was a great deal, he says, for them to understand who grew up in the temple time understood these things. [00:06:38] Speaker B: It is far more difficult for us who have never once seen an altar or understood this from the inside. [00:06:48] Speaker A: And here's what happens. Here's what happens when it becomes too much. People take the one piece that sounds very familiar to them, the blood and the death, and they pull it out by itself and they hold it up and say, there, look. That's what it's all about. Jesus died. Blood was shed, sin was paid for, finished. That's the book of Hebrews. You can't do that with Hebrews. Why? The author told you himself. You have to use your brain. You have to, like. This is solid food. It asks you to understand a lot of pieces. So that's what we're going to do, one piece at a time. [00:07:24] Speaker B: Sanctuary, priest, blood, covenant, conscience. And when they come back together, hopefully you'll see that the death, of course, was never the thing. It's part of something far larger. And the good news is that we're prepared for this. [00:07:42] Speaker A: We're prepared for this because we took now 12 weeks to get here, 11 of a series one epilogue. What did we learn? [00:07:51] Speaker B: Let me recap it in 30 seconds. [00:07:54] Speaker A: We saw that the chatat was a purification offering, that blood is life. We saw that sin does not only stain the sinner, it sends out an impurity that settles on the sanctuary, on the very place where God meets his people. So that if the meeting place, it has to be kept clean or the meeting stops. We saw that forgiveness flows from the mercy of God while blood purifies and restores access. Then last week we saw Messiah himself as the mercy seat, as the Hilastarian, the place where God made a way for his people to meet him that's [00:08:29] Speaker B: brought us to now. [00:08:31] Speaker A: Every one of those ideas goes into [00:08:33] Speaker B: the book of Hebrews with us. Last week I told you that Messiah is the mercy seat. This week I'm going to tell you [00:08:46] Speaker A: that the Messiah is the high priest who walks into the sanctuary and carries life inside. Okay, which one is it? The meeting place or the one who enters it? What answer is coming? Which one is it? [00:09:03] Speaker C: Yes. [00:09:05] Speaker A: And it can be both. You can have two pictures that don't mesh perfectly together like interlocking gears. Paul gives you this idea of a place. [00:09:20] Speaker B: Hysterion. I'm going Hysterion. [00:09:24] Speaker A: Hebrews hands you a high priest who enters the place, and both of them are true. Is that confusing? Not at all. Is that hard teaching? Not at all. It just explains, expands the picture. That's what happens with these authors in the first century who are trying to find words and expressions and ideas to communicate to the audience just how big what happened was, is. So a first piece, the Sanctuary. [00:09:56] Speaker B: Well, two sanctuaries, really. Right. [00:10:00] Speaker A: I'm not pulling out a lot of Hebrews. I'm not bringing in a ton of biblical Bible verses. You can go back and reread it [00:10:08] Speaker B: with my notes, with my sermon as a guide. You can reread it and that will be your assignment. The sanctuary. [00:10:16] Speaker A: There are two, earthly and heavenly. This is in Hebrews. And Hebrews says there was some cleaning that was needed. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Right? [00:10:27] Speaker A: He says. And in the same way he sprinkled the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood. That's talking about Moses in Exodus with [00:10:36] Speaker B: the people and the altar. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Hebrews continues. Therefore, it was necessary for the replicas of these heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices. The holy altar, the holy furnishings, a [00:10:49] Speaker B: replica of these things in the heavenly, [00:10:51] Speaker A: but the heavenly things themselves, with better [00:10:56] Speaker B: sacrifices than these [00:10:59] Speaker A: purified. He says it was necessary for the replicas of these heavenly things to be purified with sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better ones, better sacrifices, purified. The same word for heavenly stuff that [00:11:13] Speaker B: he just used for the earthly stuff. [00:11:15] Speaker A: But, huh? How does heaven become impure? Heaven did not sin. The heavenly sanctuary is not corrupt the way we are. What could possibly need cleansing up there? [00:11:36] Speaker B: Well, we already answered this on the earthly level, and the answer will transfer here for us. [00:11:42] Speaker A: This is at least, let me say, one perspective. [00:11:46] Speaker B: There are others. [00:11:49] Speaker A: Remember how impurity worked. Sin sends out something that travels. It drifts into the sanctuary, settles on the holy, the meeting place in the Holy of holies, on the furniture, even though the sinner never even came near it. We use this fun term, aerial miasma. That's why the earthly sanctuary had to be purged. Not because the building did anything wrong, but because the weight of human impurity came to rest on the place where [00:12:20] Speaker B: God meets his people. Sounds familiar, right? We studied this. [00:12:25] Speaker A: Now carry that up. The earthly sanctuary was only ever a copy. The true meeting place is supposed to be the heavenly one. And here, even more radically, the impurity that this creates, it doesn't just politely stop at the Earth's atmosphere. It reaches the real sanctuary, the highest place, the one where God and humanity are supposed to come together. For this to work, we put that distance there. And it landed on that spot we most needed, kept open. So the heavenly things really were purified, just exactly as the author says, not cleansed of any guilt of their own, cleansed of the separation that we pressed into that meeting place. And understand this impurity. This is what impurity is, the force of death. Sin counts as A force of death pushing God and humanity apart. Same thing on earth, same thing above. And that is exactly what takes a high priest of a special order to be able to go in, a mediator, someone who can enter the place, clear what stands between us and God, make the meeting possible again. The blood of bulls and goats could not do this. It could do it on the copy down here, year after year. But the life of Yeshua does it at the source once. [00:14:05] Speaker B: And that takes, as I said, a high priest of a different sort of. So actually, let me make one important little caveat here. The word heavenly carries a lot of baggage with it. [00:14:16] Speaker A: When Hebrews talks about a heavenly sanctuary, it is not describing some far off place where we're going to go when we die and float endlessly and aimlessly on the clouds for all eternity. That's not the point. From Eden forward, there's this idea of a sanctuary. A place where heaven and earth meet, where God can be with people. So what Hebrews is describing here is this meeting place, supernatural meeting place being reopened. Heaven and earth drawing near to one another through the mediator. And this age and the age to come are also concepts which unfortunately here, and this is a major concept throughout Hebrews, this age, Olam Hazeh and the next stage, Olam Habah, the world to come. If you want more on that now, a better Covenant series or Daniel Lancaster's two volume Messianic Jewish commentary on Hebrews can take you through that. [00:15:24] Speaker B: But that is not our mission here today. [00:15:29] Speaker A: For this morning. The heavenly sanctuary is representative of the place where God and humanity can meet. [00:15:38] Speaker B: Yeshua has reopened it, which raises the obvious how. And the author of Hebrews wants to provide that answer for you, Hebrews. [00:15:51] Speaker A: Our series will do the heavy lifting [00:15:53] Speaker B: we need for understanding this. [00:15:56] Speaker A: His blood is life. And not just any life, indestructible life, Hebrews calls it a life that walked into death. It could not be held there. Hebrews says that he holds his priesthood by the power of his indestructible life. That is why he is a priest of a different order of Melchizedek. Not because of his bloodline, but because death could not hold him. And a life like that, that kind of indestructible life and that kind of blood is the most potent thing in all of creation, the strongest purifying and consecrating force that there is. And there is the key to the book of Hebrews, because his blood is that a one life giving act can do what no other can do. And it can clear the heavenly sanctuary. And it can reach into places that no animal blood could ever go. [00:17:05] Speaker B: And you will notice there's an interesting. There's this verse early in Hebrews, right, [00:17:13] Speaker A: which says there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood. [00:17:19] Speaker B: Why blood? Well, not because death is the price. [00:17:24] Speaker A: It's not about death. [00:17:25] Speaker B: This is what we've learned over and over and over and over again. [00:17:29] Speaker A: Blood is about life. Life is the agent and his is the most potent life there is. And this verse is a statement about purification. It was never a demand for death. Side note on this text, by the way, if anyone ever raises it for you, and it's kind of important when someone says there is no forgiveness of sins without the remission of blood, guess what? That's actually not true, is it? And that's why the author himself qualifies it. He says, one may almost say he writes that all things are cleansed with blood. Go read it. Chapter nine. He knows his Torah. He knows that flour can be used for the poor worshiper, that there's water and fire and the sense of silver. All of these things provide this atonement without a drop of blood. Now that's a side note. [00:18:33] Speaker B: I probably shouldn't have confused what's already confusing, but another way that Yeshua opens the way that his blood opens the [00:18:44] Speaker A: way you remember back to our series [00:18:47] Speaker B: for something else that blood does. [00:18:49] Speaker A: And it's something that a sin offering could never do. It consecrates people. Think back. The blood sealed the covenant at Sinai. It makes covenant. It consecrates Sinai. That was not a sin offering. The blood that ordained the priests and set them apart for the holy service. That was not a sin offering. That was a different kind of blood, the blood of covenant and consecration. And that is the kind of work that Hebrews lays onto Yeshua in his high priesthood. His life giving blood inaugurates a new covenant. This is the new covenant that the prophets promised us, the one God tied to the forgiveness of moral sin, of writing the law on our hearts. And it does not only bring a new covenant with forgiveness, it also consecrates. That's something that blood can do. It takes ordinary people and sets them apart as a priesthood that can serve in God's holy space, that people can come near when they have this consecration. And the third and most powerful thing that Hebrews wants you to understand is that Yeshua's blood does something unbelievable. It reaches the conscience, the sacrificial system for everything it could do could never reach inside the person and cleanse the conscience itself, there was no offering written for that says it outright. The blood of bulls and goats could never perfect the worshiper from the inside out. But the blood of Messiah, he says, offered through the eternal spirit, purifies our [00:20:38] Speaker B: conscience from dead, works to serve the living God. [00:20:42] Speaker A: The same potent life that clears the sanctuary, clears the person. Hearts are sprinkled clean. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Now, some people may have an objection, and that's good. It means you listened. [00:20:58] Speaker A: We said again and again, sacrificial blood never cleansed moral impurity from a person. The Hattaat, it dealt with ritual impurity, moral guilt, on the other hand, that had to be answered by repentance and at its worst had to be addressed through exile. We even said that the deepest moral pollution built up on the holy space beyond anything that any sacrifice could touch, and God would leave the area until his presence would be driven out. That was the ceiling of that whole system. So how can I now tell you that blood reaches the conscience? [00:21:41] Speaker B: It's because Yeshua is not just a better sacrifice doing the same old job. [00:21:48] Speaker A: Sacrifice hit this wall of exile. His life reaches past it. That's what an indestructible life is for. Ordinary blood could never cleanse a conscience of this deep, deep pollution. He can. And the author of Hebrews makes the same argument. If the blood of bulls and goats could purify the flesh, the outward ritual impurity, how much more does the blood of Messiah reach the conscience? The greater life reaches what the lesser blood never could. That is the whole reason the distinction between Jesus and a sacrifice. We spent a lot of time here, but people will then take all of that and run in Hebrews 10 toward a terrible conclusion. For by one offering he's perfected forever those being made holy. The Ruach Hakodesh also testifies us. For after saying, this is the covenant I will cut with them after those days, says Adonai, I'll put my Torah upon their hearts and upon their minds. I will write it. And then he says, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. That's Jeremiah. And Hebrew says, now where there is removal of these, there is no longer an offering for sin. And that announcement is read as the fact that the entire sacrificial system has been eradicated by Jesus, abolished. [00:23:24] Speaker B: That is not what the author is saying. He's not calling the system a failure [00:23:29] Speaker A: because the temple did its work, the priesthood did its work exactly as it was designed. And the prophets tell us that in the age to come or the Third Temple period, Ezekiel saw this in detail, that at least some offerings return. So the author of Hebrews is not in any way trying to abolish the temple. What is finished is the one thing that earthly offerings were never built to do, the reaching of the conscience. That work is done by the only life, the only indestructible life, the only [00:24:06] Speaker B: blood that could reach that far to cleanse. [00:24:09] Speaker A: If you think about the three things [00:24:11] Speaker B: that Yeshua's blood is doing here, we [00:24:14] Speaker A: can see our Atonement explained series laid [00:24:18] Speaker B: out nicely, clearly in view. [00:24:21] Speaker A: Here. He is presented as the high priest carrying blood into the heavenly holy of holies, his own blood, which represents indestructible life. And what is occurring. [00:24:33] Speaker B: One, a cleansing. And we know that blood can do that to impurity. Two, a covenant inauguration. [00:24:42] Speaker A: We know blood was used for that purpose at the Mosaic covenant. [00:24:45] Speaker B: The people were sprinkled, the altar was [00:24:47] Speaker A: sprinkled, and three, a metaphysical transformation takes place. We know that blood can do that. Israel becoming the people of God at this covenant inauguration ceremony, the inauguration of the priests, even the leper who is cleansed had this metaphysical transformation, and so have we. [00:25:12] Speaker B: The sacrificial system could never remove sins [00:25:16] Speaker A: of conscience, but he has. [00:25:20] Speaker B: And in turn, a metaphysical transformation occurs for us. The system of the sacrifices was never broken, it just was. [00:25:30] Speaker A: It has always pointed somewhere. [00:25:32] Speaker B: Now this then leads to this question. [00:25:35] Speaker A: Okay, great, beautiful. What about the cross? [00:25:38] Speaker B: Once again you've completely diminished. You've taken the cross out of the story. [00:25:42] Speaker A: What about that? [00:25:47] Speaker B: Well, Hebrews does speak about the death. [00:25:50] Speaker A: It says he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. It says he was offered once to bear the sins of many. It says we are made holy through the offering of his body. I'm not stepping around any of those things. We never have tried to diminish the death. The question is what the death is. And I've said it again and again and again, that the death is the doorway. It was never the payment. It is faithful obedience carried all the way down to the bottom of the grave, the place where life was poured out so life could then be carried in. And we Talked about Isaiah 53 and bearing the sins of many and meeting meeting place of God so that we could walk together. The servant who meets the people and intercedes for the people. Never a victim absorbing wrath to calm God down with his brutal, bloody death. The death is important, so important. But it's simply not a transaction that buys off God. It can't be. [00:27:05] Speaker B: Now, we put all this in one place, the way that the author does [00:27:08] Speaker A: the sanctuary cleared, the covenant made, the people consecrated, the conscience washed. And then he does. The one thing helps us take one [00:27:21] Speaker B: last amazing step in Hebrews. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Since we have confidence to enter the [00:27:27] Speaker B: holy place by the blood of Yeshua, [00:27:29] Speaker A: by a new and living way which he inaugurated us for us through the veil. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. Our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. Our bodies washed with pure water. The whole series fits into those few lines. A new and living way he inaugurated. He opened it. He left it open. The blood, heart sprinkled clean, bodies washed pure with water. Life that conquered death, blood that is life. The washing that moves a person from death to life. The people not only forgiven, but consecrated, made into a royal priesthood who can draw near. All of this change of status that occurs through the blood of the Messiah, he's not merely improved our standing, he's changed us. [00:28:26] Speaker B: And the holy of holies is open and we have been remade to walk into it, to draw near. The author says to come close. So put it all together, because that was kind of a lot. [00:28:47] Speaker A: Penal substitution. [00:28:50] Speaker B: Looks at Hebrews and sees one thing. The death that paid the wrath of God ended the sacrificial system, tore down the temple. Blood, death payment. [00:29:01] Speaker A: The end of the old. Right, the old. [00:29:05] Speaker B: And for most readers, that's the whole book. [00:29:07] Speaker A: But that is one piece, the death, one piece of a story. So much larger. And the author warns, warned us, guys, this is a big story, solid food. It's deeper, it's better than death bought off anger. Hebrews is the risen Messiah, alive by a life that death couldn't hold, calling us to draw near to God, who was never standing like the Grim Reaper with one of those sickles on a [00:29:39] Speaker B: black, you know, black hood, waiting. Come on in here. Come close. Hebrews teaches us how it is, why it is that we can draw near to God. [00:30:00] Speaker A: And everyone in the room can now [00:30:02] Speaker B: say, golly, this sounds so repetitive. Isn't this exactly what you have said for the last 12 weeks? [00:30:17] Speaker A: And I say exactly, yes, that's the point. I only want you to see that the book of Hebrews only further supports what the whole series was trying to say. So when someone uses Hebrews, it doesn't undo the series, it captures everything. So when, when they use Hebrews to point to whatever they want to undo about what we've studied and learned, you can now explain it to them, or [00:30:49] Speaker B: you can smile politely, [00:30:58] Speaker A: Knowing behind your [00:31:00] Speaker B: smile you know, there's so much more. The blood is life. The priest is risen with indestructible life. He's gone ahead. The sanctuary is heaven and earth meeting, and the worshiper has been cleansed on the inside. Welcome in. [00:31:20] Speaker A: And now, given your own indestructible life, [00:31:29] Speaker B: Shabbat Shalom. [00:31:30] Speaker C: I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch. Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom Macon.