Cleansed!

 

Text: Hebrews 9:11-14

Focus: Cleansing

Function: To celebrate how our consciences are made clean by the Holy Spirit

¹¹But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), ¹²He entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. ¹³For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, ¹⁴how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

It is too bad that Carol isn’t here today because she designed this service and sent it to me early and her designing of the service gave me inspiration for how to prepare this message.

Today, we are focusing on the cross and the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ .

The author of Hebrews throughout the book paints Jesus Christ as the Great High Priest who offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

I mentioned earlier, at the beginning of our study in Hebrews that Hebrews is full of Jewish mystery and theology. It can be difficult for us Westerners to understand or to picture the significance of different passages.

For example, the Jews had a sacrificial system to atone for their sins, to honor God and to thank God for certain blessings in their lives. But mainly, the animal sacrifice was the price that was paid when we sinned.

Every year, on the day of atonement they had two goats. They laid their hands on the heads of the goats and they took one and they killed it by slicing its throat in their presence. Then, in the presence of the leaders, the Priests took the goat and butchered it. They laid the fat, the entrails and the meat on the altar where it was burned up.

It was a bloody sight. I imagine that the temple area stunk with the residue of blood and the burning of flesh. They would sprinkle some of the blood on the base of the altar. Imagine how the buildup would have been kind of a grotesque sight and stench.

The worst part was that they didn’t get to eat any of the meat. It was a sacrifice given to God to pay for their sins.

And it didn’t just happen on the day of atonement. The same practice was there for someone who sinned, unintentionally, and became aware of it. The same process happened. The slaughter of the lamb or the goat of the birds, if they were too poor to afford a lamb or goat and if they were rich, they sacrificed a whole bull was the price paid for sin.

Sin cost a life is the message that is shown in the sacrificial system. It was highly symbolic of the price of sinning in the land. They placed their hands on the head of the animal to be sacrificed in a symbolic way to show, I believe, that their sins were transmitted onto the animal and the animal had to die.

There was one ceremony of sacrifice where the blood of the animal is poured into a bowl, then they take a sprig of hyssop branch, dip it in the bowl of blood and then fling the blood onto the crowd. The blood was to remind them of their guilt. That might be a good time to sit in the back for the worship service!

And I hope that I haven’t grossed you out with the description of the scene, but it helps us to be aware of what they were facing in the OT worship system.

Now, there were sacrifices that were eaten, they offered thank offerings for things like babies being born and etc. Those offering went through the same bloody ritual. But they only burnt up the unusable parts of the animal and the rest of the meat they boiled so that all the blood was taken out of it.

The shedding of blood and its visceral image was supposed to be a warning for them not to sin.

Jesus Christ, we believe, paid the final price for all the sins of the entire world and because of His sacrifice for us, the Church does not need to sacrifice an animal to pay for the sins of the people. Jesus, we believe, abolished the need for sacrifice because He became the perfect and final sacrifice for our sins.

Animal sacrifice was a common practice in pagan religions as well. So, when the first Christian missionaries began to share the good news about Jesus death, sacrifice and resurrection, people could relate to the idea that God (or the gods) could be appeased by a blood sacrifice.

And the whole idea was to assuage the feeling of guilt and shame that was inherent in the cultures. The blood of the sacrifices reminded them of that.

So, after building a foundation of the fact that we do not stand before the Creator of the universe without guilt and guilt leads us to shame and shame destroys our hope, we have a remedy for out sin. Jesus Christ, the just and righteous judge who gave Himself on our behalf.

Let us worship Him and draw near.

He says something about Jesus’ sacrifice in the passage that is significant. He speaks of how the Holy Spirit lead Jesus and that is what made Jesus the perfect sacrifice.

It was the Spirit of God that empowered Him and the author of Hebrews tells us to trust in God to cleanse our conscience.

God does it through the same Holy Spirit that lead Jesus to the cross to be our sacrifice.

And that Holy Spirit is powerful enough to actually cleanse our conscience.

I have seen it time and time again. I have had the privilege on several occasions to pray with someone the sinners prayer whereby they make a formal request of Jesus to save them from their sin. And they all report back to me the same experience I had when I asked Jesus to forgive me. They are cleansed and somehow, by the power of the Spirit, they know that they are forgiven.

I consider myself a liberal. But liberal theologians ask the question, and I ask it also, why? If God is all powerful, why didn’t God just erase sin by decree? He could, we know.

But the scriptures show us throughout, from OT to NT that blood is shed for sins and Jesus did it for us. I don’t know why except to believe that God did it to show us both how to live and how to die.

Jesus was killed standing up to those who would displace the poor and the weak. Especially against those who used a false religion to do it. We do not have to follow the system as well, is the example that Jesus gave us. We do not have to live a life of greed, we can love and live because we know that we are cleansed and on the the way to heaven when we die where our reward will be according to the sacrifice and love we showed Jesus while on this earth.

That prayer that I have used? It is simple, It goes like this: “Dear Jesus, I believe in you and I ask you to forgive my sins and to save me.”

Simple. Powerful. Transforming. That is what our salvation, or healing from God, is like. A clean conscience is something to celebrate!