Text: Hebrews 10:1-10, Title: A Body for God? Date/Place: NRBC, 12/9/07, AM
A. Opening illustration: talk about the Mormon concept of God having a physical body that is bound to spatial and temporal realms, and about him being a man first, and becoming god later, and his physical relationship with our heavenly mother to produce spirit children…
B. Background to passage: The book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians that were wavering in their faith, considering going back to Judaism. The writer has spent much time and ink arguing for the superiority of Christ to angels, the law, the Jewish priests, and the sacrificial system. Our passage this morning is the culmination of the entire letter, where he speaks again of how God dealt with these insufficiencies by giving his Son a body and allowing him to be the substitute for us all.
C. Main thought: There was a time and reason that God fashioned a body for Himself.
A. The Shadow Didn’t Work (v. 1-4)
1. The writer speaks of the law as a shadow of things that would come. But he says that it could never cleanse the conscience of sin within the individual, nor could it perfect or complete the worshippers. Its design was to lead believers in God to a consciousness of sin in their lives, so that they might by faith grasp. As Paul said in Galatians, the law was simply a side road to faith to point erring people to a dependent trust in God. The design of the law was not to give a standard of righteousness so that you can be good enough to get to heaven. It was to bring despair in the seekers life. And therefore it couldn’t cleanse the conscience that was heightened to sin by the Spirit. And it offered no help for those trying to do better. It pointed to the help, and the cleansing, and the final sacrifice that would come. It pictured a sacrificial Lamb of God who would come to take away the sins of the world.
2. Rom 5:20, Gal 3:19, 24, Luke 18:13-14
3. Illustration: like going to eat at one of those restaurants where they charge you for every refill but you don’t know that, and you just drink away with no care or thought of it, until you get the bill, have you seen one of those old cartoons where the shadow leaves its maker and begins to do its own thing, In his book, My Tortured Conscience, Martin Weber writes, “He was a deeply committed Christian evangelist. Even in retirement he won many converts throughout the conference. Everyone spoke well of the gentle man. One cold and gray morning he put his shotgun on his shoulder and told his wife he was going outside to shoot a rat. Then gave his wife a kiss on the cheek. Moments later she heard the shot. Only it wasn’t the rat he killed, it was himself. His funeral was one of the saddest you could find anywhere. The unspoken question on everyone’s mind was, “What caused such a godly man to kill himself? What caused him to pull the trigger?” Here was a man who had no problem opening the New Testament and proving the importance of keeping the law. But in his diary he wrote these words, “Here I’ve been telling everyone else to keep the law and I can’t even keep it myself. What hope do I have of heaven? Why go on?” An overwhelming sense of condemnation made him kill himself.
4. One of the common answers given in a street poll about how to get to heaven is some version of keeping the 10 Commandments, but the point of scriptures is that you can never do it. And those commandments are powerless to help you do it. They just stand there cold and immovable as the standard of righteousness. But know today, God never intended for you to be able to under the power of the human will be good enough to get to heaven. The law seems that way, but His true intention was to heap enough guilt upon a person that they would turn to him in utter desperation for forgiveness. You can’t be good enough, do enough good things, live a moral life, help enough people, give enough money, go to church enough to get into heaven. That system never worked, nor was it intended to. On our own we are hopelessly lost in sin by nature and by choice, and there is no human way to get yourself out. And if God had left us there, we would have no hope at all. But…
B. God Fashioned A Body (v. 5-8)
1. In God’s incomprehensible wisdom, before the fall of Adam, before the foundations of the earth, God designed a plan that would not leave humanity hopeless, and would bring God inestimable glory. He came into the world. And not like an angel in the brightness of His glory, but in the form of a baby in a manger, that would grow into a boy, then a man. Quoting Ps 40:6-8 twice, the writer says that God was not satisfied ultimately with the blood of bulls and goats, nor by burnt offerings for sin, but prepared a body for His Son to come and to die in. This was the plan from the get go—to enrobe His Son in flesh.
2. John 1:14, Heb 2:17, Philip 2:7-8,
3. Illustration: “The mystery of the humanity of Christ, that He sunk Himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.” –Luther, “The Shekinah glory of God was nothing less than the visible manifestation of God…The incarnate Word is the true Shekinah, the ultimate manifestation of the presence of God amongst human beings, for the Word became man.”
4. Who would have ever come up with such a plan? Veiling the infinite One in finite clothing. Compressing the omnipresent One into time and space limits. Giving a non-corporeal being a body for a season. Temporarily restraining the shekinah glory of Christ from expression. Concealing external deity with the disguise of frail humanity. Reducing infinitely high royalty to a common ordinary person. Leaving all the glories of heaven to be born a baby in a manger. All of this so He could glorify Himself, demonstrate His ending love and faithfulness, communicate the good news of a faith that draws us near, and ultimately provide a way of dealing with sin through an ultimate sacrifice in that Christ was perfectly obedient to do the will of the Father even to death.
C. A Perfect Substitution (v. 9-10)
1. As mentioned earlier, the animals sacrificed were a type or shadow of that which was coming. And when He came, He fulfilled the greatest need that we had to the glory of God. He became the substitute sacrifice for me and you. One of the unique things about Christianity is that it actually has a way to deal with sin. God chose to deal with sin by punishing it (maintaining His justice) upon a substitute sacrifice. It had to be a human, because animals were not worthy substitutes. But it had to be a sinless human. And that sinless human had to die vicariously for others. You can now see why this is the culmination of the whole book! Jesus meets all these requirements. And He did it hapax—once and for all! And He will provide help for those trying to kill sin, and seek God, as the Chief Intercessor for us!
2. Heb 7:27, 9:22, Rom 3:21-26, 2 Cor 5:21, John 1:12, Philip 2:9-11,
3. Illustration: C.H. Spurgeon said, “Human nature’s way of salvation is, “Do, do, do.” But God’s way of salvation is, “Done, done, it is all done.” You have but to rely by faith on the atonement that Christ accomplished on the cross.” Christ died for us. Jesus came so that you and I might transfer our guilt to Him and accept by faith that as the guiltless One, He has received our sin and taken it to Himself.
If you are looking for forgiveness on the basis of your pleas, promises, and performance, then you will remain in your sins. Only if you accept His sacrifice will you open yourself to receiving the fullness of God’s life-giving Spirit. Oswald Chambers once said, “We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the atonement which He has worked out for us. It does not matter who or what we are; there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because he died. It is not earned, but accepted. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.”
4. And this is still the only way to get to heaven, is by trusting, surrendering to, submitting to, treasuring, receiving, embracing, loving Jesus, so that the payment that He made is imputed or transferred to your account. For whoever embraces this Son, the Father will credit Jesus’ obedience to their account, as well as the payment for the sin that they have committed, and grant unto them the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower them to cut off the hands and gouge out the eyes. And all the while that you are killing the remnant sin, you stand justified by faith alone in Christ alone. And there is now no condemnation for those in Christ who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
A. Closing illustration: Some time ago I read about an instant cake mix that was a big flop. The instructions said that all you had to do was add water and bake and you had your cake. The company couldn’t understand why it didn’t sell -- until their research discovered that the buying public felt uneasy about a mix that required only water. Apparently people thought it was too easy. So the company altered the formula and changed the directions to call for adding an egg to the mix in addition to the water. The idea worked and sales jumped dramatically.
B. Go into a really solid, but simple gospel presentation about receiving Christ as your treasure
C. Invitation to commitment
Additional Notes
• Is Christ Exalted, Magnified, Honored, and Glorified?
