Amen, amen. People of God, let us turn now to the reading of the Word of God. Hebrews chapter 9. Now I mentioned to the council that I saw that there was a sermon just one month ago from Hebrews chapter 9, a catechism sermon. I listened to that sermon on Sermon Audio. I trust there is, I'm confident there is not much overlap. This is more focused on the first half of Hebrews 9, especially on verses 13 and 14. After the letters of Paul, we have Hebrews and then James, Hebrews chapter 9. We'll read 9 verse 1 through 22, even as we'll especially focus in on verses 13 and 14. Hebrews chapter 9, let us begin reading at verse 1, the very Word of God. Then, indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service and the earthly sanctuary, for a tabernacle was prepared, the first part, in which was the lampstand, the table, and the showbread, which is called the sanctuary. And behind the second veil, the part of the tabernacle which is called the holiest of all, which had the golden censer and the Ark of the Covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablets of the Covenant. And above it were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat of these things. We cannot now speak in detail. Now when these things had been thus prepared, the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services. But into the second part, the high priest went alone, once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people's sins committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience, concerning only with foods and drinks and various washings and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of Reformation. But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the most holy place, once for all having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance. is a testament, there must also be of necessity the death of the testator. For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives. Therefore not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken, precept had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law. He took the blood of calves and goats with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you. Then, likewise, He sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. And according to the law, almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission." So far the reading of God's Holy Word. The grass withers, the flower fades, the Word of our Lord endures forever. dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, how much blood flowed in the old ceremonies of the law. Between the tabernacle and then the first temple and then the second temple, the Levitical system is in place for well over a thousand years. for 70 years, the Babylonian captivity, it was interrupted, but we read of no other interruption. We read of corruptions, we read of not doing the full system as it ought to be done, we read of adding things and taking away in the unfaithful generations, but we don't read of interruptions. It was continued, the Levitical system established by Moses, Aaron the first high priest, for well over 1,000 years. And so, what does this mean for the sacrificial system if we think in terms of numbers? Well, it means that the annual ceremonies and sacrifices and feasts, such as the Day of Atonement, that was performed over a thousand times. For the weekly ceremonies, such as the replacement of the showbread or the bread of presents, that means that there were at least 50,000 weekly ceremonies. For the daily ceremonies and sacrifices, that means there were at least 400,000 of these accomplished. If we think just in terms of the daily sacrifice, which was done twice each day because it was done in the morning and in the evening, that sacrifice alone is done over 800,000 times, approaching one million sacrifices of animals. Surely if we add together the morning and evening sacrifice together with the other sacrifices, we are talking not about thousands upon thousands, but we're talking about into the millions of sacrifices. Surely the blood of old flowed. These are conservative estimates. And all of this ceremony, all of this blood points us to. So now we look back at it, and Hebrews says so much about the old covenant, speaking even specifically about the Mosaic covenant when it uses that term throughout the book of Hebrews. All of this points us to, shows us more clearly what Christ has done, and also informs us of principles regarding our New Testament service to God. Surely the blood that flowed of old anticipated both Christ's work and our new service." It anticipated both Christ's work and our new service, and those are our two points this morning. First, Christ's perfect offering, and then second, our service offerings. So first, Christ's perfect offering. And we're going to look specifically at one similarity and then two differences. There is more that we could look at, but we're going to look at one similarity and two differences. And the first similarity between the sacrifice of Christ and the Old Testament sacrifices of the litical system is this, that in order to be inaugurated, in order to be started, there had to be the spilling of blood. that Christ comes and brings a whole new system is seen at the end of verse 10. That we had all these other things that were concerned with foods and drinks and various washings until the time of Reformation. And the word Reformation there is not simply being used in terms of reforming back to something which had been done. That's how we use it when we speak about the Reformation of church history. No, the word Reformation here is being used in the sense of something new. It could actually be translated the new order of things. And so Christ brings in the new order. And just as the old order, when Moses established it, which we read the summary of this in verses 18 to 22, when that old order was established, it was established with much spilling of blood. And so it is with the new order, with the order that Christ brings in. It is brought in with His blood. It begins on Good Friday, not on Resurrection Sunday or on Ascension Thursday or one of the days in between. It begins on Good Friday. That is the day. when the new order begins. Just as the old began with blood, so the new begins with blood. When Christ came in on the donkey before His Passion Week, they were still offering the sacrifices, and they still should have been offering the sacrifices. But at His death, the veil of the temple is torn. At His death, the new order begins. And so it is the day of blood, which is the day of new beginnings. Just as it was when the Levitical system was set in place with much blood, so it is the blood of Jesus Christ. And specifically, blood tied to death, which verses 15 to 17 specify, that brings this new order. aim to spill His own blood in order to bring about the new order of things, the new covenant. Now, that is a key similarity, but now let us look at a couple of differences. The first difference is the value of the blood and what the blood can even be used for. The offering of Jesus Christ was a blood offering with internal and spiritual value and significance. There's the phrase in verse fourteen, that the blood of Christ was offered without spot to God. Without spot, or it could be translated without blemish. Perhaps you're familiar with the term unblemished sacrifice from the Old Testament. Now what made a sacrifice in the Levitical system unblemished? We can read of some of the requirements in, for example, Leviticus 22, and to just zoom in on one of them, it was that the animal sacrificed could not be an animal that was ever maimed or lamed, an animal that had never had a broken leg, even if that break had healed. And so this was an external thing, and it was tested in an external way, on the outside of things. And so the way the priests would test this is that when the animal came in, and it was a potential animal to be offered for sacrifice, the priests were supposed to run their hands down the legs of the beast. And if there was a bump, if it was not a smooth leg, if there was a bump in the bones of the animal, they knew that it had had a break at some time. And so this was not an unblemished sacrifice. If they found a bump that was one of the external tests, there were more, and they had to discard that animal. They could not offer that animal. They ought not to have. We know sometimes the rebellious generations did, but they ought not to have given such an animal. Now that's an external test, right? It's something you can see, it's something you can touch, and literally that is how they tested it. Now how is Jesus Christ tested? Jesus is not an animal. Jesus is full of God, full of man. Jesus is a moral creature. We can no longer have just an outward test, can we? Jesus is tested in every way. Jesus is tested morally. Jesus is tested on the inside. And surely Jesus Christ is the only one who passed that test. As it says in Hebrews 4 verse 15, Jesus is the one who is unblemished in his soul. He is the one who having been tempted in every way as we are yet without sin. For Jesus to be without spot is to be without sin. This is a key difference between the blood of Jesus and the blood of old. And so then a second difference flows from that, and that is the amount of blood. since the blood of Jesus is that which is internally pure and eternally pure. And so our text speaks about how Jesus is offered up for eternal redemption. That's the language in the middle of verse 14. Now the amount is not thousands upon thousands into the millions. The amount is once for all. Once for all. Hebrews 9 verse 12, He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. Eternal redemption. And then verse 14 says this was done through the eternal spirit. This blood is very different from all that blood of old. There had to be blood. But this blood is the blood of Jesus. It is without spot in that, it is without sin. And so it is now of infinite worth with eternal implications. It is the blood of Jesus Christ which saves all of the saints, past, present, and future. It is eternal redemption. only in the blood of Jesus. And it touches on internal things. It touches on the conscience. It touches on the heart. It no longer touches on merely fleshly things. It's not just a fleshly ordinance to use the language of verse 10. It's not just for the purifying of the flesh, of the outside, of things that are outside, as it says at the end of verse 13. And so it is that the blood of Christ is what brings about the new order. That Good Friday is followed by Resurrection Sunday, which is followed by Ascension Thursday. And it is also Good Friday, people of God, which is followed by New Testament Christian service. It's also Good Friday which is followed by New Testament Christian service. This takes us now to our second point. that the blood of Christ has a direct impact on the life of believers is clearly seen in verse 14. We've already looked at 13, the first half of verse 14, but as we continue on, past the language of Christ himself being without spot, which we know is without sin, because he's the one who's morally without spot, that moves into what? That we are now cleansed, to cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. So we move from looking at the very sacrifice of Christ to considering our New Testament offerings, and we put offerings in quotation marks because they're not the same as the offerings of old, and we're going to look at that, but there are still New Testament offerings, and the blood of Christ has a direct impact upon that. It moves us from dead works." Dead works, the language there at the end of verse 14. And the Scriptures speak of this language of deadness. We see this language in the New Testament, don't we? Ephesians chapter 2, which we read for our assurance of pardon, that speaks about how we start in deadness, that We were dead in trespasses and sins. We could think of the language of Romans 6, that we are slaves to sin. And we could think of the language of moving on towards the end of Romans 6, where it says, the wages of sin is death. What's the picture then? The picture is this, that we start in deadness, we continue in deadness, and it all ends in death. That is the state of man. That is where our sins leave us. That is where our natural state leaves us. But, we are those who have been cleansed in order to serve the living God. The language of Romans 6, to come out of slavery to sin into slaves of righteousness. language of Ephesians 2, to move from being dead in sin to being alive together with Christ, and here now the language of Hebrews 9, to move from a state of deadness in our works to being those who, we can paraphrase it, living service, have living service for the living God. It is the blood of Jesus that redeems us, which makes us clean, which moves us into a life of worship. Now we're going to look at two principles now, We know that our offerings are not exactly the same as Old Testament offerings, but there are principles from the Levitical system which inform how we are to serve God today. We could list more than two principles, I'm sure, but we are going to look at two principles from the Old Testament rituals, from the Old Testament blood that flowed that inform us how to now serve God today, how to move from those dead works to that living service. The first principle is this, that we serve God with the best of what we have. That's a principle we see in the Levitical system, isn't it? Those animals that came and had a broken leg, Well, what did that mean? That meant that anyone who tried to come and bring that offering, that false offering, that blemished offering, what were they doing? They were bringing something that was not their best. They were bringing the broken part of their flock. They were bringing the leftovers of their flock. No, the principle is that we are to bring our best. There are many sacrifices where it's specifically prescribed that they had to be young and strong animals, young, strong, not broken. You bring your best to God. That's a principle that continues to this day, does it not? We must come to God with our best, not merely our leftovers. And there are so many ways, people of God, that we can be tempted to bring just our leftovers, aren't there? We might be tempted to go to church for corporate worship only when it's convenient. We might be tempted to only pray at the very end of the day. We might be tempted to just tack on our prayers at the very end. And maybe we go to bed at midnight and that means our only offering of prayer is a two minute prayer at 12.02. That's not bringing our best. That's bringing our leftovers. That's doing everything else in our day and then praying only at the very end. We might be tempted to do family devotions only when there's no Little League game to play in, no Major League game to watch on TV. Perhaps families that have disrupted schedules in the evening need to consider different, more consistent times for family worship so that it does not become just something done when it can be done, that it does not just become a leftover. Or maybe we are diligent in coming in our personal devotions, and we do have a time set apart for that, a healthy time set apart for that every day, but when we come, we only pray confession of those sins which we want to confess. We have this other list of sins over here that we don't really want to include in our prayer, that we don't want to include in our confession of sin. These are all ways that we might bring only our leftovers to God, doing only what we want to do for God, confessing only what we want to confess. But just as the priest of old could easily see when a lamed or maimed animal was broken and brought for offering, so Jesus Christ, so God above, can see when our heart is not fit for service. So, that's the first principle. We must bring to God our best. The second principle we'll look at this morning is that we must come to God often. Now, we can almost imagine two of the Levitical priests in the year 200 BC, of course they don't know it's 200 BC, but the year 200 BC, and they're standing there and they're having a conversation, they're in the second temple, and they're saying, do we really need to sacrifice again? Do we really need to do the daily cleanings every single day? Do we really need to do the daily washings every single day? Do we really need to do the daily offerings every single day? Maybe they did the math and they were sitting there thinking, you know, it's already been over a thousand years. We've done this millions of times. Do we really need to do it again? People of God, how many prayers do you think have been offered by the members of this church? I did some very rough back-of-the-napkin estimates, and I trust it's not thousands upon thousands, but it's into the millions and millions of prayers that have been offered by the members of this church. Millions of prayers. Do we really need to come before God again? Isn't millions of prayers enough? You see, the principle of the Old Testament is that we come before God again and again. Yes, it's different. We're bloodless offerings now. There's much that's different. We are part of the new order. But that principle of coming to God again and again, that principle of the fact that there was not just thousands but into the millions of times that the blood flowed, speaks to our New Testament service today. God is delighted that we would continue to come before Him. David, yes, he knew that it was a broken and contrite heart that pleased the Lord. But did David then tear down the temple and say, it's a broken and contrite heart, that's all we need? No, David beefed it up. He wanted to rebuild the temple and he established the Levitical system with more detail and with singing of songs added onto it in a more explicit way. When we have a heart for God, It doesn't lead to less offering, it leads to more. Millions of prayers. And yes, we continue in prayer. We continue to come before God. Part of the very fabric of the life of the nation of Israel. William Brown, Scottish minister from the 1800s, wrote a book that can still be found in print on the tabernacle. He summarized it this way. Here's an extended quote from Reverend William Brown. The privilege of daily worship may be enjoyed at the family altar and by all believers in their own closets, and surely no Christian will be content with less than morning and evening sacrifice. Christians are under deeper obligations than the Old Testament saints were to begin and end the day with exercises in plain thankfulness for mercies received, sorrow for sin, the consecration of themselves and all they have to Him who bought them with His own precious blood. Our first look every morning and our last one every night should be to the anointing, the atoning Lamb of God. Our Heidelberg Catechism summarizes prayer this way in question and answer 116, that we must be those who pray both continually and with heartfelt longing. Well, that's those two principles, isn't it? Coming to God with a true heart, with heartfelt longing, coming to God repeatedly, coming to God continually. We should say it this way, our prayers must be both our frequent fruits and our first fruits. This is true in the pre-Levitical system. This was true when Abel came, right? He offered the best of his flock and by faith offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. This is true in the post-Levitical, new order, the order made in the blood of Jesus Christ. We come to God with our best. We come to God often. And so we can summarize it together in this way. The blood offerings of old are similar to the offering of Christ in that there's blood. The blood offerings of old are similar to our New Testament service in that it's given repeatedly. The difference is that Christ gave it only once. The difference in our offerings is that it's now done without blood. Now, people of God, will we always serve God with our best? No, we will not. Will we always come with continual and heartfelt service as we should? No, we will not. So let us move from the blood of Christ, considering the New Testament offerings which we ought to be bringing, but then bring it back to the blood of Christ again. Because that is how we are saved. The offerings are offerings of thanks and praise. The salvation is in the blood without spot. Because Jesus Christ was without sin. And so, yes, let us review our hearts and test to see if we are following these old principles in our personal, in our family, in our corporate worship to God. But let's not stay there. Let us always, always bring our gaze back to Christ, the one whom we are to be offering continually, thankfully, because that's where our salvation is found. trust in His blood, His perfect blood of eternal redemption. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, through all of our not faithful enough service Help us to yet continually come before you. Most of all, to continually look upon your blood for salvation. Taking us out of our sin and deadness which we must confess and into the life which you give and the living service you desire us to bring. So we pray in Jesus' precious name, amen.