Well, we will continue our series examining the Trinity, knowing who our God is. And the words of which we'll examine tonight come out of Hebrews 10, verses 1-18. You'll see in your bulletin, the corrected title is, Jesus, the Final and Perfect Sacrifice. Those are two true aspects of which we will examine tonight. But if you've been with us through this journey, we've been examining the Trinity. The first two weeks we saw how the Trinity, three persons, three persons unified in one, one in essence, all God. And we've examined the unity within the Trinity. And now, we're not examining the disunity of the Trinity, but we're taking each week and we're examining a specific person of the Trinity. So last week, Jason wonderfully laid us out the image of who the Father is and how the Father is active within our salvation. The Father is the one that has planned and wills the redemption of sinners. And it was actually last week is, you know, just so you can, I'm going to give you a peek into my brain, which is a little scary, but I have a few hundred different thoughts and sermon ideas that are always just floating around. And I thought I was going down one path. And then Jason said something last week that sparked something in me. I thought, oh no, scrap everything I've thought and I'm going to go down this path to examine Jesus, the Son, the second person of the Trinity. And what we want to see tonight is how is Jesus sufficient as the sacrifice? How is He enough? How is Jesus the one that has redeemed us? that's what we're going to examine tonight. So thank you Jason for your wonderful message last week, but also God using you to spark that in my mind. Let us examine this aspect of Jesus. And then next week we'll examine the Spirit, how the Spirit is at work within our salvation as well. And then The last two weeks will be objections to the Trinity and then heresies of the Trinity, which will be very unique and fun sermons. So just to give you a vision of what the next few weeks look like. But tonight we want to look at Jesus, the final and perfect sacrifice. I think for most of us sitting in here, if not all of us, we would say, yes, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. That's our confession as Christians. That's good and beautiful and true. But why? Why did Jesus die on the cross? Was there no other option? Could we not have achieved it some other way? Did we have to pour out the blood of the Son of Man and the Son of God perfectly in one, the incarnate God came down in flesh and dies in our place? Is there no other option? And tonight we're going to see that there is no other option. That He is the only way. The final, because there's nothing else that's going to need to happen. We're not waiting for another Messiah. We're not waiting for another system of religion to come in to fill us up, to make us clean. No, no. It was Christ and it's done. And then the perfect. Oh, the perfect's beautiful. because the sacrifice was so sufficient that it was once and done. The sacrifice of Christ was so sufficient that he took sinful beings like you and I and made us perfect, not just for a moment, not just for a time, but he made us perfect into glory, into the eternity. That's the Jesus we worship. That's who we want to examine. How is this possible? And tonight we will see this. We're going to ask three simple questions. I try to work in question base because that's how I think. So the three questions we'll examine tonight is how has man attempted and failed to make himself righteous before God? We're going to have to do some self-reflection here. We're going to have to look at history. The second question, and essentially the most important question, is who is able to make sinful man righteous? Spoiler alert, Jesus. If you didn't know that, this is the most simple answer, Jesus. And then the third question, what does all this mean to the Christian? What does it mean for you and I? So let us examine Hebrews chapter 10 verses 1 through 18. The Word of the Lord reads, Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered? Since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 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 burnt 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. When he said, Above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings. These are offerings according to the law. When 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. And every priest stands daily at his service. offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from the time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them, after those days declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there's no longer any offering for sin. What a beautiful section. I know it's a longer one, but Hebrews is just one of my favorite books as I've unpacked it more and more. About two years ago, in our Bible study that we had in our home in Italy, we worked through the book of Hebrews, and I did it kind of on a whim, and as I worked through it, and each week, it just seemed like the glory of God, the glory of Christ, and what He had done for sinful men, magnified each time it was like this chapter was great and people would get excited and then the next week is like holy cow this chapter in this aspect of Christ is even grander and it's just really the entire book unfolded that way and I hope we see that here that the glory of Christ is just magnified in this writing that his work goes beyond our comprehension of what we needed as sinners So let us ask, how has man attempted and failed to make himself righteous before God? We see the author of Hebrews here, he lays out a few positions and what he does is he's using the Jewish understanding. The Jewish understood the law, they understood the Old Testament, they even understood the covenants that God had made with them. And what he wants to do is show how they were just a shadow, as the author uses, or just a type. It's a hint. It's a foreshadow of what is to come. Some of the best stories often do that, but you don't realize it till the end, right? Some of the best stories and movies, in the very beginning, there's just a glimpse of something. You're like, that was unique and interesting, but then you forget about it. You watch the movie, you read the book, and then in the climax of the story, the glimmer you saw in the beginning the fulfillment you get it at the perfection at the at the highest point of history and that's essentially what happens here is God gave us a glimmer of the hope and the salvation in the sacrificial system as the animals are sacrificed as their blood is poured out upon the altar but that was never to save sinful man it was just a glimpse of the grander blood that would be poured out for sinful man But what has man done with this? What have you and I done with this? We've chased after other things to find ourselves and make ourselves righteous. So the first one is through the obedience to the law. We see in verse one, for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come and so the true form of these realities, listen, it can, how often? Never. It can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect to those who draw near. Never. The law was never intended to make perfect. We actually see in scripture the law was used to show us our need for the Savior. The law shows our sinfulness. But what do we do? We want to follow a step-by-step pattern that makes us good. Give me the rules. Pastor, give me the rules. Parents, or kids, you're asking your parents, just tell me the rules. What do I have to do to make you happy? Clean my room? Brush my teeth? Floss every other Thursday? That's all we want, right? We just, you give me the rules and I'll check that off. And humans, don't we do the same thing? Adults, I don't care how old we are, just tell me the rules and I'll follow those rules. Just don't speed. Go to church, don't swear, I'll check off those boxes. And then in the end, we look back and say, look how holy I am, look how righteous I am. But actually, that hasn't redeemed us at all. It may have protected us from some sins, but it has not cleansed us of our sin nature. That's the problem, is that we chase after the law, we attempt to obey it in this desire that it will cleanse us, it will make us clean. But in fact, we know and we see that the law has no ability to cleanse us. It never did. So we don't need to think that Israel was cleansed by the law in the past. And it never will. We know that today we're not cleansed by the law. Our sins are not forgiven because of obedience to the law. Likewise, we know into the future, obedience to the law, as it is not, will cleanse us and forgive us our sins. Obedience to the law will not make us righteous. It's one of the beautiful things that Jesus lays out in Matthew and what's commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. But what he's trying to do is show how as perfect as we can keep the law, sin is still active in our hearts. He lays out the obedience and the physical action. And this is where we like to live. Let me appear clean. Let me check all the boxes. I won't murder. Good. Easy, right? Easy one. But then what did he say? He turns it inward and says, let's examine the heart. Sure, you're not slaughtering your brother by physically striking him, but you've slaughtered him by spiritually striking him with your heart and your hatred. Ooh, OK, that hurts. Adultery. Good. I won't cheat on my spouse. I won't sleep around. That's good. Oh, but what happens is in your heart, unseen to man, but the seen to God, is still sinful." So we see that it doesn't matter how perfect we keep the law, there's no way that the law can cleanse us and make us righteous before God. So the second piece, sacrifices. This is a little foreign to us today. We don't see a whole lot of animal sacrifices pouring out of blood. If you would go to Israel, there's some sects of people that are trying to bring back a sacrificial system. But ultimately, the sacrificial system that we knew of the Old Testament is completely eradicated today because they don't have the temple of which they believe they need to go into to sacrifice. But look here in verses two through four, and we're gonna see how the pouring out of animal blood was never sufficient, was never sufficient to make sinful man righteous. Verse two reads, 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 goats to take away sins." Is it sometimes doable that blood of goats and bulls will take away sins? Or is it never possible, impossible? It's impossible. It's right there. It's impossible. It never was sufficient in the past. It was just a type. It was pointing to Christ. If you were here a few weeks ago, and we worked through Romans in the morning service, Romans 3, we see God's patience and grace for that time. He passed over their sins until the day of Christ where they were atoned for. They weren't atoned for through the bulls or the goats. They were atoned through by Christ. So we must recognize that the sacrifice of animals was never sufficient. Brothers and sisters, we could fill up, we could get all the perfect lambs and all the perfect goats. We could follow the Levitical law to the T. And we could fill that baptismal pool full of the blood. And it won't leak because we fixed it. But it could be packed full of the blood and it would never, it wouldn't cleanse a single piece of sinful man. It wouldn't even touch it. We could slaughter, we could eliminate every animal and pour out their blood, following the Levitical law, and not one of us would be made righteous. The blood of the animals was never sufficient. It never cleansed. But what about today? We don't see sacrificing animals in this way. But does that mean we're still not chasing after that in some way? Sacrifice, giving up our time. We think if I'm just committed, if I make sure I show up every time there's a work project going on here at the church, or anytime someone has a need, I'll be there, I'll be the one to do it. I'll sacrifice my time, my services. Won't that make me righteous? Not at all. Is it good? Sure. Please, as a guy doing outreach, I'm begging you to volunteer your time. Don't hear me there. But if you're thinking at any point that this is going to cleanse you of your sins, you've missed it. It's not ever the case. Sacrifice was never sufficient to cleanse the sinful man and make him righteous. We see this often in the prison systems. These men and women, they do the crime, they go to prison, and they get reformed. They recognize the wrongdoing. And you often see they come out and they start doing great programs and try to help people that they have wronged. They try to fix the problems. They try to help the youth, and that's good things. But often they're chasing because they have to eradicate their sins of the past and try to make themselves better, and they're doing it in all the wrong avenues. Now, if it's through Christ, it's because they recognize that Christ has bled on the cross for them, and Christ has redeemed them. That's a different story. But often, we're chasing after our own ways of trying to cleanse ourselves. And the third thing that we're often chasing after to try to make ourselves righteous, or that we see man doing throughout history, is through good works and offerings. Let me give some of my money. Let me give some tithes. Let me offer, once again, services and time. I think a lot of these are overlapping. And we think this is what's going to fix us. This is what's going to make us good. This is what's going to make God happy when I get to heaven. Look at verses 5 and 6. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, These are hard words, aren't they? Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired. He's speaking of God. But a body have you prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you've taken no pleasure. No pleasure. This is a bit of the climax of the Protestant history. If you're familiar with Martin Luther's life, he was really, he was kind of the Paul of the Catholic world. He was the perfect Catholic. He did all the sacraments. He followed the Catholic law to the T. He was actually asked one time not to ever go back to the confessional booth for a day or two because the priest was getting so tired of him coming back in there. Because what Martin Luther would do, he would go into the confessional booth, he would confess his sins, thinking this is how he's going to be made right. He's got to follow the law, he's got to do his sacrifices, he's got to do the offerings of the Catholic Church, and by this, he will be made righteous before God. So he would go back into the confessional booth, he would confess his sins, and he would talk about it. So he'd walk out of the confessional booth and around the cathedral there, there was this path he would walk down. And each step of that path, each stone, excuse me, he stepped on, he was reminded of a sin that he had failed to confess. And what did he do? He ran back around the cathedral, got back in the confessional booth, and started back over. He would leave and he would do this, sometimes for a long time. Because he was chasing after a way of making himself righteous. And then as the story goes, as he's reading through the book of Romans, the Holy Spirit convicts Martin Luther of the sin of following and chasing after his own works to achieve his righteousness. Convicts him that it was only through Christ. There was no other way. The Catholic traditions were never sufficient to redeem him and now we live on part of the shoulders of Martin Luther and his work in the Protestant Reformation. But we're doing the same thing many times. The world's doing the same thing. The outsiders, the non-believers are chasing after a God in some form or fashion. The non-believers are trying to make themselves righteous by their own standards in some form or fashion. identity. People are chasing after who they are, their identity, let me try to change how I look, change the group I'm hanging out with, in an attempt to make themselves righteous to whatever higher power they have, which they deny. The social justice movement. I will be made righteous if I march with this group. I will be made righteous if I vote in this way. I will be made righteous if I post on Facebook that I stand with so-and-so and such and such and go down the list. The world is chasing after some form of righteousness through their works. Now, we don't need to just examine outside. We do very similar things in here. In our own lives, we're chasing after some way to make ourselves righteous. We go on a missions trip. We have this high, it's wonderful. What happens, you come back, you're on fire, you're sharing about that, and then that fire dies out some way, and we have to do it again. We're always chasing this high, we're always chasing, oh man, this was when I was made righteous, this was when I was close to God, was at this concert, at this mission strip, at this time when this song was played, and we're trying to replicate that in our lives. Because we're chasing all the wrong things. Our eyes are focused on the wrong place. Throughout history, man has attempted to make himself righteous before God. And throughout history, man has failed. So who is able to make sinful man righteous? Answer? Jesus. Who said God? Good job. Trinity, right? Jesus is part of the Trinity. It's the easiest answer. When in doubt, you just think of this. This is what I want you to take away tonight. If you're thinking, who will make me righteous? What will make me righteous? It's Jesus and Him alone. Notice that. Jesus and Him alone. Who was sacrificed on the cross? Jesus. Not the Father. Not the Holy Spirit. This is where the persons of the Trinity and the unity of the Trinity should start to amaze us. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, was the only person of the Trinity that died in our place. When we start to recognize that the mystery of the Trinity is so mysterious that the unified God, only one person died in our place, only one person convicts, only one person of the Trinity foretells the future or the plan of his will, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, yet they're all combined, but each person, individual, we start to be in awe of how great our God is. Brothers and sisters, we must recognize that it was Jesus, the Son, that died in our place. Jesus completely fulfilled the law and was obedient to the Father. That's why we have to understand that it wasn't God the Father that died in our place, because it was Jesus being obedient to the Father. It's not the Holy Spirit that dies in our place because Jesus says that he will send the Helper, the Comforter. It's Jesus. It's the blood of Jesus that paid for our sins. It's the blood of Jesus that poured out. It's the blood of Jesus that fulfilled the sacrificial system, which the bulls and the goats never could. Look here in verse seven, this is continuing that last thought. Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, and it is written of me in the scroll of the book. Jesus perfectly fulfilled the law. We need to recognize this because this helps us understand how Jesus is sufficient as a sacrifice. We see in the Levitical laws that there was requirements of what it took for a goat and the bulls to be the right type to be sacrificed. It had to be perfect. A perfect bull and a perfect goat was the only thing qualified to be sacrificed at the altar. Had to be of the right age, the right quality, no blemish, no limping. God didn't want this goat that had a cough that was infecting all the other goats. You wouldn't bring the sickly one that had no weight or no value to you. No, no, no. God said that the requirements for the sacrificial system was that you brought the best of the best. Not even a glimmer of a type there, because Jesus is better than the best. He's perfect. He fulfilled the law. We see Jesus coming and taking on flesh. This is important that the Son of God, the Son of Man came down incarnate, God incarnate, totally, fully, truly God, totally, fully, truly man. And he dwelt among humanity. being obedient to the law. Why was he obedient to the law? Was this his way of being made righteous? No, he's God, we see that, we know that, but he had to be perfect. He had to be the perfect sacrifice. If it just took any human to hang on the cross, why not just pick the worst person among us and put him up there, right? Wouldn't that be a good solution? But that's not the case. It takes a perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. We see this all the way back in Genesis, at the fall of man in Genesis 3. And God promises before that, that the disobedience to God, surely man will die. Death will come upon him, and we see this. And then we see man rebel, and God comes in, and immediately Adam and Eve weren't struck down as they could and should have been. They weren't struck down. They weren't put to death. What does God do? He kills an animal. It's a glimpse. The soul dies. We see the separation of man and God, and the unity they once had in the garden, and now we live in that sinful and corrupted flesh. The glimmer that an animal died for them, and then we see the sacrificial system coming all the way through. But Jesus perfectly obeyed the law. Not the law that man had made. We see him constantly fighting with the Pharisees, constantly being attacked, saying, oh you're being disobedient. You're working on Sunday. You ate on Sunday. You healed a man on Sunday. And these other laws, you said you were God. And we see that they're bringing these accusations and these attacks against Him. He did not fulfill the law written by man's hand. He fulfilled the law written by the Creator. This is the law that He cares about. This is the perfect law that He fulfilled perfectly, not just in His actions, but also in his heart, something you and I have no ability ever to do without Christ. He fulfilled the law and he was obedient to the Father. It's why we must recognize that it's Jesus that died in our place. It's Jesus that was the sacrifice. Why is it important that we recognize it's Jesus and no other person in the Trinity? It's because Jesus is fulfilling the will of the Father. If we take that out of any place and we think that the Father dies in our place, well then, whose will is being followed? How is Jesus saying here that he followed the will of the Father who sent him? He's being obedient to the Father. He's demonstrating what this looks like for you and I. He's fulfilling the magnitude of what Israel was called to. He's fulfilling the magnitude of how God created humanity. But he had to take on human flesh. He had to live a perfect, sinless life. There wasn't a sprinkle of sin within him. No thoughts were ever sinful. No actions were ever sinful. It was perfect, because it takes a perfect human sacrifice on the cross to pay for humanity's sins. What else do we see? Is that Jesus is the true and perfect sacrifice. The author of Hebrews helps us out here. In verses 8 through 10, he explains why he just wrote what he wrote above there. So let us read in verse 8 through 10. When he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt 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. Jesus is the true and perfect sacrifice. The old law system that we saw in the Old Testament is eradicated. It's what we call the new covenant, Jeremiah 31. It's actually quoted in this section that we've read tonight. That is done away with and the new covenant we have is through Christ and Christ alone. Get that? There's no more works that we need to think about. It's through Christ. We're made righteous through Christ. We don't have to think about a future. There's no future law. There's no future sacrifice that's going to come in place that's going to eradicate or fix something Jesus did. Jesus' work on the cross is final. It's complete. It's perfect. It's true. Start putting any other words that satisfy the nature of what Christ did on the cross. It's sufficient. What else do we want? Don't we want something? As humans, we want something else. Come on, tell me what I get to do. Tell me what I have to do. This can't be enough. This can't be all. But it is. He's sufficient. It's perfect. The perfect Lamb, Christ, died the perfect sacrifice to atone for sinners. To make sinners righteous before God. While all the blood rained down the streets from the bulls and the goats, there's Jewish history that writes about on the day of which Christ was crucified, that during that ceremony, there was also, well, during his crucifixion, there was also the sacrificial system happening within the temple. And it was said that the streets coming out of the temple would be flowing with blood, that truly it was a river of blood running down the streets. And all that blood wasn't sufficient but the drops of blood that came out of Jesus' hand. The drops of blood that poured out of His side as He was pierced. That's the only blood that was sufficient to atone for sinful man. You could fill up the oceans with the blood of lambs. You could fill up the oceans with the blood of bulls. You could fill up the oceans with the writings of your good works. And none of them were sufficient. It was Christ's work on the cross for you and I. This is the Son of God, the Son of Man whom we worship. That His sacrifice is perfect, it's true, it's everlasting. And He gets rid of the old and creates the new. Brothers and sisters, we don't comprehend it. And I feel like each year I grow more and more in my understanding of this. But we are living in the new. We're living in the new. This is good news. Matt, good news, not bad. This is good news for us. We don't have to doubt and think about and sacrifice and worry and just dream of a future. We're living in the present. We're living in the true, we're living amongst the kingdom of God while the true king has already paid for our sins and he already reigns in heaven. That's the God we worship because He has done it on the cross. The Son has died on the cross paying for our sins. And look at 10. I love this in 10. And by that, by His death, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ. How often? Every day? Every time we take communion, is Christ re-dying for us? Every time you sin, does Christ have to re-die for you as you have to go and confess? No, it's once and for all. 2,000 years ago, your sins were paid for, final. It doesn't matter what happens tomorrow. It doesn't matter what happens in the future. You have been made right. You have been made new at the death of Christ on the cross. Place your faith in that God. Place your faith in the work of Christ and Him alone. This is beautiful and good news for us to recognize. So we see that man has attempted throughout history and failed. We see that Christ has done it perfectly. He has made us righteous before God. He's the only sacrifice that ever could make us righteous. Nothing else was sufficient. Now let us ask, what does all this mean to the Christian? So what? It's a little flippant if we just say, so what, after that, after we see that Christ is the perfect sacrifice in our place. But the first thing we recognize is our sins have been completely eradicated by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Eradicated. That means gone. Washed away. There's even a sense there with the eradication that it was paid for. Absolutely, it was paid for. But if you think the Father is sitting in heaven looking at the saints, looking at the believers, and going, look at those sinners, you misunderstand what Christ actually did there. When the Father looks at those that have faith in Christ, He's not looking down saying, look at those sinners, He's looking down saying, look at my children, washed in the blood of the Lamb. And we see this here, that our sins are completely eradicated. Look here in verses 11 through 12, and every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. Let me pause there. Each year, the priest would have to go into the temple and re-sacrifice. year. And honestly, the priest, if allowed to, he could have walked out of there and walked right back in there and start sacrificing. The priest could have stayed in the temple sacrificing into eternity and no sins would have ever been paid for. Each year, man was reminded of their sin and the guilt of their sin. As Christians, we're reminded of our sin and the corruption of it and the nature of it, but we're not reminded of our guilt because we are forgiven. It's been eradicated. Verse 12, but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Our sins have been eradicated. Now why is it we see that that was through the life, his perfect obedience? This is what makes him a perfect sacrifice. His death, which is what then is the payment for our sins, we then know that he resurrected from the dead and he ascended into heaven. Why is this important for us to understand about Christ? Well, his resurrection gives us the hope. If Christ never rose from the dead, what hope do you and I have to raise from the dead? This is 1 Corinthians 15. But we have hope. The resurrection of the dead has happened. Your sinful dead nature that you once were has been brought new life in Christ. That has happened. We have hope. What about the ascension? Why is it important that Christ ascended and now sits at the right hand of the Father? That's authority position. He's king. He's king. He rules over all. He sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding for sinful man and the Father. Good news for us. That the sacrifice that died on the cross, Christ, He sits next to the Father. So when we come before the Father in prayer, in worship, in confession, we come before the Father, we go through the curtain. We go through the blood of Christ. We go through our interceder, Christ, and dwell and interact and live and worship God. This is why we must see that he perfectly lived, perfectly sacrificed, resurrected, and ascended into heaven. Letter B here, Christ is king and all of creation will submit to him. He sits on the throne. He sits on the throne, he's king over all, and all of creation will submit to him. All, in this instance, means all, everything. He's the Creator. He created it. He's the Redeemer. He died for it. He now sits in heaven on His throne. He's the King. It's His. All will submit to Him. Submission comes in two forms. Submission comes through confession. Do you confess that Jesus is Lord? Do you confess that He is God? Do you confess that He has died and resurrected from the dead? Do you confess that He has redeemed sinful man? Do you confess that He is the only way to be made righteous? Welcome to the kingdom. That's Christianity. The second form of submission comes in the negative sense. We have confession, that's where the believer lives in, and the other one's destruction. You want to reject God? You want to reject the authority of Christ? You want to reject that He has died in your place? And you want to attempt to chase after something on your own? And you're going to do that to your death? Well, we see there's assurance of the punishment you deserve rightfully and justly from God. So mission will come through confession or destruction. As believers, we live in the confession. We live in His kingdom. We worship the King. We work for the King. Letter C, we are righteous before God as we mature here on earth. Man, when I read this today, or it's not today, I did read it today, but when I read this preparing this week, it actually caught me off guard. It's like I'd never read this verse before, but look at verse 14. For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Wait a second. He has perfected, that's complete, there's final. So He's perfected those, that's you and I, who are being sanctified. Those kind of contradict each other if we really think about it. How can something be perfect that has to be sanctified, has to be mature, it has to be improved? Because of Christ. Because His work has perfected us before the eyes of God. His work has perfected us, we're righteous, there's no question. There's nothing else we need to do. He has made us righteous. And because of our new identity, we're now growing and maturing in Christ. You don't have to raise your hand. I know the answer already. Who here continues to sin even though you've been made righteous by God? Guilty. But each day, each part of my life, Spirit is sanctifying and growing and maturing us. making us look more and more like Christ, perfected. In heaven right now, you are perfected before God. It's why we dwell on this earth, while we dwell in still the fallen world, we are being sanctified. This is good news for us brothers and sisters. This should give us hope that tomorrow when you wake up and you fail, and you will, when you fall down, when you sin, You don't need to hide from God. You don't need to shy away. You know that you have been perfected through Christ. You have hope to go before God. You continually confess your sins with joy, knowing that you're forgiven. Letter D. Christ's work has satisfied and sealed the covenant of God that gives us the power, desire, and joy to obey God's Word. Christ's work has brought in the new covenant. He's fulfilled the requirements of the covenant. He sealed the covenant through his blood. And now because of that, we have the power. So that's the strength. Before we were redeemed by Christ, before we were made new, we had no ability not to sin. That's who we were. That was who our slave master was, was sin. And we were good slaves. Really good slaves. We were obedient to our slave master's sin. We followed after his instructions and we were just fine with it. But now, because of Christ, because of the new covenant, We have the ability not to sin. We also have the desire not to sin. Before Christ, you didn't care what God had. You didn't care what his will was. You didn't care what he meant for good life. But now we actually have that desire. We want to be obedient. We want to follow after him, not in an attempt to earn ourselves his pleasure, but because we just enjoy living in the kingdom that he's given us. And that brings us to the third is, and the joy to obey God's word. He gives us the power, the desire, and the joy. It's not a burden. It's not upsetting. It doesn't take away time. preaching to the choir a little bit, a group of people missing the first part of the Super Bowl, I think you recognize the joy of the Word of God. I think you recognize how good it is just to fellowship with others and hear His Word proclaimed. But let us remember that when times are hard. Let us remember that when we actually do want to go and follow after the sin. But we have to think and know that we have the power, the desire, and the joy to obey God's word. Look at verses 15 and 16 here. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us. For after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. The Lord has given us the knowledge of the law. knowledge, but here he also puts it in our hearts. This is the key. Israel knew the law. All humanity knows the law. They know what's right and wrong, but it's not in their hearts. They don't have the love for God. They don't have the love to follow after him, and that only comes through the love of God. He first loved us so that now we can love him. And lastly, what does this mean for us brothers and sisters? Christ changed the status of man from sinner to saint. You can put sinner to child. I really like that. But I think we have two S's here. Sinner to saint. While you were dead, Christ died in your place to make you alive. While you were an enemy of God, Christ died in your place to make you a child of God. While you were pagan and heathen, Christ died in your place to make you a saint. While you worship sin, while you worship the flesh, Christ died in your place to make you worship God. We see this here in verses 17 and 18. Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. Brothers and sisters, this is the good news of Christ's work in our place, that we are forgiven. So we've been reading through Acts on Wednesday nights. We're slowly working through it, and we see Peter has a simple message. The message is this, Christ died and rose from the dead, and there's forgiveness through Christ. Peter repeats this over and over again, while he's standing before the council, while he's standing before the authorities. He has no other message to give. And the reason he's saying that is because Christ instructed them to preach that gospel. His death, his resurrection, and the forgiveness found in him alone. Brothers and sisters, we live in that reality today. We live in that gospel message Peter preached 2,000 years ago. We live because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross when we did not deserve it. The perfect sacrifice. The unblemished lamb, the God-man, died in our place. This is the God we worship. This is what we celebrate in Easter. This is why we gather together as Christians. We heard it this morning. If there's anything else we can disagree on a whole lot of things, and we do, but we are unified in Christ. We are unified in who Christ is and what he has done for sinful man and how sinners are made righteous through Christ and him alone. That's what unifies us. When we want to fight about things, let's calm down, let's go back to Christ and work from there. When we're trying to see who do we invest time and effort in, we evaluate, do we have the same image and understanding of who Christ is? When we are down and saddened and feel hopeless, depressed about the world, depressed about our problems, do we look up to Christ and remember His work on the cross? Do we remember the forgiveness that's found in Him alone? Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this truth. We thank You that You've sent Your Son to die in our place, that His work is sufficient. There's nothing we could do. There's no hope for us. Lord, I ask that we recognize this more and more as we live. Continue to grow us and mature us into His image. Continue to remind us daily of the forgiveness we have in Him. Continue to remind us regularly how His work is finished, and that we are perfect before You. We pray this in His name. Amen.