“It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (10:4).  So much, then, for the entire sacrificial system established in the first books in the Bible.  So much for the Temple and the priesthood.  The Jews knew that God had given them instructions regarding sacrifices; they knew He required sacrifice from His people.  On the one hand, then, this idea that animal sacrifice was of no use or value would have been quite novel—God told us to do this!  On the other hand, the Jews also knew, the priests also knew several places in Scripture where God had told His people quite clearly that it wasn’t blood and bulls that He wanted.  He didn’t actually care about that—those things were for our sake, not His, to give us visible assurance and the comfort of action until fullness of assurance, fullness of comfort should come.  God wanted something else from us, all along.  He gave the sacrificial system as a vivid, visual, visceral reminder both of what He actually wanted from His people and as a reminder that He would, in His own time according to His own plan, provide what was needed.  God Himself would give what had been missing.

“Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire’” (10:5).  Sacrifice and offering come along too late, after the trespass, after the sin.  Sacrifice and offering were to try to make up something owed, to close a breach already made.  Beloved, the best way to maintain a wonderful relationship is not to mess it up.  God wants righteousness—life lived His way.  Where there is righteousness, life being lived God’s way, there is no need for sin sacrifices.  What pleases God is faith, devotion, prayer, love for one another.  “[W]ith burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased” (10:6).  Bull’s blood can’t undo the damage done, any more than saying “I’m sorry” can make the hurt go away.  And you and I also know—and God certainly knows—that people can say “I’m sorry,” yet not entirely mean it, not entirely feel it.  The price for the damage is blood.  God-appointed gesture for reconciliation as these sacrifices were, the sacrifice must also be heartfelt, with recognition and acceptance of the guilt, with desire to be restored, not for the sake of any supposed privileges but for the sake of the worth of the relationship itself—if I can’t know You, Lord, be with You, where is the value in life?

After the thousandth bull, even the priests could feel a little numb and worn out, like it was all just mechanical routine after all, a job, a chore.  And God wants righteousness, the love supreme for God.  Like everyone these days, we Christians talk a lot about love; we aren’t always so great at actually showing it, sharing it.  God wants our sacrifice and offering, our grateful gift to God, to be our faith-filled living in and by His righteousness.  We even want to live God’s way, more or less, from time to time.  Then we try it, and our failure appalls and dejects us.  We conclude, soon or late, that no amount of effort on our part is going to be enough for God.  What then?  Give up?  Ignore God?  Find another?  Keep working at it, in more or less continual frustration and despair?  I’ve set myself the goal of living for the Lord.  Maybe I’ve even managed to do that, completely, for maybe even as much as a day, maybe even two.  My heart is in it, until it isn’t.  My mind is for it, until it’s not.  Good intentions . . . so many paving stones.

The preacher of Hebrews points out a passage in the fortieth psalm that doesn’t read the way we read it.  He’s using the third century, BC, Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, called the Septuagint.  This was the result of the work of seventy-two Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, which at that time was a major center for Jewish thought.  Hebrew was no longer commonly spoken or understood.  Greek was the common language, much as English is today.  We read in our NIV, “but my ears You have opened” (Ps 40:6).  In versions of the Septuagint, the rabbis translated the Hebrew this way: “a body you prepared for me” (10:5, Ps 40:6).  Kind of a big difference.  Presumably, the ancient Alexandrian Jewish scholars understood the Hebrew.  Not oxen, goats, or sheep, not seeking forgiveness after the fact, but a life lived start to finish for God.  Not a sin-broken body but a sinless body.  We never spend a lot of time on this at Christmas—a pity that we don’t.  There is a reason Joseph could not be the biological father of Jesus.  There is a reason why the Spirit overshadowed Mary.  Jesus was not conceived in the usual way.  He enters this life not with a sin-broken body but with a sinless body.  A body that has been prepared—God has a plan, has made preparations in advance, for just the right time, just the right moment.  The Jewish scholars realized they were hearing about a deep, holy mystery.  Just here, they walked soft and hushed, listening.

“Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, my God’” (10:7, Ps 40:7-8).  At the right time, the way God had prepared beforehand came, to do God’s will, which was not only to live a human, embodied life perfectly, fully, completely pleasing to God in every way, but also a life that would be offered up as a sacrifice for those who could not save themselves, offered up for the sake of those whom it pleased God from the beginning to bring to Himself, for Himself.  When we consider that, from before creation, God chose you and me for salvation—it’s kind of astounding, I’d say.

Salvation comes to call to everyone—there is hope, there is a way.  Not all come to salvation; yes, this grieves us, and we earnestly wish—even plead—that it could be otherwise.  Do pray for those who may yet come to salvation; pray also for one another, that we more and more may know, together, the fullness of the blessings God has for those whom He has preserved for Himself.  Blessing doesn’t always come the way we think it should.  We can’t force salvation upon anyone, but we can neglect the sterling significance of our salvation.

Through Christ’s sacrificial offering, through the pouring out of his blood for our sake, something remarkable, miraculous, has happened for us.  Apart from Christ, we cannot be holy.  We may feel some inclination towards it, but we’ll have no true knowledge of what holiness truly is until we have been claimed in Christ.  Apart from Christ, we cannot be holy—devoted, dedicated to living God’s way.  Christ’s sacrifice makes us holy, because through it we now can be in him, participate in his life, have his life, in us.  Whatever is in contact with the sacrifice becomes holy by it: “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10).

The sacrifice makes us holy.  Believers have been made holy.  A sign of our holiness is belief.  We don’t make the sacrifice—Lord, just look at all I’m giving up for you!  Christ, you know I love you!  Did you see the way I believe in You and God?  So tell me that I’m saved.  Yes, Peter says much the same thing, only then to deny Jesus.  We don’t make the sacrifice; God makes it for us, provides it for us, receives it for us.  It is that sinless blood, that sinless life, that permits us to be in the presence of the Lord, because only what is holy can be in His holy presence.  It is that blood that seals us in God’s service; holiness is for service: what is consecrated (holy, that is) is set apart for a special purpose.  In Christ, we live for God’s special purpose.  Oh, let’s live lives that help others to see that special purpose, that holiness, and awaken their own hunger and thirst for God’s gift.  As we live to worship God in Spirit and truth, we will.

We hear also another deep mystery.  We have been made holy, once for all.  There is nothing lacking in our holiness.  We have been reborn in Christ—spiritual rebirth.  Children of wrath, vessels for God’s wrath before, we are now children of God.  We do not yet know what we shall be.  We have faith.  We have the glorious privilege of living out God’s active work in our lives, our sanctification, by which we more and more realize our holiness, rejoice, and desire all the more to display this all the more, to the glory of God.  All of this is from our Father, in the Son through the Spirit.  Hard as it may be to accept, we contribute nothing positive to our salvation.

The preacher of Hebrews offers a magnificent image of Christ in heaven: “when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool” (10:12-13).  Now, sitting down may not seem so magnificent, but in the ancient world, the one who is seated has the authority—the king upon the throne, the judge at the bench.  In the early days of the church, the preacher would sit and the congregation would stand.  The cathedral was the place where the bishop preached, and he preached from a chair called a cathedra.  This was the seat of authority, authoritative teaching, trustworthy, to be believed, to put into action with God’s help.  Christ our priest, praying for us, is seated at God’s right hand; Christ is the indispensable one, the help that is just right.  Christ is seated as king, as judge, as teacher—all authority.

We hear another quote from the psalms in what I read to you today, this time from the 110^th psalm: “The Lord says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’” (Ps 110:1).  Christ on his throne—praying, teaching, judging—is also a reminder that what already is is not yet fully manifest.  We are already saved: we do not yet see, let alone know, the fullness of our salvation.  We are already holy: Lord knows we have a ways yet to go before we fully realize, experience, and demonstrate that!

Christ’s enemies are being brought to heel.  Who are they?  Well, in one sense, they are you and me: all that remains of rebellion in us, the residual influence of sin in us, upon us.  In another sense, Christ’s enemies are all unbelievers, both the willful and the clueless.  A life not being lived for Christ is being lived for what is not Christ.  We see not Christ all around us out there quickly enough.  What is not Christ pleases God in no way at all.  All anyone’s goodness and kindness and outrage over injustice does not prevent them from being unkind themselves, does not prevent them from pursuing what God condemns, does not even prevent such people from doing injustice when and as it suits them.  Approving socially-approved values doesn’t keep anyone from being messed up.  A decent life is not the way to salvation: it’s salvation that then makes life decent.  The only way to salvation is through Christ, through his blood, shed for our lives on the cross.  People want change, certainly.  They want hope, peace, happiness.  None of that means they want salvation or even understand what that word really means.

Our enemies, as Paul reminds us, are not in fact our fellow human beings, flesh and blood just like us: broken, in need, misguided, deluded, wretched, pitiable.  Our enemies, as Paul tells us and as I think Hebrews may be reminding us, are the powers of spiritual darkness: the very sin and brokenness that plague us all.  When we try to combat these without Christ, we’re outnumbered, overrun.  When we fight these with Christ through the Holy Spirit, the victory is won for us.  Yes, we get bloodied.  So did Christ.  Yes, we get wounded.  So was Christ.  Yes, it hurts.  Christ joins with us; we get joined to Christ.

“For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (10:14).  There it is, the key.  We are already made perfect forever in what Christ has done for us.  We are already made perfect forever because Christ is already forever perfect: completely fulfilling his godly purpose.  We are blood brothers, and sisters.  We are already perfect forever—all those lady singers on the radio crooning and crying about already being good enough—maybe the Spirit is speaking to them, too!  Well, we aren’t good, we know that, but we are enough because Jesus has grabbed hold of us and will not let us go.  Christ makes us enough, through himself.  And in this life we will have moments, joyful, glorious moments, and even longer seasons of knowing Christ making us holy.  Holy and being made holy; already and not yet.  We don’t make ourselves holy.  We don’t make ourselves faithful.  This is what Christ has already accomplished for us and what the Holy Spirit is now fleshing out in us.

The objection that gets raised to all this it’s all God talk is, what is left for you and me to do, then?  Surely, we need to do something?!  Beloved, if you would do something, rejoice.  Praise God.  Thank the Lord with a full heart, remembering He is renewing our will after His own will, in Christ Jesus.  Look forward, with great eagerness more and more to seeing as Jesus sees, more and more thinking as Jesus thinks, more and more living as Jesus lived among us and now lives.  And know, always, nothing can happen in this life stronger than God’s grace.  The cross, beloved—see the cross, meditate upon the cross.  Go to the cross, and pray there.