The Final Sacrifice | Hebrews 9:15-28
Brian Hedges | September 15, 2024
Let’s turn in our Bibles this morning to Hebrews 9.
At the heart of the Christian faith is the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We worship a man who was crucified in history under Pontius Pilate, a man who was condemned as a criminal, died a painful death, tortured on a Roman cross.
Right at the heart of the Christian faith is the cross. We could say that the cross is central to everything we say and everything we do, or it should be. Christianity is a cross-shaped religion.
In some ways, I think the entire New Testament is given to us to help us understand the significance of the cross of Jesus Christ. We might even say that every book in the New Testament is a book that looks at the cross, that gazes at the cross through a specific lens. When we think of the Gospels, that record for us the historical narrative of the incarnation and life and ministry of Jesus Christ, we know that each one of those Gospels ends with a focus on the final week of Jesus’ life. Almost half of that material is focused on the cross and everything leading up to the cross.
When we get into the book of Acts, we are seeing how the early church proclaimed the death and resurrection of Christ. They proclaimed that this man who had been crucified, Jesus, was now risen, that he is alive.
You think of the letters of the apostle Paul. He focuses on the cross of Jesus Christ, reading it through that judicial lens, that forensic, legal lens, showing how through the cross we are justified and declared right before God. Paul, as the apostle to the Gentiles, focuses on how through the cross the Gentiles are brought in, and there’s this reconciliation between Jew and Gentile and between the world and God.
Or you think of the apostle Peter, who writes to suffering Christians, and for him, Jesus the crucified one is the great example in whose footsteps we are to follow as we learn to suffer according to the will of God.
Or think of the apostle John, the great apostle of love. For him, the cross is the most momentous display of the love of God for the world. Even the book of Revelation, confusing to so many with its prophecy and its apocalyptic imagery, is really just telling us about the triumphs of the Lamb who was slain.
When we come to the letter to the Hebrews, Hebrews is all about the cross of Jesus Christ, read through the lens of the Old Testament, and showing us how Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that went before.
That’s especially the focus of the passage we’re going to look at this morning in Hebrews 9. This letter proclaims that “Jesus is better.” He’s better. We have a better and final word from God, because God has spoken to us through his Son. Jesus is supreme and superior to the angels. He’s better than Moses. He’s better than Joshua. He leads us into a better rest. He is a better high priest, our great high priest and the final high priest, and he is a priest who has inaugurated this better covenant based on better promises, and he has offered the supreme and final sacrifice.
Really, for the last several weeks we’ve just been looking at Hebrews 8-9 and coming to chapter 10. I mentioned how these three chapters are something like a symphony, with three interweaving movements that are showing us the supremacy of the priestly ministry of Jesus Christ with these three interlocking themes: the new covenant, the heavenly sanctuary, and the final sacrifice. We looked at the new covenant in Hebrews 8 a couple of weeks ago, the heavenly sanctuary last week (the first half of Hebrews 9), and today in the second half of Hebrews 9 the focus is on the final sacrifice, the cross of Jesus Christ.
We’re going to begin by reading this passage, Hebrews 9:15-28. Once again, it’s a passage with a lot of detail, many echoes from the Old Testament. Pay attention, but don’t get lost in those. Don’t lose sight of the fact that this whole passage is telling us about the supremacy of Jesus Christ in his final sacrifice offered on the cross. Hebrews 9:15-28.
“Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.’ And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
“Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
This is God’s word.
I want us to see three things this morning, all about the final sacrifice of Christ.
1. The Necessity of Christ’s Sacrifice
2. The Nature of Christ’s Sacrifice
3. Our Response to Christ’s Sacrifice
Or we could view this as the answer to three questions: Why did Jesus have to die? What kind of death did he die? How should we respond?
1. The Necessity of Christ’s Sacrifice: Why Did Jesus Have to Die?
Again, this is right at the heart of Christianity: a man who was crucified and is now alive. But why? Why did Jesus have to die? There are many different ways we could answer that text. There are lots of layers to the answer. There’s a lot of texture to the answer to that question, why did Jesus die? Let me try to simplify it and just focus on two things I think we see in the passage. Everything else kind of fits under these two categories.
(1) First of all, he had to die to establish the new covenant. Remember, we’ve already talked about the new covenant in Hebrews 8. Now the author mentions it again in Hebrews 9:15: “Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant.” “Therefore”—in light of what he has just said in verse 14 about how Jesus has offered himself through the eternal Spirit as a sacrifice to God to purge our consciences from dead works to serve the living God—therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant.
But it really recalls the emphasis of Hebrews 8, where the author quotes the prophet Jeremiah from Jeremiah 31—incidentally, the longest block quote of the Old Testament recorded in the new. That tells you how important this is. He tells us what the substance of this new covenant was, these promises of God, that “I’m going to write my laws in your heart.” He’s going to change our hearts. “I’m going to be your God and you’re going to be my people, and everyone will know me, from the least of them to the greatest, and I will remember their sins no more.” It’s a promise of a changed heart and a new, personal relationship with God and the forgiveness of our sins. That’s the new covenant.
Here the author is telling us that Jesus, through his death, has inaugurated or established that new covenant. This covenant language is really the focus of Hebrews 9:15-21. The key word is this word “covenant,” and also the word “will.” In fact, those two words, two different words in English, are the same word in Greek, diatheke. It is the word for covenant, but there’s kind of a play on words here, because it could also refer to someone’s last will and testament. So the point in verses 16-17 is that someone has to die before the last will and testament is read. So Jesus, through dying, has established this covenant.
Then he goes on to talk about how even the old covenant, the first covenant, had to be established in blood. There are echoes here of Exodus 24, where, after Moses has received the Ten Commandments, the law of God, on Mount Sinai, he comes down from the mountain and he reads to the people the book of the law, and the people say, “All that the Lord has commanded we will do.” He reads this book of the covenant. Then blood is shed, animals are slain, and the blood is sprinkled on the altar, and here it says on the book and on the people. The people are consecrated to God. This covenant is established through the shedding of blood.
The author’s point here is that, just as in the first covenant blood had to be shed to establish the covenant, so now Jesus’ blood had to be shed. He had to die to establish the new covenant.
(2) Of course, the problem with that first covenant was that the people didn’t keep it. They said they would do what the Lord commanded, and then they didn’t do what the Lord commanded. So a new covenant is needed, a covenant that will deal with the problem of sin.
That’s the second reason and the primary reason why Jesus had to die. He had to die to deal with sin.
Now, if you’re a sinner, this is important for you. If you don’t feel that you are a sinner, this may not resonate, but if you are conscious of wrongdoing and you know that you have violated the holy law of God, or you know that you have transgressed the dictates of your own conscience, or you know that you have hurt or wounded another person, that you have done things you should not do—if you have any regrets for for your moral life and for your relationships and for the way you’ve lived, and you know that you are guilty of wrongdoing, this is the most relevant thing in the world. The only reason this doesn’t seem relevant to us is because we don’t take sin as seriously as God does.
This passage is all about how Jesus, through his death, deals with sin. You can see it in Hebrews 9:15. “...a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.” Verse 22: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Verse 26: “He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Verse 28: “So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sin of many…”
Why did Jesus have to die? He had to die because of sin. That’s the big problem! That is the big problem in the human race. Sin is why we die. The wages of sin is death.
For many people, it may be only when they get to their death bed that they really begin to wrestle with this. That’s when the regrets are strong. That’s when the conscience is accusing, roaring in their ears of everything they’ve done wrong.
Of course, we live in a culture that doesn’t really believe in sin, a culture that relativizes all moral distinctions. But every once in a while there will be something, even in popular culture, that will remind us that this is the perennial question that haunts the heart of every human being.
I remember seeing this a few years ago. I watched a one-off episode of this TV show House MD. I’ve never really watched this show regularly, but for some reason I watched a show one night.
The plot—at least part of the plot of this episode—was a terminal patient, in the hospital, who’s speaking to a chaplain, and this patient fears for his soul. He knows that his illness is terminal, he knows he’s about to die, and he wants some answers. He’s talking to the chaplain, and the chaplain is somewhat dismissive of those fears. “We don’t really believe in judgment.” She’s just trying to comfort him, to be at peace with his death.
He gets anxious and angry, and he says something like this: “Can I please talk to someone who believes in a real hell and a real God? Because I’m dying, and I need to know how to get my sins forgiven.”
That’s the issue. How can I have my sins forgiven? How can I know that I’m right with God, that I have some kind of hope beyond death? The only answer to that question is found in the gospel.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached a wonderful sermon on Hebrews 9:26 called “The Putting Away of Sin.” He said, “It is a very hard thing to put away sin. Meditate a while on this truth, for it will help you to magnify the power, the wisdom, and the grace of Christ, who is put away.”
Now, without quoting him extensively, let me just tell you what he did in the sermon. The first half of the sermon, the first point of the sermon, he just talks about all the ways that people would think maybe they could put away sin, that don’t work. He says that the Old Testament sacrifices, they didn’t put away sin. They would provide a ritual kind of cleansing, but they didn’t deal with the problem of sin. That’s why they had to be repeated again and again and again. That’s the whole point of Hebrews 9.
He says the ceremonies that were added to that system didn't deal with sin. He says even repentance doesn’t put away sin. Repentance is necessary—nobody’s saved without repentance—but repentance is the gift of God that’s given to us when our hearts are changed. Something has to happen to us for us to repent. But never think that your repentance somehow earns God’s forgiveness.
We sing this song occasionally:
“Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill thy law’s demands.
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and thou alone.”
Your repentance is not what atones for your sins.
Spurgeon said, “No form of suffering in this world and no degree of self-denial and no measure of holy living—” none of those things deal with sin, put away sin. Even death doesn’t put away sin. Even hell itself doesn’t put away sin.
You can’t get rid of the stain of sin through anything that you can do! We need a Savior. We need a Savior, and when we ask the question, “Why did Jesus have to die?” the great answer to that question is, “Because of sin.” To deal with the problem of sin.
Maybe the first application for those of us who are believers this morning is that this is a reminder to us to take sin seriously. We don’t take sin seriously enough. I don’t think any of us really do. We don’t take it seriously enough. That’s why we’re so easy on ourselves.
It’s not that I’m trying to heap guilt on you, but listen, you can’t really fix your gaze on the cross of Jesus Christ and see what it cost the Son of God to pay for our sins—you can’t really fix your gaze on the cross and not begin to take your sin more seriously.
Sin is a serious issue, and we can’t get rid of it on our own. We need something from outside of ourselves; we need a Savior. The cross reminds us that sin is serious business and that we need to take that sin seriously. We need to not take forgiveness for granted. We need to let these truths rest with more weight on our hearts.
If you find your heart in this moment cold to this and hard to this and you don’t feel moved at all, you need to get your eyes back on Jesus. You need to see him there, imagine him there, hanging on the cross. Imagine that head pierced with thorns, the blood dripping down his face, the spittle on his face as he is mocked and scorned by these soldiers, his back in ribbons because of the cruel scourging that he received, that beating. The nails pierce through his hands, the spear in his side, Jesus heaving for every possible gasp of breath. And Jesus groaned there under the weight, the judgment of God for our sins. That’s what it cost, and that’s how much he loved you. That’s how much he loved you, that he was willing to do that so your sins could be forgiven.
Let’s take the sin seriously, and let’s not take forgiveness for granted, and let’s get our eyes on Jesus and the sacrifice that he made for us.
And if you’re not a Christian, I want to tell you, you can spend your whole life trying to wipe out that stain in your conscience. You can spend your whole life trying to make yourself better. Nothing’s going to work. But there’s one thing that does work, and it’s the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
2. The Nature of Christ’s Sacrifice: What Kind of Death Did He Die?
What did he do when he died? What kind of death did he die? That’s the second question. We see the necessity of sacrifice, now the nature of his sacrifice. What kind of death did Jesus die on the cross, and what is he accomplishing in his death?
What I want to do for a few minutes with you is just sketch out a theology of the atonement, right here from Hebrews 9. I’ll just point out quickly five things about the death of Jesus.
(1) Number one, it was voluntary. The text says that he offered himself (verse 14), and then verse 26 speaks of the sacrifice of himself. We need to remind ourselves of this, that Jesus willingly went to the cross. He did this because he wanted to do it. He did it because he loved sinners and because he wanted to save us.
Let this stand in against that objection that liberal, progressivist theology will shout in our ears, that the whole idea of a substitutionary atonement, where God punishes the Son for our sins, is immoral. There are some out there who say that’s cosmic child abuse, that the Father would punish the Son. No, that’s misunderstanding and misunderstanding blasphemously, misrepresenting the atonement. Jesus was the very Son of God, God himself incarnate in the flesh, and he came to the cross because he wanted to the cross. He said, “No man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.”
The Father wasn’t twisting Jesus’ arm to go, and Jesus wasn’t twisting the Father’s arm to forgive. There was this eternal pact between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. As God planned out the whole scheme of redemption, the Father as the great architect of redemption and the Son as the one who would come and secure that redemption for us through his incarnate humanity and his sacrificial death and his resurrection from the dead. The Spirit now is the one who applies that to our hearts and our lives. But this was voluntary on the part of Jesus. He went to the cross because He wanted to because He loved you so much.
(2) Secondly, the sacrifice of Jesus was sacrificial. There’s a lot of blood in Hebrews; did you notice that? The emphasis on blood, just in the passage I read today—seven times, blood. There’s blood everywhere! And Christianity, when it’s right at its heart, is a bloody religion, right, because we sing about the blood of Jesus. I can imagine someone thinking, “This is strange.” Someone coming in from off the streets, never been to church before, and they come in and we’re singing,
“There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.”
“What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
This whole idea of being washed in the blood of the sacrificial victim… “Isn’t this primitive? I mean, who are these people, talking about blood?”
Why do we talk so much about the blood? The reason is because the Scriptures show us again and again that the death of Christ can only be understood when it’s understood in the context of the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament. That’s one reason these sacrifices were instituted in the Old Testament, the whole levitical system.
I know the temptation is to just skip over the book of Leviticus, but listen, God’s trying to teach us something through that. He was teaching his people what it cost for a holy God to dwell in the midst of a sinful people, what it cost to restore fellowship with God. That bloody sacrificial system was there to show them the seriousness of sin and the holiness of God and the necessity of atonement, and to point the way forward to this great final sacrifice that would come.
When Jesus died on the cross, it was a bloody, violent death, because he was slain, he was slaughtered like a lamb, a sacrificial victim who bore our sins.
(3) That leads to the third thing: it is a substitutionary death. He came to bear the sins of many. We’ve already seen in Hebrews 7 that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was holy and harmless and undefiled and separate from sinners. In Hebrews 4, “he was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus wasn’t guilty of sin; he was innocent! Even Pilate said, “I find no guilt in this man.” He washed his hands of the whole affair. “I find no guilt in this man.”
Over and over again, Jesus is acquitted before he is crucified, then he’s condemned and sent to the cross. Why? Why does this innocent, righteous man die? He dies for the sins of others. He dies as the substitute, the sin-bearer.
I think the author here in Hebrews 9 is echoing the great prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 53, that great part of the Old Testament, sometimes called the gospel in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53. Many of you will maybe be familiar with this passage, but here are just a few phrases.
It’s all about how the suffering servant dies for others. He dies for others.
“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray…
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
…[He was] stricken for the transgression of my people?
…by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
…he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many.”
There it is! That’s verse 26. “He bore the sin of many—” it’s quoting Isaiah 53:12. Jesus is the substitute. He dies in our place. Again, it’s right at the heart of Christianity: Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. He took our place, he bore our burden.
The great English poet George Herbert, in his marvelous poem “The Sacrifice,” says these words. He’s speaking as if it’s the voice of Jesus.
“O all ye who passe by, behold and see;
Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree;
The tree of life to all, but onely me:
Was ever grief like mine?”
We stole the fruit! We’re the ones that committed the sin, but he climbed the tree of the cross, the tree of life for us, but a tree of death for him.
“What thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners’ gain.
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But thine the deadly pain.”
“It was my sin that held him there / Until it was accomplished.” I mean, this is right at the heart of our songs, isn’t it? We sing about the cross, about this one who died for us! Why? Because he is the substitute. He’s the one who takes our place, who demonstrates his great love for us by making the ultimate sacrifice for sin.
(4) It’s a substitutionary death; then number four, it’s final. The death of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ is the final sacrifice. Again, that’s the emphasis of Hebrews. He died “once for all” (verse 26). “He died once” (verse 28). There’s similar language in Hebrews 10, as we’ll see.
The background here is Leviticus 16. It’s that Day of Atonement, central to the calendar of Old Testament Israel, where once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the Most Holy Place and offer sacrifice for sins.
For those of you who like charts, maybe this will show you the contrast between atonement in the Old Testament and atonement in the New Testament. This is really summarizing, I think, what we see here in Hebrews 9.
The old covenant, the new covenant. Each has a priest. There was the high priest, Aaron first of all and all the successors of Aaron. But Jesus is our High Priest, our great High Priest.
The time—it was the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament, but now it’s Jesus at the end of the ages, the very culmination of the ages, as the text says.
The place—it was the most holy place, that inner sanctuary of the tabernacle in the Old Testament; but Jesus went into the reality, heaven itself, the very presence of God.
What was the offering? Well, the high priest offered the blood of bulls and goats, animal sacrifices, but Jesus offered himself. He offered his own blood.
The high priest in the Old Testament offered it repeatedly, again and again and again, but Jesus once and for all. What’s the results? Well, ritual cleansing for people in the Old Testament, but eternal redemption for us. Eternal redemption for us, because it is the final sacrifice.
(5) Eternal redemption—that leads us to the fifth thing. This sacrifice is effective. It redeems (verse 15). It established the new covenant (verse 16). It’s a better sacrifice (verse 23). It actually puts away sin; it actually deals with the problem! This sacrifice is effective, because Jesus accomplished what needed to be accomplished. We could say that this is the definitive, unrepeatable, final, and sufficient sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Remember Jesus, as he hung on the cross, said, “It is finished.” Listen, Christian: you can’t add anything to the finished work of Jesus Christ. To even try is foolishness. It’s like standing there on the brink of the Grand Canyon to behold the wonder and the beauty and the majesty of the Grand Canyon, and instead of looking at that Grand Canyon you turn around and with a little spoon you try to dig a little trench and say, “Look how great this is.” I mean, that’s just crazy!
It’s like trying to add to the fullness of the ocean by tossing in a bucket of dirty water, or adding to the light of the sun with a flashlight. You can’t add anything to this! This is the ransom payment that is infinite in its value. It’s been accepted by God, and this work is finished. It’s a complete and final, sufficient and effective sacrifice.
3. Our Response to Christ’s Sacrifice
How, then, should we respond to this? Again, there are lots of ways to answer that question, so many places in Scripture we could go, but we’re just going to stay right here in Hebrews 9. I just want to point out two phrases that I think give us two different angles for how to understand what the appropriate response of our hearts should be to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
(1) First of all, Hebrews 9:15. “Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised, eternal inheritance.”
Who’s this for? It’s for those who are called. Of course, in Scripture the call can have a twofold reference. It can refer to the external call of the gospel. Everyone who hears the gospel hears the call, hears the invitation to believe in Jesus Christ and be saved, to come to him if you’re weary and heavy laden, and to find rest for your souls. That’s the call of the gospel. You’re hearing it this morning, a call to come to Christ, to follow Christ.
Our response to the gospel of the crucified Christ should be to respond to that call, to follow that call.
But it’s not only that there’s this external call, but also that there’s this internal, effective call, the call that the Spirit through the word effects in our own hearts, a divine summons that brings us to faith in Christ. The call of the gospel is the call to believe. It’s the call to repent. It’s the call to follow Jesus. It’s the call into the fellowship of the Son of God. It’s a call that makes us begin to think about this in personal terms. This is for me.
Again, to quote one of the great hymn writers,
“Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown,
And love beyond degree!”
What kind of grace is this? What kind of love is this, that Jesus would die in my place? Listen, when that hits you, when that gets applied with power by the Spirit to your conscience, when you begin to realize that the death of Jesus was for me, for my sins—this is balm for my wounded soul, this is relief for my guilty conscience, this is the answer to my problem, this is the comfort that I’ll need on my deathbed; when I’m facing that undiscovered country, when I’m about to cross the threshold into the life to come, this is the answer, this is what will give me peace with God—friends, that’s the kind of gospel that I want. Not a gospel that to me would be no gospel at all, that simply says, “If you’ll just do better, if you’ll just become a better person, things will work out all right.”
That’s no gospel! What we need is good news that will comfort us and make that dying pillow sweet. We need good news that will assure us that our sins are forgiven. I need to know that my sins, my worst sins, the sins in my heart and my life that I know and God knows, sins of my thoughts and attitudes, the wickedness of this sinful heart, that would make me tremble to stand before a holy God in judgment—I need to know that those sins can be pardoned, and the only way you get it is through the gospel, and the call is to believe that gospel.
Brothers and sisters, this is the good news. It’s a call that extends to the worst of sinners—to prostitutes and pornographers and drug addicts and lazy bums and liars and cheats, to the ugly sins and the big sins and the scandalous sins, to the repeated sins. And this is the answer, that Christ has put away sin. He’s put it away. He’s borne your sins in his body on the cross. We respond by believing that gospel and by following his call and turning to him in repentance and faith, trusting in what he has done for us. So follow his call; that’s first.
(2) Then here’s the second phrase in Hebrews 9:28. “So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time.” He appeared in history to deal with the problem of sin when he offered himself; he appears now in the presence of God for us, and he will appear on earth a second time. We have three appearances of Christ; that’s another whole sermon, isn’t it? Three appearances of Christ, but he will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him—underline that phrase—those who are eagerly waiting for him. Wait for his coming. That’s the second response. Follow his call, and wait for his coming.
What does that mean? What does it mean to wait for his coming? It means that we have an eternal mindset. It means that we’re not living just for his world, but we’re living for the world to come. “Only one life, ’twill soon be past; / Only what’s done for Christ will last.” Burn that into your brain.
It means that we’re setting our hope not on some temporary good—you’re not setting your hope on the day when you finally get out of school or when you finally get to get married or you finally get to have children or grandchildren, or you finally get to retire, or the vacation that you’re saving up for next summer—I mean, those are all good things, those are wonderful blessings from God if he gives them, but those things fade. They don’t last. They will not bring deep rest to your soul. Don’t set your hope on those things.
You need a hope that’s better than that. You need a hope that is this anchor within the veil, as Hebrews 6 says. You need the better hope that Jesus gives, and it’s the hope that when he comes again he’s going to bring our salvation to its completion, to its consummation; sin and suffering will be done away with once and for all, the world will be set right, there will be a new heavens and a new earth, all suffering and sorrow will cease. Every tear will be wiped away. We will receive this eternal inheritance, and we will forever be in the joy of the Lord restored to communion with God once and for all. Let that be your hope; let that be your mindset. Live for that. Live in light of that. Eagerly wait for his coming.
Maybe some of you have heard this story before. I heard this years ago, about a couple—I think it was during World War II. They loved each other deeply, they’d become engaged to get married, but suddenly the guy, named George, had to be shipped off. He went off to Europe or to Asia to fight. They didn’t know if they’d see each other again, but he said to his fiance, Mary, “Will you wait for me? Will you wait till I return?” She said, “Yes, I’ll wait.”
Every once in a while she would get a letter. She’s waiting for the day when the war will be over and George will come home. But one day she got a telegram that he was missing in action, presumed to be dead. They didn’t know if they would ever find him. She’s grieving the loss; she thinks that she’s lost her fiance and will never see him again. She goes on in that grief for weeks on end, and one day she’s up in her room and she’s thinking of what might have been, what could have been. Her wedding gown is hanging there in the closet; she puts it on, and she’s looking in the mirror, and there’s a knock on the door downstairs. When the door is opened, there’s George. He’s been found, and now he’s home. They embrace one another, they kiss one another, and George says, “Mary, I knew you’d be ready; I didn’t know you’d be this ready!”
I don’t even know if that’s a true story. Maybe it’s kind of a silly story, but let me ask you, are you ready for the bridegroom to come? This one who has loved you with an everlasting love, this one who has died for you like a husband giving his life for his bride. Are you ready? Are you prepared in your heart and in your life? Again, not ready in the sense of making yourself right, but ready because you have received the gift of salvation, you’ve trusted in Jesus Christ, and you’ve followed the call of Christ, and now you’re pursuing holiness in the power of the Spirit implanted in your heart. Are you ready in that way? Living for the glory of Jesus Christ.
That’s how we respond to Christ’s sacrifice—follow his call and wait for his coming.
If you’re a believer this morning, my hope is that by God’s grace and through his Spirit he’ll take the truths of the gospel, familiar truths to us all, but that he would press them deeply into your heart, make them real to you in a new way. And if you’re not a believer this morning, and maybe today is the first time that the gospel has ever been clear and that you’ve understood that there is an answer to the problem of your sins, that your sins can be forgiven, not because of what you do but because of what someone else has done for you, that you will receive that message, that you will trust in Jesus Christ, that you will embrace him in saving faith, and that you will begin to follow him. Let’s pray together.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for your word, and we thank you for this simple but profound story of Christ and his love for us, love that took him all the way to the cross to bear our sins, to take our judgment, to suffer in our place, and to secure an eternal redemption for us. We do now once again receive and rest upon this message of salvation, trusting in Christ and in what he has done. Lord, we don’t look to ourselves; we have nothing to commend ourselves to you, but we look to Christ and to his finished work, his final sacrifice on the cross.
We ask you, Lord, by your Spirit to make these things real to our hearts, to take them deep into our consciences, into our very psyche, so that we would be formed and shaped, changed and transformed by them. We pray that you would give us the deep and abiding love for you that answers the love that you have shown us.
Lord, we pray right now for any who do not know Christ, that today would be the day of salvation; that they would receive this message, that they would respond with faith and entrust themselves to Jesus as Savior and as Lord.
As we come to the table this morning, may we come with humble hearts, believing the gospel and feeding on Jesus, the bread of life, even as we take this physical bread and this cup as the tangible and physical reminders of what Jesus has done for us.
We ask you to draw near to us in these moments as we draw near to you. Be glorified in our worship, and may our hearts be deeply satisfied in you. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
