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February 19, 2017

Hebrews 10:1-4, 8-14, 1 Peter 1: 3-5

“The Power of Once and For All”

1 – The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.

For this reason, it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make

perfect those who draw near to worship.2 – Otherwise, would they not have stopped being

offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have

felt guilty for their sins.3 – But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.4 – It is

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

8 – Jesus said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not desire,

nor were You pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law.9 –

Then He said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the

second.10 – And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus

Christ ONCE FOR ALL.11 – Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious

duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 – But

when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of

God,13 – and since that time He waits for His enemies to be made His footstool.14 – For by one

sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

1st Peter 1:3 – Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He

has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the

dead,4 – and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in

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Heaven for you,5 – who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the

salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Like most people, I fill out a bracket for the March Madness NCAA final four. And—like most

people—many of my bracket selections are crushed every year. That’s happened before but

when it happened last year I got to wondering—HOW did that happen? I made very sensible

picks.

So, how did 12th

seed Little Rock beat 5th

seed Purdue?

How did 12th seed Yale beat 5

th seed Baylor?

And most of all, how did 14th seed Middle Tennessee beat 2

nd seed Michigan State?

I had Michigan State going to the final game last year. By the way THAT loss was a shocker to

a lot of people. I mean, you would have to have borrowed Dr. Emmett Brown’s DeLorean

from Back to the Future to have predicted that one. Before that game Middle Tennessee was 0-

22 in the NCAA tournament! How did they beat mighty Michigan State?

Of course unpredictable wins like this are the reason March Madness is so entertaining. This

tournament always lives up to its name in that picking a winning bracket based on the way

various teams are seeded. It can drive you a little crazy. Anyway—I got to wondering. How

does a basketball team get awarded its seed in the tournament? What gives that college the

right to stake a claim as 1st seed?

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So I did some research and here’s what I learned. Thirty-two of the sixty-four teams in the

final four tournament gain automatic entry into the bracket by winning their conference’s

championship—and that makes sense to me. Winners should be in the bracket. But the

remaining 36 teams don’t necessarily get in by wins. No—they are seeded in the tournament

based on the decisions of a selection COMMITTEE. Now—I learned a lot more—I mean the

formula for who gets placed in what seed by this selection committee is very complex but I

decided not to share all that with you this morning—because the word “committee” is really all

you need to know. You see, I may know basketball but I am not an expert—-but I am an expert

on committees and I know that committees—no matter how wonderful the people are who

make them up—all committees have a hard time making decisions.

And committees are notorious for this. There are all kinds of saying that reflect this. Here’s a

couple:

“A committee is a group of people that keeps minutes and wastes hours.”

“A committee is an animal with four back legs.”

Now—I share all this because for the past couple months we have been studying Jesus from

the perspective of the writer of the book of Hebrews. And last week the writer said something

very important—he made a powerful claim about Jesus. In essence He gave Jesus “first seed”

when it comes to cleansing our sin—the sin that separates us from our Loving Heavenly Father.

He “seeded” Jesus way above the Jewish sacrificial system. This claim is repeated in today’s

text. In case you missed it here it is. The writer says: “We have been made holy through the

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sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ ONCE FOR ALL. By this one sacrifice He has made

perfect FOREVER those who are being made holy.”

Well, that statement can be a little maddening for many people and not just in the month of

March. They ask, “How can the Bible make this claim? What is it that makes Jesus’ sacrifice

on the cross better than all the other sacrifices? What makes it a once-and-for-all deal?” Well

the answer to that question should be obvious because it’s the reason we gather every

Sunday. I’m referring to the fact that HE IS RISEN! [He is risen indeed!]

AMEN! Since Jesus died AND rose again—He proved He was the sinless Son of God, which

means He could indeed do what the law and all those other sacrifices could never do—cleanse

us from ALL our sin—once and for all. Let me put it this way: Jesus’ resurrection gave Him the

right to be “first Seed—” or more accurately the “one and only seed” when it comes to

forgiving sin and making it possible for us to be pure in God’s eyes.

The fact is EVERYTHING about our faith as Christians is built on what happened on that

third day. Dr. Dale Bruner has an interesting insight. He says that when Mary Magdalene turned

and saw our Risen Lord in the Garden that first Easter morning—when SHE turned and saw

Him it was as if the entire WORLD turned as well—in that instant it turned from B.C. to

A.D.—from “before Christ” to “anno Domini:” — “The Year of our Lord.” One second

before Mary had been a woman agonizing in the depths of sadness, in the face of unforgivable

sin and unconquerable death. Then, a second later Mary experienced the highest possible human

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joy because she stood in the presence of the One—the ONLY ONE—Who has conquered sin

and even death itself.

By the way this is one of the unique aspects of our faith compared to all other religions. You

see, unlike any other faith system, the Christian faith traces its origin to one moment in time—

the moment Jesus ROSE from the dead. That instant validated Christianity as the only true

faith. John Ortberg tells a story about a time Sunday School teacher was telling children the

Resurrection story. The teacher asked the children, “What did Jesus first say to His disciples

after He rose on Easter morning?” And a little boy replied, “TA DA!” Well, as humorous as

that child’s response is—it has profound truth in it for Jesus’ resurrection was that amazing—

that WORLD-changing. TA DA INDEED! Since Jesus’ resurrection is so foundational to our

faith I want us to take a close look at it. Just like millions of Christians around the world are

doing.

First, I want to affirm the fact that the Resurrection of Jesus REALLY HAPPENED.

Now, I know we’ve talked about the proofs of the resurrection in the past but they bear

repeating so I’ll mention just a few. First, the initial witnesses of the empty tomb were

WOMEN like Mary Magdalene. That’s what the Gospel writers report. And—no offence

ladies—but women had a low status in the culture of that day. The “ceiling” in the first century

wasn’t “glass”—it was GRANITE. One indication of this is the fact that a woman’s witness was

not admissible evidence in court—neither in a Jewish court nor a Roman one. So—if you were

MAKING UP a story—like a legend about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you would never put

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women in there as the first eye-witnesses. Doing so would totally debunk your story. Including

women would destroy its plausibility for the hearers or the readers of the time. No—-if you

were making it up and you wanted people to believe it, you’d use credible witnesses like MEN.

So—the only reason the Gospel writers could have put women in is if they really were they

eyewitnesses. There’s no other motivation for doing this. PROOF #1.

And speaking of eyewitnesses, in his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham

says that the Gospel accounts of the resurrection have all the marks not of vision literature—not

of legends—but of actual eyewitness accounts. He says you can see the difference between an

account that’s given from the vantage point of an individual in the actual scene as opposed to

most legends—because legends are written from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator. An

omniscient narrator sees the whole and tells you everything that’s happening. But the Gospel

narratives are different. If you read them carefully you see that they are written from the

LIMITED point of view of eyewitnesses—the people who were there at the time. For example,

on the road to Emmaus we are told that one of the travelers was Cleopas—but we aren’t told the

name of the other—it’s a LIMITED reporting.

Bauckham also asks, “What are all these names for—like Cleopas? Why the names of the

women, Joanna and Mary the mother of James?” He answers his own question by saying that

in ancient times very often when you were giving a historical account based on eyewitness

testimony, these names were like footnotes. It was your way of saying if you want to check out

what I’m telling you, go talk to these people. And you could have done that because the

Gospels came out while these eyewitnesses were still alive so you could go to Cleopas and say,

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“Hey Cleo—did it really happen like Luke said in the 24th chapter of his book?” And Cleo

would say, “Yes—it did—I was there and can verify what Luke wrote.” PLUS—the fact that we

STILL HAVE the gospel accounts verifies their accuracy. All that would have had to happen

for them to disappear from the pages of history would be for witnesses like Cleopas and the

others to stand up and say, “This is all made up!” But they didn’t! They affirmed what they

witnessed—what they experienced on that first Easter Sunday. PROOF #2!

Here’s something else Baukman points out. Jewish people are the last people on the face of the

earth to be open to the idea that a human being could be God. To believe that—to be preaching

that—-would be going way against their worldview. I mean, they wouldn’t even SAY the name

of God out loud. When they added vowels to the Old Testament Scriptures they did it for every

word except the name for God. To them that name was too holy to “pollute” with vowels. So—

how would Jews like the disciples be worshiping a man—JESUS—as God? How did that

happen? Well, it didn’t happen through DISCUSSION—and it wasn’t a GRADUAL thing.

No—something must have happened—some BIG SHOCKING thing that shattered their

worldview. And that something was this—they met the RISEN Jesus. PROOF #3!

Tim Keller writes, “The resurrection was not preached in the early church as a symbolic

representation of wonderful higher truths like, ‘We must always keep hope.’ The resurrection

was preached as a hard, bare, terribly irritating paradigm-shattering, horribly inconvenient but

impossible to dismiss FACT.”

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Keller invites us to take Paul as an example. When he was known as SAUL he was offended by

Christianity. He hated the gospel message. He was seriously ticked by the idea that there would

be no more temple—no more sacrifices for sin. These revolutionary teachings were outrageous

to him. After all, he was a Pharisee—so he was against everything about Christianity. Then

something happened—something that shattered Saul’s deeply held convictions and that

“something” was SOMEONE he met when he was traveling on the Damascus road. That day

Saul SAW and talked to the Risen Jesus. On that road he was confronted with the unshakable

FACT that Jesus was crucified—dead—buried—and then ROSE.

You know, many people are offended by Christianity today. There are lots of “Sauls”

running around. They don’t like Christianity’s teaching on money—they don’t like the Bible’s

teaching on creation. They laugh at stories like Noah and the Flood or Moses parting the Red

Sea or Jonah living in the belly of a whale. They think Biblical accounts like that are ridiculous.

They are offended by the Bible’s teachings on sex and morality and so on. Well, the fact is the

first Saul was more offended by Christianity than any of these people. He was so upset he was

killing Christians for spreading their offending message. But when Saul realized that Jesus had

been raised—it didn’t matter that Christianity offended him anymore. It didn’t matter because

he knew it was true. Jesus’ resurrection validated the Christian faith—all of it.

Here’ something else we should remember, the Resurrection of Jesus is the key to

understanding ALL the Scriptures—not just the book of Hebrews. The Bible only makes sense

if Easter is true—which it is—because He is RISEN? [He is Risen indeed!]

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For example: The Jewish sacrificial system we have been studying about in Hebrews—it only

makes sense if it points to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The Jewish Passover meal

only makes sense when paired with the Resurrection. The promise of Abraham’s descendants

blessing the whole world only makes sense if you realize this happens through Christians

sharing the good news of our Risen Lord.

In 1799 a French soldier named Pierre-Francois Bouchard—who was a part of the

Napoleonic expedition to Egypt found a granite stone that was inscribed with a decree—one

that had been issued in Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree

appeared in three languages: ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and ancient Greek.

Since it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts the stone provided the key to the

modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is called THE ROSETTA STONE—and it

was a very important discovery because before then we had no way of translating all those

Egyptian doodles. Well, Jesus’ resurrection was in essence THE ROSETTA STONE of the

Bible. It explains or “translates” everything.

In the time I have left, I’d like to elaborate on this by pointing out how the fact that HE IS

RISEN affects our day to day existence. I want us to look at the POWER of once and for all—

how that power impacts our lives.

First, it has the power to change the way we look at SIN. As I said earlier, because Jesus

ROSE it shows He has the authority to forgive our sins. It means He did indeed die for sin

ONCE AND FOR ALL—which means our sins can be washed away. We can be pure in God’s

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eyes. There is now no need for further sacrifices—the blood of our Risen Lord covers all our

sin. When we come to him in faith, Jesus’ death on our behalf wipes the “sin slate” clean.

I was a fan of The Monkees when I was a young teen. Well, here’s a little Monkee Trivia that

you may or may not know. Did you realize that Mike Nesmith’s mother invented liquid paper?

Well that was her first name for it, it is now known as white out. She put some tempera water-

based paint in a bottle, took her water color brush to the office—and painted over typing errors.

She made improvements with the help of young Mike’s High School chemistry teacher and it

worked great. She began her own company. The company was very profitable and in 1979 she

sold it to the Gillette Corporation for $47.5 million. Now, wouldn’t it be great if someone came

out with a way to correct PEOPLE—a way to cover over their mistakes? Well, that’s exactly

what Jesus did on the cross. Because God so loved the world—He sent His only Son to do what

could not be done in any other way. He sent Him to die on a cross. Jesus’ blood was shed to

cover over our sins once and for all—and as I said, the resurrection proves He could and DID

do exactly that!

Secondly, the resurrection power of once and for all changes the way we look at LIFE.

You see, when a sinner like you or me realizes that Jesus is indeed God’s Son Who died in our

place. When we confess our sin and invite Him into our lives as Lord we experience a change in

perspective—a change in focus. As we grow in Jesus’ likeness we become less self-focused and

more other-focused. Plus, we don’t look at life as just a three-score and ten deal. No—we

embrace an eternal mindset—and start living for things that last—things that further God’s

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eternal kingdom. We begin to want to change the world by helping others and we know the best

way to do that is by telling others about Jesus. We also follow Jesus’ footsteps in ministering to

physical need—knowing that this kind of good work points people to our Lord. I mean when

we walk our talk—people are open to hearing us talk about our walk!

I heard this week that Muslims are coming to faith by the droves in Europe—because

Christians there are opening their homes to these refugees. Those Muslims want to know why a

Christian would want to help them—why a follower of Jesus would want to help give them a

new start—and those Christians are telling them about Jesus Who gives all people a new start.

One final point and we are done. The power of once and for all changes the way we

look at DEATH. Take the fingers of your left hand and feel the pulse on the wrist of your right

arm. That pulse will stop one day. Your heart will have a final beat. Feel yourself breathe. One

day those lungs will empty a final breath. When you woke up this morning the number of

nights you will lay your head on a pillow decreased by one. If Jesus tarries, we will all die

physically one day. Your family will call a funeral home to make arrangements. The mail man

will deliver sympathy cards. This kind of thing will happen to all of us. That’s our future. I

know it’s an uncomfortable fact to consider—but it’s true. In Psalm 89:48 we find a question

that we all know the answer to: “Who can live and not see death or who can escape the power

of the grave?” NO ONE. Young and old, good and bad, rich and poor—neither gender is

spared; no class is exempt. We all die—nearly 2 people a second, more than 6,000 an hour,

more than 155,000 every day—57 million a year. The finest surgeon might enhance your life

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but he can’t eliminate your death. As Hebrews 9:27 says, “People are destined to die once.”

That’s the fact—plain and simple.

Last year was proof of this fact and I say that because in July, August and September, I had 1

funeral a week. In December I had 6 funerals. That has never happened at that rate in any year

since I went into ministry in 1981. PTL…January and February has slowed down. In fact I did

31 funerals in 2016. The most I had ever had before last year was 19 in one year. The power of

ONCE AND FOR ALL is what got me through all that grief. You see, we know that the Risen

Jesus promises to do to the tombs of Christians the same thing He did to HIS—EMPTY them.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even

though they die; and whoever lives by believing in Me will never die.” (John 11:25-6) Because

Jesus rose—we know death is not the end—in fact, it is the beginning of an eternity of sinless

joy. We know we’ll be reunited with our loved ones in the home God has prepared for us. And

this knowledge—this sure and steadfast hope is SECURE. Peter says this inheritance “is kept in

Heaven for you.”

I heard a story about a guy who, ever since he was a little boy, his parents had promised to

give him a beautiful car to drive when he turned 16. He looked forward to parking it in the

family’s barn where it could stay warm and dry. Only first his dad would have to get rid of that

old car sitting in the barn. He couldn’t wait for his dad to haul it off to the dump to make way

for his dream car. But when would that day come? When would that new car arrive? When

would his dad get rid of that old junky car under the tarp? Then one evening in early summer he

heard strange sounds coming from the barn. It sounded like an engine. What was going on?

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Peering into the darkness he noticed a light was on in the barn. He walked into the warm night

air, down the dirt path, and poked his head into the barn door. When he saw the tarp, rolled up

and left against the door, he excitedly thought, Dad is finally getting rid of that junky old car!

Then he looked and saw one of the most incredible sports cars in automotive history. It was a

Corvette, but not just any Corvette. It was the coveted, beautiful, powerful 1963 Corvette 327

V8 with a split window, aluminum knock-off wheels, painted candy apple red. That was the car

that had been underneath the tarp in the barn all those years. He stood there stunned. It was

always there, just waiting for him to turn 16. His father looked up, and with a broad smile, he

said, “Come on, son. Let’s take her for a ride.”

In the same way, this coveted, beautiful and powerful inheritance I just described is kept in

heaven for you and me. It’s there now. Someday the Lord Himself will roll up the tarp and let

you see it in all its glory. Let me ask—who is “first seed” in your life? Who calls the shots?

Who or what gives your life perspective. By virtue of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead—

only He has the right to be first—so if you haven’t already made that decision—make Him first

in your life today.