Clough Hebrews Lesson 39

The Finished Work of Christ – 7:26-28

I’d like to start tonight by pausing for a moment, we’re going to finish chapter 7 and it’s one of those situations where chapter 8 is detailed enough we can’t really start it, so this leaves us with a little time gap which I’d like to use if there are any questions that we can clear up at this time particularly in Christ’s intercessory ministry since that’s been so heavily stressed, if any of you have questions in that area, that department.

[someone asks] God the Father plays a role in our sanctification somewhat like Jehovah did in Israel. It goes this way, if you want to get a picture of the Father and the Son, think back, again the old Biblical principle, the archetype. In the Old Testament Psalm 2, Psalm 110, you have the Father taken over by Jehovah and the Son, David the king. Now, the question can be asked is what part did God play in Israel’s sanctification and what part did the king play in Israel’s sanctification. And this is not exact but at least it gets you started thinking in the right direction because the Father-Son relationship, remember, in history was never clear until first you had Israel’s king set up and then when that king became the Son of Jehovah you have the Father-Son relationship starting there. 2 Samuel 7 is when this Father-Son linkage begins. Now in theory it obviously was from all eternity, but in the progress of the way God slowly unravels things and lets a little bit out every century during the Old Testament, it wasn’t until that time when the Father-Son thing got cleared up.

Now let’s think this through. Let’s think of the king of Israel; what role did the king of Israel have in the leadership of the nation? What are some things the king had to do? [someone answers] Okay, let’s put it a form that can be easily transferred from the Old Testament over to the New Testament problem of sanctification. The king had to build an army but that was primarily for what reason? [things said, can’t hear] So let’s look at some of the things the king did. The king led the nation in battle. That was one very clear activity that the king had; he led the nation in battle. He didn’t get out there and say boys you do it, I’ll be behind you. He was out ahead leading into battle and the only time he wasn’t was when he was out of it, that was 1 Samuel 11, before the Bathsheba incident when the Holy Scripture specifically says David was home sacked out when he was supposed to be out leading troops in battle. That’s one area.

What does this mean in the New Testament? How do we map this over from the Old to the New. If that’s what the job of the kings was, to lead the nation in battle, the job of the Son during the Church Age is to what? Jesus Christ, right now, leads the Church in the spiritual war, Ephesians 6. This may give you some insight into Ephesians 6. Many of you weren’t here when we went through Ephesians 6 but Ephesians 6 is that passage when you put on the armor and so on, it talks about all the pieces of the armor, it has this picture of a soldier and often times you see it in Sunday School material and so on. What I’ve never seen brought out is the most obvious thing about that passage. Ephesians 6 is not original with Paul; Paul got the whole imagery of Ephesians 6 from Isaiah and in Isaiah the soldier is the Messiah, and the point of why Ephesians 6 is the believer as a soldier is simply because the believer is identified with the role of Christ. Christ is involved in the battle, there’s a very close identification with the person of Christ. All right, leads the Church in spiritual war, let’s be more specific; that sounds nice but what does that mean. [someone else said] Okay, can you specify a little bit, practically what does it mean. You’re getting there but let’s just be as specific as we can because if we’re not we’re not going to understand what the Son does? [more said] Good point here, Jesus Christ is the source of all strategy and tactics in the Church Age, which means something in the sense that it means that if you have, say a Frances Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland and he is being led by the Lord Jesus Christ, he will be developing tools that believers in other parts of the body of Christ can use in their war. So you have the Church administered by one Savior/General who has a tremendous logistic system and tactics system. So the tactics fought over here also apply. And from age to age as the Church has needed to change its strategy the Lord Jesus Christ is changing the Church’s strategy. In the first and second centuries the strategy was primarily one of physical survival against Roman persecution. Since Constantine the Church’s tactic has been basically one to survive its internal enemies. Today the major problem of the Church is to survive the tremendous relativism in human thought and we are in danger of being the stick in the mud by being the last people on earth to hold any kind of an absolute, and that’s the area of strategy, so that’s one thing that the Lord Jesus, the Son, is doing is that He is devising the strategy, the source of strategy and tactics.

What’s something else that Jesus Christ is doing with regard to the spiritual battle which I pointed out last week from Luke 22. Does anybody remember what it was about, without peaking. [someone answers] Jesus Christ is involved somehow, we can’t specify the details but He is somehow involved in limiting Satan’s work upon believers, more of a defensive strategy, just like King David would be in his war involved in limiting the Philistine advance up the valley of Rephidim, for example.

Another thing the Lord Jesus does, what’s the obvious thing, that in most fundamental churches this is all you hear about, and what is it the Lord Jesus Christ is doing. It’s a very good thing, don’t lose balance here just because we go into other areas of the Word, but what is it in most fundamental churches is all you hear; the 11:00 o’clock service, evening service, Wednesday night service, any other time. [someone says provides salvation] All right, evangelism. Who was it that Paul had to clear his orders with when he wanted to go into Macedonia? Satan stopped him and he had to go to the Lord and check into this thing, see what it was about; he was blocked from going into Macedonia and going into Europe to start missionary work. And he had to go back to the Lord to find out what was going on.

That’s enough in one area, that’s what the king does, he led the nation in battle, Jesus leads the Church in its spiritual battle. Now thinking concretely, now here’s where those of you who have taken the laborious time and patience that it has demanded of you to stick it out in the Old Testament, you have a vocabulary, you’ve already picked up a lot of history that now you can start to pull on when a question like this is thrown out. If we want to compare Jesus with David and we want to compare what Jesus is doing with the Church with what David did to Israel, and you know the life of David, you’re way, way far ahead and you can guess without thinking of specific Scriptures and you’ll still be in the right ball park. So we found one thing that David did that Jesus does in the Church, He leads the Church militant into battle; that’s Onward Christian Soldiers. That’s what that’s hymn is about, Jesus Christ leads into battle.

Now what would be the role of Jehovah when David was leading the armies of Israel back into battle so we can see the role of the Father when the Son leads the Church into battle. Think of it for a moment, here’s David leading soldiers into battle. Think back to our David series and Samuel series, what did God do for David. Can you think of some specifics that God did for David when David was leading the army into battle. [someone answers] Okay, He gave him the overall strategy, sometimes it was immediate tactics but most of all it was overall strategy. That’s one thing that God did, in fact, sometimes He even gave them tactics, like when Joshua was going into battle He even showed him what weapons to use but generally the Lord let the king do that, but He gave him basically the strategy.

What other things did Jehovah do for King David. [someone answers] Let’s sum it up by saying that God basically worked with the miraculous. David obviously didn’t do magic tricks, he didn’t have the magic power in himself, he did it by God, what God had done for him. Anything else on what God did for David when David was fighting the battle? This summarizes enough so let’s apply it to the New Testament now. Here’s the Father and the Son; the Son, when He fights is God but He’s also man. What is the doctrine, let’s review; what is the doctrine that the Church has devised all the way from Chalcedon down to the 10^th century that specifies the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. Hypostatic union. The doctrine of the hypostatic union—what does the hypostatic union say? [people answers in unison] Undiminished deity and true humanity united without confusion in one person forever. Good. So that’s the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, He is God and man, but the important thing that Hebrews brings out, wherever Christ works in His humanity as well as His deity. That’s the difference between the Father and the Son. The Son is the incarnate member of the Trinity, so when the incarnate Son works, even this day at this hour, Jesus Christ is dependent on the Father for what is going on in the Church.

Let me show you some examples of this. Let’s turn to John 17; though this prayer was prayed before Christ got seated at the Father’s right hand, nevertheless, it seems to be pretty much of a model type of intercessory prayer. And notice that in John 17 it’s obviously directed to the Father. Just like David addressed his prayers to the Father. And Jesus, at this hour, the Son talks to the Father. Notice, for example, John 17:4, “…I have finished the work which You gave me to do.” Now the Father is the One with the master plan and the overall strategy, so you see, He’s the One that gives the Son the basic plan. For those of you who haven’t been in the service, this may be a little hard to visualize but when you get involved in a military type situation you have a high command, it may be… well, say in the European theater, the invasion of Sicily, you had Eisenhower, Churchill, FDR, and then over in the east Stalin was banging around because he wanted a second front opened. So you have Eisenhower who was the head chief of the military and I can’t think of the man who was head of the British Air Force but [someone answers] Beadlehead, okay.

Now here’s the level and how the strategy comes down. Churchill and FDR and Satan over here get together and decide what the overall objectives were to be. Now one of the weaknesses in World War II was that the political objectives were not clear but theoretically they were supposed to give the military men the political objective. The military men, and then under Marshall, General Marshall was involved too, they were to devise an overall strategy for what was to happen, how we can bring about those political objectives, whether it was an invasion to be on the north side of Europe, whether it should be in the Balkan, whether it should up through Sicily and up through Italy. Their job was to carry out this master strength plan. Then it went down further to the different commanders of different units, Air Force, both the British and Americans, the Navy would be represented and the Army and these groups would have to get together and what would they do. The Navy would have to decide, how are we going to supply the soldiers once they get on the Sicilian beaches, how are we going to get them there, can we keep the sea lanes clear while the soldiers are going on shore, what part of Sicily should we land on. The Air Force, these people are interested and in Sicily there are about three air fields, which air field should be knocked out first so that we can destroy the German cover on the beaches while our own soldiers are landing. So as you come down to lower and lower levels of command the questions become more and more specific in detail.

Well, if you can visualize this as just one big break here between the high command and the battlefield commanders you have the difference between an overall strategy and just simply a regular strategy. Now that’s the difference between God the Father and God the Son, God the Son being both God and man together. As the head of the Church His job has been given to Him, verse 4, “I have finished the work which You gave me to do. Now this was finished in the sense of His direct incarnation work, but obviously the work through the Church has not yet been finished as I’ll prove in a moment with another passage. But that verse is typical of the sense the Father originates the overall plan, the Lord Jesus Christ, even at this hour is showing His sanctification and His obedience by following orders is what it amounts to.

And notice again an analogy holds in the service, every time you contemplate a major operation you’re going to have differences. The Navy is going to want conditions of relatively smooth seas so they can get soldiers on shore, so the landing will be easy. The Air Force wants clear skies, the Navy wants cloudy skies, the Navy wants cloudy skies because the enemy air planes can’t see them, the Air Force wants clear skies so they can see the enemy targets. And so obviously any overall strategy is going to have to be a compromise of these and there are going to be some men down here that are going to get an order that they don’t like but they’re going to have to say yes sir, because that fits the big plan.

Now if you can think of yourself in that level, the Father has an overall strategy, the Son has the strategy and we’re little peons down here and we’re told to do certain things and from our perspective what we are told to do often doesn’t look very thrilling and it doesn’t look like we’re part of any big master plan at all. But our job is to say yes sir and do it, period, whether we like it or not. And this is why in our day it is so necessary to develop a loyalty to the Word of God, and not a loyalty to somebody’s experience. Can you imagine these battle commanders down here saying well I don’t feel like this order is right, I feel Eisenhower is speaking to me in my heart, and he told me told me to do something last night. You can imagine what a balled up mess it would be if every battalion commander had his own idea of how Eisenhower felt.

Now there’s only one set of written orders and they are all… all movements are to be taken off that set of written orders. That’s the same thing in the Christian life and don’t try to say it’s any different. God has passed down written orders and you’re holding them in your lap. And you’re to say Yes, Sir, and do them, not debate whether you feel like it or not. All right, this is the difference here, then, between the Father and the Son, one type of difference.

Let’s sum up another area, besides the service, think of what else David did for the nation, completely apart from his military role. What is he known for in history? What was his other skill, when he was a young man he was known for two things. [someone answers] All right, the psalmist and in what connection to the spiritual life do you associate the psalms. What does that ring a bell with? [someone answers] Praise. Worship, coming together. Where were the psalms originally acted out? Remember the word that we called the central place? Not the cult, the cultist; the cultist was the tabernacle complex, later on it became temple complex. When the tabernacle group gets through their massive engineering job you will see a scale model of the tabernacle so you can see what it was; don’t look for the Shekinah glory, that’s gone, but the tabernacle will be a scale model so you can see what this cultist looked like. The cultist was the place where assembly worship occurred.

The Lord Jesus Christ, then, is promoting worship and where there is genuine worship it will always be Christ centered, not Holy Spirit centered. The Second Personality of the Trinity is always the One exalted, never the Third. In the tabernacle every piece of furniture in the tabernacle speaks of Jesus Christ, not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not glorified by you trying to glorify Him. He’s glorified when He’s allowed to do His job, which is to glorify the Son. There are a number of details; if you’d like further details on Christ and His role with the Father I would recommend John Walvoord’s book, it’s just entitled Our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a very, very good book on the doctrine of Christology; in fact, it’s the only book I think that’s available today for the Christian that goes through every major area of the doctrine of Christology.

Let’s turn to Hebrews 7; tonight we finish chapter 7 and as we finish chapter 7 we finish the second major section of this book. From Hebrews 1:1 to 2:18 was the first major section of this epistle. In that section we summarized the though by saying since Jesus Christ is God’s Son, our only Savior, we must be careful of our response. That was the passage that had the warning passage, remember it said, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” Then the second major section began in 3:1 and has run through 7:28. The theme of this second section of the epistle is Jesus Christ is the ideal high priest because of three things: He is faithful for one thing, that was developed in the early part of chapter 3; and then He is sympathetic, that was developed, remember, “Let us come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy” and so on, because Jesus Christ Himself personally went through the trials of being sanctified.

Remember sanctification is not primarily getting rid of sin. What is sanctification primarily? Sanctification is basically gaining a loyalty to God’s Word. That’s the definition of sanctification. Even if we didn’t have sin we’d still have to be sanctified because Jesus Christ had to be sanctified. So if you’re thinking of sanctification as just getting rid of sin, wrong. Look, you’ll never get rid of all the sin patterns you have, from the time you became a Christian until the time you die you don’t have time to get rid of all the sin patterns. So it’s hopeless if sanctification is getting rid of all sin; sanctification is not getting rid of all sin; sanctification, at least in this life, sanctification is learning loyalty to God. That’s what is to grow and increase with time, and obviously as it increases then unrighteousness will decrease but it’s never going to peak out to its maximum in this life.

All right, Jesus Christ is sympathetic, He is faithful, and then the last part which is chapter 7, He is everlasting, all three of these attributes for the ideal high priest. Now the last three verses of chapter 7 summarize both chapter 7 and really this entire section.

Hebrews 7:26, “For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” Now we have to go through verse 26 real slowly because of the vocabulary. This is one of those places in Scripture where you want to juice every word, squeeze it dry, use a concordance if that is necessary, but do something so you understand what these words and the test of your understanding is ask yourself to describe to yourself in your own vocabulary what is being said here in verse 26. Let’s look then.

“For such an high priest became us,” the word “became us” or “befits us,” probably the best translation would “befits” or “fits,” comes from the Greek word that means to be empirically necessary. There are three words for necessity in the Greek, one is dei and that is the word for logical necessity, it is logically necessary that if you have two and add two to it you get four; that is logical necessity. And you will find dei in the New Testament pages where there is an inference or a logical deduction made, a syllogism. Another Greek word that is used in New Testament Greek is opheilo and this means that it is morally necessary, in other words, in the light of ones moral character this is what you would expect of such a person. But that isn’t used here nor is the word dei used here. An entirely different word is used, prepo, and this means because of the nature of things, this is necessary so we’ll just call this empirically necessary; because something is made necessary by virtue of how things are, that’s all. It’s not emphasizing the moral structure so much, it’s not emphasizing the logical structure, though of course they’re wrapped in, tied in, you can’t cut them completely out, the empirical is just because of the nature of things this has to follow.

So when we read in verse 26, “For such an high priest became us,” what this means is that only this kind of a high priest can fulfill our needs. That’s what this verse is saying. In other words, here we are, as fallen creatures. We have X number of needs; some things will fill that need and that need; psychotherapy might solve some of your needs; money might solve some of your needs, less, by the way, than you think. If you’re single you think that being in marriage, divine institution two is going to solve some of your needs. And you have your own idea what’s going to solve your needs, but what this verse is saying, that all of our needs can only be fulfilled when we have the Lord Jesus Christ as our high priest, “such an high priest,” this kind of a one is the only one hat fits our needs. Now this verse, the beginning here, tips us off, as to how the early Christians argued that Christianity was true and that all other religions were basically wrong.

Now this is the most unpopular thing you as a Christian are going to have to learn, there’s just no way around it, you might as well get used to it, you’re going to be looked down upon as a bigot if you’re going to evangelize because people are going to turn around, that is if you’re evangelizing properly, people are going to turn around and tell you well, who do you think you are that your opinions have weight over everybody else’s and they’ll come up with something like that. Now at this point here is where you are fighting your Americanism. Now America is a great country and we have much of which we can be proud, but there’s one flaw among several others in the American character. And the flaw is the presupposed relativity of all religions. It was built into our country from the very foundation and it happened because of an argument between two men.

There were two men who argued for the separation of Church and State in our country. One was right and one was wrong; they both argued for the same thing but from different motives. One was Roger Williams who founded the colony at Rhode Island. He argued for separation of Church and State on the ground that the State was dangerous to the Church. The other man was Thomas Jefferson, whose arguments won the day for separation of Church and State who argued that separation of Church and State is necessary because the Church is dangerous to the State. And Jefferson’s argument is the one that most people learn in the schools; you never read anything by Roger Williams. The only people that are picked out in the public are atheists like Jefferson and Franklin and a few other clods in the colonies instead of the great Christians, such as Witherspoon, Williams and others. You never hear about them. But Roger Williams, if you want to do some historical work, has the correct doctrine of Church and State, not Thomas Jefferson. But since we’re living in Thomas Jefferson’s days and Thomas Jefferson’s ideas, when we go to evangelize we have to go against that Jeffersonian ideal that all religions are not equal, all men are not equal, that God loves some men more than He does others, He elects some to salvation and others he leaves. And this cuts straight across the ideals of Thomas Jefferson. And there’s’ no way you can reconcile the two. At this point you have to choose between being a good American and being a good Christian and you’d better choose for being a good Christian. It’s not being dishonoring to your country to be this way because the first Americans were Christians until Jefferson got everybody screwed up.

So we have separation of Church and State that is denied here, in the sense that we don’t buy the equality of all religions. And the argument the first Christians used, and the same kind of argument in verse 26 that is used is that men have a need that can only be filled through Jesus Christ. That basically is the argument for the truth of Christianity. And that all other religions ultimately are going to fail because they’re going to fail to provide for one or more of man’s needs. All of them, and they all can be disproved this way, that Christianity alone is left as the only religion in the world that provides for all the needs.

For example, take Islam, many, many millions of people down through history have worshiped Allah, but it’s interesting when you enumerate Allah’s 100 plus attributes there’s one that’s missing and the attribute that is missing from Allah is precisely the attribute that all men need most; it’s the attribute of love. Allah does not have the attribute of love; an “it” can’t love you. And you only have the attribute of love when you have a Trinity, when you have eternal love, love that preexisted the creation, unless you have a Trinity with multiplicity in the God head you can’t have love there before God created anything. God wouldn’t have had to have created something in order love so love didn’t begin until creation with all other systems. Only with Christianity does love preexist creation and the reason that love can preexist creation and therefore be part of God is because of the Trinity. This is why this doctrine is important, it’s not just to be tossed in the basket.

So that is an example of how Christians argue, Pascal’s famous saying is valid as long as you don’t limit it to the way Pascal said it, there is in the heart of every man a God-shaped vacuum that can only be fulfilled by the Creator made known through Jesus Christ. That is a valid summary statement of why Christianity is true. It’s not an appeal to subjectivism; it’s not saying man’s wants are fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Please notice the careful difference in phraseology; two words, man’s needs and man’s wants. Man’s needs are common to all men. All men have the same needs; all men do not have the same wants. And so therefore Christianity can be objectively shown to fit man’s needs, though obviously it fails to meet all of our wants.

Now that argument is nothing but a refinement of verse 26. “For such an high priest fits us,” the appeal of the author, if you don’t believe me, he says, Jesus Christ alone fits us and how does He fit us. He fits us at a number of points. All the things that you see enumerated have to do with Christ’s character, in verse 26; He is first, “holy,” now there’s a whole problem with this word, normally in the Greek this is the word for holiness, hagios, that is the common Greek word for “holy” but it is not used here. Another word is used at this point in the text, hosios, and this word is used two other places. Let me show you those two places and see if you can guess what’s special about this word. Remember, the other word is the common word for holy, righteous, just, so on. Now you look at these two references and see if you can tell me what is strange about both of these references.

Turn first to Acts 2:27, [“Because Thou wilt not leave My soul in hades, neither wilt Thou allow Thine Holy One to see corruption.”] Acts 13:35 is the second place this is used. [“Wherefore, He saith also in another psalm, Thou shalt not allow Thine Holy One to see corruption.”] What is your observation? What is common to both these occurrences. [someone answers] Look carefully at those verses, you’re on the right track but look a little more carefully, what’s common to both. They’re both quotes from the Old Testament, and particularly they’re both quotes from the same passage in the Old Testament and in particular they’re quotes of Psalm 16:10 which happens to be the first century Christian’s proof text that Messiah had to rise from the dead. Now Jesus Christ is the hosios, He is hosios in His character, what does that mean? Not just that He’s hagios, it’s hosios, and hosios is a technical expression that would clue his readers immediately [cant understand word], hosios, the hosios one was the one that could not stay in the grave.

And so with this one word the author of Hebrews call our attention not just to Christ’s righteousness, not just to His justice and holiness, but with this word he calls our attention to the relationship between being holy and being immortal. Immortality is involved in this claim of hosios, it’s not just holiness, but holiness that leads to immortality, that’s the kind of holiness that our high priest has, because remember the section of chapter 7, what is the theme? Christ is the everlasting priest, an everlasting priest has to attain immortality, he has to actually possess immortality. So it’s not strange, then, that this word be used.

Turn back to Hebrews 7:26, Jesus Christ is hosios, He has the holiness that leads to immortality. Now the next one was good when it was translated in the King James, unfortunately in our day it’s “harmless,” and you use the word “harmless” today when you think of some person who may be an idiot but at least he’s harmless so you kind of leave him alone. That’s obviously not what must be meant here for the Lord Jesus Christ. “Harmless” is a translation of another Greek word, akakos, and this word means without, “a” without, evil, but more is meant than just without evil; the idea is He never picked up evil. All during the time that He was on earth He made it without ever getting tainted with evil. See, it’s talking a lot like hosios except it looks at it from a different point; hosios looks at the fact that Jesus had such a character that demanded immortality and therefore resurrection but this word draws emphasis, kind of the same thing but it places the emphasis on the fact that all the way to the grave He made it without getting His feet dirty, in the terminology of John 13; that is what it means by “harmless,” akakos, he is undefiled.

Undefiled is a word that is borrowed out of the context of discussion that happened in that day of a man by the name of Philo. Philo was a Jewish philosopher who existed in the city of Alexandria, a very important man in ancient history. By the way, he is important from the standpoint of understanding the logos of John 1. Philo was a Jew living before Jesus Christ who was probably the first major Jewish philosopher of history apart from Solomon, and he tried to combine the Old Testament with Greek categories and he used this word a lot. He used the word “undefiled.” Now I’m giving you this background because we think that this author of Hebrews came out of Alexandria, at least he was influenced by Alexandrian thought. And therefore he’s interacting with it and in interacting with it he denies something that’s tremendous here and leads to a wonderful truth. What Philo meant by the word “undefiled” was that you get away from the world of concrete things into the world of the abstract. You get away from this good man and this good man, say for example you have a good man here, a good man here, a good man here, all these good men that you can think of have faults. This man has a fault, this man has a fault, this man has a fault, so Philo said if you want to have the undefiled good you can think of the abstract thing called goodness that exists some in here, some in here, some in here, but never in any one man. The abstract goodness is an abstraction that doesn’t exist anywhere except in the realm of the ideal and for that he employs the term “undefiled.” It is undefiled and he tried to philosophically attain this era of perfection like Plato did, by getting away from all the details and the concrete up into this theoretical world of thought, into the realm of the ideal.

Now the astounding thing in verse 26, which is the same claim that the author of John makes in John 1, and it must have dropped like a bomb on people who were acquainted with this vocabulary and had struggled with these thoughts for two or three hundred years; now men before Christ had struggled much with this kind of thinking. For someone who was intellectually sensitive this thing would have just gone off like a bomb when he says Christ is “undefiled.” In other words, he was claiming that Jesus Christ as a concrete man was the ideal good; it wasn’t in the realm of the abstraction. If you want to find what is the ideal good, don’t go to the thought world of Plato, don’t go to the thought world of Philo, go to the person of Christ and look at Him, there you have concrete and perfect goodness in one person. So you don’t have to become impersonal, you don’t have to have some abstract thing up here that doesn’t really exist but you’ve got a Christ that you can touch, feel and hear. He is concrete goodness. So the word “undefiled” is a very, very powerful word.

The next word, “separated from sinners,” it’s a perfect participle, “who has been in the past separated from sinners and now continues separated from sinners.” Now if you want an idea of how this went over with his congregation, we have to kind of again recreate the thought world of that synagogue which this epistle was spoken to. So I’ve just given you some background in Philonic thought, they were infiltrated with that, now you can see this preacher, the author of Hebrews coming in and saying Christ is undefiled, and it would have hit like that if they had been thinking in Philonic terms.

Now he drops another bombshell, “Jesus Christ is separated from sinners,” and what bombshell went off here. Turn to Leviticus 21; back in Leviticus 21 we’re in the middle of the Mosaic Law Code and in that law code there were specifications for the making the priest undefiled. Now of course, because the priest too had a sin nature, in an absolute sense he couldn’t be undefiled, there’s no such thing as a perfectly undefiled high priest. But the gist of the matter was that God had him put on a drama, which we will call ceremony. The Law had a ceremonial part and though the actor that played the role of the priest wasn’t himself perfect, he was trying to act out what perfection meant. And in doing so he had to subscribe to this set of codes. Leviticus 21:1, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say unto the, There shall none be defiled for the dead among His people. [2] But for his kin who is near unto him, that is, for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother, [3] For his sister, a virgin, that is near unto him, who has no husband; for her he may be defiled. [4] But he shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people, to profane himself.”

Now what that’s talking about is that he could bury close members of his family, he could bury his mother, he could bury his father, he could bury his daughter if she hadn’t been married, and he could bury the rest of the people that you see there. But he couldn’t bury anyone else; he could come into no contact with a dead body. Verse 5, “They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard,” these are things that the priesthood in other countries did in the ancient world, “nor make any cuttings in their flesh,” remember this is what the priests of Baal were doing, when Elijah challenged them to pray to Baal and see if Baal would send lightening down to fire, remember while he was saying to the priests of Baal, and they were sitting there cutting themselves and they cut themselves, slashed their wrist and held their blood up and let it drop down, showing that they were making atonement for themselves and thereby trying to bring the gods to answer. That’s when Elijah made the classic reply to unanswered prayer, “maybe your god’s out for a walk, cry a little louder.” He said a few other things which we won’t go into, it might offend somebody.

Leviticus 21:6, “They shall be holy unto their God, and not profane the name of their God….” Verse 7, “The shall not take a wife who is an harlot, or profane, neither shall they take a woman who is divorced; for he is holy unto his God. [8] Thou shalt sanctify him, therefore; for he offers the bread of thy God,” now these ceremonial things were not to attain sanctification or salvation, they were there to make the priesthood function as a great drama to teach doctrine to the people of what undefiledness means.

Now return to Hebrews 7, when you read there that Jesus Christ is undefiled, it means that Jesus Christ, in His soul, is undefiled. In other words, it’s not just a drama with Christ, here you have the actor playing the role who literally fulfills the role, who has been separated from sinners. He is, in other words, in his soul He is in no way touching anything of the fallenness of man. This is another reassertion, much like that hosios was, these words are kind of parallel here. Remember hosios, He had the kind of holiness that demanded immortality, same kind of thing here.

Now the last one in verse 26, “and He has been” or “He was made higher than the heavens.” In other words, this has to do with His authority, “the heavens” is simply metonymy for angels, as this epistle uses it. Jesus Christ has command over all heavenly powers.

Now let’s tie all these words together in summary. How are these terms related to our nature; here we are, members of the human race, we have a certain nature, we have a nature that is made in God’s image, the image of God, and is also fallen. That is our nature. Now how do these words fulfill our nature? The word hosios, the kind of holiness that demands immortality means that we are built for that kind of immortality; that’s what we’re built for. This is why we feel so, like something’s wrong with all this evil in the world, why everybody is disturbed. Even the person who’s a non-Christian is disturbed with evil in the world, he can’t really tell why he is disturbed but he is disturbed. The kind of holiness that leads to immortality is what we all want; it’s the thing that fits our soul.

The next word, “harmless,” all of us need a perfect record with no failures on that record for confidence in God’s sight. Christ alone can provide that. He is “undefiled,” again it is the concept of an ideal that is real. You don’t have to look to Plato, you don’t have to look to modern theology that follows philosophy, who always speculates like Tillich, God is the ground of all being or something. That’ just an ideal, Tillich’s god is a product of Tillich, it’s just an intellectual sentence, with subject and predicate and that’s all, it just exists in the realm of thought. But what we need is something is more than the impersonal abstract God; we want a God that’s real, Jesus Christ is that perfection. “separated,” we want to be in a state where we don’t share all this fallenness, the fallenness in our soul, the fallenness in the world, all these things, Christ alone provides this. And finally, we were created to rule over all the universe and we need that authority and that authority is only found in the person of Jesus Christ when it says He “has been made higher than the heavens.”

Hebrews 7:27-28 follow very, very quickly. I might add that this whole epistle, and I’ve mentioned this before time and time again, Hebrews is one of your better works in the New Testament if you’re bothered with cults who like to assert that along after Jesus came somebody else, it may be Mohammed, it may be Bahiullah, it may be Mary Baker Eddy, it may be Joseph Smith, always somebody else that God has to send to finish the unfinished work. The author of Hebrews insists that Christ is the final end character; there needed to be no person to follow Christ. No one can follow in Christ’s footsteps. No one whatsoever.

Verse 27, “Who needs not daily, as those high priests, to offer up the sacrifice, first for His own sins, then for the peoples; for this He did once, when He offered up Himself.” Now at the end of verse 27 is a statement that occurs again and again in this epistle from this point forward. It’s one of the most important statements ever used by the Reformers against Catholicism. Now again we are not knocking individuals who hold to Catholicism so don’t take it that way but we are knocking the system; either Catholicism or Protestantism is right but they both can’t be. Your charismatic movement is trying to amalgamate Protestantism and Catholicism into one world church based on experience, because we all have the unity of the Spirit or something. Now this is a direct denial of the great doctrinal fights of the Reformation that have not been answered by the charismatic movement today. And the great doctrinal fights were many, one of which hinges on this verse. There’s one word in this verse that meant a lot to the Protestant Reformers and a word which caused John Calvin himself to write the commentary that I’ve quoted from before on this epistle to the King of Russia, and he wrote that epistle, the commentary on Hebrews to the King of Russia to cut off two things: Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy. Calvin was against both because of what they taught about Jesus’ sacrifice.

Now what is taught here in verse 27? “This He did once,” now in the Greek there is a word like this, hapax, by the way, does that look familiar, you know what that word means, anybody guess, “once,” once for all. Now the word used here is an intensification of that word. It looks like this: ephapax, now this word means absolutely once and for all. It is as dogmatic as the Greek language can come on. It can’t come on any more dogmatically than this. You couldn’t ask for a clearer statement than this, Jesus Christ sacrificed once and only once and never again, period. That’s the message of the Protestant Reformation, you don’t sacrifice Christ as the mass, He has been sacrificed once and only once. There are some people who have objected to recent trends in LBC’s pulpit against Roman Catholicism. This trend that you have observed is deliberate on my part for two reasons, and I’ll explain those two reasons so when you hear this criticism you’ll know why I’m doing it. Number one, today we face a flanking attack by the charismatic movement to get Protestants and Catholics together. They have been able to do what a generation of one church people have not been able to do and that is get the machinery going for the one-world church that we know is prophesied in the book of Revelation. The Holy Spirit is going to be taken out of the world at the rapture and when He is taken out this one-world church is going to amalgamate and become the world power of the antichrist. The charismatic movement is preparing the way for that by breaking down the boundaries between Protestants and Catholics. Now these boundaries have to be kept because these boundaries are doctrinal boundaries that must be respected. All due respect to the people involved, they are doctrinal boundaries and they don’t change because you feel friendly toward one another. They are still points of dogma in the Word of God.

And the second reason why I’m pushing this is because in our part of the country in particular we’re getting more and more Latin influence and with it comes Romanism. We have nothing against Latin Americans at all, nothing whatsoever, but it’s undeniable that most are bringing with them Romanism and because of these influences it behooves every fundamental Christian today to know where you stand so you can evangelize them, so you know what the differences are. You’ve got to see the differences, so as we go through the epistle I’m not trying to start a holy war between Protestants and Catholics, not another Ireland or something, it’s not that at all. It’s to define where we stand in this great debate, a debate that is largely going unnoticed among many people. But you watch it, I grew up in one of the most Catholic areas of the country and I know whereof I speak both in theory and in practice. I have watched Romanism first hand, I have watched their dealings with Protestants in school boards, in city councils, on faculties at universities and I know how it works. Most of you come from an area where you know nothing about Romanism. And we will teach you about it because it is a modern coming pressure against evangelical Christianity in this part of the country.

This is one of the key texts which is the center of the debate, did Jesus or did He not die once and for all and did He or did He not present His sacrifice once and for all. Notice the last part of verse 27, not just that He died, but that He offered up Himself once and for all. Now you read that once again to yourself, then let me read you a section of the Catholic mass. After the mass is given, the priest has partaken and the communicates, this is read in certain versions of the mass: “May this holy sacrifice of the mass be pleasing to You, O God, most Holy Trinity. May it earn forgiveness for me and for all those for whom I have offered it, I ask this through Jesus our merciful Savior. Now obviously there’s a little collision between that statement and what you just read in verse 27. You can’t have both, throw one out or throw the other, but the both can’t be true. The mass is either a re-sacrifice of Christ or it isn’t, and verse 27 says it can’t be because, if hapax, Jesus offered Himself once for all, never again to be reoffered. Catholicism, you see, the difference between the priest and the sacrifice, that’s the problem, they equate the two; we diverge from the two. We have an everlasting priest who makes continuing intercession, but not a continuing sacrifice. Jesus makes a continuing intercession on the basis of His sacrifice but He doesn’t make a continuing sacrifice in addition to His intercession. Is that clear? See the difference? Catholicism logically has to hold that Jesus is not only making a continuing intercession but He is also at the same time continually being re-sacrificed whereas we hold only to a continuing intercession, not to a continuing sacrifice. All right, there’s a tremendous difference here and it has a lot to do with sanctification which we can’t get into tonight.

Hebrews 7:28, summary, “For the Law makes men high priests who have infirmity, but the word of the oath, which was since the Law, makes the Son who is consecrated for evermore.” Now “the Law makes men high priests who have infirmity,” that’s obviously the Law working with fallen man, working with fallen man in the sense the Law was only temporary. It never finished the job. “…but the word of the oath,” what was the oath? Where is that oath? The passage has been quoted seven times so far. The oath in Psalm 110:4. It can’t be Genesis. Why? Look at the next phrase, “which was since the Law,” see if it was in Genesis it would before the Law. It has to be after the Law, Psalm 110, “that was since the Law.” In other words, the Law was scheduled to be obsolete, like Detroit makes their cars, it was planned obsolescence, after so many thousand miles it falls apart. All right, God designed the Law under the Old Testament so after so many centuries it would just destruct. It wasn’t made for a continuing thing, but the oath was. The oath was an eternal guarantee; you would be foolish if you were the manufacturer and you eternally guaranteed the car, and at the same time you made the car it would be obsolete; you would only, if you were thinking, make an eternal guarantee for your product if you were sure the product was eternal. So that’s the argument of the oath, “the word of the oath,” Jesus is not planned to be obsolete, to be superimposed or to be replaced by Bahiullah, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith or Mohammed. Jesus is not scheduled for replacement, He is the final word.

“…who makes the Son, who is consecrated for evermore,” “is consecrated” means is mature, He is mature and He will never become more mature. Another interesting point, you know Jesus Christ hasn’t grown at all spiritually since He sat down at the Father’s right hand. He has become mature, period. That’s what this says. He’s not going to grow any more, “for evermore…” “for evermore,” that’s the final quotation from Psalm 110:4 so I guess the last count was 7 times, now it’s down to 8 times.

We’re going to conclude by turning to 1 Corinthians 15 for a cross reference to this work of Christ, it kind of ties it with what we started the class with this evening. 1 Corinthians 15:24, we started the evening off with what is the difference between the work of the Father and the work of the Son? What does the Son do? Verse 24 tells you when the Son’s work is going to be over. “The comes the end, when He,” that is the Son, “shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power, [25] For He must reign, until He has put all enemies under His feet. [26] The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” and when that happens Christ’ job is through, and with it man’s job is through because who is it that Christ is leading? Mankind, as the son of man. And when that is done the destiny that was pointed to back in Genesis 1 will also be finished and eternity begins. Now in eternity the creature learns more about God but what we are calling sanctification is not descriptive of that process. This is the end, and when that happens Christ’s work is done.

Father, we thank You….