[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the President of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Here is one now tonight I don't have to take every book of the every one of the New Testament epistles in order.
So tonight I'm skipping to the book of Hebrews for a specific reason.
This is this evening as the sun starts to go down, is the end of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It began yesterday.
I'm sure you know this, but the Jews reckon a day from sundown to sundown, instead of as we do from sunup to sundown. So they a day starts on the sundown of Tuesday and ends on sundown of Wednesday.
And this day is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
And it is the holiest of all Jewish holy days. It's the highest holy day of the calendar year. It is also the most ancient of all the Jewish feasts and holy days. It's established in the book of Leviticus. We're going to read about that in just a few moments.
And I just felt that as we came to this day of atonement to Yom Kippur that it was appropriate to skip to the Book of Hebrews. If you have your Bibles, you can take those and turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews and I'll just begin reading at first chapter one, verse one. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, being made so much better than the angels. And he hath, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
Put your hand on your Bible and let's pray together. Father, in the next few minutes we pray that your spirit will brush aside every barrier, every distraction, anything that will stand between us and the power of your word, as it is taken deep within us by the Holy Spirit.
Speak to us, O Lord, that when we leave Here tonight, we will leave with the deep sense that the message, the letter tonight was to us, each of us, to all of us, and to each of us personally.
We receive this by faith in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
We are not sure who wrote the Book of Hebrews because the Book of Hebrews doesn't tell us.
There are various theories. Some people suggest Apollos, he was known as a preacher, to be very fluent. He was. His language was very powerful. He was known to be fluent with scripture. So there is the possibility of that. Some have suggested Peter.
I think it is clear in my mind that it was the Apostle Paul.
It is very Pauline in its structure. It's like other letters that he wrote. It deals with a specific.
With a specific concept which was very precious to Paul. And I believe it is appalling letter. There's nothing in the letter itself that tells us. However, if you have a King James Bible, if you look at the title, it says the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews. But that isn't. That's not in the text itself.
There is a reference, a potential reference to this letter. In Peter's second letter, in 2 Peter 3:15, Peter mentions, he says, our brother Paul, as our brother Paul has written in his letter.
So there is the possibility that that is a direct reference in 2 Peter 3:15 to the book or the Letter of Hebrews.
What is the general purpose of the Book of Hebrews? The Book of Hebrews. The Book, you might say an epistle to the Jewish believers.
The concept is they are through perhaps the vicissitudes of life circumstances, trials and tribulations, or perhaps simply through pressure from their family and tradition, they are Jewish believers who are beginning to drift back or even to consider the possibility of returning to the laws and rituals and festivals of Judaism to become again Jews and leave back from their devotion to Jesus Christ.
So the whole letter is based on a given word or variations on that word, that word is better, or what you might call comparatives or superlatives of every kind. Better, more, wonderful, more, more glorious, higher, more, sufficient.
Also, then there are negative comparisons. Those things are less, those are not as good. So the whole book is based on comparatives.
Let me just give you an example of some of these.
In 1:5 through 2:18, Paul says, Jesus is better than the angels.
I'm coming back through these, but I just want to give them to you quickly. In chapter 3, verse 1 through 4 13, he says Jesus is better than Moses. In 414 through 7 28, Jesus is better than Aaron. The primary priest.
In 81 through 10 18, Jesus is a better covenant. In 91 12, Jesus is better than the sanctuary, meaning the temple or the tabernacle, if you will. In 9:13 through 10:18, Jesus is a better sacrifice.
So let's just think through these as we go back and go through them one at a time.
If you'll remember in the time of Jesus, just previous to the time of Paul the Apostle, that his life and ministry were before Peter and Paul really began their ministry.
They overlapped. But Jesus life came to an end around 30 A.D. 33 A.D. and then Paul and Peter. Their lives went on probably until the late 60s or early 70s.
In the time during the trial of Jesus and also during the trial of Paul the Apostle, there was a big debate between the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
The Sadducees did not really believe in the supernatural aspects of the Jewish faith. They didn't believe in the resurrection. They didn't really believe in a coming of Messiah, and they definitely did not believe in angels. The Pharisees believed in all these. The Pharisees were the enemy of Jesus because they didn't believe he was the Messiah, but they did believe in Messiah. They did believe in the resurrection of the dead, and they did believe in angels. So evidently Paul is writing to Jewish believers who, who are like himself. Paul was a Pharisee, if you remember, who are of the Pharisaical frame of mind. In other words, they believe in angels. And that is a primary part of their lives in the belief of angels. But Paul makes it clear.
Jesus is not simply a really good angel. He is infinitely better than the angels. We've got to keep this clear in our minds that Jesus is better than an angel. Angels were made by him. That's what we just read. Everything that is was made by him. Angels were made by him. He that makes is greater than he that is made. There is no comparison between the most powerful, illustrious, significant angels such as Michael or Lucifer or any of the others. There's no comparison between them and Jesus.
Jesus is better than the angels.
That was. That's how the letter starts.
But then Paul kicks it into overdrive.
Who is the primary, most important figure in all of all of Jewish writings? Law, Torah, everything. It's Moses. Moses wrote the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, all written by Moses. Through, through Moses, God gave the law. Through Moses came Torah through Moses. He is the primary, the primary spokesman and figure and personality of Judaism. And Paul makes it perfectly clear in chapter 3:1 through verse 14:13 of the fourth chapter, Jesus is better than Moses. I want to begin reading in chapter three, in verse one.
Wherefore, holy brethren, partaking of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house, for this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses.
In so much as he built his own house, Moses built the house of Judaism. He says, Jesus is faithful in the house that he built, and his glory is transcendent.
This would have been the most important thing he could say in the whole letter.
Jesus is greater than Moses, where there is no comparison. Moses with the great prophet, Moses with the Lawgiver. But there is no way that we can have any comparison between Moses and Jesus.
Then he says, as Moses was the giver of the Law and the writer of Torah, of the. Of the Pentateuch, as we call it, that he established the priesthood through his brother Aaron.
So Aaron became the primary priest, the first priest, and. And all of the Aaronic priesthood, all the priests that follow, the sons of Levi, all of them come through Aaron. And so therefore, every sacrifice, every thing that is done in all of the tabernacle, in the wilderness, in the temple when it's finally built, in the new temple, when it came in the second temple under Herod, all that, all of that, none of those sacrifices can be administered without a priest.
But those are all of the order of Aaron.
So when a new order comes, that order is abrogated. It's finished. So the order of Aaron is those priests who descend physically through DNA from Aaron. They are the priests, and every year a high priest.
But Paul says this is a new order.
Jesus is not just the new high priest of the order of Aaron. That order is over, that order finished.
Now we have a whole new order. And it's an order after the order of Melchizedek.
So Melchizedek appears only a couple of times in the Bible and is a very mysterious figure. First of all, he appears to Abraham in the book of Genesis, and he basically serves Abraham communion, and Abraham tithes to him. Paul makes a very strong point. Who is greater?
The one who tithes are the ones who receives the tithe. So he says Melchizedek was greater than Abraham. And Melchizedek has no mention of his birth, there's no mention of his death, there's no mention of where he came from. Remember, in Jewish writing, it's often as important what you are not told as it is what you are told.
So if every other important person in the Bible, you're told where they were born, who, who their father was, who his father was, who his father was, he begat him, he begat him. He begat him. He begat him and came to him. And then suddenly you come to this hugely important person and they don't tell you where he came from, they don't tell you his father, they don't tell you his grandfather, where he was born. They tell you nothing about his death, nothing about that. The assumption is that because you're not told that that's what's important.
The most important thing about Melchizedek is that there is no natural beginning.
There is no obvious physical ending. So his order is not like the order of Aaron, where every priest, every high priest, every year is replaced with a new high priest and they die and they go to heaven and they're gone.
This order has no beginning and no ending. It's a supernatural order of priests and that the order of Aaron is over. And now Jesus as our high priest, after the order of Melchizedek is greater. Not only greater than angels, greater than Moses, he is also greater than Aaron and therefore a whole new priesthood.
So think what he's building.
He is building this concept of the. Not only of the greatness of Jesus, but. But that those things that they might return and go back to, if Jesus is greater, they're less. If Jesus is more wonderful, they're less wonderful. So he's building the case. Why would you go back to something that has already been ended, that has no power, that is less? If Jesus is greater than Moses, why would you go back to Moses?
If Jesus is greater than Aaron, why would you go back to the priesthood?
Then he says, in fact, not only is Jesus better than Moses, he is better than the Abrahamic covenant, he is better than the Mosaic covenant. He is a better covenant. In him there is a whole new covenant. Our relationship with God, he says now, is no longer based on the Abrahamic covenant or the Mosaic covenant. Now we have a covenant in him. Jesus himself now becomes the covenant. Turn, if you will, to chapter eight, Hebrews, chapter eight.
Now, of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum he says, all right, I've been talking about all of that. Now. Now, here's the sum of it. We have such an high priest who is set on the right hand of the throne, of the majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle. Not that image. Not that. Not that first One that was just giving us an idea.
Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man.
God has built the tabernacle.
Moses built one. Okay, fine. It was fine. But it cannot possibly be compared to the tabernacle that God pitches. For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices. Wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer. For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law.
So if Jesus is not a priest after the law of Moses, because he is a priest in heaven, if he were on earth, then he'd have to follow the law, he says, who serve under the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle.
For he saith, that which thou make all things according to the pattern shewed thee in the mountain. Now pause a moment. What is he saying?
Moses was allowed to see the tabernacle in heaven.
So if he has seen the tabernacle in heaven and seen the eternal covenant, then he builds one on earth according to the pattern.
But the one that is patterned after the real tabernacle cannot be greater. The one that Moses would build on earth to look like it can't possibly be greater than the one it's patterned after.
Look at verse six. But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry by how much? Also he is the mediator of a better covenant which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second, he says, look, why would you go back to the tabernacle of Moses? Why would you go back to Moses? And why would you go back to the covenant of Moses when we have the primary tabernacle waiting for us in heaven, where Jesus is now seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, where he is our eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek, offering the eternal sacrifice of his eternal blood. Why would you go back to a pattern? Why would you go back to a duplicate? Why would you go backwards? There's no way you can compare the temple, even the temple. Forget the tabernacle in the wilderness.
There's no way you can even compare the temple in its most glorious moment to the temple in heaven that it's based on.
He says. Moses saw the real thing, but what he built was. It was patterned after it. It was just kind of something for people to look at so they could understand what it looked like in heaven. And then he says, God gave us certain promises through Moses, and the covenant was based on that. But he says, now you have better promises and therefore a better covenant.
Why would you go back to an old covenant when you have one that's better?
Now look at chapter nine, verse 13.
And this is critical.
I'll tell you what let's do. Let's begin with verse eight.
The Holy Ghost. This signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing, which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience, which stood only in meats and drinks and diverse washings and carnal ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation.
But Christ being come, an high priest of good things to come by the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, and that is to say, not of this building. Now he's going to deal with his sacrifices.
He's dealt with the priest with the tabernacle, the covenant, the law. Now he's going to deal with the sacrifices. One of the primary functions of the priest was to offer sacrifice.
But he says, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood. Jesus entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. Not annual redemption, not annual. You don't have to return every year for Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, Next year, the day of atonement, next year, the day of atonement. He says it's eternal. This redemption is eternal. For if the blood. Verse 13.
For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh.
Look at verse 14.
How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
There are 45 occurrences of comparatives in the book of Hebrews, more than any other book in the Bible.
Some are positive, as I said, as in better. Some are negative, as in less or worse. Better is used 13 times greater is used 4 times, more is used 4 times, superior is used 2 times.
There are others that are used once sharper, more excellent, more perfect. There are some negative Comparisons, lesser worse, 17 times better is used as an adverb. 15, 3 times it is used. He's used the word first.
All the more is used four times. First is used three times. Sooner is used twice.
Do you understand what he's saying? He's saying. How can I put this in a way that you'll understand?
Jesus was first. Jesus is last.
He's before Moses. He's after Moses. He's better than the Tabernacle. He's better than the Temple. He's a better priest. He's a better sacrifice. He's a better covenant. Those things are less. They're going backwards. They're not good.
They were a pattern. They were in the beginning. Now we have the best. Now we have the highest. Now we have the holiest. Now we have that which is perfect. Now we have a covenant that can sanctify us. Now we have a covenant that can save us. Why would we go backwards to that which is less?
The powerful message of the Book of Hebrews is simply this.
Jesus is better.
Now, not only is he better than those things, here's what we must ask ourselves. If you've got mail, if the Book of Hebrews is to you, not just to first century Jewish believers, you've got mail. What is Paul saying to you? The temptation for you is probably not to return to Moses. The temptation for you is probably not to go back to the tabernacle. What is the temptation for you? It is to elevate or allow anything or anyone to be elevated to the level of Jesus.
Jesus is not only better than Moses, better than the law, better than the Tabernacle, better sacrifice, better covenant. He is better than anything.
He's better than anyone.
He's better than any blessing he can bring in your life.
You cannot compare the blessings of God with God. He's better than any miracle that he could ever perform for you. He's better than anything he can do for you. In you, to you or through you. No matter. Anything you can think of. The greatest thing you could think of. Jesus is better. If you can ever just get that mindset. It will bring everything in this world into a sort of a sense of perspective.
The four of us, the grizzles. And Allison and I. Allison's with me tonight. We were talking about places we've seen, different things that we've seen.
And Joey was telling us about the grandeur and the beauty and the magnificence of the Grand Teton Mountains. He's telling about the Grand Canyon.
I didn't get a chance. Joey was talking. I didn't get a chance. But I wanted to tell him. You haven't seen anything. You've never. If you haven't been to Texas, where I was born. Those. I'm sure those things are fine, but they're not Texas.
Here's what I would say to you.
The greatest, most powerful, grandest, most beautiful, most magnificent sunset on the Grand Tetons cannot be compared with the worst day in heaven.
The most magnificent things that we will see. The greatest rivers, the highest waterfalls, the sparkling water, the beauty, the laughter of a child. Nothing compares to Jesus.
Nothing compares to Jesus. What can you say then? How does it work for us? In the most splendid moment of pleasure or blessing in your life, you must remind yourself, this is great, but Jesus is better.
This is wonderful, but Jesus is better.
In the worst moment of your life, when it just feels like everything is going wrong. That's how I began.
It's easy sometimes for us to say, yes, Jesus is better than the good stuff, but we must remind ourselves when the whole world is falling to pieces around us.
If this nation is invaded and we're at war and our homes are being destroyed, we can say, yes, but Jesus is better.
He's higher than this. He's holier than this. And he's not. He's not going to change. He's not going away. He's not going to be altered. The most powerful scripture in the world, in my. The most powerful scripture in the New Testament. In my view, apart from the Gospels, the most powerful epistle is the Book of Hebrews, the Book of. If you read nothing in your whole life but the Gospel of John and the Book of Hebrews, I believe you would have the clearest view of the. Of the truth of Christianity that could be written. I'm. I'm so enthralled with the Book of Hebrews, with the. The sense of grandeur and beauty and glory and power, the eternal priesthood of Jesus.
One of the problems with the priesthood, the priests would die.
They changed.
It's just like preachers. You finally get a preacher you can stand to listen to and he dies or moves.
You got to start over. Oh, I don't know if I like this new guy. Well, what's he going to be like? That kind of thing. That's the way it was with the. With the high priest. You make your way to Jerusalem for the. For Yom Kippur, for the Day of Atonement. And there's a high priest who's going to go into the Holy of Holies, offer first a sacrifice for himself, because he also is a sinner.
He's got to offer a sacrifice for himself and for his family. And then for Israel. And you look at him. There's something about him that just.
I just don't like this guy. He's not like the high priest we had last year.
And it changes every year. And you go home and you do your best, but you come to the end of the year and you realize, I've sinned. And you got to go back to Jerusalem and every year back to Jerusalem and back for the Day of Atonement and back to Yom Kippur. Every day. Every year, the Day of Atonement. Trying to get. And Paul says, that's all over.
That's all finished. This is the day. This is the day.
Every day, all day. The eternal sacrifice of Christ administered through his perfect and eternal priesthood. It's what Paul says. He lays down an eternal sacrifice himself, not goats and bulls and the ashes of a red heifer. He offers his own self as a sacrifice, eternal outside of time, so that he was. He is, he always will be. I am the perfect, full, sufficient sacrifice offered once and for all.
This is very, very important.
I was in Jerusalem one time. I've been there so many times. And every time I go, I always meet people from the States or from some other country that I know. It's. It's wonderful. Everybody comes to Jerusalem. I was in Jerusalem and I saw some college kids from a certain Christian college, and they were really wired up. It's pretty easy to get college kids wired up. And they had been to the Temple Institute. And I've been there. I understand the attraction of it where they're making the golden laver and they're making the instruments for a new temple and all that. And these kids said, oh, we've been there. We saw all this. He said, won't it be exciting when we could go to a temple right here in Jerusalem and see sacrifice just like it was in the day of. In the time of Moses. Won't they that be wonderful? And I said, no, no, that will not be wonderful. No.
Why would we go back if the temple were built of gold? It's not the temple that's in heaven.
If the sacrifices are perfectly administered according to Torah, if everything was done according to the law, is still a shadow of something. What which is perfect already in heaven.
The full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for our sins and for the sins of the whole world. If you've got mail today, listen, here's the message.
Jesus is better.
He's better. He's done it all.
Well, I want to bring this to a conclusion kind of in the way That I began by talking about Yom Kippur.
So Mishnah says. The Mishnah says that on Yom Kippur in synagogues you should read Leviticus chapter 16.
It's a significant passage of Scripture and it relates to the book of Hebrews. So let's go to Leviticus. If you have your Bible still, go to Leviticus chapter 16.
I'm going to begin reading at verse 7, and we're going to read a lengthy passage, so just stay with me.
And this is the description from Moses of how to celebrate Yom Kippur, how to celebrate the day of atonement. And this passage should be read according to the Mishnah, should be read in a synagogue on the day of atonement, which was today.
And he that is Aaron, the priest, whoever the priest is, and in Aaron, every priest to come, he shall take two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat.
And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord. So there are two goats, they cast lots.
One lot is to be made a sacrifice, the other lot is to be a scapegoat. I'm going to explain that to you in just a moment.
But the goat on which the lot fell to be verse 10 shall be presented alive before the Lord to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. And Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin offering which is for himself, because remember, Aaron also is a sinner, and shall make an atonement for himself and for his house, and shall kill the bullock and the sin offering which is for himself. And he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil. And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony that he die not.
Remember, Moses, Aaron is just a man. If he goes into the holy of holies and doesn't do it right, he would die just like his sons died.
And he shall take of the blood of the bullock and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy Seat eastward before the mercy seat shall be the sprinkle of blood with his finger. 7 times 7 is the number for perfection, perfect sacrifice of blood on the mercy seat. Do you understand?
Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people.
And bring his blood within the veil and do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat before the mercy seat. And he shall make an atonement Kippur.
And he shall make an atonement for the holy place.
Because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel and because of their transgressions in all their sins.
So shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.
Then shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation when he goeth in to make an atonement in the holy place. Until he come out and have made an atonement for himself and for his household and for all the congregation of Israel. And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the Lord and make an atonement for it. And shall take the blood of the bullock and the blood of the goat and put it on the horns of the altar round about. And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon him with his finger seven times and cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place and the tabernacle of the congregation and and the altar, he shall now bring the live goat. Remember I told you there were two goats.
One is sacrificed, one is kept alive. Now he's going to deal with the live goat. And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat.
That's in English. Shall lay his hands upon the head of the live goat. In Hebrew it says he shall press heavily.
He's to put both his hands on and press heavily. He's pushing down so that this goat will feel the weight of the sin of the people.
And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over him the iniquities of the children of Israel and their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat. And shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him all, all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited. And he shall let go of the goat in the wilderness. Later on, the practice became. They were afraid the goat would come back.
So later on, the practice developed that they would throw the goat off a cliff.
But either way, the concept is this.
Do you see what he's saying?
On the day of atonement, he would bring a bullock and make the sacrifice, pour the blood on the mercy seat. Then he would bring these two goats. The first goat he would sacrifice, kill it and pour the blood out.
The second goat. Then he presses his hands on that goat and confesses the sin of the whole nation, all the people of Israel, to pass through him onto that goat.
And then they banish the goat away. A scapegoat. The goat bears their sin away. And there would be rejoicing. The goat is leaving, never to come back, never to bring their sin back again.
Paul says, everything in that is Jesus.
Everything in it was all pointing you to Jesus.
Jesus is Aaron. He's our high priest. After the order of Melchizedek, only Jesus can go into the holy of holies in sin heaven. What did he say? I go now to prepare a place for you. And if I prepare a place for you, will I not come back and get you? That where I am, you may be also?
No high priest after the order of Aaron could say that.
Never, never could have said, I'm going into the holy of holies now, and I'm going to clean it up and put the blood down. And then I'll come back out and we'll all go into.
That would have been horrifying.
Only the high priest and only on Yom Kippur. But Jesus says, I'm going to take you in with me.
That where I am, you shall be. How? Because of two things. One is not only is he the covenant. Not only is he the priest, he now becomes both goats.
He is both goats. He is. He is the sacrificial blood that's poured on the altar. And then he is the goat that bears our sin.
It says in the New Testament, him who knew no sin became sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ.
Him who knew no sin became sin on the cross. Jesus became our scapegoat.
Imagine the horror of this. I want you to think about this.
Just think about the sin in this room.
Just think about our sins.
If all of this sin were gathered somehow into some kind of a cosmic bundle and fastened into the body of a human being at one moment, imagine what that would feel like. The horror of it. Especially when. What if that human being had never experienced sin in his life?
Now all the sin that we've ever committed would be fastened into his body.
Now think, what if it was all the sin in the whole world, all the sin that has ever been committed and all the sin that will ever be committed, Actual, real sins gathered somehow into some kind of transcendent cosmic bundle. And on the cross it enters in Jesus, becomes our scapegoat, and the hand of God presses on him heavily.
Imagine that. And that's when Jesus cried out, eli, eli lama, Shabbat.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
He was banished outside.
A way to carry our sins away.
Jesus is better is not just some kind of casual statement. He is the ground and foundation and hope of our forgiveness, our redemption, our reconciliation. He is better than Moses. He's better than the priesthood of Aaron. He's better than the tabernacle. He's better than a thousand years, a thousand, thousand years of the blood of bulls and goats. He's better than Yom Kippur. He's better than the scapegoat. Jesus is all the answer to all the sin that you can ever commit.
Jesus is better.
He's better is the wonderful news of the Book of Hebrews.
Have you sinned?
Have you sinned?
Jesus is better.
Have you lived a righteous life?
Oh, Jesus is better.
Have you known somebody that you thought, wow, he must be a saint of God. Mother Teresa, boy, she must be a saint of God. Jesus is better.
The greatest preacher, the greatest priest, the finest orator, the greatest writer. Paul the Apostle. Wow, he must be great. Jesus is better.
St. Peter himself.
Jesus is better.
Your sainted grandmother that you can't imagine she ever had a dirty thought in her life.
A, she probably did, and B, Jesus is better.
It's the most wonderful truth of all the epistles.
Jesus is better. A better priest, a better sacrifice, a better scapegoat, a better covenant, and the only way in we don't ever have to celebrate Yom Kippur again.
Jesus is the day of atonement.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this evening together. I thank you for this precious church.
Bless Pastor Joy as he preaches elsewhere. We thank you for this time together, and we pray that this would take root in our being, God deep within.
We thank you for it. In the wonderful name Jesus, who is better.
Amen. Amen and amen.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on
[email protected] or visit his website, Dr.markrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
