“Thanking God for Making Us Holy” Hebrews 10:8-10

Last week we talked about how almost everyone, at one time or another, feels misunderstood or alone. We yearn to belong, to be included.

But there is another part of us that wants to be seen for who we are, and to be seen as different. We’re not like everyone else; we have our own personality and our own view of the world. As much as we want to belong, we also want to be recognized as being different.

One of the things that God gives us through Jesus is that we are set apart by Him. We are made different in that we are made holy. Holiness is being set apart by God for His service and ministry. Today’s passage speaks to Jesus’ act of sacrifice and how His sacrifice makes us holy.

Background

The writer of Hebrews has shown that Jesus is superior to the angels, to Moses and to Aaron and the Levitical priesthood. In Hebrews 9, the writer shows that Jesus’ priesthood is superior in that He acts as high priest in a heavenly tabernacle and that the sacrifice made for His ability to the enter the most perfect temple was His own sacrifice. In v. 15, he writes, “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that, those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”

Having established that Jesus is the great high priest, the writer than goes to show why Jesus’ sacrifice is superior to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. Having already mentioned in Chapter 9 that the high priest had to make an annual sacrifice before entering the Holy of Holies, while Jesus’ crucifixion was sufficient for all time, the writer goes into more detail about the differences between Old and New Testament sacrifice beginning in Chapter 10. He begins the chapter by stating that the sacrifices offered under the Laws of Moses are insufficient to truly make us holy. “For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship” (v. 1b). He goes on to write, “because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (v. 4).

It is here that the writer shows how Jesus’ sacrifice makes us holy. He quotes from Psalm 40, putting the words into Jesus’ mouth. The psalm speaks about the inadequacy of sacrifice and offering, ending with Jesus saying, “Here am I—it is written about Me in the scroll—I have come to do Your will, O God” (v. 7; Psalm 40:7-8).

Central Truth: We thank God because He makes us holy.

Jesus:

Knew God’s heart (8)

Knowing someone’s heart is important. When we become close enough to know their heart, then we are able to know what is really important to them and can act accordingly. This is helpful in any relationship, whether it’s between two spouses, parent and child, even co-worker. To know the heart is to know what drives the person, what motives them to do what they do and say what they say.

In proclaiming an awareness that God was not pleased with sacrifices and offerings, Jesus shows He understands God’s heart.

When God gave the laws to Moses, God included the need for various sacrifices and offerings to be given at various times of the year. Some of the offerings would celebrate a major event—the birth of a child, the successful harvest—while the sacrifices were given to commemorate an historical event or to seek atonement.

In this verse, taken from Psalm 40, Jesus is acknowledging that while God instituted the various offerings and sacrifices, He wanted more than the rituals. The offering of a sacrifice or the gift of an offering was intended to reflect the heart of the one making the sacrifice or offering.

By the time the psalmist wrote Psalm 40, it was obvious that too many were going through the motions while divorcing themselves from the emotions and the thoughts that should accompany them. The sacrifices and offerings had ceased to be a form of worship and had simply become something that had to be done to stay in God’s good graces. They had come to miss the point entirely of the sacrificial system.

In acknowledging this, Jesus was saying He understood God’s heart, God’s desire for the fellowship found in worshipping Him and in walking in His ways. Jesus knew that the practice didn’t mean anything if the heart wasn’t in it.

When I was a little boy, we were visiting my grandmother in Marshall. We were gathered around the table for a meal, when I asked, out of the blue, how a person gets to heaven. Grandma told me I need to be a good person and do good things. Mom and Dad were quick to tell me that getting to heaven meant following Christ and confessing my sins to Him.

In today’s America, I believe there is a large part of society that follows Grandma’s path to heaven. Even Evangelical churches seem to stress the need to be faithful in church membership, to read our Bibles daily and give our tithes, among things.

While all these things are important to Christian growth, just going to church and reading one’s Bible is not enough; all those things do is make us a good church member. Remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 7—not everyone who calls to Him, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the Father’s will. There are a lot of people who go through the motions of playing church and have no personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. While God does want us to join in worship and to learn from Him through Scripture and prayer, there is so much more involved in pleasing God.

There has to be more than doing the rituals, and Jesus shows us how in the next verse.

Yielded Himself to the Father (9)

Knowing there is a difference between playing at knowing God and actually knowing Him, Jesus goes the step beyond sacrifices and offerings. “Then He said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do Your will” (v. 9a).

In the Gospel according to John, after Jesus had fed the 5,000, He crossed over the Sea of Galilee because He knew they wanted to make Him king. The people followed Jesus to the other side and when they found Him, they asked Jesus, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” (John 6:28). Jesus’ response was, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent” (v. 29). Then Jesus told them that He is the bread of life and began to discuss what it truly meant to believe in and follow Him. At the end of Jesus’ lesson, the Bible says, “From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him” (v. 66). Only a few remained to follow, including the 12.

Jesus said if we love Him we will obey His commands (cf. John 14:23-24), and He said a wise person hears what Jesus teaches and does it, while the foolish person hears what He says but doesn’t do it (cf. Matthew 7:24-27). Clearly, Jesus expects us to do more than go to church and read our Bibles and pray and give. He expects us to know and do His will. The way we learn and do God’s will is to have a personal relationship with Jesus and to let Him live through us, being controlled by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ words to God reflect the submissive attitude described in Philippians 2. Jesus surrendered His glory and became a person—“a body was prepared for Him”—in order to follow God’s will and demonstrate what it means to walk a life of obedience. For Jesus, it meant giving Himself over to the authorities to be crucified. Jesus lay down His life in order to be submissive to the Father, and in so doing He made atonement for our sins.

The writer of Hebrews ends the verse by saying that Jesus set aside the first—the sacrifices and offerings—to establish the second—walking in obedience to the Father through a personal relationship with Jesus and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

Makes us holy (10)

The writer concludes his lesson on Jesus as the supreme sacrifice by saying, “And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” By walking in obedience, Jesus gave Himself for our sins, and by His crucifixion, Jesus completely ended the need for the sacrificial system in seeking atonement. By His act of obedience, God makes us holy through His Son.

That holiness means we are set apart for His good will. God reaches into our lives and begins transforming us to know and do His will (cf. Romans 12:1-2; Galatians 2:19-20; Philippians 2:12-13). And because we are holy, we must see the world in a different way and relate to the world in a Christ-like manner. No longer are we content to live our lives according to our will, but now we are prompted by His Spirit to seek and do His will by giving ourselves to Him completely.

Conclusion

What does it mean to be a Christian? From this passage (and consistently through the New Testament), we learn that being a Christian means so much more than playing church. We know that a Christian is someone who may do the things that make him or her a good church member, but the true follower of Christ is someone who knows His sacrifice and knows His offer of fellowship. A Christian is someone who give him- or herself to Him with all our heart, our soul and our being. We learn from Jesus’ example that “sacrifices and offerings” pale in comparison to saying, “Here I am, come to do Your will.”

Where are you in this walk? Are you playing church, or are you seeking and doing His will?