Clough Hebrews Lesson 44
Efficacy of the Better Sacrifice – 9:13-14
We working in the section, Hebrews
9:11-14. The entire section, from
Hebrews 9:11 down through
But the point that the author of Hebrews is
hitting is that God added a dispensation and made a change. He made all of this system obsolete. Now He didn’t make all the truths of the
system obsolete, any more than if you have one President succeed another, you
have one administration succeed another there are going to be certain things
that carry over, but it is an entirely distinct administration. So you can think, if you get all fogged up by
the word dispensation just forget it and think of the administration. The word
administration means that there is obviously someone who is administering it
and here it’s God, and during different administrations He operates
differently. There’s a fundamental law
of interpreting Scripture, otherwise you’re going to be all fouled up. God in different ages administers the
universe differently.
Now in this section, between chapter 9 and
chapter 10, we’re talking about the finality of this sacrifice. This says that
since the Old Testament was built, knowing that it would one day become
obsolete, that believers in the Old Testament looked forward to something
beyond their existing administration; the administration of the Old Testament
was not final. The argument of the
epistle of Hebrews is that we have now passed to an eternally valid
administration so that the way the system operates from the point of time in
history when Jesus Christ sat down at the Father’s right hand, from that point
in history His administration for eternity has begun. Now normally we look at it this way, we look
upon it with a dispensational charts and we have our pre-flood time, the
antediluvian civilization, the postdiluvian civilization made up of
Therefore, every religious leader after Jesus Christ, whether it’s Mohammed, whether it’s Bahiullah, whether it’s somebody else, every religious leader after Jesus Christ is subordinate to Christ and if his teachings conflict, he is to be rejected. This is the strong claim of this epistle. Now you can disagree and not believe it, that’s fine but at least be honest, that’s what the man that wrote this epistle is teaching, that Christianity is the final answer. Now he’s not saying that all parts of Christ’s administration have been phased in. For example, all during the Church Age only one part of Christ’s administration is functioning. During the Church Age the only part of Christ’s administration actually that’s functioning His Lordship in the invisible realm. This is the age of the angelic conflict, this is the age when the battle is between our human spirit aided by the Holy Spirit and the principalities and the powers of the air, the spirits that work disobedience.
So during this time is a time of angelic conflict, Jesus Christ’s kingdom and His empire are expanding. Then comes the tribulation and another part is added. The battle now becomes overt physical and political so that during the seven years of tribulation or seven plus years, during this time period, just before Christ returns to the earth, the battle will break out afresh in a new domain. During the Church Age, from the time Christ rose and ascended to be at the Father’s right hand, until the rapture of the Church and the rapture of the Church and the end of the Church Age and the beginning of the tribulation, all during this period the only holy war that exists is a holy war of spirits. Beginning with the tribulation the holy war escalates to where it will involve people; so the imprecatory psalms will directly be applicable to the tribulational situation. People will pray God, bash the babies heads against the wall and they will do so with the filling of the Holy Spirit when they so pray.
Now this is because Christ’s kingdom is now expanding to take over the literal planet earth during the tribulation and to do so things have to heat up a little bit. And then we come to the millennial kingdom, when Jesus Christ reigns on earth. We’re not given too much about the details of this administration except to say these are not ages like in the past, in the sense that succeeding steps of a gradually expanding administration from the throne room on down. So Jesus Christ 19 centuries ago began an administration that will never be superseded. Things will be added but nothing will be superseded as we have seen in the Old Testament.
So in Hebrews 9:11-12 the subject was Christ
has entered, remember the subject, verse 11, Christ, the main verb in the
middle of verse 12, He has “entered once for all into the
Now Hebrews 9:13-14, these are the last two verses that deal with the first section. Remember we said verses 11-14, the first small section of the large one and these four verses indicate the efficacy of this better sacrifice. The large overall idea is the better sacrifice and these four verses develop one theme of the better sacrifice, the tremendous efficacy, it’s effectiveness. Let’s look at verses 13-14, today we have two problems of interpretation. I hope as we go through the Hebrews class that those who have been here long enough to know your way pretty well through Scripture, this is the class where you should take advantage of the time and the opportunity to watch the method of interpreting Scripture. This is why we pause and have the question and answer and go through this; this is kind of a special class, this book has a lot of problems of interpretation. And I’d like you to be exposed to how these problems are solved. Now we don’t go walking around praying that God the Holy Spirit is going to miraculously reveal these problem texts to us The Holy Spirit will open our eyes to the problem texts but He’s not going to write it in a neon sign in your closet, He is going to do it through the normal, every day means of reading, subject and predicate and so on. So let’s look at verses 13-14.
Hebrews 9:13-14, “For if the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies the purifying of the flesh, [15] How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” There’s only about fifty different doctrines in those two verses. And we’ll just touch on a few of those doctrines. But this gives you an idea of what it would be like to have been a first century believer. Just think of what it would have been like. You often say oh how exciting it would have been. Look at the demand that is made on believers in the first century. These people were expected to know the Old Testament and know it very, very well indeed. They were expected to know doctrine so well that a man could mention it just like this… how long does it take you to read verses 11-12 and say 13-14; maybe a minute. In the course of 60 seconds you should be able to master, maybe 20-25 doctrines and be aware that’s what’s being said. So you see how fantastic the teaching must have been in the first century church.
Now keep this image in mind because many of
you will be under the pressure, don’t take in too much of the Word, you might
get overfed or something; or over at
Verse 13, “For,” all right, that warns you and as I said since this is a little more serious and detail class, when you see something like this, watch it because this is a tip off that an inference is going to be made or an explanation if going to be given, gar in the Greek, it means and it signals there is an explanation coming up. All right, before you dive headlong into the explanation, you’d better find out, was there a problem that needed to be explained. Now what is the problem that needs to be explained, do you think, based on verses 11-12? See, he’s made an assertion, 11-12, and now he has “For,” so he’s going to pause and he’s going to explain what he just said. Now what do you suppose it is about verses 11-12 that’s the problem that needs explaining. [someone answers] All right, the most obvious thing about 11 and 12 that contrasts with the Old Testament is that Jesus Christ entered in once and for all. Now he stated that as a truth, now he’s going to explain it, why is it true that Jesus Christ entered once and for all. Let’s have a little explanation.
So he’s going to explain it by a method of comparison, if such and such is the case, and it is, then such and such must be the case. This is called a first class condition in Greek, if and it is so, you’ll see a little particle, aei, on the front, if and it is so, that’s all verse 13, that’s what we call the protasis, if and it is so, all that, then, the conclusion, verse 14, the apodosis.
All right, “if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer,” now let’s again train ourselves, verse 13, what’s the subject what’s the main verb? [someone answers] blood and sanctify. Okay, blood, subject, sanctify; there’s another part, you’re omitting part of the subject; and ashes. Okay, blood and ashes, sanctify. There’s the big idea, the subject, compound subject; verb, sanctify. The tense of that verb, has it been in the past, will it happen, or is it happening. Now this of course is it happening under the Old Testament system. It’s present tense meaning that it was continually happening under the Old Testament system. All right, so we learned something just starting right off; this is how you start in reading and studying your Bible. Subject, verb, sanctify present tense, meaning it goes on and on and on under the Old Testament system. Blood and ashes continue to sanctify all during the operation of the Old Testament system.
Now let’s drop down to verse 14, again, pick out the subject and the predicate. The blood, verse 14, is the subject, what is the predicate? Purge, the verb purge or cleanse. Now the word “purge” is also present, notice your tenses. It isn’t will purge in the future, it’s not that Christ is going to do this and He hasn’t done it to you yet. And it isn’t that He has done it once and for all in the past. Notice what’s happened here, there was an entering in verse 12, that entering was point action, aorist tense, once and for all. But now in verse 14, “purge,” that is a present tense and that has some continuing action. Now the tension of this thing is changing.
Let’s observe a little bit more; in verse 12 where you have a once and for action, where’s the location of that once and for action; compare that location in verse 12 with verse 14 where you have a continuing action. Where’s that located. Two actions, in verse 12 you have an action, it’s a once and for action; where, location? Where does it happen? In heaven. So you have the action in verse 12 once and for all in heaven but the action of verse 14 is continuous where? Conscience, inside your soul. Notice this now, on the basis of a once and for action in heaven there is continuing action in your soul that goes on and on and on and on and on and on.
Now let’s go into detail; verse 13, we’ve got the subject: blood, ashes. We’ve got the verb: sanctify. Now let’s see if we can deal more with the subject of verse 13, break it up and see what it’s referring to. “The blood of bulls and of goats,” that’s obviously talking about the Old Testament sacrifices. Now that’s one part, “the blood of bulls and of goats.” But now you see there’s a comma, and you watch these commas because where’s the next comma, it goes on quite a ways before you pick off the next comma, you should have a comma before the main verb, “sanctify.” There’s a big long phrase in there, “ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean,” now the verb “sprinkling is a participle, present tense, the ashes were continually sprinkling the unclean, the word “unclean” is a perfect participle, passive, “those” literally, “sprinkling those who have become unclean,” in a point of time with a result that continues. There’s your perfect. So “the ashes of a heifer constantly,” present tense, “sprinkling those who have become unclean.”
Now that is an elaborate enough phrase that we should take a clue and go back and find out a little bit what he’s talking about and we’re going to discover that one of the great problems of interpreting verse 14, namely, what are the dead works, will dissolve, we can answer that problem if we simply take a clue from this big long thing, “the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean,” or “the ones who have become unclean.” We’re going to go back to Numbers 19. This is the place in the Old Testament that the author has on his mind when he refers to these ashes. So because he’s teaching out of the Old Testament, we have to know the Old Testament. This is one of the peculiar places in the Old Testament where we don’t just have a sacrifice, there’s something else that’s added. Numbers 19:1, “And the LORD spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, [2] This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they may bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish,” notice the word “no blemish,” the author is going to pick this up and he’s going to make something out of it when he comes back and applies it to Jesus Christ. It had to be a heifer with “no blemish, and upon which never came yoke. [3] And you shall give it unto Eleazar, the priest, that he may bring her forth,” and now here’s the unusual point, “outside the camp, and one shall slay her before his face,” so the interesting point of this thing is that the sacrifice was not made by the tabernacle, it was made outside the camp, way outside, beyond where they had all their tents set up.
Numbers 19:4, “And Eleazar, the priest,
shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle of her blood directly
before the tabernacle of the congregation seven times.” There’s the use of blood, but that’s not all. [5] “And one shall burn the heifer in his
sight; its skin, and her flesh, and her blood, and her dung, shall he burn. [6]
And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into
the midst of the burning of the heifer.
[7] Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh
in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be
unclean until the evening. [8] And he
that burns her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water,
and shall be unclean until the evening.
[9] And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer,”
okay, now here’s where we’re picking up the ashes, “will gather up the ashes of
the heifer and lay them up outside the camp in a clean place, and it shall be
kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for w water of separation:
it is purification for sin. [10] And he that gathers the ashes of the heifer
shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening; and it shall be unto
the children of
[13] Whosoever touches the dead body of any man who is dead,” that’s an interesting thing, “and purifies not himself, defiles the tabernacle of the LORD;” now that’s a point that you want to recall and remember because the author is going to use this. See, all this is a drama, what we call in teaching theory role playing, God had them role play as a teaching technique to illiterate people. He had them role play these things so they could learn doctrine through drama. So the point of verse 13 is that these people are going to become contaminated by touching dead flesh. And the particular problem and the offense in this contamination is that it defiles the tabernacle.
So here’s the situation, you have the tabernacle set up and maybe the whole Jewish camp is around this tabernacle, hundreds and thousands and thousands of tents. This sacrifice was way, way out here some place, beyond the limits of the thing. The only other thing that was out here were latrines. So that should give you an idea of the association of things that are killed and slaughtered outside the camp. The only thing out here is that which would contaminate people. So when it says he will “defile the tabernacle of the LORD” it means that inside the confines of this camp the Jews were to have physical cleanliness. This is one of the big things in the Mosaic Law. It’s why a few weeks ago we read you the story of Dr. Semmelweis, the famous Austrian surgeon who was the one who pioneered, when he shouldn’t have, in so-called modern Europe, when women would have pelvic examinations and become infected and die and the reason was that the medical students in the morning would go down and examine all the women who had died during the night to find out why and without washing their hands they’d come along and give pelvic examinations, one right after another, no washing of hands, nothing. And they were wondering why four or five out of every ten women died. Well obviously they’d die because there was contamination. And the simple concept of washing hands was not rediscovered in the west until about the time of… well, by Semmelweis’s time in hospitals. It’s amazing and yet here we have the ordinance for simple washing of hands 30 centuries before modern science rediscovered it and the reason of course now we know is bacteria. These people didn’t know it was bacteria that was doing it; God just told them do it.
Now let’s go on and see what happens. Numbers 19:13, he “…defiles the tabernacle of
the LORD; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel; because the water of
separation was not sprinkled upon him,” noticed the word “sprinkled,” that is
going to occur again, “because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon
him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him. [14]
This is the law, when a man dies in a tent: all who come into the tent
and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. [15] And every open vessel,” look at that
now, not closed vessels, open vessels, why?
Because you have bacteria and viruses that airborne, this is
amazing. One of the great signs, this to
me has always been one signs of inspiration of Scripture. These people could not have empirically
deduced these kinds of procedures for if they had you would have seen the same
procedures in
[15] “And every open vessel, which has no covering bound upon it, is unclean. [16] And whoever touches one who is slain with a sword in the open field, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. [17] And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer” notice what they’re doing with these ashes now, “of purification for sin, and running water shall be put into a vessel,” notice not stagnant water, Semmelweis was just trying to get them to wash their hands in a basin, but if Semmelweis would have wanted to improve he would have had the men washing, as they do with sterile technique, washing under moving water where the water drains off your hands and so on, that kind of technique. Well, here it is 30 centuries before, running water. [18] And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons who were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead or a grave. [19] And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day, and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at evening.”
Notice all the bathings that go on here. Can you imagine how this must have gone over with a group of people out in a dirt desert, who had no idea why God insisted on all this bathing business. Now granted, it wasn’t just physical hygiene, it was also to teach spiritual truth. So keep this in mind, Numbers 19, and now come back, with all this background let’s come back to Hebrews. See how well those people had to know the Old Testament. When he mentioned the ashes of the heifer, sprinkling the unclean, there should have been lights click, oh, that’s Numbers, it’s over in Numbers, and we would know that.
Now this is going to explain something else. When we translated this a few moments ago we said “ashes of the heifer, constantly sprinkling those who have become unclean,” you see now why there’s a perfect tense there. Not just unclean people but those who had become unclean by what? By touching a person who’s dead, by going to a grave, by touching one slain in the field. So the point in time when these people became unclean was when they were contaminated by dead bodies. So we’re talking about a way of decontamination. That’s what that whole phrase means, “the ashes of an heifer sprinkling those who have become unclean,” is a system of decontamination. Now there are various systems of decontamination, most of them involve water or just physical removal, hospitals use decontamination when you have a plague, when you have an epidemic, the health department has to use procedures in decontamination.
If you have an accident out here and somebody drops a radioactive implant out in the street we have to decontaminate the streets, there are all sorts of procedures involved. Ever once in a while some careless medical person will flush an isotope down the plumbing of the hospital and so it contaminates the whole plumbing, and that’s a very wild thing to be decontaminated imagine decontaminating the whole sewer system if somebody dropped a radioactive isotope… it has to be done, and there are procedures of doing it, and this city has those procedures, but the point is, that under certain situations in life you have to decontaminate. In nuclear war, at sea, in many of the ships, have these big spray nozzles so they can go into a situation where there’s fall out, spray off the decks, decontaminate it, you don’t want to walk up there and have beta burns and gamma radiation all over the place. So decontamination is an important thing in the every day world.
Now that’s the picture in Hebrews 9:13 that is going to be used to illustrate the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, “the blood of bulls” and “the ashes.” Blood is a sacrifice, the ashes decontaminate, “constantly sanctifying to the purifying of the flesh.” So he’s talking about it in a natural point; verse 13 is Old Testament, natural, flesh centered, simple pictures.
Now there were two ways of forgiveness in the Old Testament, these people would offer the blood of bulls and goats and we would call it theocratic forgiveness. Now we mean by that that these people got a political clearance, they could come into the tabernacle if they ritually had sacrificed. And they would not be permitted, by force, they would not be permitted in there if they hadn’t sacrificed. It was legalistic, it was ritualistic and was necessary. That was theocratic forgiveness. We call it theocratic forgiveness because it had to do with the theocracy, it was kind of a governmental forgiveness. But along and parallel to this there was a second thing and that was actual forgiveness. Now the actual forgiveness didn’t come because of the blood of the bulls and goats; it came because you would have a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament and he would come there and he’d offer his sacrifice literally and physically and he would have to obtain theocratic forgiveness but at the same time, while he was doing that, it would be like we are supposed to during communion when we take the elements; when you eat that wafer and you drink the cup, this is why we always say before we start communion, we pause and we make it clear that this is a ritual and it’s only going to be meaningful to you if you have personally accepted Jesus Christ. If you haven’t accepted Christ you can drink grape juice or wine until it comes out your ears and it isn’t going to solve your problem.
So ritual is necessary in the Old Testament but ritual didn’t save them nor did ritual ever crank their conscience. These Old Testament saints had an actual forgiveness but it was parallel to the ritual, not part of the ritual. It occurred while they were participating in the ritual but it didn’t occur because of the ritual; it occurred because of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. As they did this they wouldn’t know that Christ died on the cross but they would have promise that Jehovah, the God of Israel, would somehow provide in a permanent, eternal way for their sin and they had that confidence; if God ordained this system and we get theocratic forgiveness, then this is the kind of God we have, He’s a pardoning God, He has peculiar way so of pardoning but He is a pardoning God, and so therefore I trust Him. So participation in the ritual, a role playing technique, taught them belief in the finished work of Christ before that finished work had occurred.
Now come to Hebrews 9:14, he’s saying if all this ritual produced theocratic forgiveness, then the blood of Christ can produce actual forgiveness. You are introduced to spiritual truth on a naïve child type way first, then you go on to the real thing. Verse 14, “How much more shall the blood of Christ,” now we’ll skip the comma because that’s a whole problem in itself, the comma, that phrase in there, “How much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” “Purge” means continually and it refers to the believer. Now look at this; the action of verse 12 is once and for all; the action of verse 14 is continuous. The action of verse 12 means that Jesus Christ, many centuries ago, did something for you but today on a moment by moment basis you have forgiveness because of what Jesus Christ did once and for all. Now that shows too why we don’t have to celebrate Christ’s death in the sense that we ritually recreate His death down here at communion. Communion is just a memorial to that once and for all act; you don’t resacrifice and resacrifice and resacrifice and resacrifice Christ over and over and over and over and over; it’s done with. What is continued is the effect of the once and for all thing, verse 14, “purge your conscience.”
Now we’ve got to decide what are the dead works? Now when we go to apply our number one rule of Bible interpretation, here’s our first of two problems tonight. What are these dead works? We can’t let a phrase like this go by without stopping, putting the brakes on, getting out and looking carefully. What is this set of dead works? If w go to the concordance, that’s the first place to go, so you go to your concordance and you say hey, where does this occur elsewhere. Unfortunately the only other place it occurs in the whole Bible is Hebrews 6:1, so it’s not a hapax but it’s the next thing to it; it only occurs twice and unfortunately Hebrews 6:1 doesn’t tell you much about it. So whatever we get out of it going to have to be from here. In fact, if you recall, when we interpreted in 6:1 I interpreted it on the basis of what’s going on here. So if you have two occurrences, pick the dimpliest one, where you can get fixes on the thine and control it.
“…conscience from dead works,” now here are some options, let me just throw them out to you, just by way of language. It could mean the work that caused death; it could mean death produces works with it’s characteristics. And there’s two different concepts involved in however you take that, so those are two options that you have. Now we’ve got to decide which one. We’ve checked in our concordance, we’ve looked up “dead works” we don’t get much out of it. That’s a dead work, using the concordance. So we have to do something else and the next something else that we do is go to context. Now in the context of this verse where is death mentioned, this idea that things are dead? The whole Numbers 19 picture that was behind verse 13. Verse 13 was talking about ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who had become unclean because they had touched dead bodies. So it would seem that if we encounter the word “dead” in verse 14 that the man foresight enough to prepare our minds what he was going to do, so there must be something in Numbers 19 which gives us the clue as to what these dead works are, what he means by them.
Let’s make an analogy; the best way to do
is go back to Numbers 19 and compare it, see if we can make an analogy between
Numbers 19 in the Old Testament and New Testament truth. In the Old Testament Numbers 19 what was it
that needed to be cleaned? To what was
the water applied? The body, the man’s
body. In verse 14 what is it that needs
to be cleaned? The conscience. Okay, now let’s think back to Numbers 19,
what was it that did the cleansing? It
was this water mixture with ashes, so we’ll say the animal sacrifice. What is it that does the cleansing in verse
14? Christ’s sacrifice. What was it that made these people unclean so
they needed to sacrifice? They were
contaminated by touching dead bodies. So
we are similarly contaminated in some way which we’re going to have to kind of
develop from this analogy. There is
something with which we come in contact, if we’re going to keep the analogy,
there is something with which we come in contact that contaminates us so that
Jesus Christ has to decontaminate us or else in the Old Testament what would
happen if you weren’t decontaminated?
You’d be excluded, you’d be excommunicated from the camp. Now the analogy would be we would be excommunicated
from the
So whatever these dead works are, if we are
to follow the immediate context, they must be something that contaminate us
from which we must be cleansed in order to be in the presence of God. Well, you’d think sin, I mean, you know, it’s
quite obvious that you’d think the word sin would be here and this raises a
problem, why doesn’t the author use the word “sin?” There’s a reason for this. I’m going to suggest now… one more point on
the works; since the word “sin” isn’t used but the word “works,” maybe we can
get a hint if we just look up not dead works but “works” in this epistle, and
when we do, I you turn back to Hebrews 1:10 you’ll see where just the word
“works” is used. And this will give us a
clue as to what’s going on here. The
“works” occur in
Taking works as you’ve just seen it applied to God and putting on a man what would be another way of saying it. This is said “God’s works,” now what correspond to God’s work in us, man’s works? Obviously man’s works but I mean what’s another word for it? [someone answers] Occupation, okay, there you go. [someone else] Production, all right, God created didn’t He, the works of His hands are what His hands made. So, when you see the word “works” over here, keeping the same meaning, the author has already established how he’s using the plural word here, “works,” it must mean the fruit of our hands, works.
Now this still doesn’t answer the question but it moves us closer to it; something about what we make contaminates us. There’s something we make that contaminates from which we have to be decontaminated. Now what is it about that which man makes that contaminates him? See, the picture is a simple picture of physical contamination in the Old Testament. [someone answers] All right, you’ve got negative volition in man that always wants to rebel against the mandates of God. What’s the central mandate of God to mankind in the Bible, the central, most basic order, it gives you the destiny of man, his position in the universe, what is it? [someone answers] It’s to glorify God by doing what? Subduing the earth. And the first act of subduing the earth, what are some simple images out of the early chapters of Genesis that give you concrete illustrations of what it means to subdue the earth. What is Adam doing? [someone answers] All right, agriculture is an example of subduing the earth. What’s another thing Adam does? [someone answers] Zoology, so he enters into the sciences, he’s naming the animals and in Hebrew it doesn’t mean he attaches a tail on the donkey kind of concept, it means he studies the animals and names them for what he perceives them to actually be.
So scientific work is always a subduing of the earth. Therefore the central mandate of God is to subdue creation; creation needs to be subdued, man is the person to do this. This is why wherever you have Bible Christianity you have godly labor, people take pride in what they do because they are subduing creation under the lordship of Jesus Christ and it adds dignity to whatever you do, whatever your profession may be, whatever it is, whatever the work is that you do, you are subduing the earth and this gives dignity to that process, you’re not out just for human approval, you’re doing your job as unto the Lord.
[someone asks question] All right, he asked the question, some
occupations obviously are out of line with respect to the Word, and this is
just the chaos that is brought into the first divine institution by the fall;
you always have occupations like that, in two senses; you have occupations that
themselves are wrong but then you have occupations that would have been
unneeded had the fall not occurred. How
many garbage men would have been needed to clean up
Now the fall has fouled us up and has brought about negative volition against this mandate. Now man still has to eat so he is still going to try to subdue the earth; there will still be farmers after the fall that there were before the fall, but what’s the difference? There’s going to be a struggle so you’re going to have a resistance. Here’s the man and here’s the ground, you have a resistance that goes this way; nature rebels against man. That’s the whole concept, man rebelled against God, he threw his fist up in the air so it’s as though the ground throws its fist up in the air at man. But nature rebels against man who has rebelled against God, the chain of command is all fouled up, it’s going the wrong way.
Now once this happens, man himself, being on negative volition tries to subdue the earth and he is partially successful, but why is he partially successful. He is partially successful only because of common grace. The farmer gets a crop whether he’s a Christian or non-Christian only because God Himself is suppressing the full outworking of the fall. So the ground underneath the farmer’s feet is a testimony to common grace. The rain from heaven is a testimony to common grace, that’s stated in Acts 14. So you have common grace is the reason for the success of subduing the earth. We can generalize this. Let’s take the unbeliever and the believer. For simplicity let’s just say here’s a believer filled with the Holy Spirit; here’s the unbeliever. The unbeliever operates on negative volition, he produces works but the works that he produces, that is the crops that he would produce from the ground, the art work, the music, if he’s creative in those areas, may be beautiful just like the plants that the farmer produces out of the ground may be edible but the point is, the reason they are edible is because all during this process you’ve got common grace working.
Now you’ve got the believer, let’s see what happens; he starts out with positive volition, he starts producing works, again, like the unbeliever common grace holds but there’s something in the believer that the unbeliever doesn’t have and that is efficacious grace, and efficacious grace is the special work of the Holy Spirit in the regenerate person so that he may produce works that are greater than these in the sense they have spiritual impact. He may produce things in his life such as a Christian artist, the Christian musician, who might produce not only a good piece of music but it would be a piece of music that would be very strongly encouraging…very strongly much of exhortation to the Christian, so that both are producing works but notice the principle, whether the believer or unbeliever the only works that are ever successful are works that have had grace behind them. If we are to deal with the bare naked curse creation there would be total chaos, there’s be no chance to work at all. The only reason we’ve got a semblance of order left is because graces is postponing the final dissolution of the universe, 2 Peter 3.
Now in this time of postponement grace is permitting some production to occur but the principle is that the person operating on negative volition thinks that his works are due to his efforts and when you see the phrase “good works,” that is the phrase put there to remind the unbeliever and the carnal Christians that your works apart from grace are fruitless. You might as well blow into the wind for all the success you’re ever going to have. Dead works means if you want to claim credit for that, you get a big fat zero because all credit goes to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was the One that suppressed the weeds, that kept the climate moderate so crops could be grown and because of that, this unbelieving farmer was able to raise his crops, his works. But now this farmer who is an unbeliever may start to, okay, those crops came because I worked for them. And the Bible’s answer to that is bologna, they’re dead works. The only thing you can produce is death, death, death, death, death, death, death; dead works, the characteristic of production of the fallen creature is death, he cannot produce anything but death.
Now let me give you some other illustrations. Let’s look around us physically. We believe here in the literal Genesis so we shouldn’t have any trouble. This is where a literal Genesis is going to save your mind from getting into schizophrenia on something like this. Think back again to the simple production of children. All children that are born are not perfect; in fact no child that is born is a perfect child. You always have something, just physically about their body, that isn’t right. What that discrepancy is is part of the death process so that the child, as he is born, already bears in his body physically the marks of deterioration and death. And as the child grows older and older this sign of your decay we call aging. The sign of the decay comes out more and more in your body until finally it takes over and destroys you. You see, the baby, from the moment he departs from the womb is dead, his flesh is marked by death; everything that’s produced is marked by death in the fallen world. The only part of you that is favorable is what God did for you at the time that you were regenerate. Your existing body right now, you can keep it alive if you take care of it, follow operating instructions and common sense, you can do a lot for your body but your body isn’t going to make it for eternity. The only part of you sitting in that pew tonight that’s going to make it, you haven’t been given your resurrection body, all you’ve got is your soul and that regenerate part of your soul, the only thing that counts for eternity.
So when you see the “dead works” now, let’s come back over we’ve got to connect it up with the conscience, “purge your conscience from dead works,” now why does the conscience need to be purged from dead works? Think back to Adam and eve again. After the fall what happened to them. There was something that happened to their physical body such that they knew they were naked. Now they were naked before but it didn’t bother them. There was something that bothered their bodies that bothered them after the fall. The text doesn’t go into it but something physiologically happened to man. One of the things the Bible tells us is that the whole metabolism shifted in the human body as evidenced by the phrase they began to sweat, “by the sweat of your brow,” and the metabolism efficiencies of the human body is very, very low; your efficiency, it’s a little bit better than a gasoline engine; it’s a very inefficient engine by the way.
So something physiologically happened and when Adam and Eve became aware of death in their own body, what did they do? They covered it up. So the point is that our conscience… here’s our mind, our conscience wants to live in that which is truly living; our conscience is that part of our soul that is dissatisfied with all evidences of death, whether it is a biological evidence of death, whether it is a psychological evidence of death, whether it is a sociological evidence of death, interpersonal relationships ruptured, that kind of thin, whether it is a physical catastrophe, a hurricane, a tornado, a natural disaster, there is something in the conscience of man that says no, this is wrong, it’s unfair, this is wrong. That is your conscience. So what he’s saying, it’s a log way of saying this but what he’s saying is this sin, at the depth of your soul, that you’re wallowing in death, can only be purged by the application of the finished work of Jesus Christ.
Now this is a titanic concept if you follow along what I’ve tried to show you. The death is all around us; it is infants, it is in the biological processes, the physiological processes, psychological processes, sociological processes, physical, chemical processes, metrological process, all of the processes are characterized by deterioration and death and the conscience of every man because he’s made in the image of God cries out and says I’m not made for this, there’s something wrong about this. I am dissatisfied with this kind of existence.
Now that’s the contamination; just as that Old Testament saint walked outside the camp and he touched something that was dead, and his body would be contaminated and he would have to go and have the priest take the ashes and the water and pour over him, wash him, wash all the contamination off, so we, in our souls, pick up the contamination by simply living in a fallen world. And we know it! And every member of the human race is aware of this, at the deepest level of your being you know this and the Bible says you do. And that sense of total frustration with reality the way it is, is only removed, it says, by the washing like it was in the Old Testament, you’ve got to be decontaminated, your conscience has to be decontaminated. As long as your conscience is contaminated you’re going to be an unhappy type individual.
Now we have a second problem that I want to cover in the remaining time, “who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God.” The problem here is what is the “eternal spirit?” So it’s either the Holy Spirit or Jesus’ human spirit. Let me give you the problem. Many commentators argue that this must be the Holy Spirit because the word “eternal” is used. Other commentators argue that it must be the human spirit because there is no article preceding the noun. Furthermore, they argue that nowhere else in this epistle is the concept of the Holy Spirit working through Christ made clear.
Now let’s get some data before we discuss this and then we’ll talk about possible differences. Let’s look up the word “eternal,” let’s see how it occurs. In Hebrews 5:9 Jesus Christ is “author of eternal salvation,” now that’s not deity, it’s eternal salvation, it’s something that has been made for eternity, isn’t it. The salvation wasn’t always existing, in the technical sense of the way we use the word eternal salvation is not eternal because it never actually existed until a point in time; we would say everlasting. Usually, by the way, if you want to distinguish this, there are two words to use; usually in theological discussions “eternal” means forever both ways, “everlasting” is the word which means comes into existence and goes on forever. And if you want to use those two words in your vocabulary to kind of sort out the thinking process those are two handles. But here the author apparently is using the word “eternal” the way we would use the word “everlasting.
I’ll give you another example, Hebrews 6:2,
the “eternal judgment,” it doesn’t mean the judgment is going on for eternity,
it means it occurs at a point in time and the results are permanent. Hebrews 9:12, we just got through saying, He
“obtained eternal redemption,” that doesn’t mean the redemption always existed,
it came into existence and will be everlasting.
And if you’re taking notes, Hebrews
Now let’s see if that helps us out, “the everlasting Spirit.” Now, that still doesn’t do too much because all those other verses referred to events, not spirits. So we’re going to have to conclude that this “everlasting Spirit” apparently is looking at the Holy Spirit, not in the sense the Holy Spirit is eternal, but in the sense that the Holy Spirit is poured out through Jesus Christ on from Pentecost everlasting, and that’s just another title of the Holy Spirit, “the everlasting Spirit,” not meaning the Holy Spirit came into existence at a point in time in the past but He was poured out through Jesus Christ at a point in the past and this pouring out goes on forever and ever and ever.
So “the everlasting Spirit we take to mean the Holy Spirit. Now why is this important? If we had this eternal Spirit Christ’s human spirit, we would have a problem with several doctrines. If it were Christ’s human spirit we’d have Jesus in His deity offering His humanity. See what would be the problem, He offered…His deity offered His humanity and the doctrine of the hypostatic union, think through what it says, undiminished deity and true humanity united in one person, not two, one person forever. Jesus Christ is not a schitzo, there is a center of union so you don’t have part of Him offering the other part, you can’t do this. So it creates a big theological impossibility; this is one of the theological arguments against this interpretation, it just introduces chaos.
We have a better way of handling the whole thing by simply saying this is the Holy Spirit, the eternal Spirit, we argue to protect and verity this interpretation, number one, theologically it makes sense; two, although it is anarthrus, meaning no article, minus article, the Holy Spirit also is anarthrus in Hebrews 2:4. So we’ve got a precedent to back up this interpretation.
The third point is that this would then refer to a particular doctrine and see if you can guess; we’ve had several doctrines that we’ve mentioned over and over in connection with Christ on Wednesday night, hypostatic union, impeccability, kenosis. Of those three which do you think is taught here? “…offered Himself through the eternal Spirit,” meaning the Holy Spirit. [someone answers] Kenosis. The doctrine of kenosis states that Jesus Christ gave up the independent use of His divine attributes while on earth. Jesus Christ gave up the independent use of His divine attributes. It doesn’t mean he couldn’t them back from the Father, but only when the Father gave Him permission to use, His omnipotence, for example, would He ever use it. That way nobody could say well Jesus was God so He had it easy. The doctrine of kenosis cuts that right out fast. Jesus Christ gave up the independent use of His attributes while on earth.
Now that being so, “He offered Himself through the Holy Spirit.” He went, voluntarily to the cross. An example of this attitude would be found in Acts 10:7-9 which we’ll get into but just take a peek there. “Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God.” Now that is a very interesting statement in verse 7, we’ll get into that and the virgin birth and so forth. Notice, by the way, just above that, verse 5, you see what that’s talking about, “Sacrifice and offering You would not, but a body Thou hast prepared for Me.” Which shows you another evidence in the Bible why the fetus is not considered living until physical birth. Jesus Christ is talking about the body that was prepared for Him in His mother, Mary, and when that body was finished, then Christ resided, the incarnation occurred at the point of His physical birth. “A body Thou has prepared for Me, [6] In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure.” Now look at the attitude of verse 7, you see what it says, “I have come to do Thy will, O God.” What is the aim of sanctification? Loyalty to God. That is loyalty to God, “I have come to do Your will.” How will He do His will? Empowered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus, in His humanity, kenosis now, He gave up the independent use of His divine attributes and therefore He relied upon the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why He expects us to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit.
One final statement about this: in the Old Testament when the blood of bulls and of goats were being offered, do you suppose they had to tie down the animal when he was being slaughtered? You bet. Did anybody have to tie down Jesus Christ when He was being slaughtered? No. The contrast is in the volition. Jesus goes willingly for your sins and for mine. He stands there and lets them slit His throat, literally, as in the Old Testament the animal had his throat slit, death, so forth, but he had to be tied down. Christ didn’t have to be tied down, it was sheer voluntary, sheer act of volition. Why? Because He loved you.
Next time we get together….