From Judgment to Salvation
Hebrews 9:27-28
March 19, 2017
We are talking a break this week from our study of the Revelation,
And there is a reason for that.
As we have studied such vivid pictures
Of God’s wrath on sinful humanity,
I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t lost on us
What a tremendous Savior we have.
First, let me just recap some of what we have recently seen regarding God’s coming wrath on sinners.
If you go all the way back to the opening of the 7 seals
Here is a brief summary of what God is going to unleash on sinners.
• He will allow them to be deceived for 3 ½ years while the most vile human being the world has ever known will come to power and world dominion.
• He will then allow world war to break out.
• This world war will then be followed by worldwide famine where men will work for an entire day to buy enough bread for one loaf.
• Then God will allow a plague to attack the world which will kill ¼ of the world’s population (equivalent of North America, South America, Europe, Antarctica, & Austrailia)
• Then God will slap the earth out of orbit, peel back the sky and reveal His great anger from His throne in heaven.
• Following this God will unleash a fire that will burn 1/3 of the earth.
• He will then unleash asteroid which will turn 1/3 of the sea into blood.
• He will then unleash a comet which will turn 1/3 of all fresh water poisonous
• He will then strike the sun and moon so that they only burn 2/3 of their appointed time.
• Following this God will unleash a demonic army from hell which will torment men like a scorpion for 5 months.
• Then God will unleash a 100million strong demonic death army which will kill 1/3 of the remaining population (there goes Africa)
• Following this comes the THUMOS of God in which He will pour out those 7 bowls of wrath or plagues.
• First a malignant sore
• Then all of the water on the planet to blood
• Then men scorched with fierce heat
• Men afflicted with pain that caused them to gnaw their tongues
• Then God draws all men to the battle Armageddon where He will pelt them with 100 lb. hail stones and slaughter them with such a great slaughter that blood will run up to the horses bridles for a distance of 200 miles.
To say God is angry is an understatement.
God’s wrath is tremendously terrible on sinners.
He will afflict them and pound them and flog them
And ultimately punish them for all eternity in hell.
This is no laughing matter.
God’s rage is intense and His judgment is absolutely sure.
And we’ve walked through this wrath for the last couple of weeks
In our study of the Revelation.
Understanding those truths should certainly cause us
To have A GREATER APPRECIATION FOR THE WORK OF CHRIST.
Romans 5:9 “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”
1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.”
1 Thessalonians 5:9 “For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,”
In view of what is coming, those verses take on a whole new meaning.
And this morning, before we move on in our study of Revelation,
I just want to make sure we grasp that reality and even celebrate it.
So THIS MORNING I just want us to look at a couple of verses
Out of the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 9:27-28 “And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”
The writer speaks of a reality
By which we move FROM JUDGMENT TO SALVATION.
Probably better stated as moving
From The Fear of Judgment to The Anticipation of Salvation.
Now, I’m hoping that many of you will still have at least some remembrance of our study of the book of Hebrews, but just to make sure we don’t misrepresent the text we do need a bit of context.
Hebrews 9 is the chapter where the writer of Hebrews is using
The Day of Atonement as sort of a parable by which to make his point.
• He talks about how the priest went behind an earthly veil to give a blood sacrifice to atone for sin, and how the people would have rejoiced when he returned successful.
• With that event as a backdrop he then talks about how Christ actually entered the heavenly Holy of Holies and took His own perfect blood as payment for our sin. And how we eagerly await His return as well.
He also emphasizes the point that since Christ accomplished His job so perfectly, He only needed to do it once, not many times.
And that is the analogy he is finishing up here.
That Christ so effectively satisfied God’s wrath in His one offering, We no longer live in fear of judgment,
But rather we now live in anticipation of salvation.
That is the context and the point in a nutshell, so let’s walk through it together and see if we can’t just observe some obvious truth in order to again gain a great appreciation for what Christ has done for us.
We can divide this text into 2 points.
#1 THE INEVITABLE JUDGMENT
Hebrews 9:27
The writer is using this statement as a benchmark sort of statement.
It is a fact that we should all be aware of, which he will use to make a new point.
But the information here is not new, in fact, it is common information.
“And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once”
And I think you certainly understand this.
It has been called “The Debt that All Men Pay”
It is a sentence that was rendered way back in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 3:17-19 “Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
And of course if you are familiar with the book of Genesis
You know that just two chapters later Moses gives us that glorious lineage of Adam and he reiterates that same phrase over and over again.
“…and he died…”
Sin came in and death came with it.
Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned”
Thanks to Adam we were born sinners by nature.
And thanks to that nature we soon became sinners by choice.
And death springs upon us all.
The writer of Ecclesiastes actually lamented this fate.
Ecclesiastes 9:2-3 “It is the same for all. There is one fate for the righteous and for the wicked; for the good, for the clean and for the unclean; for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner; as the swearer is, so is the one who is afraid to swear. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards they go to the dead.”
And passages like that should certainly brighten your day.
“it is appointed for men to die once”
It doesn’t matter if you drink whole milk or 2%
It doesn’t matter if you eat real butter or margarine
Death is appointed.
As one man put it, “Despite all of our nation’s medical research and technological advances, death remains our nation’s number one killer.”
Or as another, “Eat right, exercise daily, die anyway”
You can’t escape it.
And l suppose that might be a depressing thought,
But that ISN’T THE PART THAT SHOULD CONCERN YOU.
The second part of this verse is the part that should concern you; “and after this comes judgment,”
Death is NOT the end.
After death “comes judgment,”
Soon in the Revelation we will read about the Great White Throne Judgment.
Revelation 20:11-15 “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
We know that believers will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:10-15 “According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”
2 Corinthians 5:6-10 “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord — for we walk by faith, not by sight — we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”
We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but I will restate it again.
YOU CANNOT AND YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE JUDGMENT.
You can say, “Don’t judge me” all you want, but that won’t change a thing.
You will be judged.
It is appointed for men to die and then for men to be judged.
The One who created this world,
Will most certain require this world to answer to Him.
The righteous will then inherit eternal life
And the wicked will inherit eternal torment.
John 5:28-29 “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.”
Romans 2:9-11 “There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God.”
And in case you were cloudy regarding what that judgment will be like,
We’ve seen it unfolding in the book of the Revelation.
God is so angry that He is literally flogging sinners.
• Pelting them with pain and agony and hail stones.
• And all of those judgments are preliminary to their eternal torment in hell where
Jesus said, “the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”
Or as we read in Revelation 14
Revelation 14:9-11 “Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”
But as I said, none of that is new information.
Humanity is supposed to know all that by now.
Death and Judgment are facts of our existence.
There is an Inevitable Judgment
But next comes the good news that the writer wanted us to focus on
#2 THE AVAILABLE SALVATION
Hebrews 9:28
Now you will notice that verse 28 starts with the phrase “so Christ also”
The writer is using the analogy of death and judgment
To make a point about the work of Christ.
And here is that point.
• Just as death occurs once, so Christ also died once.
• Just as judgment follows our death, salvation follows Christ’s death
That is the picture the writer is painting.
But I want us to chew on the reality of it a minute.
“so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many,”
I really want us just to ponder this statement for a second.
THE FIRST THING we come to recognize is that Christ was “offered”
And this is worth understanding as well.
First we ask, WHO OFFERED HIM?
Certainly we are FAMILIAR WITH THE SINNERS who condemned Him to death.
Acts 3:13-15 “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him. “But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.”
Of course when we look a little deeper we realize that THE SOVEREIGN GOD of the universe was certainly at work there.
Acts 2:23 “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
But ultimately the writer of Hebrews wants you to know over and over that it was CHRIST WHO IN FACT OFFERED UP HIMSELF!
Hebrews 7:27 “[Jesus] does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.”
Hebrews 9:14 “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
Hebrews 10:12 “but [Jesus], having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD,”
It was in fact Jesus who “offered” Himself as a sacrifice to God.
John 10:17-18 “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
It was Christ who offered His own life as a sacrifice.
The next word we must grasp is the word “once”
If you remember our study of Hebrews you will remember that
THE WRITER MADE A VERY BIG DEAL OUT OF THIS REALITY.
Hebrews 10:11-14 “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”
This is another one of those areas where Catholicism has it so wrong.
• They keep Jesus on that cross (the crucifix)
• At the Catholic Mass the priest calls Jesus down again to offer His body and blood as a sacrifice for sin.
• That is why they claim that the cracker literally becomes the body and the wine literally becomes the blood. It is Jesus suffering again and again and again for your sin.
We learn through the Scriptures that
The death of Jesus was so sufficient that it only had to occur one time.
When Jesus died upon the cross He did not say, “1 down, millions to go”
He said, “It is finished!”
He offered Himself, and His offering was so acceptable
That He only had to do it once.
And His one death reached backward to the Garden of Eden
And forward all the way to the end of the age.
He was not just a willing sacrifice, but He was also a sufficient one.
“having been offered once”
And then we come to the next phrase which indicates exactly why He was offered. And that is “to bear the sins”
It is a noteworthy reminder to us that
IT IS SIN WHICH BRINGS ABOUT THE WRATH OF GOD.
And that WRATH is not just on sin,
But ALSO ON THE SINNERS themselves who participate in it.
For example:
Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil, A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers.”
The writer of Proverbs didn’t just say that God hates the sin,
The writer said that God hates the hands that do it…
Psalms 95:8-11 “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, “When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work. “For forty years I loathed that generation, And said they are a people who err in their heart, And they do not know My ways. “Therefore I swore in My anger, Truly they shall not enter into My rest.”
And of course that reality is clearly seen in the Revelation
Where God is not just ridding the world of sin,
But literally flogging the sinners who commit it.
The clear understanding then is that sinners have stored up for themselves an enormous amount of wrath and fury
Which God will one day pour out upon them.
It is a debt in fact so large that
Even after all the horrendous punishment of the days of the tribulation,
God will still cast those people into a lake of fire for all eternity.
In short, His fury is never satisfied on sinners.
• Even after God can relentlessly flog you on earth, He can then torment you for
all eternity and never reach a point where He decides you have suffered
enough.
It is simply an incomprehensible amount of wrath
Which God has toward sin and the sinners who commit it.
And that is what makes this statement in Hebrews so amazing.
That Christ came “to bear the sins”
1 Peter 2:24 “and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”
Isaiah 53:4-6 “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.”
This Christ willingly came and offered His own body
As a means of bearing sins.
He took upon Himself that which was not His own.
And in taking that sin He also took the wrath that came with it.
We read in Revelation 14 about THE FATE OF SINNERS
Revelation 14:10a “he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger…”
This was the cup Jesus prayed about in the garden.
This was the cup He was about to drink.
All of the floggings, all of the plagues, an eternal weight of wrath,
All poured out upon Him.
This was that moment of darkness which fell upon the cross.
• This was that moment when Christ cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
And from Isaiah we learn that the second sin came upon the Son of God,
He was TREATED as though He were just as much an ENEMY of God
As any sinner who had ever lived.
Isaiah 53:10a “But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief…”
He bore sin and the judgment that comes with it.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that the DEITY OF CHRIST is so important. For only an eternal Christ can bear an eternal wrath.
No finite human is capable of bearing all that He bore.
All of that wrath and judgment we have read about,
Jesus took as He hung upon the cross.
HE WAS A WILLING AND SUFFICIENT AND SUFFERING SACRIFICE.
And there is another phrase that you must see. “to bear the sins of MANY”
Please look at that word (before some of you want to shoot me)
I know it is common place to simply say that “Jesus died for everybody”
The popular mantra is to say that Jesus already died and paid the debt for your sin, so won’t you please now accept Him into your life since the debt has already been paid.
And that just simply isn’t true.
Jesus bore the sins of “many”, namely He bore the sins of the elect.
He bore the sins of the redeemed.
Isaiah 53:11-12 “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors.”
Matthew 20:28 “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Matthew 26:26-29 “While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. “But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”
Romans 5:19 “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”
And there are many others.
But the point I am making is that Christ did not pay the debt for all men.
He paid the debt for the redeemed.
As you are clearly seeing in the book of the Revelation,
Those who reject Christ will most certainly pay their own debt.
Why do I want you to see that?
I want you to understand that we are not proclaiming universalism here.
(that is what “The Shack” and so many others are portraying)
They are saying that when Christ died He paid the debt for all men everywhere, and if that is true than no one should go to hell.
But the fact is that Christ totally bore the sin and the wrath
That was aimed at the elect; at the redeemed.
A lost man, who has not yielded his life to Christ,
Has no right to partake in this Lord’s Supper
As though it has done anything for him.
Later the writer of Hebrews will say:
Hebrews 13:10 “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.”
What Christ did,
He did willingly, totally, and sufficiently for the redeemed.
He didn’t potentially pay the debt of all men,
He totally paid the debt for His children.
He finished it on the cross.
And now because of what He did,
All those who belong to Him can understand that
There is no longer any wrath pointed at them at all.
Romans 8:1 “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
To read those earlier verses again:
Romans 5:9 “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”
1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.”
1 Thessalonians 5:9 “For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,”
And I just want to make sure that you get that.
What we have recently studied in Revelation is some terrifying stuff.
Indeed, “it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God”
But for those in here who have yielded their lives to Christ,
That is something that you shall never experience,
For Christ already did on your behalf.
WHEN WE READ REVELATION,
We don’t read it with dread, we read it with anticipation.
And that is how this writer ends this verse.
“So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”
Just as the people anticipated the return of that High Priest from behind the veil, so we also anticipate the return of High Priest from heaven.
WE DON’T FEAR His coming as though we will be recipients of His wrath.
WE ANTICIPATE His coming because He has already paid our debt.
When He returns it won’t be in “reference to sin”
It will be only “for salvation…to chose who eagerly await Him.”
No longer do we fear death judgment…
We have Christ, who paid our debt,
And will one day return to take us home to be with Him.
And I just want to make sure we all get that
As we study such wrath in the Revelation.
Jesus drank that cup of wrath so we don’t have to.
The only cup we drink is this cup of the new covenant.
His was a cup of judgment, ours is a cup of forgiveness.
He drank down God’s fury, we drink in God’s mercy.
And after spending so much time seeing the terrible wrath of God,
I thought it only fitting to pause a week and just take a moment
To tell Jesus thank You that He saved me from such a horrific fate.
That is what this is for this morning.
• We come to this table to remember the body that bore our sin.
• We come to remember the blood that was shed as a payment.
• We come to remember the wrath that was endured.
• We come to remember the salvation that was accomplished.
And in our partaking we again confess our gratitude and our need.
And in this, I also want to offer to those in here who have not surrendered their lives to Christ a very real invitation.
Now, to be clear, there is no salvation in simply eating this food up here.
It’s just a cracker and it’s just grape juice.
You can buy it at the store.
But it is a symbol to us of the body and the blood of Jesus.
As I said a moment ago,
If you have not submitted your life to Christ, you have no right to eat from this altar, it is actually an act of hypocrisy for you to do so.
However, if you have never submitted your life to Christ,
But you also know you want to,
THEN LET THIS BE THE PLACE YOU START.
We are about to have a time of preparation.
During that time I would encourage you to cry out to Jesus.
Paul said it like this:
Romans 10:9 “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;”
This time of preparation can be the time when you cry out to Jesus
For forgiveness and righteousness.
And if you do that, then this Lord’s Supper will also be for you.
It will be a time for you to give thanks for what He has done.
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN REDEEMED,
This is most certainly a time of gratitude and thanksgiving
To the One who bore God’s wrath and paid our debt.
