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Not a single individual who has been born into the human race has been able to remove himself from it. Many have committed suicide, but all they have done is to shorten the days of their earthly existence. Their existence still continues on and on into the eternity of the future.
So all the dangers of this life and then, further, all of the years of eternity that lie ahead, we have a representative at the right hand of the throne of God, who constantly lives to make intercession for us. And those who have believed in him know something of that now. We pray Thy blessing upon our evening and the study of the word. The New Testament presents the forgiveness of sins as something that is already accomplished and that the effect of this redemption is that we are not even to be conscious of sin Heb. All of us included there.
Still some teach that one who has been saved can be lost. By analogy with the human race, this is impossible. A person cannot become unborn physically, nor can he become unborn spiritually. No provision is given in the Word of God for one to become unborn.
Nowhere does this imply that you become born again, then unborn, then born again, then unborn, and so on. Once you trust Christ and are born-again all of the above list of things happen to you. If you could be unborn, all would have to be made void, but all of the above list is eternal and irreversible.
Jesus promised the believer, " I will in no wise cast you out John 6: I should lose nothing, but should raise it them up again at the last day John 6: If one person were ever lost after having been born-again, then Jesus would be a liar. That is a very interesting question. After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him. We read in Psalms We learn in Galatians 3: What was the price that He paid to redeem us? The Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3: This speaks of the new life we have in Christ when we accept Him as our savior.
In our study a couple of weeks ago, we also pointed out that in Jeremiah 31, the writer of this epistle, the prophet, had made reference to the New Covenant, and in this epistle he had made reference to the fact that that particular statement in Jeremiah So Psalm suggests a new priesthood; Jeremiah 31 suggests that there will be a New Covenant.
That prophecy prophesied the covenant after the Mosaic Covenant had already been instituted. Now, there is one third passage that the author will lay stress upon in chapter He will point out and again citing an Old Testament passage that there is to be a new sacrifice and this new sacrifice will be a sacrifice in which sins are truly taken away. Now, that citation that he will discuss in the next chapter is from Psalm And so we can sum it up by saying Psalm suggests a new priesthood; Jeremiah 31 a new covenant; and Psalm 40 a new sacrifice. We looked at the first five verses, and there he went over the contents of the Tabernacle.
And then in verse 6 through verse 10, he talked about the ceremony itself or the ritual. And he also pointed out, of course, that it was defective. And now, he will go on to prepare us for the unfolding of the significance of the new sacrifice, which, in effect, does away with all of those sacrifices of the Old Testament.
They all find their completion in the one sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, he will show the validity of the new sacrifice, right here in verse 11 through verse 14 of chapter 9, he will show the necessity of it in verse 15 through verse 22, and then, beginning at chapter 9 in verse 23 and going through chapter 10 in verse 18, he will expound the finality of that new sacrifice. He paints his picture as he does in the Epistle to the Hebrews, primarily, against the ritual of the Day of Atonement, which was typical by contrast and also by comparison, with the final effectual sacrifice.
One chapter a week? Read Leviticus chapter And it taught them, if they thought about it as they should have and many of them did think about it, some did not, of course. If they thought about it they would realize that as they looked at that Tabernacle, they could surmise that entrance into the presence of God and close fellowship with him was forbidden. There was a gate into the Tabernacle into which the priests entered, and the person who was going to offer his sacrifice at the brazen altar, brought his animal there.
But entrance into the Holy Place, that is, the first division of the Tabernacle was open only to the priests. And then, as you know, entrance into the Holy of All, the Holy of Holies, which was behind a veil, was open to only one person, for one day in the year. So as you looked at the Tabernacle, one could have put there outside, Entrance Verboten, except to the priests. And then, if there were a sign inside. So you can see, I think, that what is suggested here is that the Lord God was behind the thick tapestry curtain, and he was a person with whom, personally, fellowship was very, very difficult, according to that which the Tabernacle itself set forth.
It should have been a constant reminder of the fact that they were unholy, and their God was a holy God. So three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year, no admission.
One day out of the year, admission, but only by one man. Now, that surely should have taught Israel, thinking Israelites, about the nature of the God that they were supposed to be worshiping. So after four thousand years remissions of sins has taken place in the shedding of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and access into the presence of God, fifteen hundred years after the hanging of the veil, which shut off everyone but the high priest on one day of the year, thirty-three years beyond that, after the birth of our Lord, we have now the possibility of entrance into the presence of the Lord God in heaven.
About, I have it in my notes the precise time in nineteen fifty-six, I was attending as a faculty member the Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, and the speaker that year was Dr. Kenneth Pike, who was with the Wycliffe Translators, at that time, and Dr. Pike was a well-known linguistics scholar. And he told some very interesting illustrations and one of them he told has stuck with me through the years.
It stuck with me then and I wrote it down and now and then I run across it in my notes. He was reading a translation of the Epistle to the Hebrews, he said, to an Indian congregation, a Mexican Indian congregation, and the reason he was reading the translation to them was because this was his translation, and he was wondering if, since their language was a new language to him, he was wondering if they were able to understand the translation that he had just completed.
So he was reading it in order to get response from them. Now, he was in a very priest-ridden area; the Roman Catholic Church there was extremely strong and contrary to the Roman Catholic Church in the bigger cities where they cannot do this, it was a very dangerous place to be.
And so it was a very strongly controlled area. And the point that he saw was that he read and understood the Epistle to the Hebrews was that that priesthood, that false priesthood, is not in accordance with Scripture. And, actually, the Old Testament priesthood, too, is no longer the right priesthood. But these people, he saw, by going around acting as priests, were seeking to stay in office as long as they possibly could as long as they could keep the Bible from the people then, of course, they could do that.
That may seem strange for me to say that but, nevertheless, I believe that that is true. So the good things that have come. Now, he mentions, also, the greater and more perfect Tabernacle. Now, this greater and more perfect Tabernacle, of course, is the Tabernacle in heaven. So our Lord is come as the high priest of the good things that have come, through the greater and more perfect Tabernacle, not made with hands.
This is the Tabernacle in heaven; this is the place where the Father is and the Spirit is and the Son is now. And it was, remember, according to the form of this Tabernacle that the Tabernacle on earth was constructed. Moses was given a pattern and he followed the pattern. So this is the greater and more perfect Tabernacle, not made with hands. The Lord Jesus has entered that. So it is not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation.
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In fact, let me see if I can turn to it quickly and just read the passage. And so, I presume, that the author of this epistle, relying even upon the terminology, writes that the temple in heaven that is the Tabernacle in heaven, the more perfect Tabernacle is one not made with hands. Through his own blood, the living blood, means life. The shed blood is a reference to death. There are only two ways in which this unnatural blood shedding comes.
It can come by malice or it can come by justice.
Now, in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, the malice of men is responsible for his death and the righteousness of God is also responsible for his death; and so that the malice of men and the righteousness of God meet in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was slain, a sacrifice to the evil passions of men, because he resisted under blood, striving against sin.
But he was in his slaying the sacrifice of God and the sacrifice was voluntarily accomplished by him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So through his own blood. This is title to enter the Holiest of All. Now, I do not believe that the text teaches that he carried his blood into the Holiest of All. He entered once, once not twice, for the veil was rent.
O, the heavenly power of the blood of Jesus Christ; power to open heaven, to open the grave and to open heaven and to open heaven for you and for me. Andrew Meyer wrote a little book on the power of the blood, also on the Cross, laying great stress upon that fact.
The power of the blood of Jesus Christ is eternal power, power to accomplish the redemption of the people of God for time and forever and to make it possible for us to enter into his presence. And those who have believed in him know something of that now. There may be some who do understand fully what that means.
So he entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. He has obtained eternal redemption for us. Now, what does that mean? That means, if he obtained this for us, he acted as our representative. He is our covenantal head.