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Hebrews 10- ‘Sacrificial Love’
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The thing to remember is that, for the most part, a sacrifice is essentially a relational term. A sacrifice is when you give up something of value to yourself for the sake of advancing the well-being of another.
This, in fact, is exactly what God does. In fact, from the start of this sermon series we’ve been seeing that God’s nature is essentially ‘sacrificial’.
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Hebrews: ‘The Journey of Becoming’
Sermon 8- ‘Sacrificial Love’
Passages: Hebrews 10: 1-18
Mark 15:25-39
Today, we want to talk about making sacrifices.
Now, everyone knows what it means to make a sacrifice.
1. If you’re a student, you make many sacrifices—endless hours of study mean lack of sleep, no fun, no parties—all so that you can get good grades and go on to positively contribute to society. That’s what it means to make a sacrifice.
2. If you’re an athlete, particularly in a team sport, the same thing is true. You sacrifice yourself for the team—in time, effort and expense.
3. Soldiers are called to make the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ of laying their lives own for their country.
4. The most obvious realm of sacrifices is in the area of parenting. Parents are always making sacrifices for their children- this includes monetary sacrifices, but the biggest sacrifices are of time and energy. Having said that, however, this is exactly what we expect from parents! Indeed, the definition of a ‘bad parent’ is one who refuses to sacrifice or their child.
The thing to remember is that, for the most part, a sacrifice is essentially a relational term. A sacrifice is when you give up something of value to yourself for the sake of advancing the well-being of another.
This, in fact, is exactly what God does. In fact, from the start of this sermon series we’ve been seeing that God’s nature is essentially ‘sacrificial’.
It is He who has always been moving towards us, sacrificing enormous amounts of energy and patience in our favour, even when we have repeatedly turned our backs on Him. That’s sacrifice! Most importantly, however, God sacrificed Himself by allowing Himself to be changed by our need!
You see, first, He sacrificed Himself in the Incarnation, by stooping to our level and taking up the form of fallen humanity. But secondly, he sacrificed Himself by willingly suffering and dying at our hands. You see, the Master over Creation became a servant of creation! He gave His life…His blood…for us, so that we might be brought into His perfection as the children of God. That’s sacrifice!
Indeed, when you read through the Bible with this in mind, you begin to see that, by and large, the Bible is telling us that it is God who is always making the sacrifices for us…for the sake of saving and restoring the human race to Himself. And this is the essential orientation that stands behind all Biblical ‘sacrifices’. They are always from God to us!
We touched on this subject a bit last week. Last week, I tried to point at that (from my way of reading the Bible, at least) the blood of all the OT sacrifices was never something offered from human beings to God, as if somehow sinful human beings could propitiate or appease God’s wrath with gifts of blood! To the contrary, I believe that the act of sacrifice primarily originated with God! Essentially, God was one who was making sacrifices to us… in a bid to appease us and to change us…all for the sake of relationships!
Just stop and think about the very first sacrifice in the Bible. It’s found in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve had just fallen away from God through an act of silly disobedience. This was the beginning of a downward spiral that would take the entire human race down with them. But what did God do? In verse 21 of Genesis 3, it says that God responded to their sin by killing an animal so that Adam and Eve might be clothed and their shame be taken away. This was the very first sacrifice in the Bible, and it was done by God!
Moreover, as far as I can tell, it established the pattern of all Old Testament sacrifices, based firmly on the determination of God to ‘cover’ (Heb. ‘kaffir’) sin, thereby reversing the effects of sin in the world. And even though God never personally sacrificed an animal again, down through the years, He seems to have chosen human representatives who would do the sacrificing on His behalf. At first, this task fell to the head of the household, the father or grandfather, who would slaughter the animal and sprinkle the blood over his own family. (This is clearly what happened at the Passover.) Later on, as Israel grew into a nation, God formalized His choice of mediators, establishing Aaron and his descendants as God’s sacrificing priests.
As I said last week, this formalized priesthood was not there to make sacrifices to God. Rather, they were chosen by God to stand before the people, as God’s representatives. Hence, whenever animals were sacrificed and blood was sprinkled over the people, it was as if God Himself was doing it. God was making sacrifices for them, ‘perfecting’ them, cleansing them with blood. God was forever coming towards His people in sacrificial love, dealing gently but firmly with Israel’s sins and failures.
In fact, I believe that even all that blood (that was so lavishly sprinkled over everything and everybody) was meant to point to God’s sacrificial love…as a picture of His divine willingness to give His own life to reverse the multiplying effects of sin and death. This blood of bulls and goats was meant to repeatedly point to the fact that God Himself was willing to give His own blood to cover our sins and bring life out of death.
Surely, that’s why the Bible tells us that the blood of bulls and goats had no power to take away sins. No, the blood of those sacrifices was only meant to point to a better blood…divine blood… which, when sprinkled over the sin-tainted human race would heal the sins of the entire world and reverse, once and for all, the downward spiral of sin and self-destruction. For only God’s blood is true life! Therefore, only God’s blood has the power to redeem and resurrect this universe from its own death.
It’s this idea that features prominently in today’s reading from Hebrews 10. Let me read verses 1-4. (read)
That’s why God Himself needed to come into the world and become a man! God needed to come to offer His own divine blood to permanently reverse the effects of the fall and restore life out of our death.
Listen to verses 5-10. In these verses, the author quotes from Psalm 40. By putting these words into Jesus’ mouth, the author of Hebrews is saying that Jesus was fully aware of the divine plan of sacrifice. His human body had been prepared for Him…a body through which He would offer His divine life blood in sacrifice to the world! (read)
This, my friends, is the high point of God’s sacrificial love for us. Here we see the Triune God (Father, Son and Spirit) personally engaged in delivering us from the self-destructive powers of sin and death. No human beings are required to represent God. All three Persons of the Godhead are involved and, together, they offer the divine blood as remedy for the sins of the world. Just listen to verses 11-17 and take special notice how all three Persons of the Trinity are deeply involved. (read)
All three Persons come to redeem and renew humankind. The divine blood is on their hands as they work together to change us from the inside out!
Now, listen to verse 18—“And where these have been forgiven (Gk=’aphiemi’ meaning to remit, expunge, wipe out, take away. Forgiveness is really not the issue here!) there is no longer any sacrifice for sin!”
What this means is that God has done His part. The final sacrifice has been made for humankind and no other is needed. The objective reality of what the Father, Son and Spirit have done cannot be reversed—they have dealt with the sins of the world once and for all! Our sins have been remitted, wiped out, covered, taken away forever. They have opened up a new and living way for us to fully experience a relationship with them. All that is necessary for our perfection is in place and nothing can change that fact. The only thing we need to do is to “Accept our acceptance”.
But does that mean that, from now on, no sacrifices are required? Not at all! At this point, we need to talk about making our own sacrifices!
If you take a look in a concordance, you’ll discover that the word ‘sacrifice’ features 20 times in chapters 1-10 of Hebrews. Each of these speaks in reference to the sacrifice of blood that takes away sins. Then we come to the verse that we just read from Hebrews 10:18, where we’re told that, now that Jesus has sprinkled His divine blood over us all, “there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.” .
But suddenly, in Hebrews 13, the author begins to speak of sacrifices again! Why? Turn to Hebrews, chapter 13, verses 15-16. (read)
It’s obvious that these sacrifices are in response to God’s sacrificial love for us:
1. Worship…offering ourselves to God in a sacrifice of gratitude and praise!
2. Offering ourselves to others in sacrificial service. Use all that you’ve been given in this life for others.
Sacrificial love is our response to God sacrificial love! Or, as St. John put it, “We love because He first loved us!”
You see, ever since the day when God sacrificed an animal in order to clothe Adam and Eve and take away their shame, it seems that the only thing that human beings have ever needed to do is to respond to God by simply ‘accepting their acceptance’… by immersing themselves in…clothing themselves with…God’s divine sacrifice! The only thing God has ever asked of the human race is to respond to His sacrificial love through their own sacrifices of gratitude and engagement in His plans for the world. Again, it’s about relationships.
When Cain and Abel brought sacrifices of thanksgiving to God from their field and their flock, they idea was not to coerce God to love them. All God was asking was their fellowship—for them to come and ‘accept their acceptance’ with gratitude for His blessings of life over death. For surely, Cain and Abel must have learned about God’s sacrificial love through their parents, Adam and Eve! Surely, that’s the only way they would have known to bring sacrifices of gratitude to God-- They would have been taught by their parents to be thankful for that original sacrifice made by God that covered the shame of their parents. (Indeed, the fact that Cain wasn’t really grateful is the focus of his own downfall!)
But the point here is this: This sacrifice of gratitude found in Genesis 4 seems to set a pattern for the rest of the Old Testament: God’s divine sacrifice would inevitably elicit a human response of sacrifice in thanksgiving to God… sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. In fact, if you look at the first 7 chapters of the Book of Leviticus, you’ll discover that all the detailed instructions dealing with sacrifices are essentially about the human response to God’s sacrificial love. Whether they be burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, grain offerings, guilt offerings and fellowship offerings, these were never intended to change God or appease God. Rather, these sacrifices were always in response to God’s sacrificial love for them!
And so, all throughout the OT, the question always was, “What can we offer to God for all His favour and love towards us? How can we respond to a God who takes our sins away as far as the east is from the west? What is the appropriate gift we can make to acknowledge God’s sacrificial love?” And throughout the OT, the answer was always the same…in two harmonious parts:
1. Love God!
2. Love your neighbor!
Or, to put it in sacrificial terminology:
1. Sacrifice yourself in worship to God!
2. Sacrifice yourself in the service of others!
Here’s but one example from the OT, taken from Micah 6:6. “With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy (love your neighbor) and to walk humbly with your God (love God).”
All throughout the OT, only two things were necessary in response to God’s sacrificial love: 1. Sacrifice yourself in worship to God and 2. Sacrifice yourself in the service of others.
Now, as we get into the New Testament, do you think this changes? Of course not! Although we’re told (in no uncertain terms) that Jesus’ ‘divine sacrifice’ has brought an end to all ‘divine sacrifices’, the question still remains: “What can we offer the Lord for all that He has done for us?” And the same answer seems to come through.
1. Sacrifice yourself in worship of God!
2. Sacrifice yourself in service of others!
This is exactly what the author of this Letter to the Hebrews advocates.
Let me finish, then, by pronouncing this benediction from Hebrews 13:20-21 over you. It’s a benediction that commends to us the divine sacrifice so that we might be propelled outwards by it, in sacrificing ourselves for the world that God so loves.
“May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
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