(If you would like to receive Pastor Harris’ weekly sermons via e-mail, Click Here)
Pastor Scott L. Harris
Grace Bible Church, NY
Good Friday – April 7, 2023
One Sacrifice that Satisfies
Hebrews 10
This evening we have gathered to commemorate the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on our behalf. I think most of us are aware of the story of that day. Tonight, I want to briefly recount that event, but then I want us to concentrate on the reason for it in preparation for Communion. If we do not understand the purpose of Jesus’ death, then we will not understand why He was willing to go through such suffering, and we will not understand how it is the supreme demonstration of God’s love and grace extended to us that we have been singing about in the hymns this evening.
Earlier this evening we read John’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion. In the chapters prior to this John described in detail the events that occurred leading up to His death. There was the Last Supper with His disciples and the various events associated with that including washing their feet, the warning about the betrayal by Judas, the message of comfort of His promise to return and to send the Holy Spirit to be with them during the interim period. There was also the High Priestly prayer on their behalf which was followed by them going out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Though Jesus was emotionally burdened with what He knew would happen in the coming hours, even His most trusted disciples were not able to keep watch with Him as He poured out His heart to the Father.
Finally, the time He had been waiting for arrived and Judas came leading a cohort of soldiers along with officers from the chief priests. Then, in the most heinous betrayal of all time, Judas came and gave Jesus a kiss which was the signal to these men of who they were to arrest. That was not needed for Jesus asked them who they were looking for and then answered them directly that He was the one. Jesus was being betrayed into the hands of evil men, but Jesus was still the one in control. Remember that these soldiers fell down when Jesus answered them. But Jesus’ purpose was not to resist them which is why He rebuked Peter and had him put away his sword. Jesus was willing to drink the cup the Father had given to Him.
Following this were the illegal and unjust trials held that night and early the next morning. First it was before Annas and then his son-in-law, Caiaphas, who was the High Priest. It was during the questioning before Annas and Caiaphas that Peter, though he was brave to follow and even go into the courtyard, was finally also overcome with fear resulting in his three denials of knowing Jesus. Meanwhile, Jesus was beaten, mocked and falsely accused until they had charges they could bring before Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea.
The trial before Pilate was also without justice. Though Pilate came to the conclusion from his own investigation that Jesus had done nothing wrong and declared that he had found no guilt in Him, in the end, Pilate caved to the pressure of the crowd and sentenced a man he knew was innocent to death. True, Pilate sought to free Jesus through the custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover, but he had no just reason to hold Jesus in the first place. True, Pilate had Jesus scourged in an effort to appease the crowd’s thirst for blood, but he knew he was having an innocent man scourged and all it did was incite the crowd into a mob that wanted more blood. Pilate washed his hands in front of the crowd as a sign that he was innocent of Jesus’ blood, but water cannot wash away the guilt of such injustice or the murder that occurred as a result.
Jesus was then beaten and mocked by Pilate’s soldiers before being led away to Golgotha, the place of crucifixion. Jesus had been a carpenter, which is a trade that would have built Him up physically into a strong man, but the many beatings He had received along with the loss of blood took their toll resulting in Jesus being unable to carry His own cross to the place of execution as required of those condemned, so Simon of Cyrene was pressed into service to carry it for Him. When they finally arrived at Golgotha, Jesus was laid down on the cross and nailed to it. It was then lifted up to crucify Him.
Crucifixion was a cruel means of execution for its very purpose was to make death slow and painful. Jesus had already suffered greatly from the beatings and scourging. Added to this was having His hands and feet pierced by nails. Now there was the thirst caused by the dehydration made worse by the blood loss. Finally there was the agony of slowly suffocating. In order to breathe while hanging on a cross you have to physically lift yourself up. The desire to breath forces you to do this regardless of the pain involved, but the muscles began to tire, weaken and then fail so that you suffocate.
Those who were crucified could often live up to three days before finally dying. Because Passover would begin with the setting of the Sun that day and they did not want these men to still be on crosses during that celebration, they broke the legs of the other two men who were being crucified with Jesus. That would prevent them from being able to lift themselves up to breathe and so would result in their death in a relatively short time. When they came to Jesus to break his legs, they were surprised to find that He was already dead.
Jesus did not die because of the beating or crucifixion. He died because He yielded up His spirit as recorded in Matthew 27:50. Jesus was still in control even when on the cross and He determined when it was finished as we saw in John 19:30. The question is why did He go through all of it? Why was this necessary in God’s plan to bring about the redemption of man? Why couldn’t God save us through some other means and method? Our answer is found in Hebrews 10.
The book of Hebrews is a call to Jewish believers to stay faithful and true in being followers of Jesus Christ. Persecution was rising against Christians and it was tempting to go back to the practices of Judaism and escape that persecution since Judaism remained legal in Roman law. The book of Hebrews demonstrates the superiority of Jesus and the New Covenant brought by Him to everyone else and the Old Covenant that came through Moses. In this particular chapter the superiority of Jesus’ sacrifice compared to the Old Testament sacrificial system is being demonstrated. But that brings up an even more foundational question. Why were sacrifices necessary anyway? Why couldn’t God just overlook, ignore or declare some other means of gaining forgiveness?
That answer is bound up in the character of God Himself and His declarations in Genesis to Adam. First, God is true and unchanging. Numbers 23:19-20 declares that “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” In other words, God is not like us. We have to adjust what we do according to the events and situations we face. We may plan what we would like to do, but as reality unfolds over time we have to adjust our plans or even abandon them because we are not always able to carry out even things we promise to do. God is never surprised by the events that occur nor does He have to adjust His plans because of the unfolding of history. As someone once quipped, history is His Story. History does not control Him, for He controls history. God even had the plan of redemption in place before man had even sinned. The redeemed were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world as stated in Ephesians 1:4. His promises, including those of redemption, were made before time began as stated in Titus 1:2 and 2 Tim. 1:9. Jesus’ suffering and death was not because He was a tragic victim of Jewish and Roman injustice nor was it some accident of fate. It was according to the plan God had declared long before there was a Roman empire or a Jewish nation. God is unchanging.
Second, God is just. He carries out His promises of both blessing and punishment. To those who follow and obey Him, He promises blessing. To those that disobey Him there is punishment. Any delay in that punishment is due to His longsuffering and patience which allows the time needed for the one who violates His commands to repent as described in 2 Peter 3:9. Such was true of the first people who broke His commandments and the same is true today.
In Genesis 2:16-17 God commanded Adam saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” Genesis 3 records that both Adam and Eve violated that commandment, and on the day that they did so they died spiritually, for death is separation and they were separated from God by their sin that very day. They also became subject to physical death and process of physically dying also began for them that same day. It was also the day that physical death entered the world for Genesis 3:21 records that “Yahweh God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” You cannot get the skin off an animal without killing it and shedding its blood. God did this specifically to provide a covering so that Adam and Eve could hide the shame of their nakedness. An animal died in order to cover over and hide their shame brought on by their sin. The Hebrew word for “atonement” has a similar concept. It can mean “cover over” in the sense of finding a way for a wrong covered so that it is over looked. It is a price paid to appease, propitiate, atone for a sin. A blood sacrifice was made on that day to cover the open shame of the sins of Adam and Eve. It should have been Adam and Eve that were put to death for their sin for sin requires a death payment. God’s justice still had to be satisfied, so in His mercy to Adam and Eve, He substituted the life of an animal. This was the beginning of the system of animal sacrifices.
We find In Genesis 4 that God has regard for Abel’s offering of an animal sacrifice. In Genesis 7 God commands Noah to prepare for the flood that was to come. Included in that preparation was taking into the ark seven of every clean animal while it was only to be two of the unclean ones. The odd numbered animal was for the purpose of making a sacrifice when they got out of the ark after the flood in Genesis 9. Genesis records t hat all of the patriarchs practiced animal sacrifice. That system was finally codified in the first seven chapters of Leviticus as part of the Mosaic law.
But there was a problem with the system of animal sacrifices. Hebrews 10 tells about it. Verse one begins by explaining that the Law and these sacrifices were only a shadow of what was to come and that they could never make perfect those who were trying to draw near to God. Those sacrifices could not remove the consciousness of sin but instead were the very thing that reminded them of their sins. The animal had to die as a substitute for their sins.
The second problem with animal sacrifices is that they were not equivalent of a human life and so they could not be an equal substitute payment. Verse 4 states it plainly that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Psalm 40 is then quoted to show that God had never taken pleasure in animal sacrifices. He wanted something else. As was stated in verse one, the sacrifices were the shadow and God was going to establish the reality in a second system of sacrifice that was equivalent and did completely satisfy and could make the worshiper perfect.
Reading from verse 10, “By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; 12 but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. 14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, 16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, And upon their mind I will write them,” [He then says], 17 “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” 18 Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer [any] offering for sin.”
Jesus died on Golgotha’s hill as the one sacrifice made for all time for all men. That is the reason He willingly went through all the suffering that He did – the beatings, the mockings, the scourging, the bleeding, the slow suffocation on the cross and then finally the indescribable agony of bearing the sin of mankind. It was the only way to bring about the redemption of man. It was the Father’s plan from eternity past.
What was Jesus’ personal motivation to do this? Too many have romanticized Jesus’ sacrifice into a statement of how valuable man is and how much God wanted to have a relationship with us. Actually, that is not true. Part of this error arises from man’s pride and part of it from a wrong understanding of God’s love. The connotation of our use of the English word, “love,” is to think of something that has value because of having strong feelings of affection. That results in us thinking that God loves us because there is something special about us that attracts Him to us. That is the opposite of the truth.
The love that God has for us in not related to feelings of affection. It is agaph / agap – a love that gives of its self sacrificially for the best interest of the other. It is a love that God extended to us when everything about us was abhorrent to Him for He loved us while we were enemies with Him (Rom. 5:10). Romans 5:8 puts it this way, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Hebrews 12:2 tells us about Jesus motivation in becoming the sin sacrifice saying that “for the joy set before Him [He] endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” The cross itself was shameful and Jesus endured it. What then was the joy set before Him? John 17:1-2 tells us as it records Jesus’ prayer that occurred just prior to going to the Garden of Gethsemane where He was betrayed. Jesus prayed “Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee, 2 even as Thou gavest Him authority over all mankind, that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He may give eternal life. 3 “And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. 4 “I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do. 5 “And now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. 6 “I manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world; Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me, and they have kept Thy word.” Jesus concluded the prayer, 24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world. 25 “O righteous Father, although the world has not known Thee, yet I have known Thee; and these have known that Thou didst send Me; 26 and I have made Thy name known to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them.”
Jesus was willing to suffer and die because it was the means by which He could glorify the Father and the Father could glorify the Son. Part of that glory is through those who will follow Him and receive eternal life from Him for they will glorify Him throughout eternity. While some do not like this truth because it does not feed their pride, I find it to be a source of awe and wonder that is far beyond human imagination. Jesus did not suffer and die because there was some quality about me or something inherent in me that He needed, it was in fact quite the opposite. It is despite my sin and its offense to Him that He redeemed me with His own life that He might include me among those who will give Him eternal glory. His sacrifice was not about something temporal, but something eternal. By His one sacrifice He has paid the price of both my sin and your sin that we might be made perfect before Him and be to the praise of His glorious grace forever.
We will partake of the Lord’s Supper in a few moments. In 1 Cor. 11 Paul makes it very clear that the purpose of communion is to show forth the Lord’s death until He comes. It is a time to reflect on what Jesus has done for us by His sacrifice of Himself. We want to give you an opportunity at this time to reflect on that sacrifice and prepare your own hearts though private confession of any sin as well as praise for what He has done for you.
If you would like to receive Pastor Harris’ weekly sermons via e-mail, Click Here)
Grace Bible Church Home Page || Sermon Archives
For comments, please e-mail Church office