Well, how do you?
So I tried.
Last week I tried.
Microphone doesn't like me today.
I tried to remind the world that we need to stop looking for blood from our neighbors
and stop looking for others to blame for our own issues.
But I found out that apparently not everyone comes to church here at Christ Memorial Lutheran.
So I was not able to reach all 161 million voting Americans with my sermon last week.
For that I do apologize.
I will work on that for next time.
I've got about four more years so it should be okay.
Now I am sure that nobody here rubbed it in anyone's face that they won.
I'm sure nobody here lashed out at anybody else in anger because they lost.
I am sure that all of you handled the whole thing politely and kindly.
So don't worry, today's sermon is not for any of you.
I promise.
Now I'm also looking at purchasing some oceanfront property in Arizona.
I've heard that from the front porch you can see the sea.
We spoke previously about how God did not initially create us as human beings with the
intention of bloodshed.
Rather we ourselves have been the ones who pursue it.
And therefore because of that our sin, Jesus had to provide his own blood to cover our
own sins.
The ones we continue to pursue and then blame on others.
And so because of the pattern we created, we were required to use blood to find forgiveness
of sins until Jesus sacrificed himself.
It says in Hebrews 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.
So then what does the rest of the chapter say?
Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these
rights but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
The copies of the heavenly things.
The tabernacle that the children of Israel followed in the wilderness was actually a
copy.
The tabernacle was the place where God's glory would descend so that God could meet the people,
guide them and bestow his mercy upon them.
But that isn't where God ultimately dwells.
God doesn't limit himself to what we develop as if our plans define what he will do.
Rather we are supposed to be God's dwelling.
But the problem is that we need cleansing.
See Jesus' sacrifice is not for the things that we create.
Jesus' sacrifice is for our souls, for our very being.
Have we finally faced the fact that what we create here on earth is not ultimately what
God intends for us?
No, that does not mean that we don't try to do what God wants us to do on this earth.
We do.
We are meant to try as much as we can.
We pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
But when did we start praying, thy kingdom has finished getting here and thy will is
being done perfectly already.
So Jesus, don't worry.
You don't need to come because we got this.
I think I missed that part in the English Standard Version.
Maybe it's in the King James.
Let me look.
Nope, nope, not there.
I know that this is hard to believe.
I get it.
I really do.
Those other people out there, they're crazy and you don't understand them and you don't
understand what they're pursuing.
I get it.
But whatever any of you are pursuing and whomever any of you are following is not the
actual answer to the issues that our world is facing either.
Our laws, our leaders, our ideas, they're from people making the best decisions they
can, but they aren't what actually makes the world a better place.
But what's concerning is because we think it does.
The only sacrifice that actually does anything for anyone was already accomplished 2000 years
ago.
It says in Hebrews, 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.
Our good intentions, our good works are not where Jesus is found.
It's been amazing.
I have been seeing tons of pictures for some time now that seem that all seem to include
Jesus in them doing this, doing that.
I see all these pictures, these memes, these graphics of Jesus doing this and doing that,
expecting this person praying or that person attacking one person's hero or rescuing someone
else's.
Man, Jesus is like the new action figure, apparently online.
Y'all, Jesus is not into the games that we're playing.
He's not in your camp or your camp or your camp or my camp or anybody's camp.
He's not a camp.
And if you're sharing graphics that somehow seem to think that Jesus is somehow involved
in our issues that we're facing currently, there's a good chance it's probably not right.
Because it says in Hebrews, Christ is not entering into what is made with our hands,
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.
Could you imagine going in year after year to make sacrifices to God to amend your relationship
with him and then deciding that your next sacrifice is somehow going to make everything
better in a way that the previous sacrifices did not?
Or if not every year, every four years, somehow thinking that our new set of works is somehow
all that much better than what we did before.
There was one sacrifice that truly brought to an end sin, death and the devil.
There are no more battles that accomplish the same thing, nor more battles like that
are even needed.
We are celebrating this weekend, those who have gone to different places in order to
defend us or to defend our allies and others from genuine threats.
And what is it that we are spending so much time attacking right now?
None of this is the actual battle in a nation where less than one half of 1% of the US population
is active duty military.
Why are we spending so much time trying to declare war on our neighbors or even more
than that?
Christians on fellow Christians.
Are we that desperate to fight but so unwilling to serve the way that people did before?
It says in Ephesians six, finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might
put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the
devil for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers against
the authorities against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual
forces of evil in the heavenly places.
If we are fight trying to destroy flesh and blood, other human beings and that isn't actually
the battle we're supposed to fight, then who is actually winning when we do?
And more than that against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
If it says in Hebrews that the heavenly places are to be cleansed by Christ Jesus, then where
is it that we're actually dealing with the spiritual forces?
Not out there in here.
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 not not to deal with sin.
But to save those who are eagerly waiting for him not to deal with sin.
Just think about what our world has been promoting.
I have to attack you because we need to deal with sin.
I hear this from so many different sides in groups.
I have to attack you because we're trying to deal with sin in Jesus name.
Jesus isn't coming back to deal with sin.
He already did.
Jesus is coming back to save.
So then why are we spending our time trying to deal with sin instead of using grace and
mercy to save souls?
If we truly believe that the people around us are so lost, then why is it that we cannot
show them the one thing that would actually save them?
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form
of these realities.
It can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect
those who draw near.
Otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshipers having once been
cleansed would no longer have any consciousness of sins.
But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year for it is impossible for
the blood of bulls and coats to take away sins.
The law and everyone who comes with it is a shadow.
There's no substance here.
None of what we are doing is cleansing anybody.
If what we do every four years could ever change or our hearts and our souls, then wouldn't
it have happened already?
And not just for a moment or a season or until somebody says or does something dumb, but
from now on.
Wouldn't it have been so overwhelmingly amazing and salvific that it would have brought everyone
and everything in line with Christ Jesus?
Israel kept making sacrifices to deal with their situation at that moment.
They had to.
But their sacrifices, their works were nothing to be proud of their practices, their ways.
They didn't prove anything to God about their worth or whether he should love them or take
away their sins in any real and permanent way.
And nothing that we're doing is the point of helping his kingdom.
That's not how it works.
Not playing the victim as if we have never did anything wrong ourselves.
Not playing the hero as if somehow we have saved all of humanity and not playing the
villain as if we are tasked by God himself to hurt anyone and everyone that we believe
deserves it because none of it is helping the kingdom.
And I am not going to pretend that I have not done that third one.
Believe me, even at this moment, I sometimes feel like I'm teetering on the edge and it
worries me.
The only reason why I should even be discussing this is because I'm scared.
I'm scared for us.
And sometimes I'm scared of us.
And yet we keep doing so many things, behaving the way we do in God's name.
And even more than that, I have had my own friends hear me say how scared I am and then
attack me even more for being scared.
But didn't Jesus become the ultimate sacrifice?
Aren't we ignoring that sin requires blood?
And if Jesus already did everything, then shouldn't we be willing to lay it all on the
line for him?
I'd like to go forward a few verses.
Don't worry.
I'm not spoiling next week's passage at all.
But Hebrews 10.5.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have
not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.
In Bert offerings and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the
scroll of the book.
I need to let you all in on a history lesson.
When people were writing the New Testament, many of them were not actually going back
and using the Old Testament Hebrew of the Old Testament scriptures.
They had something that was called the Septuagint.
It was a Greek translation.
What they had done is because Greek was so well used is that also when they were translating,
it had so many better manuscripts to go from.
But in so doing, you have to translate from Hebrew, the original Masoretic text to Greek.
But there were variations in it.
Not destroying the word of God, but variations.
The writer of Hebrews here was quoting Psalm 40, and there was a variation in there.
We read the part that says, a body you have prepared for me.
And when we read that, we oftentimes jump to Jesus giving his body as a sacrifice.
A body have you prepared for me?
Oh, offering sacrifices, a body.
Yep, that's talking about Jesus giving his life.
But look at the context.
Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired.
Because when it talks about the body, it is not saying what you think.
Because the original Masoretic text had a different way of saying what it was trying
to get across.
We have some copies that still exist.
And we say that the original wording was, but you dug two ears.
What does that mean?
If you have two ears, then you can listen to God's word and you can obey him.
Which is what you can do when you have a body prepared for you.
A body to listen and a body to do God's will.
Because the point here is exactly what the Hebrews writing is trying to get across to
us.
It's not about the sacrifices or the offerings.
It's about listening and obeying our God.
When he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings
and Burt offerings and sin offerings, these are offered according to the law.
Then he added, behold, I have come to do your will.
He does away with the first in order to establish the second.
And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all.
Psalm 40 describes what happens when the king is present at the altar, when the sacrifice
is being made.
The king is there to present the offering and to sing God's praises.
But the king is not the one to make the sacrifice.
The king is not the high priest.
The king is not the one to bring salvation to the people.
The king is not the one who makes the people righteous.
The king is supposed to be righteous himself.
Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.
If we want people to follow Christ, it is not by victories.
It is not by what we can somehow push toward with our efforts.
Whatever we wish to see in the world must be because of what Christ has done and does
now through us.
If we want the world to trust in his mercy, then we have to embody mercy.
If we want the world to know that there is love and that we are meant to follow, then
we need to do it ourselves first.
And if we don't understand why it is that people would go in a different direction,
yelling louder won't fix it.
And listening to them to understand won't change that God has saved us.
It doesn't matter what has happened right now.
And it doesn't matter what happens in four years or four years after that or however
many multiples that there are that we have to teach kids in third grade.
The same is true as it has always been.
The king is not the high priest.
And if we want the world to follow Christ, the answer has to be in our lives, not in
our fight to win power.
So fortunately, we've talked about this twice in a row, so I'm sure that all of you have
got it down now perfectly.
But wherever you may find yourself this week, and whoever it is that may be upsetting you,
that's not where we find the true salvation because Christ already did it.
So my hope and my prayer is that we as people who already know the mercy and the forgiveness
of Christ Jesus ourselves can show that to the world around us because it is only by
forgiveness and mercy that God can actually transform this world.
Thanks be to God.