Robert Jeffress - Sanctified, Sealed, and Delivered - Part 2
Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress, and welcome again to "Pathway to Victory". At some point, perhaps you've found yourself drowning in the long and complicated passages of the Old Testament that described the Jewish law. These archaic rules were so complex and nuanced that no one could possibly follow them perfectly. But gratefully, God established a new covenant through Jesus Christ that is far superior to anything that existed previously. My message is titled, "Sanctified, Sealed, and Delivered," on today's edition of "Pathway to Victory".
Remember, you and I are caught in time. God is not bound by time. He lives above time. Everything is already seen as complete in God's eyes. Think about the Lamb of God. What does the Bible say? Jesus was slain when? Before the foundation of the world. In God's eyes, it's all taken place. So since the beginning of time, that righteousness was available. But Adam and Eve and Moses, they all had to receive God's grace through Jesus Christ. They had to believe and receive it in their life. The only thing was, their ATM card had a different pin number on it. They had a different code they had to type in, in order to receive God's righteousness in their life.
For Adam and Eve, it was the animal skins they had to put on. When they put on those animal skins in the garden after they sinned against God, and depending on those animal skins to cover their sin, they were given access to the wealth of Jesus Christ, his righteousness in their life. They got credited with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That was their pin number, the animal skins. For Noah, it was building the ark, when he had faith in God's grace. When he built that ark and entered into it, he received access to the righteousness of Christ. For the Israelites in Egypt, it's when they put that blood on the door post that they received God's grace, his righteousness, into their life. For those living during the time of Moses, it was the animal sacrifice.
It was different pin numbers, but it was all based on the death of Christ, the righteousness he offers. And today, today we type in the pin number, J-E-S-U-S. It is through believing in the name of Jesus. And let me make this very clear. There is not one example in the New Testament of anybody ever typing in a different pin number to receive salvation. It is only through the name of Jesus. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me". The apostle Peter said, "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, other than the name of Jesus Christ".
Does that make sense to you? We are all saved the same way. It is by grace, God's grace, through Christ, we receive by faith. That's how the Old Testament saints were saved. And that was one of the limitations, though, of the Old Testament. It was simply a shadow of something that was yet to come. A second purpose of the old covenant was, it was a reminder of a present problem. Why did God have them go through those continual sacrifices that were never effective? Well, it was a reminder of their need for a permanent sacrifice.
Look at verse 3: "But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins, year by year". Every year that they offered a sacrifice, every day that they offered a sacrifice, it was a reminder that this isn't working. Because if it worked, they'd only have to offer them one time. I remember a couple of years ago when I had all this junk in my chest that everybody seems to have right now, this time of the year, somebody said to me, "Oh, Pastor, you know what you need? It will clear it up right away". I said, "What's that"? They said, "Mucinex. It is a wonder medicine. It will take away all that chest", I said, "That sounds so great".
So I went to the store and got some Mucinex. Zilch is what it did for me. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You know what? Every time I go into the pharmacy today and I look at that display of Mucinex, you know what my first thought is? That stuff doesn't work. It doesn't work. Those displays, every time I see, are a reminder of what doesn't work. It's the same way with the Old Testament sacrifices. The fact that they had to offer those sacrifices over and over again. Every time they put an animal up there, it was a reminder that they needed something better. And that was the purpose of the Old Testament sacrifices.
What was the limitation of the old covenant? Well, it was based on shadows, not the substance. Secondly, the old covenant could not relieve guilt. Look at verse 2: "Otherwise they would not have ceased to be offered because the worshippers having once been cleansed would no longer have had a consciousness of sins". I mean, if the old covenant was effective, then people in the old covenant wouldn't have had a continued consciousness of their sin. That word "consciousness" is a word that we get our word "conscience" from. You know what it is to have a conscience.
You know what your conscience is. Somebody defined a conscience as that still small voice that makes you feel smaller still. That's the conscience that we all have. We all have that sense that we have wronged God and, under the old covenant, even though those sacrifices provided a temporary covering for their sin, it never relieved the guilt of their sin. They came to the altar, feeling dirty inside, and they left feeling dirty inside. David said it this way: "My sin is ever before me". He could fool other people, but he couldn't fool God and he couldn't fool his own conscience. There are some of you who feel that way. You go through religious ritual, you come to church, maybe you've gotten baptized, but you still feel guilty inside.
The reason we feel guilty is because we are guilty. The old covenant, religious rituals, tradition, will never take away that guilt. That was another limitation of the Old Testament, the old covenant. Thirdly, the old covenant could not perfect the sinner. Look at verse 1. It could not make perfect those who draw near. It could temporarily cover the sin, but it didn't eliminate their desire to sin. Have you ever been walking in the park, seen the sign on the grass that says, "Stay off the grass"? What's the first thing you want to do? I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm telling too much about myself.
The first thing I want to do is go over there and jump up and down on that grass. There's something about that sign that makes me want to sin. Well, it's the same thing with the law. Paul said the Old Testament law couldn't make you perfect. In fact, if anything, it stirred up your desire to do wrong. It couldn't change your want-tos. But that's what the new covenant offers, that the old covenant could never offer. It actually changes our desires. What is needed, the writer says, is a system, a way, a person, who could eliminate our sins completely, eradicate our guilt, and transform our hearts. And that's what the new covenant is all about.
Having pointed out the limitations of the old covenant, look, beginning in verse 5, the advantages of the new covenant. These verses record Jesus, the Son's, final words to his heavenly Father before he departed heaven and came to earth. Have you ever wondered what that goodbye was like, and what he must have said? Here are the words, verses 5 to 7: "Therefore, when he," talking about Jesus, "comes into the world, he says, 'Sacrifice, and offering thou,'" he's talking to God, "'has not desired but a body thou hast prepared for me. In whole, burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, thou hast taken no pleasure. Then I said, "behold, I have come in the role of the book it is written of me to do thy will, O God".'"
He was saying to his heavenly Father, "God, you don't take desire and animal sacrifices. What you desire is a body and you've prepared that body for me so that I could come to accomplish your purpose". Jesus understood that from the beginning of time, God's plan had always been to offer his Son as the permanent sacrifice for our sins. And notice verse 9 says, "By his death, he has taken away the first agreement to establish the second". You know what, you can't live under two agreements. You have to make a choice in how you want to try to please God. You can either try to do it through your works. That's the first agreement, works, or you can try it through God's grace. It's one or the other.
If you try to enter into heaven based on your works, your righteousness, you're gonna fall short and you're gonna be severely disappointed on the judgment day when God says, "Depart from me. I never knew you". The only other choice is to live under grace: to say, "God, I have no righteousness, but Jesus has plenty of righteousness and I wanna go to heaven on his coattails. I wanna depend upon what he did for me in dying for my sins to enter into your presence". That's the difference between the first and the second covenant. Notice three features of the new covenant. First of all, it offers sanctification.
Verse 10: "By this, will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all". Underline that word "sanctified". It's a word that means to set apart. Under the new covenant, God has set you apart for a special purpose. God has a general purpose for which we've been sanctified, set apart. And that is to become like his Son, Jesus Christ. Think about it. God so loved his first Son, he was so enthralled by his Son Jesus Christ, he said, "You know what? I wanna have a lot of children just like Jesus. Just like him, who love me and serve me, that I can bless incomparably".
And so God's will is to add a lot of sons and daughters to his family. And that's what God is doing. When you trust in Christ as your Savior, God begins a process of sanctifying you, of making you more and more like his son, Jesus Christ. That's what sanctification is. I remember reading a story about a sculptor who had chiseled from a piece of marble, a almost lifelike replica of a lion. So somebody asked him after he finished the project, "How did you do that? How did you transform this slab of marble into a lion"? And he said, "Oh, that was easy. I just chiseled away everything that didn't look like a lion in that piece of marble".
You know, that's what God does for you and me. He wants to make us into the image of his Son. What does he do? Well, he takes a hammer, he takes a chisel. Sometimes it's painful, but he chips away everything in our life that isn't like his Son. He chips away those wrong attitudes, those destructive habits, those acts of disobedience, and the finished product is the image of his Son. And that's, by the way, the context of Romans 8:28-29. And we know that "God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose". But people stop short there. They don't go to the next verse. Yes, everything in your life, including the hard, hard things some of you are going through, they're working together for a good purpose. But you have to understand what that purpose is.
Verse 29: "For whom God foreknew, he predestined, to become conformed to the image of his Son". God isn't saying everything in your life works out for your immediate happiness. He's not saying there's a silver lining in every cloud that you're gonna see. No, he's saying everything in your life is working together to make you like Jesus Christ. And remember what Hebrews 5:8 says about Jesus? "Though he was a son, he learned obedience," by what? "By the things that he suffered". These hard things that take you by surprise in your life, they're not an accident. They're all part of God's plan to achieve his perfect plan for you. The new covenant offers sanctification. Secondly, the new covenant offers permanent forgiveness.
Look at verses 11 to 14: "And every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time, the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But he, Jesus, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time onward until his enemies will be made a footstool for his feet, for by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified". Remember in the levitical system, there were 24 different orders of priests, hundreds of priests, going into the temple day after day offering sacrifices for the sin.
And then remember at the Passover. The Passover, Jews would come to Israel and it is said that on the Passover, before the Passover Day, there would be up to 250,000 animals sacrificed in that temple area. It is said during Passover, there were so many animals being slaughtered that there was literally a river of blood flowing from the temple mount down into the Kidron Valley. And yet that river of blood never took away one sin. Only the blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, could accomplish that. And that's why he says in verse 14, "For by one offering, he has perfected for all time, those who are being sanctified".
Finally, the new covenant offers access to God. Look at verses 15 and 16: "And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them, after those days says, the Lord, I will put my laws upon their heart, and upon their mind I will write them". Under the old agreement, people obeyed God because of some stone tablets that had God's commandments written on them. But under the new covenant, God changes our heart. He puts his law in our heart so that we want to obey him. And look at verses 17 and 18: "And their sin and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more. Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin".
The best thing about the new covenant is it removes that barrier forever, our sin between God and us. Remember I said at the beginning of this study of Hebrews a year ago, I said any religion worth its salt answers this simple question: How can I have a relationship with God, both now and throughout eternity? How can I, a sinful person, have any hope of having a relationship with a holy and perfect God? Every other religion in the world answers that question with the word, "D-O," do.
Do this, do this, do this, and you might have a relationship with God one day. But Christianity is the only religion in the world that says that access code is spelled D-O-N-E, done. It's not what we do for God; it is what God has done for us by sending that once-for-all sacrifice for our sins. That's what the new covenant is all about. I remember talking to Dad who told me about the most painful experience of his entire life. He said his 2-year-old son had to have a bone marrow transplant or he was going to die.
And so they agreed to the transplant. He said, "Robert, the most painful part of that experience was the 50 days I spent isolated from my son. Because of the threat of infection, he had to be kept in a secluded place. And there was a glass partition that separated me from my son. I could see him. I could wave to him. I could even put my arms through a plastic sleeve and touch him. But he couldn't feel the touch of my flesh and I couldn't feel him". But then the day came when the doctor said, "The threat of infection is gone and you can touch your son". He said, "I wish you could have seen the smile on my son's face when he felt my touch for the first time in a long time. And his smile was only matched by my joy in being able to hold my son, once again".
You know, the Bible says we have a heavenly Father who loves us. He made us. He longs for a relationship with us. But we have all been infected with the disease of sin. And because of that, there is a partition that separates us from a holy God. In past ages, God has tried to speak to man. He's tried to touch man through the miracles, through burning bushes, through revelations from heaven, through the angels, but nothing provided real access.
But then God provided the ultimate sacrifice to remove that barrier. He sent his Son Jesus to provide that once-for-all sacrifice on the cross for each of us. And the moment we trust in Christ for salvation, that wall is taken down between God and us. We can feel his touch in our lives and we can touch him. And that's why the writer Paul in Ephesians 2:18 says, "It is through Jesus that we have confident access in one spirit to the Father. Praise be to God for his incomparable gift of the Lord Jesus Christ". That's what the new covenant is all about.