Exodus 24 & Hebrews 9:15-28

The Necessity of Blood

There is a question that haunts every man and woman who has ever lived, which sits in our minds like a splinter, driving us mad:  it is the question "What will I do on the day of judgment when I must answer for all the horrible things I have done or have thought or have said?"

It is the question that continually plagues our lives and what causes every man and woman to fear death in the end.  We all know consciously, or subconsciously, that there is a day of reckoning -- a day of accountability when we will each stand before the Judge of the Universe and give an account for how we have lived our lives here on earth. 

How are you approaching that terrible day, when your entire life will be weighed in the balance and you know, with certainty, that you will come up short?  As the preacher reminds us all this morning in v. 27, "it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment."

It is an appointment that no one will miss.  It is certain:  one day, each of you will stand before the Holy God of all creation and explain to Him why you have done what you have done.  And there will be no escape, no lies, no half-truths.  Everything will be exposed, from the actions of your sinful hands and feet, to the venom spewing from your tongue, to the lustful eyes and prideful, self-conceit of your hearts.

How can you possibly face that day with any hope of rescue?  If you are honest with yourself this morning, you know that there is no hope within yourself.  You know deep within that you are truly rotten to the core of your being and that if you look long enough, deep enough you will only find rebellion and death worthy of eternal condemnation.

You know that you cannot possibly face God and draw near to Him.  You are defiled and unholy, everything God is not.  You cannot possibly approach the One whom the angels describe in the superlative:  "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty.  The whole earth is full of His glory."  Instead you are like the grass or the flower of the field -- when the wind passes over you, you are no more and the world remembers you no more (cf. Ps. 103:15-16).  You are dust and to dust you will certainly return (cf. Gen. 3:19).  At the end of the day, your heart is deceitfully wicked and desperately sick.  Who among us can fathom the depths to which our wicked hearts will travel? (Jer. 17:9). 

And the problem is not found outside of you but from within.  As Jesus said:

Mark 7:18-23  "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him,  19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" . . . "That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.  21 "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,  22 deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.  23 "All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man."

Your problem is not all the social ills of your life.  It’s not with corrupt politicians or a difficult boss.  Your problem is not the teachings of evolution, the lack of prayer in schools, or even the marches of those who seek to justify their wickedness.  No!  The enemy is not out there, preying on you, trying to destroy you from without.  It is in your own heart eating you away moment by moment, day by day, destroying you like spiritual cancer until you finally reach the day of judgment and you have nothing left but a black heart full of evil thoughts, intentions and bloody hands covered with evil deeds, and completely naked with no more hypocrisy to protect the real you from being exposed.

It will be a terrible day indeed and you will find no comfort in that hour in anything found in yourself.  Instead, if you are to have any hope at all, you must look outside of yourself -- you must look for a purity, a righteousness, a holiness that has nothing to do with you at all.  For everything you have touched is polluted with your own sin and nothing that comes from sinful man can ever hope to approach a holy God and find anything but condemnation.

So where are you to look this morning?  What are you to fix your eyes upon that could possibly save you on that terrible day of judgment?  What hope do you have that will give you absolute certainty that that day doesn't have to be feared at all -- but approached with the utmost and absolute certainty and boldness that you will be welcomed into the arms a Holy God and forever dwell in eternal paradise and everlasting joy?

Well, one thing is absolutely certain to NOT give you this joy:  Moses!  As the preacher explains again this morning, Moses was a temporary fix -- a mere band-aid over the cancerous tumor that was entirely insufficient to forever purge the awful sickness that plagues you and will one day bring you death.

And you can see the insufficiency of Moses in the very picture of Moses continually sprinkling the blood of animals on the altar of God, over and over again, year after year after year.  Like someone with obsessive compulsive disorder who continually washes his hands 50 times a day until they are bloodied and chapped because he never feels clean and always fears what he cannot see -- Moses and the priests of Levi continually poured gallons and gallons of blood over an altar here on earth, made by the hands of men, which could never wash away your sin.

In order to show the insufficiency of the Old Covenant under Moses, the preacher contrasts the ultimate day of purification under Moses with the completed work of Jesus Christ at Calvary and shows how that day of sacrifice through Moses could never cleanse your conscience from dead works and bring you into everlasting fellowship and communion with God.

That day of course was the day Moses mediated a covenant between Yahweh and the children of Israel at the base of Mt. Sinai.  Moses had received the Law of God from on top of the mountain.  It came out of his fellowship and communion with God alone and he brought the Law down to the people.  He read the tablets of stone before them and explained to them all that God would require of them. 

Now, at the moment, the people had two choices.  They could have simply walked away and lived their life without any hope of dwelling in the Promise Land God would give them.  They could have lived out the rest of their lives in the wilderness in relative peace and security.  But they chose another way:  they chose to commit themselves to the Lord and obey all that He had commanded them.  They heard Moses and they professed, "All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do!" (cf. Ex. 24:3).

Once they committed themselves to this path, they were in covenant with God -- bound forever to live and dwell in His midst as long as they obeyed and followed His way. 

The only thing left to do to consummate the new relationship, was to build an altar and make a sacrifice of young bulls to God.  Two kinds of offerings were made that morning:  one was a burnt offering to purge away their sin and the other was a peace offering symbolizing their new relationship with God of fellowship with Him.  But what would that fellowship be based upon?  What is the foundation upon which this new relationship would be built?

Well, we can see what that foundation was by looking at what Moses did next (Ex. 24:6-8).  First, he took some of the blood and sprinkled it on the book of the covenant -- the Law of God -- and then he took some more of the blood and sprinkled it on the people as they once again professed, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!" (Ex. 24:7).

Now why this double sprinkling, first upon the Law and then upon the people?  Moses was signifying where the responsibility lay for the fulfillment of the covenant.  The basis of the covenant was found in a binding relationship between the people and their keeping the Law.  And the seriousness of that relationship was bound with a bloody sacrifice to show the ultimate consequences they would each experience if they broke their required obedience to the Law.  It was a legal, binding relationship sealed in blood. 

The sacrifice itself was a gruesome scene.  The bodies of the young bulls were disemboweled and dismembered, with blood pouring everywhere, and then the pieces of the bulls were placed upon a burning fire and consumed (cf. Heb. 9:19-22). 

The people completely understood what Moses was saying.  The bloody dismemberment of the representative animals signified the violent death that the people themselves would experience if they broke the covenant with God. 

Therefore, it was through blood that the covenant was made with them that day.  And so it is here in the very nature of the blood that you see the radical difference between the old and new covenants.  The preacher even changes the words slightly to bring to mind how vastly different that covenant under Moses was with the new covenant that Jesus made with you.  In Hebrews 9:20, the preacher writes, "and Moses said, 'This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you.'"  Now where else have you heard those words?

Jesus said at the last supper, "This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins" (cf. Matt. 26:28).

But Jesus offered no bulls or goats upon an altar made with hands.  The people did not gather before their high priest to see with anticipation the offering of God, to commit themselves in allegiance with Him. 

No!  He was spit upon, beaten, mocked, scourged -- and he carried his own cross and died alone on Mt. Calvary.  Why?  Because he was doing what only he could do.  No one else could make the sacrifice that you needed to have perfect fellowship with God.  

And look at where we see the violent death in the New Covenant!  It is not found in the Temple built by the hands of men.  It is not seen in the dismembering of bulls and goats.  No!  It is seen nailed to a tree outside the gates of Jerusalem, while all his followers are hiding from the powers that be.  There stretched out like a carcass drying in the sun, hangs the ultimate sacrifice that will forever bring an end to Moses and all the works of men.

It was not your obedience to all that God commanded you.  It was not your sacrifice or the blood pouring from your own body.  No!  It was the Son of God, the Lamb who came to take away the sin of the world.

But why the blood?  Why did Jesus have to die to mediate a new covenant between you and God?

The answer is found in v. 22 – there is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood.  As the preacher says in vv. 16-17 for a covenant to be made a death must take place.  Why?  Because that is the payment price of rebellion to the Creator of the world.  Blood must run for the sinner to draw near.  Access to God comes only through the undoing of our sinful lives.  Something must die to pay the penalty for sin, to atone and cleanse the sinner so that he or she may approach a holy God.  

Through such a violent death you see the seriousness of your sin and rebellion before God.  Over a lifetime, Israel had a constant reminder that their sin offended God – a reminder so stark that they constantly saw before their eyes the death of an innocent animal to cover their sins for yet another year of life in the land.

The problem with the Old Covenant was not that it lacked a means of cleansing Israel’s sin.  Yes the tabernacle was built, the priests were ordained, the animals were gathered, and the sacrifices were offered, all as God had commanded.  But that cleansing was only temporary – the blood of bulls and goats made by sinful priests would never perfectly wash away your sin.  That’s why they had to be offered continually year after year after year.

Rather, what was needed was a real cleansing of sin – not made with the sinful hands of men – but a perfect sinless sacrifice, where both the high priest and the sacrifice itself was without spot or wrinkle.  But where would such a perfect priest and sacrifice be found?

God sent forth His only Son into the world to live the perfect obedient life that we have all failed to live and to take the burden your sin upon His own shoulders and become your sacrifice to forever wash your sins away.

But once the blood poured at Calvary, Jesus did not gather his own blood and sprinkle upon the altar in the temple in Jerusalem.  No!  That temple, built by the hands of men, had become obsolete at the cross -- signified by the tearing of the temple veil from top to bottom.  That temple and its whole sacrificial system had man’s hands all over them, signifying the dead works of sinners whose consciences were never clean.  Moses signifies what man does for God in his own sinful flesh.  

But Jesus brought His own atoning blood to heaven itself, the true tabernacle of God and poured it out before the footstool of His Father and there with the better sacrifice He forever cleansed your sin and provided you entrance into the most holy place. 

The work was finished forever.  God’s wrath was satisfied.  Peace has come!  The War is over! Nothing more could possibly be added to this perfect sacrifice.  Therefore, Jesus took His seat next to the Father.  There He entered into perfect fellowship with the Father and through His own blood He has provided you with perfect access to the throne of grace.

And with this one sacrifice, Jesus Christ has brought an end to the former covenant of works for all those who have rested in Him.  No other sacrifice must be made (Heb. 9:25-26).  No other priest has to be raised up.  Not one finger needs to be lifted yet again to make perfect what Jesus has finished.  And so with this last sacrifice, Jesus has brought that old age under Moses to an end. 

And therefore, the final judgment has already fallen on Jesus for your sin. 

Under the Old Covenant, the time of real celebration took place only after the high priest had entered the most holy place and returned.  Upon seeing the high priest come out alive, the children of Israel knew that God had accepted their offering for yet another year.  It was a time of great relief and joy that they would be able to remain in the land for another year.

But now Jesus has entered into the true presence of God in Heaven and this time with the perfect sacrifice to end all other sacrifices and therefore when He returns a second time, it will be a day of great joy for you who have rested in Him – a joy that will last forever.  The preacher describes it as “eager anticipation” (v. 28).  For the judgment of your sins has already fallen on Him – and so He is not returning to you in regards to your sin because it has been paid in full.  Rather, His return will be a day of rejoicing.  You will rejoice to the extent that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice and that He has taken all your punishment upon Himself and through Him and Him alone you have full and permanent access to God forevermore.

Hebrews 9:15  5 For this reason aHe is the bmediator of a cnew covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been dcalled may ereceive the promise of fthe eternal inheritance.

Amen!

-SDG-