Turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is near the back of the Bible. If you have a pew Bible you're visiting, it's page number 945. And I will tell you that I Thought I would preach more than what I will I think I bit off more than I could chew and the sermon text is gonna be Hebrews 9 verses 1 to 14. So what's in the Bolton is incorrect Hebrews chapter 9 Verses 1 to 14 as you're turning there just a plug very very far out in advance our youth group just got back from Boardwalk Chapel and I happen to know that your pastor has set aside some dates in 2025, and if there's any possibility that some of you could consider and pray to go to Boardwalk Chapel, I would really, really encourage you to be thinking and praying about that. I've been four times already. Some of the most spiritually encouraging and challenging and good times the Lord has worked. in my own heart and the hearts of our youth. And so I know RYS Convention is important. If you can do both, go to Warwick Chapel and RYS, but be praying about considering that. God's word is Hebrews 9, verses 1 to 14. And this is God's holy and inspired and perfect word. And it's the very means by which God builds. He creates his church by his word. He sustains us by his word. So let's give our careful attention as it's read. Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared, the first section in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence. It is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the most holy place, having the golden altar and incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold. in which was a golden urn holding the manna, an errant staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes. and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age. According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper. but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of Reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how 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 serve the living God? Let's ask for God's blessing on his word tonight. Father, we come now to your word and confess our complete inability, Lord. Without you, Lord, these are just words spoken, and there's no power in them. And so we beg you tonight, Lord, that you would ascend your Holy Spirit to give the effect, Lord, to take things, take us, Lord, that by nature are dead and make us alive. Lord, we ask that you would give strength and joy and we would truly, Lord, see Christ in this passage and all the glory that he has accomplished for us as our great high priest. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. I wonder if you have ever encountered someone with the psychological condition described as obsessive-compulsive disorder. had the opportunity to get to know one of my congregants and my last congregation, not here in Michigan, but in California, a very, very strong case of this. And it's one of the psychological disorders that is very, very helpful in its name, because you pretty much get a sense from the title of what it actually is, obsessive and then compulsive. So certain obsessions, perhaps in a particular case, I feel filthy or I feel dirty, then is reacted to, and the attempt to compensate for that is a compulsion, which then potentially is, I need to wash. And so the person potentially could be washing and washing and washing their hands, for instance, a thousand times in a day, washing to the point where their hands are chapped, and yet they still feel internally like they're soiled. And if you could take a spiritual snapshot of your conscience, by nature this is often how our conscience functions. We feel filthy internally based on things that we have done or sometimes even things that other people have done to us. We feel soiled. And then we repeat behaviors, even some very good Christian behaviors, to try to deal with our conscience. We might say to God, I've got to pray more, I need to do more, I need to read my Bible more to kind of get rid of this dirtiness, this filthiness that I feel. And we can do Christian things, studying Christian books, and try to do outside activities that are good. In a lot of ways, God even calls us to do some of these things. But internally, they don't cancel, they don't clean us, they don't wash us. internally in our consciences. And I emphasize, and we talked about, we read Psalm 51 to speak about the dirtiness of our sin, because I think oftentimes we can only think in terms of a legal sense about our sin, and that is a biblical category, the legal need for the canceling of our record of guilt. And there's a beautiful whole picture of metaphors in the way the Bible speaks legally about our guilt. But the Bible also speaks about the need to be cleansed or to be washed, to be made clean. That by nature, our consciences do not... We don't begin life, we don't take our first steps as people in this world with clean consciences. The Bible speaks about our conscience like something that could catch filth, like a rag that could be made filthy and then has to be washed. So don't think of it like a scoreboard, like you're watching a baseball game or a basketball game, and if your team just gets a few more points or runs or points on the scoreboard, it's sort of overcome. Think of it as sort of a filthy rag that has to be washed out and cleansed. And so God is telling us this evening that he has done something significant and permanent to actually wash you all the way deep down into your conscience. those who have committed the darkest sins, or maybe those who just want to be pure and they just can't ever quite get themselves clean, those people, with a dark sense of their own dirtiness, can say, my conscience is pure, I am clean. that murderers or adulterers, or even again, those who feel very, very, like they're pursuing righteousness by trying to make themselves clean, can say, my conscience is pure and clean. And it's remarkable that that's exactly what the Apostle Paul did. I was reading some of Paul's sermons in the book of Acts, and one of the things he says over and over again is, my conscience is clear. My conscience is a good, or I appeal to you from, a pure and clean conscience. And you think, I know the kinds of things that you did, Paul. How could you say about your conscience that it is pure and clean? And we see in our text this evening that God has actually acted in Christ, in the high priestly work of Christ, to cleanse us all the way in our conscience and to set us free then, it says, to serve or to worship the living God. There's a few aspects of God's priestly work through Christ that have been emphasized in the book of Hebrews. It's been taught to us that he's able to sympathize. Christ is able to sympathize with our weakness. He's gentle with the ignorant and the wayward. We saw in another section that Jesus is the obedient son in the order of Melchizedek, and that by the power of indestructible life, Christ is now a priest forever, the author of Hebrews has said. Not like the Levites who are prevented by death from continuing in office, Jesus remains forever as your priest. He's at the right hand of the Father praying for you tonight in the service. Jesus is praying for you and he's offering this eternal intercession by the power of his indestructible life. Jesus is a priest forever, but we see this evening that Jesus washes your conscience completely. through the offering once for all of his blood for you. So I want us to see first in the passage that you were made to draw near to God. that you were made to draw near to God. The story of the Old Testament is a story of a soiled people, a people who were made to be clean and holy and set apart for God, who repeatedly made themselves repeatedly filthy by their breaking of the covenant. And God created a situation by which they could draw near to Him, but in a mediated and in a protected way. And the author of Hebrews starts to lay out how the Old Testament did that. I'm not gonna walk through every detail very, very closely, but he says that there were sections to the tabernacle, to the temple, to the tent that the priests could go into throughout the year. So there's a first section, the author of Hebrews says, that the priests were very welcome to go into. That was the section that had the lampstand, the table, the bread of presents. He calls this the first section, and it was called the holy place. The priests were welcome to go into that first section of the tabernacle or the temple all year long, but there was a second curtain or a second section and that curtain blocked off access to go into the most holy of places. And the reason for that is very, very simple. You cross that curtain and you're not the appropriate person at the right time of the year and you'll be struck dead. The extra-biblical writings that describe the entrance one time a year of the high priest into that second section said that there were ropes connected to the high priest and a bell so that if he was struck dead even, if he had not done the preparations for that offering, they could pull him out from that second section. You can imagine the author of Hebrews kind of speaking in hushed tones about this second most holy of places, because this is something that you don't just burst in on. I was reading about this sermon, a person was reflecting on the book and the movie, Indiana Jones and his entrance into and pursuit of the Ark of the Covenant. He says the main character in that movie is not Indiana Jones, but the Ark itself, and there's this majestic holiness that you don't just go and throw yourself into the presence of an awesome and glorious God. And so the author of Hebrews is saying the most holy, that second protected place, has this intimate holiness before which you cannot just throw yourself, you cannot draw near in yourself. And so only once a year could the high priest go into that most holy of places. And the whole nation, that one time a year, sensed that in the presence of the high priest, they themselves were going before the glorious presence of God. But I think, oftentimes, when this passage is taught, at least how I've heard it, oftentimes, we get a detail about the access to God that we have in the New Covenant slightly wrong. I think oftentimes this passage is taught to say that when Jesus came and he died, the veil of the temple was torn, and now we have just unfettered access to God. Now we just sort of throw ourselves into God's presence. And the reality about this passage is that the problem is not merely external, the problem is not merely the curtain, But the conscience as we're gonna see the conscience the flawed nature of our conscience and what the Old Testament could actually do or what the the mere animal sacrifices could do was the problem and so notice The author says, according to this arrangement, verse nine, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed. until the time of Reformation. So we want to be careful here. Certainly the Old Testament saints were trusting in the same sacrifice of Jesus as we trusted, and as they came with their sacrifices to the temple, they participated in the same salvation, but the animal sacrifices themselves, the author of Hebrews is saying, could not perfect the conscience. They could only deal with outward And so God's people in the Old Testament were set apart by the things that they ate and by the things that they drank, and they were a unique people in that sense, but there was something that those sacrifices was pointing forward to. And in themselves, the arrangement, according to verse nine, was such that they could not perfect the conscience of the worshiper. And I want us to see second then, If we're made to and we're intended to draw near but we have a problem of our filthy conscience, what is it then that separates us from God? We see second that it's our sin. It's our sin that makes our consciences dirty or soiled and keeps us out of the presence of God. And I'm accentuating this issue of the soiled or filthy conscience because again, it's the conclusion of verses one to eight. Notice verses one through eight conclude then in nine, speaking about what this whole arrangement couldn't do. They couldn't perfect the conscience. And then as you come to the conclusion of verse 14, notice what it does do. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without a blemish to God, purify our conscience? That's what the author of Hebrews is about. What did the old not do? The old reminded, we're gonna see, reminded of sins. It did not deal with the conscience of the worshiper. What does the new do? Jesus is a mediator of a new covenant. What does the new do? It enables your conscience to be cleansed and washed. And of course, if you need to be purified, if you need to be washed in your conscience, then you know that sin is a very serious thing before God. I think sometimes, I was raised, at least in a tradition, where we read the Ten Commandments every Sunday, and we sort of went through the rhythm of speaking about our sin, but there was a very, at times, at least in my own heart, kind of go-through-the-motions aspect. Yeah, yeah, I'm a sinner, I know about that. But God takes sin very, very seriously. When we sin against him again, it's not only that we're guilty, but then we are also made filthy. And so notice again, I'll read those verses that we read in the reading of scripture from Psalm 51. Wash me thoroughly from my sin. Cleanse me from my iniquity. Verse seven, purge me with hyssop, I will be clean. Wash me. and I will be whiter than snow. Verse 10, create in me a clean heart. David is saying, Lord, I need to be clean. I need to be washed. My sin has made me infected and dirty with this darkness of sin. And if you've walked this road, If you've perceived the way that you feel soiled by your sin, or even sins that have been done against you, you know the burden of feeling this thing that makes you ashamed. You know the tendency to cover up, to rearrange things, to try to protect yourself. You don't want anyone to know your own heart. You say, I know the light of God's word and his will for me. I want no one to know about the darkness of my sin. I do not want people to know the filthiness of my own heart. So 1 John 1.7 says, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sin. Notice the need to be washed to be cleansed by Christ's blood. And then verse nine, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins. And notice he adds, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God is a God who washes his people. God is a God who cleanses our conscience. Have you lived in the filth of your sin? I know that I have a tendency to want to run and to hide. Maybe to come on Sundays and put on a Christian face and say, I kind of have life together. We dress up nicer on Sundays. It's good to be reverent before the Lord and to be set apart even in the way we dress to some degree. But internally, we just have to all recognize we are all before God. filthy and dirty if we are sinners, and we all are, and we have to be washed. Our conscience needs to be cleaned. As you come to the Lord's Supper tonight, I think sometimes we can have a tendency that I have to make myself ready. In examining myself, 1 Corinthians 11, I need to make myself ready for this sacrament. You do not make yourself ready. You don't prepare yourself in the sense of making yourself worthy or clean for this sacrament. God washes you. God prepares you to come to him. And the whole purpose of sacraments is to say, we are broken in Adam, we are filthy, we need to be washed in baptism. We need to have fellowship and communion with a savior who came for sinners to wash those who needed to be cleansed. And our consciences play tricks on us. So Romans 2 tells us that the Gentiles who have the law of God written on their heart use the law at times to excuse themselves. They say, God, I'm fine, I don't need you at times, and the law is written on their hearts. And other times, that same law is condemning their hearts. And the law functions in that way, using our consciences to say, guilty, filthy, you have no worth because of your lack of cleaning. But what if you could be clean? What if you could go home this evening knowing that your conscience is totally purged and washed? And God has done everything necessary to make you clean and pure and lovely and that he would delight in you. What if God had done that? And that is our third point tonight. What has God done to secure a clean conscience before him? Well, I want us to see third then. Christ's blood is the only way to a clean conscience. Conscience. Notice the seeming disgusting obsession with blood. Maybe we're too used to how much the Bible speaks about blood, but the book of Hebrews chapter nine speaks constantly about blood. The priests who went into the holy place had to bring blood. Almost nothing is done without blood. The book of Hebrews chapter nine verse seven says, in the second only the high priest goes, he but once a year and not without taking blood. Imagine what this was like if there was a priest in the old covenant. An animal has to be sacrificed and then bled out into a bowl and the priest has to walk with blood into the most holy of holies. And in another context, he says almost everything is covered with blood in the temple. If you imagine the color of the temple and the tabernacle, it's all washed in red, in blood. But notice the uniqueness of Jesus's blood compared to these Old Testament sacrifices. There's a huge contrast between what the Old Testament could do in the sacrifices and the beauty and the majestic cleansing power of Jesus's blood. There are four things that this text will lay out for us of why Jesus's blood is the only way to a clean, to a cleansed, washed, And we'll see this as we get ready to close. The location of Jesus's washing, the frequency of his sacrifice, how it was spotless, and then it was personal. So where did Jesus offer this sacrifice? How often did he offer it? Third, that he was spotless as the sacrifice, and then fourth, that it was personal. So first, we see the location and the reason why Jesus is the only way to a clean conscience. Notice verse 12. he entered into the holy places. Jesus takes his sacrifice and he enters into the holy places. Verses 23 and 24, which we won't dive into because we didn't have enough time tonight. Verses 23 and 24 will make it explicit that heaven is what's being washed spectacularly. Jesus takes blood and he washes heaven itself to cleanse our conscience. If you have house guests coming over and you're like me, we run around our house and try to clean it up a little bit before people come. And Jesus has gone into heaven itself and he's prepared the way, he's cleansed heaven itself so that you can go into heaven and have it prepared for you. That's the location of Jesus's offering of his blood. But second, notice the frequency. Verse 12, he entered once for all. Imagine how discouraging it would be if you're an Old Testament person going up year after year. If you were rich, you could afford more expensive animals. If you were poor, you would take a bird or something cheaper, and you'd offer that sacrifice at the temple. Imagine on the way home, though, according to these passages, that you knew, I'm gonna have to do it all again. New sins this year, conscience that accuses me, and I know because of these sacrifices that I'm not actually clean, I'm gonna have to do it over and over and over again. And in the new covenant, this was only offered once. Jesus, cleansing of your conscience is effectual because it only happened one time. Verse 12. Notice third, that he is spotless. Christ's offering is without blemish. The blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with ashes, I'm reading verse 13 and 14, sanctified for their purification of flesh. How much more will the blood of Christ, who the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience? The father delighted in the son. In the Old Testament, it was only a spotless lamb that could be brought in sacrifice. And what does the father present as the sacrifice to cleanse our conscience? He says over his son, this is my son whom I love. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And the son says about the father, I do everything that the father commands me. It is my delight to do. the very word of the Father and John the Baptist speaks over this lamb this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world Jesus's blood is so precious and because it is unlike anything else. 1 Peter 1, 19 says, you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited by your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like a lamb without spot or blemish. Jesus' blood is given by the unblemished and spotless. lamb. But maybe most glorious and most beautiful is the fourth reason why Jesus's blood is the only way that your conscience can be clean. And that's because it's so personal. Think about the difference between the priests being able to bring animals that other people brought to sacrifice and Jesus using his blood to wash you. If you have been cut significantly and you have a scar, I remember going in to try to play with my dog while my dog was eating her food, and that's a stupid thing to do, but the dog bit me and I still have a scar on my hand. It's very, very personal that I've been marked there with the place where the blood poured out of my hand. Jesus shed his precious blood, not with the blood of animals, it says. Verse 12, he entered the holy places not by the means of blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood. He says about your conscience tonight, he says, I will not take something that I will trifle with. I'm not taking something that's insignificant. I'm taking my own blood and I'm offering it for you to actually wash you, to actually make you clean. It's personal. Jesus was appointed for this purpose. Revelation 13 verse eight says that Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world for those who are written in the lamb's book of life. He shed his own blood for you to wash you and to make you clean. So the location is heaven where the washing happened. The frequency is that it was once for all. The lamb who was offered was spotless, but it's so personal in the way that Jesus offered his own blood for you. And I just wanna come back to that opening illustration about the need to see obsessively our own filthiness oftentimes, and then compensate with different ways to try to wash ourselves. Do you actually know that you're clean tonight? I mean, do you know that you are, in yourself and apart from Christ, filthy and you need to be washed? That that's actually offensive against your Creator and Master. But if you know the real depravity of your own heart, the filthiness, do you understand that Jesus has washed you? That Jesus said, I will pay. I will shed my blood. Nothing can separate them from my love. I will do all of the work necessary to wash them completely clean. And all of the endless of thousands of lambs and bulls and goats that were killed in the Old Testament. And the streets running out of the temple flowed with blood. All of that could not perfect the conscience of the worshiper. God has done what you can't do to wash yourself, to wash yourself of your sins. God has done in Jesus. And so if there's any part of us tonight that says, I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't know if I'm clean enough. I don't know if I have done enough. to make myself ready for God. God says to you tonight, you can't, you can't. I've given my son, my only son whom I love, He shed his blood for you. It's personal. He loves you. He's done everything necessary to wash you. And he invites you this evening to put all the things that you've done. Maybe your conscience is so soiled tonight and you'd say, pastor, you have no idea what I've done. And I would tell you, yes, those offenses are serious. The blood of Jesus can wash you. And he has told you, come, confess your sins and seek cleansing in me. And he promises to you, not a single person who turns to him in faith tonight and says, Lord, would you wash me? We'll go home dirty tonight. If you cast yourself on the mercy of Jesus, his blood will cleanse you from all of your sins. And he lives right now to pray that reality for you. And so we'll sing as we close. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Let's close in prayer. Our Father, we know as we enter into worship, Lord, tonight, that we are a people that have to be washed, Lord. And we thank you so much, even as we prepare to come to your table, Lord. that you were so radical in your love, Lord, for those who were broken and dirty and filthy, Lord, that people accused you of this. This is the master, this is the rabbi who calls himself a teacher sent from God who sits with sinners and eats with them, Lord, and that's exactly what you've come to do, Lord. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And so Lord, we thank you so much that you did not shy away from a cross and you secured, Lord, our eternal redemption with the precious, spotless, once for all offering of your blood. And Lord, I just pray that if there's anyone here tonight who's struggling to believe that that's true, Lord, would you please just reach their hearts Would you, Father, not only teach us about this reality, Lord, but would you actually drive it into our hearts tonight that we are washed, that you've made us clean in ways that we can never cleanse ourselves, Lord. We pray that you would do that by your spirit right now in this moment, Lord, of worship. And as we hear your gospel preached to us, we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.