Text: Hebrews 9:15–28
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
A Religion of Blood Sacrifice
This morning as we gather to open the Bible, we gather to worship the one, true, and Living God—God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
Worship is one of those inescapable concepts, something that you can’t not do. Humanity was made to be a worshiping thing, and even in our fall, as Romans 1 makes clear, even when we exchange the truth of God for a lie, we worship. We worship the creature rather than the Creator, yes, but we still worship.
The scientific name for man is homo sapiens, which means “wise man” in Latin. It has been said before, and I agree, that a more accurate classification would have been homo adorans, which means “worshiping man.”
We can’t help but exalt something above ourselves and make that thing the center of gravity in our pursuit of truth, goodness, beauty, transcendence.
Some of the ways in which man in his fallenness has worshiped are shocking to us. In the Aztec religion in the 15th century, upwards of one in five of the children of the Mexica peoples were killed each year. Estimates reach as high as 250,000 people, or one percent of the population, have been theorized.
One particularly brutal god that the Mexica people worshiped, Huitzilopochtli, was the god of warfare who was believed to carry with him a fire breathing serpent to burn down villages. This god was worshiped through human sacrifice.
The sacrifice would be placed on a stone, and the priest would cut through the victim’s abdomen with a stone knife. The priest would then tear out the beating heart of the victim and hold it up to the sky before pushing the body down the sides of the temple.
Each man in this culture was considered a part of the army, but only a man who provided a victim for sacrifice could become a full-fledged warrior, so you can imagine what it would be like to war against this people.
We are worshiping things, and worship is never a safe activity. Maybe that description of Aztec religious worship shocks you—and it should.
But this morning, the author of Hebrews would remind us of one of those shocking truths of the faith, one that is easy to try to hide somewhere in the back cupboards of our theology, to tuck out of sight in a dark corner somewhere we can safely ignore it: Christianity is a religion of blood sacrifice.
One of the most dangerous cancers at work in the visible church today is the cancer of saccharine pleasantness, the virulent infection of sanitized niceness—this kind of not-a-religion-but-a-relationship desacralizing of the Christian faith.
One of my favorite words is the word “deracinated,” and it basically means “uprooted,” or “severed from the root of a thing.” There is a kind of Christianity being attempted today that is an attempt at Christianity, deracinated. Christianity, severed from its nourishing root. What is that root?
That root is the root of sin and guilt and judgment and wrath meets blood and suffering and atoning sacrifice. It’s the root where the crushing eternal guilt of a lawless humanity and the crushing weight of divine wrath for it—a furious, holy God—runs headlong into the unimaginable grace of divine self-sacrifice through blood payment.
It is our baptism by blood, where the nations are sprinkled with the blood of the Son of God, cleansed white with red blood. As we often sing, “There is a fountain, filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”
The Christian faith is a faith of the cross, where the love of God moved the Father to crush the Son of God for the sins of the people of God. Christianity is a religion of blood sacrifice. That is what we will see in our text this morning, Hebrews 9:15–28. Let’s take it up together and read, then we’ll get to work. This is the Word of the Living God:
“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 that redeems them from the transgressions committed 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. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
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 holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, 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 places every year with 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 ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes 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.”
-Hebrews 9:15–28
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word. May he write it on our hearts by his Spirit. Pray with me, if you would.
One Point, Two Sections
The way this portion of Hebrews works is very straightforward. In verse 15, we have a sentence that essentially summarizes the point that he aims to make in the rest of the chapter, a point that he has been building, really, since chapter 2.
What is that point? That Jesus Christ is greater than all of his rivals and forerunners, and that part of why he is greater is that he has, by his death, mediated a New Covenant, one that is radically superior to the Old Covenant, as our great, heavenly High Priest. He writes,
“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 that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.”
-Hebrews 9:15
Following that summary sentence, there are two sections that work together to prove this point:
In verses 16–23, we learn why he had to die to mediate this superior New Covenant. In the process, we’ll see how the shedding of blood and bloody baptisms in the Old Covenant relates to this once-for-all shedding of blood and bloody baptism of the New Covenant.
Then in verses 24–28, we see how this New Covenant age means the emphatic ending of the previous aeons, launching God’s work of new creation—not at the Second Coming that is still future to where we stand now, but right there in the first century.
A Religion of Blood Sacrifice
So let’s walk through that first section, from verse 15 through verse 23, and see why Christianity is a faith built on blood sacrifice. Look again at verse 15,
“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 that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
Now I want to point out something obvious, and that is that this section is probably pretty confusing at first glance. I give you permission to do that when you read the Bible, to sometimes just scratch your head and say, “Huh?” That’s ok. That’s the first step to getting it, humbly admitting that we don’t.
So this section can be confusing at first take, but once you follow the flow of the argument, it’s actually a very simple flow of thought.
Here in verse 15, he gives us the main point: Jesus is the mediator of a New Covenant, and he did this so that those who are called may receive something that God has apparently promised: An eternal inheritance.
That inheritance is nothing less than the inheritance of everything. Think about it like this: Jesus is the firstborn of heaven. As such, he gets the farm; he gets everything. And what this New Covenant does is to unite us to that firstborn Son, and so we get the same inheritance he does, since our identity is now united to his.
This is why Jesus can say audacious things like he does in the Sermon on the Mount, that “The meek will inherit the earth.” God is, through this New Covenant, giving us everything. He’s giving us the Creator himself, and he’s giving us creation itself.
But there is an obstacle in the way of this, and it is clear in verse 15 what it is: Sin. Specifically, he’s talking in this passage about all of the sins of the Jewish people under the first covenant.
So he takes up the question in this section that is the natural question to ask: How does Jesus mediate this new covenant?
Again, it’s right there in verse 15. He does it through a death. They may receive this inheritance, he says, “…since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.” And we already know what that deal is, right? It’s the death of Christ, the High Priest himself! Remember last week, verse 12 tells us that Jesus died this “by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” Ours is a faith of blood sacrifice.
The death of Christ mediates an eternal redemption, and this redemption secures and eternal inheritance, and all of it happens because of the blood sacrifice of the Son of God. Let’s keep going, and he’ll unfold the argument some more—connecting the Old Covenant blood sacrifices with the New Covenant blood sacrifice. Verse 16,
“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.”
-Hebrew 9:16–17
Here’s the big point of this part: We get our New Covenant inheritance through the death of Christ, just as a son received the inheritance assigned him in the last will and testament of his father when his father died. It’s something of a play on words, since the words translated “will” and “covenant” in our text are the same Greek word: diatheke.
Now look at at verse 18,
“Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
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.”
-Hebrews 9:18–23
Again, an easy portion of the text to struggle with understanding, but once you remember the context of the whole chapter, including what we saw last week with the Tabernacle and furnishings of the Tabernacle, this is fairly straightforward.
The Old Covenant was a shadow-covenant, full of shadow-priests playing out shadow-worship in a shadow-Tabernacle—and all of it was an earthly copy of the heavenly realities Jesus would accomplish.
So the priests and tent and sacrifices weren’t effective as ends in themselves, but they were effective as signs to point to Jesus and his effective work.
So here in verses 18–23, the author unfolds yet another part of the shadow-worship and what it pointed to. In the shadow-covenant of the Old Covenant, he says, almost everything was sprinkled with blood and purified with blood. Why? He makes it clear, because “…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”
New Creation Begun
Look at verse 24, and we’ll step into the second section of the text and follow deeper into this line of thought,
“For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, 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 places every year with 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 ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes 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.”
-Hebrews 9:15–28
So the earthly Tabernacle and its furnishings were sprinkled with blood in order to show that the real thing, the heavenly tabernacle and the work of Jesus as our great High Priest in heaven—that his effective ministry, which was not a shadow-ministry but the real thing, would be cleansed by blood.
Whose blood? The blood of the guilty sinners, who deserved death and Hell? No! Grace upon grace, by his own blood!
Heres’ the point: Our faith is a faith of blood sacrifice, but unlike the Aztecs ripping out hearts to make the Sun come up the next day; unlike modern Americans chopping up unborn babies and vacuuming them out of their mother’s womb to worship the gods of free sex and human autonomy… unlike all of those forms of blood sacrifice, this was an effective sacrifice. This sacrifice actually works.
The Inevitability of Blood Sacrifice
Now, before we move on into the second section, I’d like to point something out that maybe you’re wrestling with, and that is the inevitability of blood sacrifice. Maybe you’ve thought, or maybe you’ve heard someone say something like, “Why blood sacrifice? That’s so barbaric. If God is love, why blood?”
Blood sacrifice is inevitable. It’s another inescapable concept, one of those not-whether-but-which sort of issues. The question isn’t whether of not you’ll have blood spilled your worldview, it’s just whose blood and why.
If you invent a God who requires no blood to be shed, then you have an impotent god, a god of manifest injustice. With this little god, you don’t have a bloodless utopia, but rather a bloodbath of victims who get no justice.
This impotent god looks at the blood of the Jews that ran like rivers out of Auschwitz and says, “I will require no blood for yours.” This impotent god looks at the blood of the schoolchildren shot to death at Newtown and says, “I will require no blood for yours.”
Or you maybe you just say, “There is no God. I will recognize no gods.” But atheism doesn’t get rid of gods; gods are yet another inescapable concept.
All that happens instead is that human autonomy gets elevated to godhood—result? Rivers of blood. Every person becomes his or her own god, and sacrifices must be made. This is what abortion is, fundamentally: A blood sacrifice made on the altar of human autonomy; a restoration of the throne of the demon Baals and Molechs of the ancients.
Or nature gets elevated to godhood—result? You find that nature is red in tooth and claw. Bloodbath. It’s all just natural selection. You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals. Right?
I like how Pastor Douglas Wilson puts it, “The only way to avoid blood sacrifice in religion is to traffic in wishful thinking.”
But our God isn’t like that. He is a just God, requiring blood for the spilling of blood from Genesis on. And requiring that the just wages for sin—which, by the way, is death—be rendered justly. But he is also a merciful God, who doesn’t stay safe and far off, but throws himself in front of the oncoming train.
So ours is a faith of blood sacrifice, yes, but of an effective one and a voluntary one, one where God takes on flesh and sheds his own blood for us.
The Nature of This Blood
One final thing to see in this text, one final thing to see that this once-for-all blood sacrifice of Christ does: This sacrifice emphatically ended the age of the Old Covenant, launching the beginnings of the new creation right there in the first century. Look at the second half of verse 26,
But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes 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.”
-Hebrews 9:26b–28
What this bloody sacrifice, this cleansing baptism of blood does is profound. It is the beginning of the end for the old cosmos, for the old heavens and old earth and old ages, and it begins a whole new-creational age.
“…he appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” When was that? Is the end of the old ages somewhere ahead for us, Refuge? No. It was there in the first century, on the cross.
On the cross, the old creation, in bondage to death, seemed victorious, but it was actually through that death that the reign of death and the age of death was brought to an emphatic close. This death, this blood, began something that is irreversible and inexorable.
As Paul writes, this seed has fallen to the ground and it has died, and it has germinated and sprung back up, and history from that moment of germination onward is the growing up of that seed. It is in the nature of the seed to spring up and multiply and cover the earth in salvation—it can’t not do that.
Here’s what I’m trying to say: God sent Jesus to save the world by this blood—to set it apart as his dwelling place. “You shall call his name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
God sent Jesus to save the world, and listen: He will. He will, and he will inexorably. The salvation of the cosmos is built into the very nature of his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement in the heavens.
Jesus’s blood sprinkled in the holy places saves the world the way that falling in the ocean gets you wet—it’s in the very nature of the thing. The rest of history is nothing more than the working out of the ramifications of this death, this sprinkled blood and bought world.
After Adam sinned and we fell, the rest of human history until the cross was the working out of the nature of that fall—in other words, it was the working out of death into every corner.
After Jesus’ blood was shed, the rest of human history into eternity is the working out of the nature of that shed blood—in other words, it is the working out of life into every corner. Here it is, from the Apostle Paul in Colossians 1:
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
-Colossians 1:15–20
Is he your High Priest? Is he your Advocate? Have you come to him in faith? Have you repented of your sin and hidden in his saving shadow? Do you have Christ?
If not, come now and don’t delay. He is reconciling to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by blood of his cross—meaning his blood will either have peace by condemning you as an arrogant idolater who refused his grace, or his blood will have peace by sprinkling you clean.
Because make no mistake: Just as surely it was in the nature of his shed blood to save, it is in the nature of your story that it was appointed once for you to die, and then judgment. May his blood-judgment pardon you, so that his just judgment need not require your blood.