The Cross Our Purgatory

The Cross Our Purgatory

“The Cross Our Purgatory”
(Hebrews 1:3)
Series: Captivated by Christ (Hebrews)

Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD

Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson

Amen! Please be seated. Love to see us fellowshipping with one another. I’d like to say thank you to all the folks who came out yesterday morning to shovel snow and ice. We appreciate your doing this so we could come this morning to worship Jesus.

Before we turn to the Word of God, I’d like to share some encouraging words about how we ended last year. Our final giving for last year totaled over 1.6 million dollars and due to your generosity and the stewardship of our committees and staff we ended the year with a surplus of more than 18 thousand dollars. Amen. And that doesn’t include the more than 36 thousand dollars saved throughout the year for funding of major repairs.

Also thank you for giving nearly $25,000 to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering for international missions. Our church consistently ranks in the top churches of Kentucky in giving to missional work. Praise God.

And one more thing: You’ll remember our “40 by Fall” baptism challenge. We ended the year with 32 baptisms. So while we didn’t quite reach that mark, we had twice as many baptisms as the previous year and three times as many as the year before. So we praise God for 32 baptisms and more in the queue.

Speaking of baptism, after the service today I will be in the Response Room right through these doors over here in the office area. There is a sign: Response Room. If you’d like to be baptized, or have questions about baptism, I’d like to give you helpful book and answer any questions you may have. Or, if you’d like to join the church, I’ve got some helpful resources for you, in the Response Room over here right after worship this morning.

In a little while we’ll be observing the Lord’s Supper together, remembering Christ by eating bread and drinking the cup, symbols of His body and blood. The Lord’s Supper is a family meal. It’s for brothers and sisters of the Lord’s family. It’s for Christians. If you’re visiting and an active member of a church fo like faith, we are family and invite you to observe the Supper with us. If you are not a Christian, your greatest need is not the Supper, but the Savior Himself. We invite you to turn to Jesus Christ and trust Him as Savior and Lord.

Before we observe the Supper we are going to look at a passage in the Book of Hebrews, chapter 1. So if you have your Bibles this morning, turn to the first chapter of the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament. The latter part of the New Testament. After the Gospels, after Acts, keep moving right. Just before the Book of James. Hebrews chapter 1.

Last week we began our new series of messages, verse-by-verse through the Book of Hebrews. The best way to teach the Bible is to teach people the Bible. So we’re allowing the Bible to do the talking, merely exposing what is there before us in God’s Word. Our series is entitled “Captivated by Christ.” One of the key verses in Hebrews is Hebrews 12:2 where the writer encourages us to “look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,” and when we look to Jesus, focus-in on Him, gaze upon Him, marveling who He is and what He has done, we are captivated by Him and live the lives we always wanted to live, a life of true joy, purpose, and meaning, a life centered upon the love of our lives, Jesus Christ.

Let’s review the first three verses of Chapter 1 this morning, and then we’ll settle-in on verse 3 as the main focus of our study today.

Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word. See how the writer acknowledges God’s having spoken to His creation in time past and how He has now spoken to His creation in a much fuller and final way, speaking to us through His Son:

1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
3 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 at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

Pray: Lord, as we have prayed before, help us to know Christ more fully, to see His glory more clearly, that we may serve Him more faithfully, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Someone asks you a question—later today, tomorrow, this week—someone asks: “Who is Jesus?” How would you respond? Maybe they know you are a Christian and they want to know specifically what that means. “Who is Christ?” they ask. And “How does He differ from other religious figures?” It’s a good question. How would you answer it?

This passage right here, this opening text of Scripture, encapsulates the person and work of Jesus Christ, who Jesus is and what He has done. Christology, the study of Christ, is largely an examination of what the Bible teaches us about His person and work, who He is and what He did. So you could turn to Hebrews chapter 1 and read these first few verses and have before you a helpfully succinct summary of truth about the Son of God.

In verse 1 the writer declares that the God of creation is a God who speaks: “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past…” God speaks to His creation. Now, He doesn’t have to, but He does! He does not have to reveal Himself, disclose Himself, to us. Have you ever thought of that? The Psalmist was right to say in Psalm 115:3, “Our God is in heaven; He does as He pleases.” He doesn’t have to speak to us, but He does. He “bothers Himself” with us, lowly creatures!

In the words of Carl F.H. Henry, God “forfeits His own personal privacy” to make Himself known to His human creation (as cited by RA Mohler, Hebrews). He forfeits His personal privacy! He doesn’t have to. He owes us nothing. But He does. He speaks!

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets…” The writer is talking here about the Old Testament and the way God spoke in the Old Testament. And in reaching back to the Old Testament the writer is affirming its use, the use of the Old Testament. Christians are not to abandon the Old Testament. It teaches us so much about how God has spoken in time past. The God who speaks today, the God of the New Testament is the same God as the God of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament still functions authoritatively for Christians. It it still relevant and applicable. While much of the ceremonial law of the Israelites is no longer binding, the Old Testament is still very much relevant, authoritative, and applicable. The New Testament is largely the fulfillment of the Old Testament, but both are critical to our study and meditation.

So “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets—verse 2 now—has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds,”

We’ll not restate all we learned last week but we recognized that the Son of God is the Agent of creation, there with the Father before the world began, co-equal to the Father, and the One who created all things and sustains all things, upholding all things by the word of His power. As John says in the opening of His Gospel: “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made (John 1:2-3)” and Paul in Colossians 1:17, “He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.”

So we come to this verse now, verse 3, where we camp for the remainder of our time, allowing the verse to guide us in our preparing to observe the Lord’s Supper. This verse helps us to prepare for the Supper by presenting to us—even more pointedly now—the person and work of Jesus Christ, who He is, and what He did for us.

Let’s look at these two divisions in a simple two-point outline. First, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper rightly when we celebrate Who He is, who the Son of God really is.

1) We Celebrate Who He Is

The writer gives us these two phrases in verse 3: “who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,” We’ve already treated that next phrase, His “upholding all things by the word of His power,” and so we focus-in again on these two phrases—see them! Be captivated by them!—“who being the brightness of His glory (God the Father’s glory) and the express image of His person.”
The Lord’s Supper helps us recall Who the Son is: “the brightness of His glory.” We noted that Jesus Christ radiates the Father the same way sunshine or sunbeams radiate the sun. A sun beam comprises the sun itself. In the same way, the Son of God is the radiance of the Father’s glory. He is God.

This is even more clearly portrayed in the next phrase: “the express image of His person.” The Son of God is the express image of God the Father. Or, the Son of God is the exact imprint of God the Father. God the Son is an exact duplication of the Father’s nature. The Son shares the same nature as the Father, the same essence of the Father. Whatever power the Father has, the Son has. Whatever attributes the Father has, the Son has. Whatever abilities the Father has, these abilities exist also in the Son.

No human son can say this about his relationship to his human father. People look at my two boys and some say the one is a “spitting image” of me, some say the other. Some say Matthew is a “chip off the old block” and some say Nicholas. In either case, neither one is an exact duplicate of my nature.

But the Son is an exact duplicate of the Father’s nature and being. He is the fullest revelation precisely because He shares the very nature and being of God. This is why we can say there is no prophet who shares this nature of God as a fuller revelation of God—no Prophet Joseph Smith, no Prophet Mohammed, no anyone. Only the Son is the “express image, exact imprint” of the Father.

And as the Father has appointed the Son “heir of all things,” so we approach God the Son and it as as though we approach God the Father. Talking to the Son is as talking to the Father. Looking to the Son is as looking to the Father. Being captivated by the Son is to be captivated by God Himself.

This is why we evangelicals are not captivated by material icons of God: crosses, statues, and pictures. In the words of one theologian: “There is no need to hang icons on a wall when you believe in the One who was [hanged] on a cross (R. Albert Mohler).”

This takes us very naturally to our second point and final point. We celebrate Who Christ is and we celebrate what Christ did. Who He is—His person—and what He did—His work.

2) We Celebrate What He Did

The last part of verse 3 contains the only mention in this text of what Christ specifically did for us during His earthly ministry. It is the only mention of what He did because it is the most important thing that He did. The phrase in the last part of the verse is:

“when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”

Jesus Christ died for sins, made purification for sins. The New King James says, “when He had by Himself purged our sins,” That phrase, “by Himself” does not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts and that’s why it is omitted from more contemporary translations, but scholars agree that this meaning is conveyed nonetheless by the words. It is Christ alone who makes atonement, provides cleansing, offers Himself as a sacrifice for sin, dying on the cross as our substitute.

This is why Christ came. This is the essence of His work. The Son of God came into this world for this primary purpose. Yes, His earthly ministry of healing is important. Yes, His teaching is important. Yes, His fulfilling the law of God is important. Yes, the resurrection is important. Yes, the ascension is important. But Christ’s main work, His main mission, was His coming to us to die.

The writer goes on to heighten our awareness of this truth in the second chapter, Hebrews 2:9, where he writes of Jesus who, “was made (better, positioned) a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.”

This is why Christ came, not to start a movement, not merely to teach ethics. He came to die. He came to “by Himself purge our sins.” He came to do this for us because we need it. We need purification. Without the removal of the guilt and pollution of sin we stand before God on the Day of Judgment with all of our sin unforgiven.

The writer warns later in Hebrews 9:27, “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,” We will face the judgment of God for our sin. We must have our sins purified, cleansed, forgiven. And Christ came to do just that.

This, the pow’r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.

Years ago when I was in Boy Scouts it was my turn to take home all the dirty pots and pans from our recent camping trip. I was supposed to take them home and clean them and bring them back to the Scout troop. So I took those pots and pans and eating utensils—an aluminum mess kit—home and put them in the corner of my bedroom, and just sort of forgot about them.

Days turned into weeks and weeks into a couple months before my mother asked me what all that stuff was stacked in the corner. When I told her, the first thing she did was have a coronary. And the second thing she did was drag all those stained aluminum pots and pans and utensils into the kitchen for me to wash. Some of those stains were so cooked onto the aluminum that no cleaning agent was capable of getting rid of them. There were stains within and stains without. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but there was no restoring that aluminum to its previous luster. Fortunately when I took that mess kit back to the Scout Troop, no one said anything, but those ingrained stains remained as a silent testimony to my sin of negligence.

As fallen human beings we have stains of sin all over us, stains within and stains without. And despite all the scrubbing we may try to do to remove them, there is no cleaning agent that will do the trick. We may try to improve our religious performance through moral reform, vowing to be a better person, trying a little harder, but the stain of sin remains.

The only cleaning agent that will purify us, removing all of our guilt and the pollution of sin is the blood of Jesus Christ. As the hymn-writer puts it in classic question-answer format: “What shall wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

“when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”

He sat down! It implies completion. He is finished.

You read the Old Testament and you read about the levitical priesthood of the Israelites and you are reading types and shadows of the work of Christ.

In the Old Testament, when a person had sinned, you remember what was done? The priest would enter into the tabernacle or the temple and offer an animal sacrifice on the altar, sprinkling its blood to symbolize purification of sin. But of course, as Hebrews 10:4 says, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.” Animal sacrifice could not cleanse the conscience and remove the guilt and corruption of sin. Those animal sacrifices were merely a foreshadowing of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

And the writer of Hebrews goes on to say especially in chapters 9 and 10 that this is why the priest in the Old Testament had to enter the tabernacle or temple repeatedly. He had to continue his work. It was never finished because sin was never completely atoned through animal sacrifice. There was no chair for the High Priest in the temple to sit upon because his work was never complete.

Yet, the writer here in verse 3 says that after Christ “by Himself purged our sins, (He) sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” He sat down!

His work on the cross is finished. He said so Himself in John 19:30, “It is finished.” This was the fulfillment of the Father’s plan. The first words of the Lord Jesus recorded in the Bible, the first words at the age of 12 Jesus says: “I must be about my Father’s business” (Luke 2:49). His last recorded words: “It is finished.”

He sat down! There is only one reference in all the Bible to Christ’s standing in heaven, that in Acts 7 where Stephen, who is being killed by stoning, looks up and sees Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father, standing as though to welcome Stephen to the glories of his eternal home. But Christ is seated on the throne because His work is finished.

The writer here even uses a verb tense to stress the completion of Christ’s work. The verbal phrase “sat down” is in the aorist tense, a tense denoting the finality of something, the completion of something, the “once-for-allness” of something. The point is that Christ’s death on the cross is an act that does not need to be supplemented or repeated.

The Son of God is the fullest and final revelation from God. And His work on the cross is the fullest and final work securing our redemption, removing the stain of sin. It does not need to be supplemented by anything. And it does not need to be repeated. His death is a once-for-all death to purge us of sin. The cross is our purgatory. The cross is the place where our sins have been fully and finally cleansed.

But this is not automatic cleansing. We must believe. We must place our faith in Jesus Christ, being captivated by Christ as our only Savior. “When He had by Himself purged our sins.” He is not just a Savior, or the best Savior, He is the only Savior.

God has spoken in these last days by His Son. Has He spoken to you? The writer goes on to warn in Hebrews 3:15, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts…” Repent from your sin and turn to Christ. Receive Christ as Lord.

Apart from Christ, our sins remain upon us. If we are not clothed in His righteousness, then we are not properly dressed at the judgment. Like Adam and Eve we stand before God trying to cover up the shame of our sin and the stain of our sin with fig leaves of our own making—call it religion, morality, or self effort—fig leaves that leave us in our sin and shame. No, we need a new covering. We need the righteousness of Christ.

Christ by Himself purged our sins. If we receive Christ as Lord and Savior then we have the righteousness of Christ—His perfection, His performance—credited to our account. His righteousness covering our sin!

And to paraphrase the ever joyful Puritan Richard Sibbes: “There is more righteousness in Christ than there is sin in us.” Amen! Thanks be to God! So however many times I may sin, there is always more righteousness in Christ, more righteousness in Christ than sin in us.

It is this truth that makes our observance of the Lord’s Supper a celebration.

Eating the bread and drinking the cup remind us that Jesus Christ by Himself purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. We deliberately and intentionally remember these things about our Lord as we partake of the elements of bread and juice. We remember that Jesus lived a life of righteousness, died a substitutionary death in payment for our sins, and conquered death by rising from the grave. We remember these things and we proclaim these things during the supper.

I’m going to pray in a moment and then we’re going to worship in song, a hymn that proclaims the power of the cross. While our deacons serve you the bread and the cup, we’ll sing about Jesus and His power—how Christ became sin for us, took the blame, bore the wrath, that we may stand forgiven at the cross.

After we sing and everyone is served, I’ll lead you in taking the elements, eating the bread, drinking the cup. Let’s pray.

Pray: “Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ, the one who by himself purged our sins, and sat down at Your right hand. We thank you that because of Christ’s work on the cross we can be forgiven of our sin and live in a way that draws people closer to You. Forgive us where we have failed you this week, this day, this very morning. We repent. We love you and we thank you for the power of Christ. In His name we pray, amen.”

While the deacons serve you, remain seated, and sing this great hymn together:

1
“Oh, to see the dawn
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.

CHORUS:
This, the pow’r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.

2
Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Ev’ry bitter thought,
Ev’ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

CHORUS:
This, the pow’r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.

3
Now the daylight flees;
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
”Finished!” the vict’ry cry.

CHORUS:
This, the pow’r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.

“The Bible says that on the same night in which Jesus was betrayed, that He took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me” (1 Corinthians 11:23-24).

[Eat bread]

“Then the Bible says that in the same manner, Jesus also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:25-26).

[Drink cup]

Amen. Stand now and let’s sing the final verse: “Oh to see my name…”

4

Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death;
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

FINAL CHORUS:
This, the pow’r of the cross:
Son of God—slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.”

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