This tape is the fourth of six in a series of teachings entitled, The Priesthood of All Believers, delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. The title of this teaching is, For Our Great High Priest, and the scripture reference is Hebrews chapters 8 and 9. If you would turn, please, to the eighth chapter of Hebrews. chapters 8 and 9 of this book summarize virtually everything that we've been studying so far. Let me just come to the first paragraph of chapter 8. Chapter 8, now the point in what we are saying is this.

We have such a high priest, the kind that has been described in the preceding chapter. We have a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the sanctuary and the true tent, which is set up not by man, but by the Lord. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, hence it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer.

now if he were on earth he would not be a priest at all since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary for when Moses was about to erect the tent he was instructed by God saying see that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain but as it is Christ has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second. The old covenant with its Levitical priesthood, the sacrifices and the tabernacle itself is a copy and a shadow of the heavenly sanctuary.

And I've suggested to you that a good illustration of that is what happens when somebody comes into a room with a strong light behind him or her. The shadow comes in first, but the reality is the person. All of the Old Testament, all of its ritual, all of its ceremony, All of its sacrifices, and specifically the Levitical priesthood, is a copy and a shadow.

It got here first, but it's just a shadow. The reality is Jesus. What he did in offering himself is the reality of which that whole system is just a shadow.

Now, the writer goes on. the rest of chapter 8 is simply a quotation from Jeremiah 31. We looked at that on our first evening.

Jeremiah 31 beginning with the 31st verse. The days are coming says the Lord when I will establish a new covenant. Not like the old covenant.

The covenant that I establish in those days will be one in which I put my laws into their hearts and each one will know me in a personal way. Look at verse 13. in speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Chapter 9 the first 10 verses are a summary of the tabernacle paraphernalia the furniture the ark of the covenant itself what is inside it all of the stuff that we've been looking at And if you drop down to verse 11, he says, But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy place, taking not the blood of goats and calves, but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. So here it is. we've been looking at the tabernacle and we saw that within that structure you have an internal building actually a tent a portable building but nevertheless a building and it has two places it has the outer part called the holy place and then the innermost part the holy of holies and here the writer specifically says Jesus himself entered into the holy place he did the thing of which that is a kind of a parable Okay?

Everybody together? He did, in reality, what the high priest does in shadow. Jesus entered into the holy place.

He did not take the blood of an innocent animal, a bull or a goat or a calf or a sheep or whatever it was. He took his own blood. So the imagery here is very vivid.

is that Jesus is both the priest and the sacrifice. He himself goes into the Holy of Holies as the High Priest. He carries with him the offering of blood, but it's his own blood.

He is both High Priest and sacrifice. And then this tremendous statement of comparison, verse 13, for if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer, if that sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, how much more shall he purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Well, you can read on.

You can read the whole rest of that chapter, and it is an elaboration of this imagery, Jesus as the great high priest. It says in verse 23, Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself.

now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf, nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy place yearly with the blood, not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for men to die once and after that comes the judgment, so Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

So there is the very heart of the argument. Jesus is the reality of which the whole system the very essence of the old covenant worship is merely a form a precursor, a prefigure, a foreshadowing. Now I want to pose a question and I want you to interact with me a little bit.

What did Jesus do in his death? I want to give you a couple of answers and then press the point. Jesus took our sin upon himself and paid the penalty so that we might go free.

If you would picture the light coming down from this ceiling fixture as the love of God, the fellowship with God, our relationship with God. Okay? And picture this book as sin.

And here I am, heavily laden with sin. The sin stands as a barrier between me and God. You got the picture?

Pardon me? The light can't get to me because of the barrier of my sin in the way. Now along comes Jesus who has no sin of his own and he voluntarily, willingly takes my sin upon himself and he pays the penalty that would have been mine so instead of my having to die, the wages of sin is death, right?

Instead of my having to die for that sin he goes to a cross on my behalf and I'm set free to enjoy the fellowship and the love of God. Billy Graham told a story a number of years ago. He said that he had been arrested for a traffic violation and he stood before the judge and the judge, of course, recognized him and he said, aren't you Billy Graham, the preacher that I see on television?

And Billy said, well, yes. I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, but I am. And the judge says, I watch you all the time.

He says, I tune in on the radio every Sunday night. I love your program. You have helped me come to know the Lord.

Now, what are you doing here in my court? And Billy said, well, I was speeding. And the judge says, well, I'm going to throw the book at you.

I mean, you are supposed to be an example of a Christian to the whole world. And I've got to hold you responsible for what you did. I'm going to throw the book at you.

And he exacted the stiffest fine that he could legitimately impose. And then he stood up, walked around the desk, stood in front of the desk, took out his wallet, and paid the fine himself. And Billy said, what a vivid example that was to me of God passing sentence upon us and then, in essence, walking around the desk and paying the penalty himself.

That's one answer. What did Jesus do? He took our sin upon himself and paid the penalty so that we might go free.

Another way of putting the same thing is he offered his own blood, he offered his own life as a substitutionary atonement. That phrase is very important. a substitutionary atonement.

He became my substitute. And in the process, we looked at that word atonement, at-one-ment. He offered himself as my substitute and made at-one-ment with God so that because he died, we live.

Okay? Those are two very traditional ways and very biblical ways of saying the same thing. Now, here's my question.

who was he paying off he was paying off the righteousness of God he was paying God off okay so God expected this payment are you saying he was paying God I'm not trying to trick you I'm just trying to understand you the righteous side of God's nature his holy okay okay so alright but you are saying that Jesus was satisfying the holiness of God paying God in essence. How many of you agree with that? Was he paying God off?

How many of you agree with that? I got one hand up. Alright.

Who was he paying off? He was paying our debt to God. Alright.

He was paying himself. All right, explain that. All right, explain that. Because he is one back of God. He is God. Okay. And the nature that commands righteousness, in order to fulfill all that, he pays himself. Okay. Wouldn't he? Really? You need nothing to do with it. Maybe he was paying the same. Ah. Because Satan was the one that had to claim on us. How many of you think he was paying Satan off? No? You're in a small minority.

You've got one vote behind you there. Those are the two answers that are traditionally given. Some folks would see this as a matter of, like in Billy Graham's example, the judge demanding a payment, and the problem being that we're unable to come up with that payment.

The payment is our death. After we've paid it, then what? And so the judge, in essence, pays himself.

Pays himself back. God is being satisfied. The holiness or the righteousness of God is being satisfied by the death of an innocent.

A second view, not quite as widely held, but a very popular alternative view, is that Satan is the one who holds us in bondage. We have voluntarily entered into a bondage to Satan. Jesus himself said so.

Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin. And that what Jesus is doing is, in essence, paying off Satan. He's satisfying all claims that Satan would have against us.

You don't like that one? That's good. Martin Luther said if I were God I'd call Satan in grab him by the nose, twist it and say let my people go.

Well I don't like the other answer. And I'll tell you why. Supposing that you do something to me that is very painful, very hurtful.

You ruin my car, you steal my wallet, you slander my name, whatever it is, you do something to me. and I choose to forgive you, okay, do I have to take it out on Pat? No. I mean, at a human level, I can react two ways to an offense.

I can either pay you back, or I can forgive it. But the thing I don't do is go out and find an innocent third party and beat up on her, or him, in order to forgive you. Do you follow that?

And I think this is the problem that folks have with that view of the atonement down through the ages. They say, it seems to make God some kind of a bloodthirsty judge that demands penalty on an innocent third party, which is so much harsher than any experience of forgiveness that we have. What I want to try to say to you is this, that I think that whole question, the way I've framed it, leaves out of its answer the reality of who Jesus is.

Okay? When I said an innocent third party, you know, that's where it breaks down. The atonement pivots on Jesus' claim as to who he was and is.

If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one. Before Abraham, I was.

I am. It's not Jesus simply as the innocent victim, but Jesus as one with the Father himself. It's more than that.

It's better than that. And what I'm trying to suggest is that the substitutionary view of the atonement is absolutely biblical, but it's only looking at it from one point of view. It's much better than that.

I gave the illustration at a human level. If I forgive you, all right? But how do I do that?

If you have hurt me in some way, and I choose to forgive you, that doesn't make the hurt disappear. It means I willingly absorb that hurt myself. I hurt, okay?

When I was 16, no, it was earlier, when I was 14 my uncle invited me to drive his car I didn't have training, I didn't have a license to do so, but he invited me to drive his car and I gleefully accepted drove it about two and a half miles and totaled it right into this huge boulder that we had at the end of our road this monster boulder that they say came down in the ice age and I'm right into it. And he forgave me. Which meant he had to go out and buy a new car.

See? Instead of making me pay for it, he paid for it. Got it?

A few years later in college, I ruined a friend's expensive sport jacket and he forgave me. which meant he had to go out and buy a new sports jacket. Instead of making me pay for it, he paid for it.

He paid for it himself. My experience is that that's the way forgiveness works. It's not only in material things.

Those are maybe the easiest to talk about, but even more so in those sensitive areas. If I get up in the morning and I got up on the wrong side of bed and I'm just very irritable and unfriendly and I've got a lot of harsh words for my wife. I hurt her.

And she can either pay me back or she can forgive me. And if she forgives me, that means she allows those harsh words to hurt and she treats me as if I had never inflicted that hurt in the first place. She, in essence, pays for it herself.

I'm submitting to you that that's what's really involved in our forgiveness from God. Instead of making us pay for what we've done, he literally pays for it himself. And so, in looking at the cross of Jesus, I want us to see it in the imagery of the high priest who offered a blood sacrifice, namely his own.

But I want you to know that there are at least four other views in Scripture itself. Did you know that? four other ways of looking at the death of Jesus.

Number one, the good shepherd. Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. Why?

Because I give my life for the sheep. To whom? The wolf.

He says, I go out and I face the wolf on behalf of the sheep. If the sheep are lost, you've got to go to where they are. If they're endangered by some devouring animal, you've got to face that.

If they're caught in the thorns, the thorns and brambles that hold them are going to scratch the shepherd. Jesus went to where we were. We were caught in sin.

He entered into our sin. We were caught in death. He went into death itself to rescue us.

Are you with me? That's exactly the same thing, but it's described in a different way, isn't it? second view right here in Hebrews chapter 9 verse 15 I skipped over this therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant for where a will is involved the death of the one who made it must be established for a will takes effect only at death since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.

Hence, even the first covenant was not ratified without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took blood of calves and goats and so on. Where there's a will, there has to be the death of the one who made it.

Do you get the imagery? Jesus is the one only begotten son of God. He was the heir.

Everything that God had was his. And in essence, he says, I'm giving that to you. I leave it to you in my last will and testament or covenant.

Only he's got to die in order for that to become ours. Get it? Exactly the same thing, but a totally different way of looking at it.

Third, somewhat similar to that, You remember the parable of the prodigal son? Father has two sons. Younger one says, Dad, I want everything that's coming to me.

The father divides his inheritance and gives the younger son his half. Kid goes off and spends it in a matter of weeks, living in riotous ways, prostitutes, gambling, drunkenness, revelry, ends up climbing into the pigsty and eating food that was intended for them. And while he's sitting there in the pigsty, he thinks to himself, you know, my father has servants working for him that are better off than I am.

I'm going to go back home and confess to my dad what I've done and see if he'll take me as a servant. And says the father is waiting there on the porch looking for him. And when he sees him coming, he doesn't even wait until the son gets there.

When he sees him on the horizon, he gets up and runs to him, embraces him, gets him a coat, puts a ring on his hand, shoes on his feet and says we're going to have a celebration because my son who is lost is found again. He was dead but he's alive. Do you ever stop and think where the father got the inheritance?

To have that party and give him the robe and the ring and the shoes? That's right. It belonged to the elder brother who had never misused the relationship.

In other words what God gave to us in giving us a second chance belonged to Jesus. And he shared it with us. And of course in that parable the elder brother reacts very badly.

The illustration would break down at that point. But press it. If we've been given life as a gift from God and we've blown it through disobedience and sin and rebellion and he's going to give us life again where is he going to get that from?

See? It's the gift from our elder brother. Jesus is our elder brother.

Do you follow what I'm saying? In the scripture for this Sunday, we have the parable of the owner of the vineyard. And his tenants are being very disobedient.

And so he sends one servant after another and tries to call them back to himself. And they just beat up the servants and treat them very badly. And finally he says, I'm going to send my son.

Surely they'll listen to him. they don't listen to him they kill him they say let's kill him in order to get his inheritance only it didn't work out that way for them what an irony because it did work out that way for us we killed him and we got his inheritance because that was the father's pleasure do you see what I'm trying to say no one explanation of the death of Jesus is going to be adequate. We're looking at it from a variety of points of view.

And my belief is that none of them will adequately capture it. It's too big. It's just too much.

The love of God is too overwhelming. The principal view, the principal biblical view of what was going on in the death of Jesus is precisely the one before us. The great high priest.

And what he did was, He came and He fulfilled all of that imagery and He offered Himself to the Father on our behalf with blood sacrifice satisfying the penalty of the law, satisfying the righteousness and the holiness of God. But you need to understand that it's not just as an innocent third party. It's not Jesus as merely the human victim.

but Jesus is one and the same with the Father himself. That's right. That's right.

It can't work. He is, in fact, the God who is offended in every sin. And so it's a matter of displaying in the most vivid kind of drama the broken heart of God.

What he's done is he's embraced our rebellion to himself and he's loved us anyway. See, what I find is fascinating is when you stop and think about it, the good news of God's forgiveness does not begin with the New Testament. I mean, God has been saying that from the very beginning of our story.

I love you. I want to forgive you. I want to reconcile you to myself.

You see? Now, if he could do that in the Old Testament, then what is Jesus needed for? He would have been if he did that. He did that imperfectly in the Old Testament because the Old Testament foreshadows what's coming. But he did that all along. In all history he did that exactly the same way you and I do.

People say, if God wanted to forgive us so much, why didn't he just plain forgive us? That's exactly what he did. He just plain forgave us.

that cost him his life. Get it? And so all of the promises that you read in the Old Testament, which you say, gosh, you know, I'd love to believe that God really is like that.

How do you know he's really like that? The answer is, when he became a man and dwelt among us, we treated him exactly the way we've treated God from the very beginning of our story. We spat upon him.

We despised him. We rejected him. We said, get out of my life.

We tried to cross out his influence. And he responded to that in exactly the way he has responded to it from the very beginning of our story. I love you.

I forgive you. I let you do that to me. And I love you anyway.

so look at Jesus in terms of what it meant for him to die as a man and that was as the innocent third party but don't stop there look at him in terms of what it meant for him to die claiming to be and demonstrating the fact that he was and is God himself you can't understand you can't even begin to understand the atonement without coming to grips with the incarnation does that make sense to you? what we've done in about a half hour here is the very heart of all of Christian theology it comes right down to this any questions? please when you were asking that question and thought it was coming to my mind was it is the word of God that needs fulfillment because it's the law in your illustration of the judge there was a law that backed up the decision the judge made to find Billy Graham and the law had to be paid the law was the force the authority and we do not live in a lawless world God is a God of order and it was his word that required that to be backed up good. That's very good. Of course, if you press it, you've probably heard people say, I try to live by the Sermon on the Mount.

I love it when people say that. I don't know whether Jesus was God, but I really appreciate his teaching and I try to live by the Sermon on the Mount. And I say, you've never read the Sermon on the Mount.

Because what he says is be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect. That's the standard. And if you want to make it on your own efforts, then that's the standard.

God doesn't grate on the curve. God holds us to Himself as the standard. Now, if we've blown that, then God Himself is going to be the one who can rescue us and the only one.

good got it it's a lot to think about isn't it alright let's stand and pray together just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me and that thou bidst me come to thee O Lamb of God I come Lord our minds falter when we try to understand how it was that you could forgive not just some slight offense but all of the rebellion and anger and sin of all mankind and mine included. Lord, thank You for loving me. Thank You for dying for me.

Thank You for being the judge who pays my fine. The elder brother who readily shares his inheritance. Thank You for being the one who owned it all and willed it to me.

Thank you, Lord, for being the shepherd who goes out into the darkness and into the brambles and allows the thorns to cut and pierce him who faces the wolf on my behalf. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for fulfilling all the promises and prophecies and for fulfilling, filling fuller all the ceremony of the priesthood for offering Yourself that I might live. Lord, this night I would put my trust in You yet again, yet more deeply, yet more joyfully, yet more gratefully for your own namesake.

Amen. Amen.