Grab those and turn to Hebrews chapter number nine
where we have started to read this morning.
How many in the room today are great grandparents?
Great grandparents raise your hand real high.
That's awesome.
How many in the room?
This will probably include the same group.
Our grandparents.
Okay, very, very good.
How many in the room are parents?
Look at it, like hold your hands up and look around.
Okay, all right.
Who in the room has parents?
That's everybody, right?
Okay, very, very good.
Some of us have a lot of kids.
Some of us have many, many kids.
Some of us have younger and maybe we just have our own kids.
As a parent, we have a desire.
We have a stewardship.
We have a responsibility to raise our kids
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
And as I'm getting older, I am more and more concerned with
what will happen to my kids.
I remember once I had kids realizing,
now I'm not just reflected by my own behavior.
I got a little kid, two, three children
that are running around with my same last name.
Their actions and behaviors and determine and connect
with people's reputation about me.
So there's that part.
But the other part of that is I'm very, very concerned
and very invested in the upbringing of my kids
and the future of my children.
I want my children to thrive.
And I want my children to love Jesus.
And I want to give them financially.
I want to give to my kids financially,
but I also want to have a legacy for my kids spiritually.
How many are with me on that?
I want my kids to love Jesus.
And I want my kids to love and to follow him.
Two kind of different verses I want to bring up
as we begin this message today.
God in Deuteronomy chapter five tells his people,
I am a jealous God.
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me
and showing mercy unto thousands and thousands of them
that love me and keep my commandments.
Proverbs 13, 22, a good man leaveeth an inheritance,
a good man leaveeth his inheritance
to his children's children.
And the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.
We've been studying the priesthood of Jesus
as we've been studying the book of Hebrews
in the last few weeks especially.
He is greater, he is better in every way.
Last week we began to study chapter nine
which started out, Hebrews chapter nine started out
by saying this, then verily was the first covenant,
then verily the first covenant had also ordinances
of divine service and a worldly sanctuary.
Now as we study Hebrews chapter nine,
what we come to find is that he uses in that verse
three terms that are gonna help us,
two terms in that verse and then one term
we're gonna look at today.
First is the word ordinances.
You guys see the word ordinances there?
The first covenant also ordinances of divine service.
This term was used by everything in the sacrificial system
that was prescribed for the priest to do
to mediate between God and man.
In the Old Testament God gave, he ordained certain things
for the priest to do in that first sanctuary
which is the next word.
You see the word here ordinances
and then you say a worldly sanctuary.
We talked about that a lot last week.
That's the word that was ascribed to the inner
and outer parts of the tabernacle,
the holy place and the holy of holies.
So you have ordinances, these are the things
that the priest did in a worldly earthly sanctuary
in that Old Testament and that was the first covenant.
This refers to the Mosaic Covenant.
It was also called the Old Covenant in the last,
you guys have your Bible, go to Hebrews chapter eight,
just the page over, it says at the very end
in that he saith, this is verse 13,
in that he saith a new covenant,
he hath made the first old, now that which decays
and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.
So you had ordinances and that were those,
all the things that they would do in that tabernacle,
that worldly sanctuary, they would offer sacrifices,
they would burn incense, they would do all kinds of things.
That was all part of the first covenant
and what at the end of chapter eight,
the preacher, the author of Hebrews tells us is,
all that's ready to go away.
It's going, it's gone and the truth of the matter is
we worship differently the same Lord now,
but we worship Him differently, don't we?
Anybody here bring a sheep in this morning?
No, you did not.
We don't have a table of showbread,
we don't have the incense, we don't have a part
of the sanctuary, this place where we meet,
that you can't go into, in fact,
and where we come and worship God,
everybody's welcome to come in here,
men and women, Jew and Greek, male and female,
it doesn't matter, we all come into here to do that.
The preacher has been making the case
that the old covenant, which was mediated
by sacrifices and ordinance made by the old priesthood,
but now we have a new high priest
and that new high priest is Jesus Christ.
And we focus on that old sanctuary or tabernacle
as a picture of a better sanctuary where Christ sits now.
All the things in the old covenant
were picturing something that was real.
There's a real place where God really lives in heaven
and now ever lives to make intercession for us.
We also saw that the old covenant was mediated
by the blood of bulls and goats,
but that Christ's blood is so much better
to purge our consciences and make us clean.
So today we come to this text and we find another term
for the word covenant, it's the word Testament.
If you look at chapter nine verse 15, it says,
and for this cause he is the mediator of the new Testament.
In today's text, we're gonna see the preacher,
the author of Hebrews, begin to expand our understanding
of this incredible word Testament.
Now, we don't use the word Testament very much
in our modern English.
You probably didn't use the word this past week potentially,
except for maybe talking about the old Testament
and the new Testament.
But in everyday language, we don't use it that often,
but we do use it in this way, in a legal way,
when we talk about having to read someone's last will
and Testament.
How many have heard that phrase before?
The last will and Testament.
Today's text deals with the Testament
and he begins to use that same word for Testament
or covenant or promise.
Now he's using it in the sense of being a will,
a Testament, like a last will and Testament.
And to prove it to you, this idea continues throughout.
If you go to chapter 10, just a page over
and look at verse 10, Hebrews 10, 10,
he says, by the which will, go back to verse nine,
then said he, lo, I come to do thy will, O God,
he takeeth away the first that he may establish,
take away the first will that he may establish
the second verse 10, by the which will,
we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all.
And so today, I've entitled today's message,
are you in the will?
Are you in the will?
The USA Today reported about a man previously named
Tony Chang in a headline that read,
billionaire's lover gets 12 years for fake will.
Here's what it says.
The former lover and fortune teller
of quirky billionaire Nina Wang was sentenced Friday
to 12 years in prison after a Hong Kong court
found him guilty of forging a will
to claim her multi-billion dollar estate.
High court Justice Andrew McCrae said Peter Chang's attempt
to pass himself off as the beneficiary
of Nina Wang's fortune, estimated by prosecutors
at 83 billion Hong Kong dollars,
which is 10.7 billion US, was shameless, wicked,
and born of unparalleled greed.
Wang, once Asia's richest woman, died in 2007
at age 69 after battling cancer.
Hong Kong police charged Chang after the 2011 ruling
that a will purportedly leaving Wang's China Kim group
to him was forged.
Later in the article, it says Chang, a 53 year old,
father of three was convicted Thursday of forgery
and using a false instrument.
The judge sentenced him to 12 years on each count
to be served concurrently.
Now people around a billionaire may have a strong desire
to be in their wills.
This guy had such a strong desire to be the heir
to those billions that apparently a judge of his peers
said that, a jury of his peers,
I don't know how a Hong Kong jury system works,
but anyway, he was convicted of forging a will.
He wanted that money.
In those circumstances, people may go to extremes,
but we know that it's a rude thing to be asked
to be in somebody's will.
Isn't it weird to ask that?
I would never think it to ask to be in your will.
That would be such a weird thing.
That's something probably someone ought never asked.
Yet God has made an offer to all mankind.
God has offered an inheritance to every man, woman,
boy and girl.
By the which will we are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all.
It would be rude for us to go to our parents
and to ask to be in the will.
You remember when, or to ask to execute the will
as we'll see in a minute before there's a death.
Remember the prodigal son?
What did the prodigal son do?
He went to his dad and said,
dad, give me my inheritance.
To which the Jewish crowd hearing that story
would have said,
what are you doing?
Would you think that would be pretty rude
in an American context?
Hey, mom and dad, give me my inheritance.
I don't wanna wait till you die, give it to me now.
I would never think to ask that.
Maybe you wouldn't either.
But here's the thing, God has offered inheritance
to everyone.
And his inheritance is way better
than any Asian billionaire woman.
He owns everything.
And you can be in the will.
You can be in the will.
If you're in the will,
then some amazing things are offered to you.
Here's today's big idea.
We can have confidence about our eternal,
spiritual and heavenly inheritance
because of two features of the new testament,
the new will and testament,
the covenant, the promise that God has made to us.
Now, I feel like I've lost half the audience here today.
So let me put this in better terms.
The creator of the universe wants to offer you
an inheritance.
It's not theoretical, it's actual.
Anybody here heard of a new heaven and a new earth
that are coming and they're coming for those
who are in the will.
And you can be in the will.
You can ask to be in the will
and he can say to you what he said to everybody,
he that comes to me, I will and know why is cast out.
I could end the sermon there
and you guys could have a really good day.
But I want to teach you why this is true.
We want to see two features of this will,
this testament that God has given to us.
Feature number one, how the will is mediated.
Let's look at how the will is mediated.
We'll look first at the benefits of the will.
Are you with me?
Anybody lost?
If you're lost, don't raise your hand.
Ask your neighbor, okay?
Verse 15, and for this cause,
he is the mediator of the new testament
that by means of death,
for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first testament,
they which are called might receive the promise
of eternal, what's the next word?
Inheritance, are you seeing
that I'm in the right universe here, right?
Inheritance, the new testament, the new covenant,
the new will and testament is mediated by Jesus Christ.
How did he do it?
Well, it says here that it was by means of death.
Jesus Christ offered his own body and blood
as a sacrifice for our sins.
Because of that sacrifice, he is now the mediator
of a new covenant or a new testament.
Now, covenants were often made in the Bible
with a sacrifice.
We're gonna do a little history lesson this morning.
The Abrahamic covenant, the covenant that was made
to Abraham, the promise made to Abraham
was made with a sacrifice.
In Genesis 15, verse nine, it says this,
and he said unto him, talking about God saying to Abraham,
take a heifer of three years old and a shegoat of three
years old and a ram of three years old and a turtle dove
and a young pigeon, and he took them unto all these
and divided them in the midst.
Meaning he didn't take, dividing them didn't mean
a couple on this side, a couple that side,
dividing them means he cut them in two.
He sacrificed them.
But the verbs he divided not.
Down in verse 18, it says, in the same day
the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying,
unto thy seed I have given this land,
do you see the inheritance there?
Do you see that?
Unto your seed I have given this land,
that's an inheritance, from the river of Egypt
under the great river, the river Euphrates.
When God made a covenant with Abraham,
there was the sacrifice of animals,
and then that promise that was made.
This is true also, the Mosaic covenant.
In Exodus 24, it says this, and Moses wrote
all the words of the Lord and rose early up in the morning
and built in an altar under the hill,
and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of Israel.
And he sent young men of the children of Israel,
which offered what?
Burn offerings, there's the sacrifices.
And sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord.
And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins,
and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar,
and then he took the book of the covenant,
and he read the audience of the people.
This is the covenant that God made.
This is the 10 commandments.
This is the law that God had given to Moses,
and he read the covenant that God was making to them
after sacrificing.
He read it to the people.
He says, verse seven, he took the book of the covenant
and read in the audience of the people,
and they said, all that the Lord has said,
we will do and be obedient.
And Moses took the blood, what did he do?
He sprinkled it on the people and said,
behold, the blood of the covenant,
which the Lord hath made with you
concerning all these words.
Notice, here's the point, the blood sacrifice made,
notice the blood sacrifice made
when the covenant promises were made.
God had set a standard that covenants were made
with a sacrifice.
Do you see the connection?
If you see the connection, raise your hands.
All right, you see it?
Okay, some of you will never raise your hands.
Okay.
Jesus sacrificed on the cross,
his sacrifice on the cross,
paid for the sins of those who placed their faith,
not just for them, it paid for all the sins
of the whole world.
But it's efficient of those who placed their faith in God
through obedience and a following,
and this is the point I'm gonna make.
Not only did it pay for those in the future,
it paid for those in the past
who placed their faith in God in that first covenant.
That's what it means.
Go back to verse 15, here's what he's saying.
And for this cause, he is the meteor of the New Testament,
that by means of death, by means of his own death
is what it means.
For the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first, the old,
all these people before Jesus came
when they would sin, part of the Mosaic covenant
was that you had to offer sacrifices
for the sins that you did
through the mediation of an old priesthood.
And God's economy, what he said was,
when you do that, I'll remember your sins no more.
But it wasn't through the work,
it was because they believed God
and because those things pointed to Jesus.
And what this verse tells us was
that the blood of bulls and goats
wasn't the thing that got their sins forgiven.
Even the people in the Old Testament were forgiven
because Jesus laid down his life,
not just for us in the future,
but for those sins that were passed, do you get it?
So he says, his sacrifice, the covenant was
for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first Testament,
they which are called, that they which are called
might receive the promises of eternal inheritance.
Those who followed God before the New Testament
sacrificed of Jesus, sacrificed animals
and followed the law the best that they knew.
God planned for their redemption
and that plan was the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
on the cross for the sins.
So what was the result for them?
It's the same as the result for us, what was it?
That they might receive the promise
of eternal inheritance, what does that mean?
That means salvation in the fullest sense,
salvation in every way.
Notice the use of the word inheritance.
As we've already stated, this is speaking of the Testament
like a will, a last will and Testament.
What's a Testament?
It's the statement by a person
as to what should happen when there are possessions
after they die.
You with me?
Do you have a will?
I hope you do, I don't have,
I probably need to get one.
I have tens and tens of dollars that I need to give
to my kids after they die, right?
That's kind of, you're getting it now, okay.
A Testament is a statement by a person
as to what should happen with their possessions
after they die.
Our inheritance, now here's the good news, are you ready?
Our inheritance from God is already ours in some sense.
We already have some of it.
And in another sense, we have an inheritance
that we get to possess.
If you placed your trust in Jesus Christ, you were saved.
Let me say that again.
If you placed your trust in Jesus Christ, you were saved.
If you placed your trust in Jesus Christ,
you are being saved.
And if you placed your trust in Jesus Christ,
one day you will be saved.
What do I mean?
There's an inheritance.
This isn't the only place that this is talked about.
Ephesians 1-10, you guys remember when we studied Ephesians?
Verse 10 says this, that in the dispensation
of the fullness of times, he, talking about God,
might gather together in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven and which are in earth,
even in him, in whom we have obtained,
and what does it say?
An inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose
of him, which worketh all things after the counsel
of his own will, that we should be to the praise
of his glory who first trusted Christ.
In whom, here's the order, I love this.
This makes it super clear.
In whom ye also trusted.
When you trusted in Christ, you trusted it after that,
you heard the word of truth.
How do people get saved?
They get saved when they hear the gospel
and then they believe.
Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
You heard the word of truth, you heard the gospel,
the good news of your salvation.
Christ died for our sins, he was buried,
he rose again for our sins the third day
according to the scriptures.
And once you heard it, in whom also after that,
you believed it says here in verse 13,
you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
So if you're saved in here today,
you have the Holy Spirit in you, living in you right now.
The third person that turned to is living in you.
If you don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not saved.
That's what the Bible teaches.
Now here's the cool thing about this Holy Spirit,
he says verse 14, which is the earnest of our, what?
Inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession
under the praise of his glory.
You know what he says?
You know what verse 14 is saying?
When you get saved, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you.
That's the earnest money.
My real-ear friends know what earnest money is, right?
I'm making a down payment now
so that you know more payments coming.
The down payment of our salvation
is the third person of the Holy Spirit
coming to live inside of us who are saved.
Helping us to know that that earnest money,
that more is on the way, it says here,
which is the earnest of our inheritance
until the redemption of the purchased possession.
You know what that means?
All that God bought for us,
all that God did for us in redemption,
we're gonna realize one day when we get to heaven.
Seriously?
We're gonna get all of it.
We're gonna get to heaven.
It's so much better than here.
You think Finley's nice?
It's a nice little town.
We got some nice restaurants.
People are basically nice.
Wait till they're sinless in heaven.
It's way better.
And the Holy Spirit is just a down payment of it.
You know, I come to church with you people.
I love you.
And we enjoy some sweet fellowship.
We have fun together.
If you don't come to church, you're missing out.
It's so fun being with each other.
People ask me how I'm doing and they care about the answer.
It's not just a greeting.
I watch you people help each other out.
You don't think I know, but you do it.
I see it.
But our fellowship one day is gonna be so much better.
Man, I love, every morning, I just about every morning,
I try to get up and I get to read God's word with my coffee.
And all God's people said, I love coffee.
And I love the Bible and I get to read it.
And there's some mornings, not every morning,
it's like this, some mornings, it's like, okay.
But some mornings, like, man, God, you are so good to me.
I get to pray to him.
And the fellowship I have with him is sweet.
But you know what's gonna happen one day?
I'm not just gonna read God's word.
One day I'm gonna hear God's word from God himself.
And I'm gonna spend time with him.
It's so much better, so much better.
And Paul tells us here in Ephesians
that we're gonna receive an inheritance.
We've already received a huge part of it.
But more is coming.
And that is called glorification.
I'm saved, that's salvation.
I'm growing in Christ, he's in me, that's sanctification.
One day I'm gonna experience salvation
in its fullest sense, glorification.
That's gonna be amazing.
Going to be with God in a new body,
on a new heaven and a new earth,
forever free from sin and rewarded
for the things done in the body we have now.
That's all part of our inheritance.
These verses are speaking of those Old Testament saints
who needed their sins forgiven,
who made sacrifices of bulls and goats,
who were given forgiveness fully and finally
because of Jesus Christ.
They have salvation inheritance that was made for them.
And it says here, made for them by means of death,
speaking of the death of Jesus.
So what are the benefits of the will?
How's the will mediated?
Well, first know its benefits.
Redemption for transgressions
and a full inheritance one day, those are the benefits.
Pretty good, aren't they?
You can be in the will.
You can have that right now, forgiveness of sin
and home in heaven one day when you die.
That's what this looks like.
We talked about the benefits,
now let's talk about the benefactor.
The benefactor.
Look at verse 16.
For where a testament is,
there must also of necessity be the death
of a testator.
Now in a will and testament, there's always a benefactor.
What is the will and testament?
It's a written down expression of the desires and promises
of the deceased person for what happens
with all the resources that they stewarded
when they were alive.
This verse is simply saying that with a testament,
with the will, the full benefits of the inheritance
are not activated until the one
who's making the will and testament dies.
The person who's living could write a will
and then later on change the will.
But once he dies, that will is in force.
That's what he says in verse 17.
For a testament is of force after men are,
do you hear it?
Do you see it?
When does it happen?
When they're dead.
Otherwise it is of no strength at all
while the testator liveth.
The will and testaments are just indications
of what the person wants to happen after they deceased.
It's not a force, it's not implemented
until after the death of the benefactor.
That's why in the story of the prodigal son,
it's so offensive for the prodigal
to ask for the inheritance of his father.
He was in essence saying to his father,
I don't wanna wait till you die, I wish you were dead.
The new testament though, bought and paid for
by the blood of Jesus, has been put to death
for Jesus, has been put into force
because the testator died.
But he didn't stay dead.
He rose from the dead.
The death of Jesus Christ has put into play
all of this, the will for those who believe.
It's sufficient for the whole world
and efficient to those who put their trust in him.
And so I ask you again, today, are you in the will?
There's enough for ya.
The death of Jesus Christ is God's gift to me
and the event that initiated those benefits
of his promise to those who believe under the old covenant.
The benefits of this new testament
are just not just off into the someday
in the sweet buy and buy,
the benefits of the inheritance are in the now and now.
Because of our salvation through the death of Jesus,
we have the Holy Spirit.
Because of God's will and election
to give everyone who believes in him the Holy Spirit,
we have the help we need to grow into him
and to everything he wants us to be.
Anybody here fight temptation?
Yeah, like every day.
If you're doing it on your own,
you're gonna mess up.
If you're doing it on your own,
if you're not saved, you are doing it on your own.
If you're not filled with the spirit
or controlled by the spirit, you're doing it on your own.
Some of you are wondering, why do I keep messing up?
Part of it's because you're doing it on your own.
But you don't have to do it on your own.
God's given you the third person of the spirit.
That's part of your inheritance.
You already have it.
Have I told you you already have it?
You already have it.
So God's given his word,
God's given his word.
God's given his people, his church,
he's given his Holy Spirit as part of this down payment to you.
This inheritance to you so you can fight temptation today.
We won't always win it.
One day we're gonna defeat all the temptation
because we're gonna go to heaven
and we're gonna be apart from sin.
But God has given that to you now.
You can have help with that.
You can be in the will.
You can be saved.
The benefits are just incredible.
And our benefactor is Jesus Christ.
Our benefactor is Jesus Christ
through a substitutionary and atoning death.
So we can have confidence about our eternal spiritual
and heavenly inheritance because of two features.
Number one, how the will is mediated.
Number two, second one, last one.
How the will is validated.
We've already been told in this text that this will be a force
or it's implemented because of the death of Jesus Christ.
The new testament was made possible
by the blood of Jesus Christ,
which is so much better than the blood of bulls and goats.
But the preacher here continues to talk about
how the will is validated by the blood of Jesus
by making the point that this New Testament reality
was pictured in the Old Testament.
So the first thing we're gonna see is it's pictured.
How was it pictured?
Well, it was dedicated or validated with blood.
How do we know that God is serious
about giving us an inheritance?
Let's look at the price he paid.
Do you get it?
Verse 19, verse 18.
Whereupon neither the first testament
was dedicated without blood.
What is he saying?
Even the picture of the thing
that he was gonna do in the future, even that,
was pictured with blood.
Everything in the Old Covenant, the Old Promise,
was dedicated with blood.
Look at verse 19.
For when Moses had spoken every precept
to all the people according to the law,
he took the blood of calves and goats with water
and scarlet wool and hissef
and sprinkled both the book and all the people saying,
this is the blood of the testament
which God hath enjoined unto you.
Moreover, he sprinkled with blood, both the tabernacle
and all of the vessels of the ministry.
What is he saying?
Well, the first covenant was a promise
and so is the second.
The preacher here is telling us that the will
or the testament that describes the inheritance
is not enforced until there's a death.
And this was the picture in the Old Testament
when everything was dedicated with blood.
Death is of necessity.
He goes back to when Moses received the law
and gave it to the people, we already read that.
God made a promise, the people made a promise,
they promised to obey the law
and yet they did not obey the law.
Who agrees?
They didn't keep their side of the covenant.
We all messed up.
They messed up, we messed up, right?
God said, hey, you need to do this law.
They said they would do it, but they messed up.
But in the law, God provided something.
God made a provision for them
knowing that they could not keep the law.
That provision was pictured in blood.
The totality of the things involved
in the first covenant was sprinkled with blood.
Here he talks about it, the book, the people,
the tabernacle, the vessels of ministry,
even the priests at one time were sprinkled with blood.
Leviticus 8.30 says,
And Moses took the anointing oil and of the blood
which was upon the altar and sprinkled it on Aaron
and upon his garments and upon his sons,
upon his garments with him and sanctified Aaron
and his garments and his sons
and his sons' garments with him.
In Exodus 29, 21 it says,
And thou shalt take the blood that is upon the altar
and of the anointing oil and sprinkle it upon Aaron
and all of his garments and upon his sons and so forth.
But this is the difference.
Those priests, I don't wanna mess up,
this is a great opportunity for me to really preach.
Are you ready?
Those priests needed to be sprinkled with blood.
Our priest does not.
Those priests needed to be sanctified.
Our priest was perfect.
They needed the blood of another to cleanse them from sins.
Our priest's blood is what cleanses us from sins.
Do you get the picture?
What a beautiful picture of the price
that was paid for our sin.
It shows the cost of my sin.
It should make me want to abandon my sin
and run to Christ who provided so much
so that I can be in the will.
We see it provided by the new covenant, the new testament.
Not just was it pictured, it's been, here's the point,
it's been provided.
Look at verse 22.
And almost all things are by the law purged with blood.
Purge means cleansed.
And without, here it is, and without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission, and you could put in there,
remission for sins.
There's no forgiveness.
That's the cost.
It was therefore, it says in verse 23,
necessary that the patterns of those things in the heavens
should be purified with these,
but the heavenly things themselves
with better sacrifices than these.
What does that mean?
If the cost of entering into the picture of the place
was the blood of animals, let me pause there,
let me get this to you.
You remember last week when we showed you the Tabernacle?
And in the Tabernacle there was the main place,
then there was the holy place and the holy of holies.
The main place could only be entered into by Jews,
Jewish men.
The holy of holies was only allowed to be,
or to the holy place is only the priests,
and the holy of holies was only the high priest once a year.
And every time the priest once a year
went into the holy of holies,
he went with blood, the blood of a spotless lamb.
And he went in there and he took the hissef
and dipped it in the blood and sprayed it,
sprinkled it on the mercy seat, the Ark of the Covenant.
That place was the, that was a manifest presence of God
in that holy place.
And only once a year he could go in there.
And every time he went in, he went in with blood.
If he didn't go in with blood,
in fact they would tie a rope around his ankle
so that if a man went in there unworthily,
not cleansed by the blood, and died,
they could pull him out
because they couldn't go in to get him.
That's how serious it was.
And he says here, verse one theory,
if it was therefore necessary
that the pattern of the things,
that tabernacle was just a picture of the real thing.
Remember me telling you that?
The tabernacle was a picture
of the heavenly sanctuary where God is.
God's presence was manifest at times
down in that earthly sanctuary.
God's present everywhere, but his manifest presence isn't,
who agrees, God's got a heavenly throne.
That's where he's at.
And he's saying, if every time we,
when we're just going into the metaphor
or the picture of God's presence in that tabernacle
and you had to take blood,
the heavenly, verse 23,
things themselves had to be done with better sacrifices
than these.
And that's exactly the case.
The cost for your will, are you in the will?
The cost for your inheritance was the blood of Jesus Christ.
He didn't need sprinkling.
His blood is what makes full and final remission of sins.
He is now there in that real heavenly tabernacle,
mediating our will and testament,
our inheritance, which is a force
because of the sacrificial death of our benefactor,
our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so it says in verse 24, which isn't part of my text,
but we'll preview you for next week.
Check out what it says.
For Christ is not entered into the holy place
made with hands, which are the figures of the Lord.
The figures of the true, but into heaven itself.
Now to appear in the presence of God.
For who?
For us.
Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again to receive you unto myself
that where I am, you may be also.
You can be in the will.
You can get part of your inheritance up front
and the full and final part of your inheritance one day
in glorification.
Anybody have somebody up there?
Right?
It's a point in an amendment once to die
and after this, the judgment.
You can be in the will and the price
for your inheritance was paid by Jesus Christ
when he shed his blood on the cross for us.
How can you have it paid?
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.
No man cometh to the Father, but by me.
Here's one thing it's hard about preaching.
There's a lot of things, but here's one thing.
Sometimes you think I'm saying what I'm saying
because I'm the preacher.
That's not why I'm saying it.
It's not true because I'm saying it.
I'm saying it because it's true.
Some of you think that this is all theoretical.
Then when I say there's a heaven
and that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sins,
some of you think that's a really pretty metaphor.
I'm telling you it's not.
When I say Jesus, I'm talking about a real historical person
that really lived and that who really came
and who really died.
And when I say he rose from the dead,
I'm not saying metaphorically,
the dead man got up and walked after shedding his blood
for your sins.
And when I say you can receive it,
Jesus and get an inheritance, you might say,
well, that sounds like a really cool metaphor.
I'm not talking about a metaphor.
He's coming back.
And those who get to go to be with him
are those who have put their faith and trust in him
because he's the only way.
You're not gonna get there because you were a good church member.
You're not gonna get there because you did
a certain number of things.
You did a certain number of rules and laws and ordinances
and all that.
Here's the proof of that.
It's in the text.
The Old Testament people didn't even get there that way.
They got there the same way we did by faith,
not knowing exactly what Jesus would be like,
but believing what God had told them up until that point.
And what God said in motion was a picture
of what he was going to do.
And the transgressions that they had forgiven were forgiven
because an actual person, fully God, fully man,
was actually born of a woman who was a virgin
and actually lived a perfect life and never did anything wrong,
never had to be purged from sin because he never did any sin.
He kept the law that you could not keep
and died the death that you and I deserve to die.
And the Bible says that if we put our faith and trust
in what he did because of his shed blood
and because of his person and what he is
and who he is and what he did for us,
we can go to an actual place.
We can get out of this life alive.
To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord
for those who know Jesus.
But to die outside of Christ is to be separated from God forever.
And so the theme of the message of every New Testament,
New Covenant, church, and certainly the theme
of our church over these years has been
that this is God's word and that God's word has revealed
to us that God loves us, that he's not willing
that any should perish, that he has set forth
the course of human history to teach us,
if nothing else, one thing, we couldn't keep God's law.
So God had to keep the law for us.
And to pay the price for our sin in the person
and work of Jesus Christ.
And that work is done.
That work is done.
We'll see next week.
In the earthly sanctuary, there were no seats.
They couldn't sit down because they had to keep sacrificing
because sin kept happening.
We're gonna see next week that Jesus Christ sits down
because the work is over.
When he goes to that heavenly sanctuary,
up there, there's a throne and he's sitting on it.
And he's waiting on his enemies to become his footstool,
is what it says.
I just ruined next week for myself.
That's some good preaching.
Are you with me?
He's coming back and it's appointed
and the man wants to die after this, the judgment.
Today is the day of salvation.
I'm not promised next week.
Neither are you.
Put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Would you bow your heads and close your eyes with me?