What’s With All Those Animal Sacrifices, and Why No More?

Sermon Transcript

As many of you know, when things got tough in society, there were a few in Germany who stood up to the tyranny and the biblical suppression that was taking place. A lot of you know the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer because he was willing to stand with Jesus Christ and not compromise the message of Scripture and the tenor of the gospel. He suffered for it for many days in a concentration camp. He ended up taking his life in April 1945.

 

But during those days in prison, he wrote quite a bit and reflected in the hard times when he watched many people compromise and renounce Christ. He wrote about the state of the church, and he was right when he said that we, like birds, have gathered around the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk the poison that has killed our passion for following Christ.

 

And that was true in the middle of the 20th century, and it unfortunately remains to be true now—perhaps more in peacetime than in times of war, perhaps more in places of prosperity than places of want. It’s important for us to recognize that when we want to mitigate the unpleasant parts of the gospel or the Bible, we, in effect, render the gospel ineffective. Scripture loses its power when we want to clean up God’s message.

 

One of the things we try to do here in our teaching of God’s Word is move systematically through the Bible, and eventually we run into texts that Pollyanna wouldn’t be too proud of—passages that clearly can’t be categorized as happy texts. I know a lot of people come to church wanting the pastor to say nice things and happy things and uplifting things, and yet the pastor’s job description is to proclaim accurately God’s Word. Oftentimes, to get to those pleasant places—and God has a lot of pleasant things to say—we’ve got to traverse the uncomfortable and sometimes unpleasant territory that is found in the text.

 

Consider the biggest themes of all that are positive and uplifting, themes like God has for us this tremendous gift called eternal life. But never is that presented without context. As a matter of fact, when we see it tersely inscribed in Scripture that the gift of God is eternal life, those of you that know your Bibles in Romans 6:23, it is preceded by the clear and difficult statement that the wages of sin is death.

 

If we don’t understand that part of the gospel and we don’t understand that part of the message, we will never fully enjoy, appreciate, or even experience the power and the benefit of God’s positive news. The good news is good, as we often say, but it is predicated on some bad news that, if we try to sweep it under the carpet or change it or tuck it away so that people don’t see it, we eventually end up proclaiming our own word and not God’s Word.

 

And so, in our study of the book of Hebrews, we are going to approach in the next few weeks some of the most encouraging and uplifting texts in all of the Bible—the end of chapter 10 of Hebrews, all of chapter 11. If you don’t know anything about Hebrews, you’ve heard chapter 11 quoted to you, but we find ourselves now in chapter 9. And though we love the mountaintop, sometimes it’s the twisty road to get there that makes us a little queasy. And this is definitely a text of Scripture that is going to make some of us uncomfortable.

 

There are some people that are going to look at this text and they’re going to be repulsed by it. They’re going to say, “Well, wow, this is not only negative, it’s grotesque.” Because not only does this text refer to death some 24 times in 17 verses, I mean, I think it breaks the world’s record for the occurrences of the word blood in one passage. And I don’t think you woke up this morning and said, “I hope I go to church and pastor preaches a good message on blood,” right? We try to avoid that.

 

But before you check out on me or give up on this, make sure that we understand why there’s so much talk of death and sacrifice and sin. Because if we rightly understand it, we’ll find ourselves at the summit of the greatness of the salvation that God has for us, and we’ll never appreciate it until we work through these difficult texts.

 

If you have your Bibles and you haven’t opened them yet, please open them to Hebrews chapter 9. We tried to tackle the first half of this text last week, and today I want to deal with the remainder of it.

 

We’ve, in this series, in talking about how Christ changed everything, seen a number of things that have changed between the old covenant experience in worship and the new covenant experience—the symbols and ceremonies and food regulations of the old covenant, and this new thing called the new covenant where Christ has come and changed everything because he was the fulfillment of it all.

 

Last week, if you glance through the first few verses here, you’ll remember all the tabernacle setup, the ceremonies, the ark of the covenant, the lampstand, all these things. They were mere pictures. As a matter of fact, when he sums it up there in verse number 10, he says all this stuff was a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings. They were only external regulations applying until the time of the new order.

 

Then when Christ came, as the high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle. That is not man-made, that is to say not a part of this creation. We’ve already dealt with that a couple chapters back, but here we’ve got this statement about how he entered, and he didn’t enter, verse 12, by the means of the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the most holy place, the real heaven, the real presence of God, once and for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.

 

Then he begins in verse 13, talk about the old covenant ceremonies.

 

Now, like we have in the rest of this series, what we’re going to do this morning is try to take a 30,000-foot view of this and answer some of the basic questions that surface because we are not in the audience of that first-generation Old Testament coming into New Testament follower of God that had to deal with the fact that everything in our practice was being changed.

 

None of us were tempted this morning to get up and go to the church down the street that you know offers animal sacrifice, right? I mean, they’re hard to find. They’re not in the phone book. You weren’t tempted to. Matter of fact, you’re glad that archaic thing is gone. But for them it was different, and so every point in this argument was important for those who stood in the sandals of those first-century Jewish people saying, “Why is it that we don’t do this anymore?”

 

But for us, it’s a bit more academic, and yet it will invoke, I hope, in us a response that will change the way we look at the cross. So let us read this text in its entirety, and then let’s stand back and ask some basic questions about it, and I trust find the response that God would have us have as 21st-century followers of Christ.

 

He didn’t enter, verse 12, by the means of the blood of goats and calves. He entered once and for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.

 

Now the blood of goats and bulls, verse 13 says, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean, it sanctifies them so that they’re outwardly clean. How much more, verse 14 says, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God.

 

For this reason, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance now that he has died as a ransom to set free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

 

In the case of a will, it’s necessary to prove the death of the one who made it because a will is in force only when someone has died. It never takes effect while the one who has made it is living.

 

That’s why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to the people, he took the blood of calves together with water, scarlet wool, and branches of hyssop, and he sprinkled the scroll and all the people. And he said, “This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you to keep.”

 

In the same way, he sprinkled the blood both on the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

 

It was necessary then for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ didn’t enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.

 

Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest entered the most holy place every year with the blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.

 

Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people, and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

 

Verse 1 of chapter 10: the law, it’s only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves.

 

And we’ve been learning this throughout: the priesthood set aside; the tabernacle, the temple set aside; the restrictions and ceremonies of the old covenant set aside. But the new covenant has the realities.

 

What about these animal sacrifices? That’s a tough thing. Here’s a situation where we struggle with the concept, and we ought to at least try to answer it from a biblical perspective.

 

If you found your worksheet, at least jot the question down: Why all the animal sacrifices? Why? What’s the point? Why is God doing that? Is he some kind of, you know, cruelty-to-animals captain? Is he not a member of PETA? What’s wrong with him? Why are we killing animals all the time in the Bible?

 

Let’s try and answer that question. And as you answer it, I want you to think back to Genesis in the very beginning. Matter of fact, it might be worth looking at in Genesis chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2, easy one to find.

 

But I want you to think back to the injection of death into the whole equation. Death was not initially, certainly from a human perspective, intended in the garden. They had this thing called the tree of life, and you keep eating from that thing in this perfect environment, everything was going to go fine.

 

As a matter of fact, after sin came in chapter 3, God had to banish them from the garden so they wouldn’t eat from that anymore. And interestingly enough, in Revelation 21 and 22, the tree shows up again. Apparently, there’s some reality in our biological units where God will sustain us in perfect bodies for all of eternity, and that was the plan from the beginning.

 

But the problem here was one little tree that sat in the middle of the garden. Drop down to verse 17. Let’s start in verse 15 to get a little context.

 

Genesis 2:15, Yahweh God took the man and he put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Great place. And Yahweh God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but,” verse 17 says, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you’ll surely die.”

 

And that’s not just some horticultural, you know, warning against eating Bougainvillea flowers, right? This was not a tree that was poisoned. It was a tree that stood there, much like this mic stand, and God just simply said, “Don’t do it.” Let’s see who’s going to be God in this scenario. I’m going to tell you not to eat from that tree. You got every other thing you want. Just don’t touch that tree. It was a test of their obedience.

 

And of course, you know the story. By chapter 3, they take of the fruit, they eat of the fruit. Adam and Eve, both guilty, sinful. They see their own shame. They want to cover themselves and hide from God, and everything unravels.

 

But here’s how God describes it. He says, “The day you eat of it,” verse 17, “you’ll surely die.”

 

Now, I know people raise their hand in Sunday school when they hear that and say, “Now, wait a minute. Chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5—Adam and Eve are still kicking around, it seems. They didn’t die.” I know you know this, but jot it down just for clarity’s sake: understand there are two phases of death. Let’s just make it super clear—relational death and biological death. If we were in Sunday school, we’d call it spiritual death and physical death, but let’s just make it really clear.

 

If I am before a holy God, a sinful person, I’ve got a relational problem with him. I’m relationally dead to him. And if I live long enough on this planet, in a sinful world, even in good health, eventually what I find is my body decays. And as Genesis 3 says, I finally meet the end of this biological capacity, and I return to dust, and I biologically die.

 

Phase one immediately happened. They took the tree, the tree’s fruit, and they immediately were in relational damage with God. They were separated from God relationally. They didn’t want to talk to him. When this appearance of God and the theophany in the garden showed up, they hid themselves. They didn’t want to be with God—relational death. And then one day down the road, they would biologically die.

 

The thing about our relationship with God is that he wants us to know that the wages of sin is death, both relationally and biologically. Biologically is the one we feel so innately. Relationally is the one that really matters. That’s why when he talks about our eternal relationship with God, we either have eternal life or this thing called the second death, where we’re cast into a place called the lake of fire. And the concern that we have is that we understand the problem well enough and graphically enough to say, “I need that fixed.”

 

If you want to answer the question in the most basic form as it relates to the death of an animal in a worship service, put this next to pointy finger number one, letter A.

 

Why the animal sacrifices? Here’s one reason: to show the wages of sin.

 

There had to be in the mind of the Old Testament person, as there should be in our minds—and we have the advantage of looking back on history, including the history of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection—there ought to be a sense that sin is a real issue. It’s a problem. And it’s not something that God can just nicely say, “Well, I’m not going to care about people doing the wrong thing.” If he’s a just God, there’s got to be a punishment. There’s a debt that’s racked up by our wrong actions, behaviors, and thoughts, and there has to be a payment for that.

 

And he says the wages of sin is death. He says when you sin against me, you will die—relationally and eventually biologically. And he says, when you come to me in worship, just know you’ve got a tremendous need. Maybe you don’t see it. It’s like something on your forehead. You need to look in a mirror to see it. But the problem is you’ve got an issue of sin that should lead to your own relational and biological demise, and you’ve got to know it.

 

So they would bring animals, and they would come with this graphic reminder, with the spilling of blood in a worship service, to have them graphically reminded that the real issue between you and God is the need for reconciliation, because we are sinful people.

 

“But, you know, couldn’t we have done that some other way?” Well, we could have, but there was something very dramatic that God was trying to show us.

 

As a matter of fact, if you look back in Hebrews, let’s try and tie a couple of passages in this text together. In Hebrews chapter 10, after we’ve discussed the animal sacrifices, in a summation in verse 3, he says these sacrifices—those sacrifices, old covenant sacrifices—are an annual reminder of sins.

 

But then why the whole issue of bringing this in worship and having this killed by a priest? Jot this reference down—and we’ve talked about it many times—Leviticus chapter 1, verse 4. When there was a ceremonial death of an animal in a worship service, the worshiper would lay his hand on the head of that animal, which was the best they could find in their flock, and that animal would be accepted on their behalf.

 

When I went to worship in the old covenant, I would go home alive, biologically, and Fluffy would not come home at all. Fluffy’s dead. As a matter of fact, the reality of it is that there’s a need for my sin to be atoned for, and the animal will be a picture of that atonement so that he will suffer and I won’t have to.

 

Jot this down, letter B, pointy finger number two. The second reminder in this is not just a reminder of sin, but an experience of substitution. Letter B: it is to experience the concept of substitution.

 

It reminds me of the sin, and then I want desperately the solution, and the solution is in a payment of the debt. So symbolically, this animal is taking my place. I get to live, but the animal dies.

 

And if you say, “Well, that sounds so cruel.” You know, if you ate a hamburger yesterday, you’ve experienced a sense of substitution. Now follow me for a second. I know you’re all—you know, half of you are vegetarians. Great. The rest of us, right? I mean, you had your chicken sandwich yesterday. Bok, bok. Here’s a real animal who gave his life so that you could live, right?

 

When did that all start? Started back at the beginning of the whole discussion of God flooding the world. There was this big catastrophe that was coming, and God was going to judge the world for its sin. But he said to Noah, “Build a barge. Build an ark.” And then I want you to bring—not like your preschool border of your kid’s nursery looks like—the animals didn’t go just two by two.

 

As a matter of fact, only the unclean animals came in two by two. God made distinctions for the first time in Scripture of clean and unclean animals. He brought two by two the unclean ones. So you got the pig, you got the snake, you got various lizards.

 

But then the good animals, the clean animals that were ceremonially clean, you were to bring in seven of those. Why so many? Because something after the waters receded was going to change forever.

 

In Genesis chapter 10, you might remember, it’s the first ceremonial offering of an animal with an altar prescribed by God. I mean, the first clear reference to that. And God then says, “I want you to take one of those clean animals,” and the distinction between clean and unclean was not just the sacrifice of it, but whether you could eat it or not.

 

And in Genesis 10, he says to Noah, “You now are going to have all these animals that are now going to provide food for you.” Now we can theorize—and it might be good, a little sidebar here—the world was radically different before the deluge, before the flood. People lived to be what, 800, 900 years. They had all kinds of vegetation all over the planet, which even today they discover, “Wow, it’s amazing.” The earth at some point before a big catastrophe was radically different.

 

Then all of a sudden, God floods the world, changes this thing cataclysmically. Now we have a world that has deserts and ice caps and all these other things going on on the planet. And now all of a sudden you didn’t walk down the road and see grapes and fruit trees and apples and just go any direction—Barstow, Blythe, full of fruit, right? You didn’t have that anymore. Now you had Blythe for the first time after the flood.

 

So God said, “We’re going to have a real problem here with food.” You don’t have refrigerators, and there’s not salad bars with nice little cubed ice around these trays. You got a problem. You’ve got to eat. And now that the world’s been radically changed and you don’t have food on every corner, here’s what I’m going to say: you are allowed to sustain your life to eat meat. And he said these clean animals now will be your diet.

 

So God then sanctions and allows people to eat these animals, which is a picture in and of itself. With the first ceremonial offering of an animal on an altar in the Scripture, we have the clear substitution: their death will provide you with life. And that felt different than tossing a salad.

 

All of a sudden now, unless you grew up on a farm, most of us have lived in a sanitized culture. We don’t experience this, but they experienced for the first time: we kill an animal, we roast it, and we eat it—which, by the way, was exactly what was going on throughout the Old Testament.

 

This wasn’t animals that were just shot in the head and burned and thrown in a ditch. You do understand that the 11 sections of Israel would come and bring these animals that would provide for people called the Levites that had no property and no herds. They fed the people with that. The Levites and their kids ate off of the offerings of the animals at the altar, which again was a ceremonial picture of what? That dies and I get to live—which is exactly the image and the symbolism that God wanted to ingrain on the minds of everybody in the Old Testament.

 

You’ve got a real problem, and that’s called sin. You don’t keep the law. The old covenant summed up—what was it? Do right and I’ll bless you. Problem is you do wrong and you deserve God’s punishment. You deserve death. But instead, God will allow you to live if there’s a substitution.

 

Now the reality of it was it was just a symbol of the substitution, but it was a substitution that allowed them to remember that God wants me to live. He wants me to live. He wants to provide life and grace to those even who have sinned. He wants to give them that sense of hope. But to do that, he wanted them to remember: it’s their life for yours. They die and you live.

 

And if, by the way, you think that was just something that you could sanitize in the old covenant and just maybe pick some corner animal—you could have maybe done that occasionally in the calendar year in Israel. But remember the most important festival in all of Israel was Passover, right? This would be worth jotting down: Exodus chapter 12.

 

Do you know how we started Passover? With a week of picking the unblemished one-year-old lamb and living with it in your house. God wanted to make it clear. You can imagine your five-year-old clinging to this animal that you’ve made as a family pet. There was a sense of cost here and a deep sense of substitution. God says, “You know what? This is going to provide for you.” And you’re going to eat off the fact and live off the fact and find sustenance off the fact of the death of someone who hasn’t done anything wrong. And that quote-unquote innocent animal will be your source of life.

 

Why animal sacrifices? Because it’s a tremendous graphic picture of the wages of sin and the act of substitution, which is exactly what we need—not only in the old covenant mindset, but we desperately need it in the new covenant mindset, which, by the way, is why we discuss the comments about Bonhoeffer.

 

We do not understand the gospel until we understand the fact that sin is the problem that should cause my death—biologically and relationally—for all eternity. And the point of the gospel message is predicated on that truth. So in the old covenant, there was a graphic picture of that.

 

So a lot of people looking at the old covenant saying, “Well, we see all these dead animals and see all this sacrifice and substitution. That must have been the way that God brought them into a relationship with himself. Those animals somehow provided for their salvation.”

 

Number two on your outline: let’s at least ask this question because it’s always asked, it’s a Sunday school question, and it’s an easy place for a mistake theologically.

 

Did animal sacrifices save them?

 

Let’s just answer that straight up in chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. Do you have that text open? We read verse 3. The sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, comma. Let’s read the rest of the sentence. Verse 4: because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

 

So does it save them? Does it take away their sin? No.

 

But now look back at the passage we read earlier. Chapter 9, look at verse 13. It doesn’t say them, but it seems to do something for them. Verse 13: the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of heifers sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean—now you can underline this word—sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean.

 

Now God does something now in response to the sacrifice of an animal in the old covenant, given that it’s offered with the right mindset and the right heart. God does something. As a matter of fact, if the leper is cleansed or the skin-diseased person is now whole, they go and offer a sacrifice, and now they are allowed to come back into the fellowship of the redeemed people. That is something that God says: it’s going to matter whether or not you give a sacrifice.

 

Now the point of salvation and taking sins away—it can’t take sins away, and the Bible is clear on that. But it does do something for them. It does something where God ceremonially sanctifies them and allows them to do things and gives them privileges they wouldn’t have if they didn’t sacrifice the animal.

 

Let’s summarize it this way, pointy finger letter A. It doesn’t save them—so write this word down—no. It doesn’t save them, but it does make them obedient. It does make them obedient.

 

PETA wasn’t big in the old covenant community. You couldn’t cross your arms and say, “I’m not doing that. I like these animals, and I’m not killing them. I’m not eating them. I’m a vegetarian. I won’t do it.” Couldn’t do that. You would be a disobedient person, excluded from the community of the redeemed if you didn’t do it. God was looking for your obedience in this, knowing that that act does not save you, but it makes you obedient.

 

If you want a parallel to that in the new covenant, you can write this down on your notes: CP, compare baptism. Baptism in the new covenant does not save us, but it symbolizes something that does. Did you catch that? Same thing in the old covenant. Sacrificing a lamb on the Passover doesn’t save me, but it symbolizes something that does.

 

And if I’ve got somebody that’s made a profession of faith and said, “Well, I’m a follower of Christ now. I’ve repented of my sins and I put my trust in him, but I don’t want to get baptized because I’m not into that water thing and I don’t want to get wet and I don’t have any cool swim trunks, so I don’t want to do it,” they would be a disobedient Christian. A lot of doors would close for them in terms of the blessing of God, right? God is looking for obedience from us.

 

Does baptism save us—water baptism? No. But it symbolizes the baptism of being placed into Christ by the Holy Spirit, and that does save us.

 

Animal sacrifice didn’t save them, but it does symbolize something that does save them—the substitution and payment for sin—which they didn’t have clarity on. They knew God was somehow going to prepare that and solve that problem for them.

 

So it didn’t save them, but it did make them obedient. And God, I suppose, could have chosen any number of things. He could have said, “You know, pat your head and rub your belly, and that’ll make you ceremonially clean.” But instead, he wanted to enrich this picture with a sobriety about sin and an anticipation of substitution.

 

Jot down or turn to—jot down or turn to—let’s turn there. Psalm 50. One example in Psalm 50, just to show you God is not some animal hater. He’s not cruel to animals. The point of this was provision and substitution and feeding the Levites and all of that. He didn’t have an interest in the killing of animals. Matter of fact, that wasn’t the original plan for the first nine chapters of Genesis.

 

He, though, wanted the heart of obedience and people that saw their need and wanted to reach out to God for the solution to their sin. That’s what he was looking for. And at times when people said, “Well, my heart’s not right, but I brought you a sacrifice,” he said, “I’m tired of that. You don’t understand. Doing the sacrifice doesn’t change your relationship with God unless you do it with the right heart.”

 

Psalm 50 is a great statement about this. In verse number 8, he begins the discussion by saying, “I’m not rebuking you for your sacrifices.” This is Psalm chapter 50, verse 8. Psalm 58. Don’t rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are ever before me. You’re doing those. By the way, verse 9, “I have no need of a bull from your stalls or a goat from your pens.” I don’t need that. Duh.

 

Every animal in the forest is mine. If I needed one, I mean, they’re all mine—the cattle on a thousand hills. I own everything. I know every bird in the mountains and the creatures of the field—they’re mine. If I were hungry as though I ate stuff, I wouldn’t tell you. The world is mine and everything in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Duh. Rhetorical question. God doesn’t eat this stuff. He has no intrinsic interest in it. He has no intrinsic desire for it.

 

Here’s what he’s interested in: the heart that comes with the right kind of—the sacrifice rather—that comes with the right kind of heart. That is included in verse 14: a sacrifice of thank offerings to God. Fulfill your vows, which includes animal sacrifice, he says, to the Most High. But call on me in the day of trouble. I’ll deliver you, and you’ll honor me. You’ll worship me. Your heart of dependence and gratitude and praise will be there. And that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for that. I’m looking for when you see the need to cry out to me and have me deliver you, which is the whole point of sacrifice. He has no intrinsic need for the sacrifice itself.

 

Which reminds us, by the way, another excursus here for just a second: 1 Samuel 15. Do you remember that classic line? It’s a great one-liner where Saul is there with all this stuff from the battle where he was supposed to kill the animals. He didn’t kill the animals. He brings them back. He tries to make an excuse to Samuel that, “Well, you know, I just was hoping to bring some really cool sacrifices back,” which was a big fat lie because he was really padding his bank account.

 

But when Samuel confronts him and he says, “What’s the bleeding of sheep in my ears that I’m hearing?” Remember that whole thing? Here’s what he told him when he said, “Well, it’s just a sacrifice.” Do you remember Samuel’s line? He says, “To obey is better than sacrifice.” And it’s better to heed the word of the Lord than to bring some fattened calf to God.

 

God’s using this as a symbol. There’s no intrinsic desire, need, or interest in the death of animals. It was a symbol. Just like he’s not interested in you swimming underwater, being in water—no interest in that. It’s all a symbol of something very important that was central to the whole redemptive plan.

 

Did animals save them? No, but it did make them obedient, and for that it was important. But obedience is not just the act. It’s the heart in sync with the act. It’s the mind in keeping with the delivery of an animal at worship to the Levites.

 

Well, then how were they saved? Back to Hebrews chapter 9. Interesting statement tucked in the middle of all this. This is another problem, and even sometimes teachers of the Bible and Sunday school leaders and even seminary professors occasionally stumble over this truth and they miss it. So let’s make sure we have it crystal clear in our minds.

 

Hebrews chapter 9, verse 15: “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”

 

Did you catch that? Sins committed when? Under the old covenant. How are they set free from the sins and the penalty of their sins? How? Well, the death of Christ. He died as a payment for that. And when he died as a payment for that, the debt of sin—these people were set free from the consequences.

 

So, number two in your outline: no, animal sacrifices didn’t save them.

 

But here’s the thing: when it comes to salvation, it’s Christ that saves them. They were saved by Christ. The same mechanism for salvation, in terms of how the merit of a righteous God is applied to them, is exactly the same in the old covenant and the new.

 

There are people that have messed this up, sometimes saying all kinds of outlandish things about how Old Testament people were saved. They were saved exactly the same way you are, by the merit of Christ.

 

But it’s the difference, as we’ve often said—I think as late as two weeks ago—between the debit card and the credit card. This is a helpful analogy. You have both in your wallet, right? Debit card, credit card. Credit card, you buy the stuff, you sign the thing, and you’ve got to pay at the end of the month—or at least you should. That’s another sermon. The debit card, it’s already there—or at least it should be, supposed to be—and I lay down the debit card and they just take it out of my bank account.

 

The credit of Christ was available to people in the old covenant. Oh, they didn’t have clarity exactly of a Christ on a cross from Nazareth who hung outside the city walls of Jerusalem, but they trusted in God and he applied to them the merit of Christ. It was on credit. It was forgiveness on credit.

 

From the new covenant perspective, it’s forgiveness on a debit card. It’s already been paid for. When we come to Christ and we throw ourselves on his mercy and we ask him to solve this big problem called sin, he does it not based on something yet to come—credit—but on something that’s already happened—debit.

 

I don’t know. I like the illustration, obviously, more than you do. But debit or credit, you get the idea.

 

Which, again, presupposes we can’t just by divine fiat say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” It matters to a holy God. You’ve got to have your sin debt taken care of. Who’s going to pay that? Animal can’t pay it, but a human—a perfect human, who does everything they’re supposed to do—can have that righteousness applied to you and your sin applied to him in this great transaction called substitution.

 

They are saved by Christ just like we are.

 

Through what? Letter C. Let’s just jot this down. We’ll prove it to you here in a second. Number three, pointy finger: they weren’t saved by animal sacrifices. They were saved by Christ via, letter C, repentance and faith. Same thing you’re saved by. Saved through the mechanism of repentance and faith.

 

The merit comes from Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. How do I respond? How do I get this? I repent of my sins and I put my trust in God’s provision. Same way in the old covenant as the new.

 

Let me prove it to you. Go to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 55. As long as you have a Bible. What a great text here.

 

That any person from new or old covenant should feel like this is just old stuff—this is how God is always responding to us and calling us what he’s calling us to.

 

Verse 6, let’s start there: “Seek Yahweh while he may be found. Call on him while he is near.” I mean, there’s an opportunity right now to get this sin problem fixed.

 

“Let the wicked”—circle this word—“forsake.” That’s a great Hebrew word, azab. It’s 112 times in the Old Testament: to desert it, to leave it, to reject his way, and the evil man his thoughts.

 

“Let him”—this is a great key theological term in the old covenant—“let him turn,” the Hebrew word shub, over a thousand times in the old covenant. It means to go back, to repent, to turn away from. Turn away from sin and turn to what? “Turn to the Lord.” Turn to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on that person, and turn to our God, and he will freely pardon.

 

If I’m convicted with the guilt of my sin, and I see it and I feel it and I know it, how do I get that problem fixed? I’ve never even, you know, I’ve never even heard a Sunday school or a Sabbath school lesson on the coming of some guy from Nazareth before. Well, here’s what you do: you repent of your sins. You throw yourself on God. You call out to God. You reach out to him to solve the problem. Same thing—old covenant, new covenant. You could preach that passage to somebody now. You could preach it to them 3,000 years ago.

 

Turn back a few. Well, what about the faith part? Here’s a great text, Isaiah 30. Same concern of the prophet: get this sin problem fixed. Look at this—as though it were ripped right out of the book of Acts.

 

Isaiah chapter 30, verse 15: “This is what the sovereign Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, says: In repentance and rest…” You know what that is? That’s trust. That’s relaxing. That’s knowing God solves the problem. “In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength.”

 

Problem with those people in that day, they wouldn’t have anything of it. Don’t talk about repentance. Don’t talk about trust. I’m fine. I’m okay. You’re okay. What they needed was repentance and faith.

 

Animal sacrifices didn’t save them. It did make them obedient, and God responded to that obedience. They’re saved by Christ, same way you are. They were saved on credit, not debit. And they were saved the same exact way when they are broken by God and his conviction: all they had to do was cry out to God in repentance and faith.

 

Faith in what? Well, faith in God’s provision. But what if they didn’t know his name? It didn’t matter. The faith and the provision that God would someday supply through the coming of the real Lamb of God that John looked up at and said, “There he is, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” They didn’t have a clear picture of that. We do. The focal point of our faith gets really clear—Jesus Christ. But for them it was a hope in God’s provision.

 

All right, so what about us? This whole text is not about animal sacrifices. It’s about leaving them behind. It’s about trusting in the fact, if you look back at Hebrews 9, that someone has come in—not with the blood of animals, but with his own blood—and taken our place. Solve the sin problem through substitution. That’s the whole point of the passage.

 

As a matter of fact, verse 14 says, “How much more,” Hebrews 9:14, “will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so we can serve the living God.”

 

There’s a radical life change there. Let’s put it down this way, number three on your outline: how should we respond to the Lamb of God, the Son of God who gave his blood for us? How should we respond to that?

 

Well, here’s a great—it’s tucked away right here in verse number 14—we want to cleanse ourselves and our consciences from acts that lead to death. That’s called sin. And we want to serve the living God. To do that on a day-to-day basis means you and I become very sensitized to this thing called sin.

 

Let’s put it down this way, pointy finger, letter A. We need to hate the sin that took his life. We’ve got to hate it. We’ve got to say, “This is a big deal now.”

 

If I’m recognizing that this Old Testament ceremony was a graphic picture of the wages of sin, and now I look back—not through a bloody sacrifice on a Sunday morning to feed the Levitical families—but I look back now on the bloodied and beaten body of Christ hanging on a cross, what should my response to that be?

 

Well, assuming I’ve repented of my sins and put my trust in Christ, my response should be: I should hate the thing that nailed him there. And the thing that put him there was my sin. And I ought to hate that.

 

If you think that’s unbiblical, here’s a great passage for you right out of the Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 8, verse 13: “To fear the Lord is to hate evil.” Right there. You’re not just allowed to hate what is evil. You are commanded to hate it. You ought to hate it.

 

If you think, “Well, that’s just those crinkled-browed, Old Testament codgers that were mad about everything,” then jot this one down. Romans chapter 12, verse number 9. Romans 12:9, the New Testament of love. Here’s what it says: “Hate what is evil and cling to what is good.”

 

Why should we hate it? One of the reasons is it slaughtered the Lamb of God. It cost him his life. It cost him that pain from the Father and that relational death where he quotes Psalm 22 hanging on the tree saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Remember that? What’s that called? Relational death.

 

Why should the perfect and holy one incur that? Why should he have the punishment and wrath of God poured upon him? Only because of the sins that we have done. Only because of our guilt. As Luther used to say, our sins have assailed him on the cross.

 

We ought to say, “Man, that’s a big deal.” We declare war on sin and we hate it in our lives.

 

Do you hate sin that much? Or like so many who like to sweep the tough parts of the Bible under the carpet, we say, “Well, God, he’s just so forgiving. He’s just so gracious. It doesn’t matter. Just ask the Lord—no big deal.” It is a big deal.

 

Jesus said it’s such a big deal that if your eye is the avenue through which sin comes, you should wear sunglasses. What should you do? Shield it a little bit? Cover it? Cap it? No. Gouge it out. The Greek word to gouge, to take it and just get it out and toss it from you. If your hand is the avenue through which sin comes in your life, cut it off. I understand this is hyperbolous and dramatic language, but the point is you better be dealing severely with sin in your life. Why? Because it’s the thing that cost the Lamb of God his life. It’s the thing that made him cry out on a cross, “I’m suffering relational death and biological death all at once because of the sin of my life and your life.”

 

We should hate it.

 

I think of people—and I’ve experienced this—had a loved one die of cancer. How about you? It’s terrible. It’s terrible. I had a dear friend, died before his time, in a hospital, Saddleback Hospital. I was there praying with him for months as he deteriorated and became half the guy he was. And I was there Sunday after church, right by his bedside, as he expired and breathed his last.

 

And you know, I walked out of there with a hatred for cancer cells, right? I came out of there thinking, those little rebellious cells, they got involved in this rebellion in his body and grew and grew and grew and took over his body. And within months, this guy’s wife also died of cancer—just boom, boom.

 

And you know what? If someone can point to something that causes cancer, it’s something that immediately, particularly in the dramatic time of losing my friend’s life, it immediately provoked feelings of anger, right? I mean, if smoking causes that, I hate smoking. See? Whatever it is that’s causing this, I want to hate it because it’s taken the life of someone I love.

 

It’s like the nurse who works up at Mission Hospital, who takes care of babies in the neonatal ICU. My wife and I had our little baby in there for quite a while. And we see all these babies, and some of them are born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Have you seen the devastation of that?

 

Now the mom who’s working in the neonatal ICU, the nurse, she’s carrying her own baby. And she watches the devastation and the pain that is caused by moms—“You know, I just can’t really give it up. Pass the Coors. It’s cool. I just need another drink.” She sees the devastation. What’s her attitude and opinion toward that? See, she hates it. She hates the smell of alcohol because she knows what it does.

 

That almost sounds biblical, doesn’t it? Jude 23 says you ought to hate even the garment that is stained by the corruption of the flesh. I mean, if you’ve watched a friend die of lung cancer, you ought to hate the smell of tobacco on somebody’s jacket. You ought to hate it.

 

And the bottom line is your compromise and my compromise, your sin and my sin, your rebellion and my rebellion, cost Jesus, the perfect one, his life. We ought to declare war on it. We ought to hate it.

 

You ought to hate sin more than you do. I ought to hate sin more than I do.

 

Hate the sins that cost him his life.

 

Hebrews 9, verse 28, says he was sacrificed once and for all to take away the sins of many people. And if you’ve repented of your sins and put your trust in Christ, you are a part of that group of people. And he has, by that one sacrifice, taken away your sin.

 

And he’s going to come back for us, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. That’s a tremendous thing. You come back, and everybody else who hasn’t put their trust in Christ and repented of their sins, they see him as the enemy—and he will be. He will come with a sword. But for us, he’ll be our savior. Why? Because he went to the cross, bore our sin, and gave us something called forgiveness—taking away your sin, completely removing it from you.

 

And you know what? It cost him his life. Something that’s that valuable and that precious, you ought to cherish that.

 

Letter B, under number three: you and I ought to cherish the costly gift of forgiveness.

 

You couldn’t earn it. There was nothing you can do to get it but trust Christ and throw yourself on his mercy, repenting and turning from your sin. But if you’ve done that, what you walk away with is a clean slate. You get completely forgiven.

 

Now, some people have given me some pretty cool gifts for my birthday and for Christmas, right? I’ve even had some people blow me away with gigantic, incredibly generous gifts. But outside of my relationship with Christ, no one has said, “I will go and suffer and die for you so that you can live.” That’s an amazing costly gift, and you ought to hold that close to your heart, and you ought to cherish that, and you ought to recognize how important that is and relive the wonderful forgiveness that comes with that kind of sacrifice on your behalf.

 

It ought to be the most important thing for you. I don’t know what your prized possession is, but you ought to scratch that out and put this at the top of the list: I am forgiven by the death of Christ. That’s the most important thing in the world. That’s the most valuable thing you have. Everything else—go away. But if you have that, you’ve got all you need. That’s big.

 

“Greater love has no one than this,” Jesus said. He laid down his life for his friends. No one loves you more than Christ, and he proved it by taking your place.

 

The book of Hebrews comes off this picture and off this picture of faith in chapter 11, and in chapter 12 and 13, the upshot of it all is given. It’s a wonderful directive for us when we contemplate the richness of our forgiveness, the costliness of our redemption.

 

Look at chapter 12, if you’re not already there, Hebrews 12. Drop down to verse number 28. If God—not because of our meritorious works or our good deeds—but if God has taken our sins away and granted us eternal life because sin was dealt with on the cross, then we’ve got one response to that. Not only should we value it, we should do something expressive.

 

Verse 28: “Therefore, since we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken,” this relationship with God, it’s perfect, it’s coming, we’ll live in that state when he brings his salvation to us—not in reference to sin he’s coming back, but in reference to salvation and forgiveness—then we ought to be thankful. Underline that. “Let us be thankful.”

 

And so worship God—which is the essence of worship, by the way, is being thankful—worship God acceptably. And if you really know the gravity of forgiveness, you’ll do it with reverence and awe. Knowing that this isn’t just a flippant, you know, “won’t your life be enhanced and you’ll have an invisible friend named Jesus.” You’ve had your sins nailed to the cross. A holy God that should be your enemy has now become your friend. He is now for you, not against you, because he put everything that was against you and laid it on Christ and was against him.

 

That substitution has allowed us to stand back with complete immunity from God’s punishment. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1. It’s an amazing truth. And if you don’t say thanks for that every day, you don’t understand the depth of it.

 

Number three, letter C: man, let’s say thank you every single day. Say thanks every day. Say thanks every day.

 

And to say thanks every day, you will have to sacrifice some things. But praise God, you don’t have to sacrifice Fluffy. All you need to sacrifice is a little time and a little effort, a little mental energy.

 

Chapter 13—are you still got chapter 12 open? Look across the page. Hebrews 13, look at verse 14 and 15. “Here we do not have an enduring city.” The world, you know where that’s heading. “But we are looking for the city that is to come.”

 

“Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice”—not of animals—“but of praise.” And that’s the fruit of my lips that confess his name, confess the greatness of his name, confess my gratitude for what he’s done.

 

Sacrifice God wants from you is a little time on your way to work in the car tomorrow morning—to turn the radio off and to say, “I want to be thankful for the redemption that is mine in Christ.”

 

It’s a little time in the morning when you want to hit the snooze alarm and you say, “No, I’m not going to. I’m going to get out of bed this morning and offer my sacrifice,” which is not an animal. It’s a little bit of time, energy, and mental work directed toward God saying, “Thank you for the substitutionary atonement of Christ.”

 

It’s coming home when you’re tired at night, and instead of just sitting brain-dead in front of the TV, taking some time—maybe around the kitchen table, maybe before a meal—saying, “Let’s just stop and be thankful for the fact that all of my sin that should cast me into the lake of fire instead has been laid on Christ. He bore the penalty for me, and I’m completely forgiven. Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.”

 

The offering that God wants from you is not an animal. What he wants from you is gratitude. And the only way you’re going to be fueled to do that is if we step aside from the sterile presentation of the biblical message, and like Bonhoeffer, we start to hate any mitigation of the message.

 

Stop being, like he said, like birds around the carcass of cheap grace. We’re there, we’ve drunk the poison that has killed our passion to follow Christ. Our passion to follow Christ, to praise him, is to recognize the value of grace. It’s amazing. It’s immense. Let’s be grateful for it this week.

 

Pray with me, please.

 

God, please help us to be more grateful. Please, God, help us to look more intently at what our sin caused and the great and incredible love that took our sin and through an unspeakable act of sacrifice gave us instead of punishment, gave us forgiveness.

 

That the one who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. What a humbling, incredible thing that should invoke and be the impetus in our heart for thankfulness and gratitude, and yet with a real feeling of reverence and awe. What an amazing God you are to do this great thing for us.

 

God, help us each day. I just pray if nothing else is taken from this message today, there would be the reminder that we ought to be grateful every day for the forgiveness we have in Jesus Christ.

 

God, we thank you so much. We love you. Help us to hate sin. Help us to cherish forgiveness. Help us to be grateful.

 

In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.