In this message from Hebrews 9:11-14, Rick Sutherland picks up where a previous lesson left off, building on the contrast between the Old Covenant's earthly tabernacle system and the superior new covenant established by Christ. Rick frames the entire book of Hebrews around a single, urgent question drawn from John MacArthur: how do we get access to God? Under the Mosaic covenant, access was restricted — limited to one priest, one day a year, through a thick veil, with sacrifices that had to be repeated endlessly because they could never truly cleanse the conscience or transform the heart. Everything in that system was a shadow pointing forward to something greater.

That something greater is Christ — the perfect, unblemished high priest who entered not an earthly tent made with human hands, but the very presence of God in heaven itself, offering not the blood of goats and calves, but his own blood, securing an eternal redemption. Rick walks through the passage systematically — the who, what, where, when, how, and why — showing that Christ's priestly work transcends the limitations of time, space, and sin that confined the Levitical system. His blood functions simultaneously as payment for our sin and as the credential of his completed priestly work.

The pastoral urgency of the message lands squarely in verse 14: Christ entered the holy place to purify our conscience from dead works so that we might serve the living God. Rick draws on John Piper and D.A. Carson to drive home the point that no amount of religious performance, self-effort, or ritualism can silence a guilty conscience — only the blood of Christ can do that. When the accuser rises up, the answer is not a better track record. The answer is the once-for-all sacrifice of the one who declared, "It is finished."

Good morning, church family. Our text for this morning is Hebrews in chapter 9, verses 11 through 14.

I'll be teaching out of the ESV this morning. Hebrews 9, 11, 14. Our text. These are the words of God.

"But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" - Hebrews 9:11-14

Let's pray over that. God, thank you for our time together this morning. Gathered as saints, gathered in praise, gathered under your words by your spirit. Now take these words, give them new life and new meaning, new application to equip us and to strengthen us to walk out our coming days this week more like Christ, to be brighter light into the places you have us. And for these next minutes, will you still our thoughts and free us in any other burdens or things of life that are tugging at us so that we can sit under your words and be made more like Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

So it's been a month. We took a month off and had four lessons in wisdom. And now we return to Hebrews. And before that break, the kind of divider was we started in chapter nine, got part of the way through, and then took our break.

So I'm going to go back, take a couple minutes of the beginning beginning and just remind us of what Don started us off in, in the beginning of chapter nine and do a recap so you can see where we're picking up and moving forward, because there was a clear dividing line of where we stopped last time. And Don's lesson explored the earthly tabernacle in the Old Testament system, which we've. We've been doing all throughout Hebrews and it explicitly pointed to how these were temporary shadows pointing to something coming that would fulfill what this earlier covenant of law stood for. And so he started off by showing us the specific limitations of the first covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant of law. It was conditional and it required obedience that sinful humans just could not live up to.

And to dwell with his People God created, designed a tabernacle, a temporary handcrafted structure made from earthly materials. And then, while that was sacred, the rituals and the external regulations that God gave, things like washings, physical offerings, were only ever designed to temporarily cover sin. And they could never do what needed to be done, which was to cleanse our conscience and permanently transform our hearts.

So then Don showed us how in the tabernacle furniture itself, there were shadows and types of Christ and what was to come. He talked about the holy place with the golden lampstand, the table of showbread, which was Jesus as light and Jesus as bread. He talked about the holy of holies, which housed the ark. And inside the ark there was the law, the manna, Aaron's budding rod. All of these represented Christ's fulfillment of law and provision and the resurrection life that was to come. We looked at the mercy seat in the veil and how the mercy seat had to be sprinkled with blood on the day of atonement, pointing to how Christ's blood ultimately would be the propitiation that brought our justification. And he talked about a thick veil that was stretched between these places and the veil, restricted access. The presence of God on earth was restricted by this thick veil, signaling that there was a way into the true sanctuary, into the presence of God. But it wasn't fully opened under the old system.

And then he finished out, returning to our constant theme of Hebrews that threads its way through every lesson. That's the superiority of the new covenant in Christ's sacrifice. Because under the covenant of law, the old system, everything that was required was repetitive. Year after year, day after day, sacrifice after sacrifice, all temporally pointing to the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

And when he died, when Christ died, we see in Scripture. And Don taught us how the veil was torn. Access was granted to all believers. And today Christ is in heaven, serving as our high priest in the heavenly sanctuary, interceding. And his sacrifice cleanses our conscience. It transforms our hearts through faith. And that's where he stopped.

And there's a line right there in the chapter very clearly between 10 and 11, because the first 10 verses point backward toward the covenant of law, just like much of this letter does. And now in verse 11, what was talked about in those first 10 verses is going to be compared to the new covenant. And this passage clearly lays out the powerful theme of Hebrews, which is, but here, this is how Christ and the new covenant are superior.

And that's what we're picking up in, in verse 11. But before we do. I wanted to rephrase this by something I found in Reading MacArthur last week. We've said over and over that the central theme of Hebrews is the superiority of Christ. That's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. But when you hear that, does your mind automatically go to but superior to what? Yes, he is superior. Superior to what? He's superior to what? The Jews knew what had been their way of life and what they had lived under for hundreds and hundreds of years. And John MacArthur puts it this way.

"Now, to the author of Hebrews, the most important truth is a simple truth. He distills Hebrews down to access to God. What's being talked about in this book is how to get to God and the preacher. The author uses the terms access to God, salvation to the uttermost, and perfection. All three of those used repeatedly are synonymous terms having to do with being able to enter into the presence of God. And he shows that such access to God, or such perfection, if you will, or such salvation to the uttermost is impossible except through Christ. He shows to the Jew how all of that old economy, the old priesthood, the old sacrifices, the old covenant, none of those could bring men to God. They could only take us men so far. But they were never intended to bring uttermost salvation or full access to God. And full access to God according to the new covenant that we find in the New Testament, and according to what the Holy Spirit is inspired in the book of Hebrews is by Jesus Christ." - John MacArthur

Because Christ himself said in John, no man comes unto the Father except what by me. By me. Access. And that is the exact message of this book.

If you're of a certain age, and I don't know what the dividing line is, I just know from my educational experience, you will remember that at one point, for some reason we were taught to diagram sentences in English class, right? Took all these words, you made it look like an algebraic equation. I don't know if kids still do that, but I did realize this week that had to have been a teaching tool and not a practical tool, because I've been in professional life for 35 years and never one time have I needed to look for a number two pencil and a piece of paper to break down a sentence to save a business meeting or something else I was working on. But when I was looking at this text and I was beginning to prepare, I was reading this text over and over. It has all these clauses, all these themes, it has something I had to remind myself of. It has a positives in it. And in trying to put them in the correct order. I realized that I might need to dust off that fifth grade grammar class that's housed somewhere in my neocortex and try to apply what I remember to this passage.

Have mercy, you grammar commanders. Because I probably didn't do it perfectly. But here's what I came up with. Take a look at this. And there was some minor reliance on online tools when my memory failed me. But this is what this passage breaks down into. And if you start off at the top, most importantly, it starts off with he entered. Christ, he entered. And then underneath that we have all these adverbs, adverbial phrases, positives, parentheticals, participles, prepositional phrases, dependent temporal clauses. I had to look that one up. I had no clue on that one. But that's what our passage breaks down into.

So when I got done with that, I looked at that and I thought, yeah, how am I going to make an outline out of that? And I was trying to construct that into a lesson for today, and I realized that I could take that and I could combine it with the foundation of my day to day occupation, or at least what you guys think my job is based upon. Based on what you've learned from Matlock, Perry Mason, and Monk.

So this morning we're going to break our passage down into the who, what, where, when, how, and the why of the text. And we start off, most importantly, number one, with who entered, and very simply, Christ. And in order for all those dependent clauses and statements to be true, Christ had to enter. And to enter he had to be worthy as a sacrifice to enter by his blood, and to apply his blood for us in intercession, he had to be qualified under the law that God had given. Let's look, see what God says about that. Deuteronomy 17. 1.

"You shall not make a sacrifice to the Lord your God, an ox or a sheep, in which is a blemish. Any defect whatsoever for a defective sacrifice is an abomination to the Lord your God." - Deuteronomy 17:1

And for what for us? What is the biggest defect for us? Sin. Right, sin. It's the defect we cannot get around. The law makes clear what sin is to us so that we can clearly identify and see our defects and our impurities.

And then for us, we seek God's atonement for our blemishes. But Christ as perfect sacrifice was without defect. 1 Peter 2 says this,

"For to this, you or us, we've all been called, because Christ suffered for us, and he gave us an example so that we might follow in his steps, Christ committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten. He. He continued entrusting himself to him who Judges justly. Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds we have been healed." - 1 Peter 2

First, John 3 says,

"Everyone who makes a practice of sinning practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. And you know that Christ appeared in order to take away sins in Him There is no sin." - 1 John 3

Second Corinthians 5,

"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." - 2 Corinthians 5

So first, Christ entered because he was the perfect sacrifice. He was the one under the law who could become sacrifice. Secondly, when, when did Christ appear? This might be the statement in the text that's generated the most theological debate. And we could meet later and work through several cups of coffee talking about the different theological perspectives about the timing of his appearance and when that started, when that happened. I hold to, and I'll be teaching this morning, what I consider to be the most orthodox and historical perspective on that.

But when we use the term appearance referenced in this text, don't confuse that with incarnation. All right? This text is a specific usage of the word, because incarnation is absolutely a historical event. Christ appeared on earth. We read about it in the Bible, and He was seen before and after crucifixion. And so we are discussing the word appearance as used in our text. And how is it used? He appeared as high priest. Right? He appeared as high priest.

And so Christ appeared in that office. When he left earth, he ascended back to heaven, and he returned to the heavenly places as both king and priest. And the ascension was to Mark the end of what the Father had sent the Son into time and space to accomplish. And he returned and appeared to begin the intercessory work of the priestly office of Christ, presenting His own shed blood as our eternal sacrifice and securing the redemption of the elect. Third, what did he enter?

What holy places did he enter? And think about the Levitical system that's being superseded the Old Covenant. Levitical priests entered an actual place on earth. It was a room in a tent or a temple. And it was entered by fallen men entering into a room created from fallen material. And these priests entered into the symbolic presence of God.

And their entering in the holy place was limited to just one time a year. And it was based, predicated upon rituals and Symbolic objects, all of which pointed forward, right, all of which highlighted its temporality.

But Jesus in our text entered the unveiled and unlimited presence of God and remains appearing there on our behalf. And instead of waiting to see if that one time a year sacrifice was accepted by God to be repeated over and over, Jesus brought the perfect sacrifice that had been decreed by God. There was no question this had been decreed by the Father. He accomplished, he returned, and he entered the very real presence and not a symbolic one.

Fourth, where did he appear?

Unlike the Levitical system, Jesus did not appear before God's symbolic presence in an earthly place within space. He appears before God in heaven itself. And this is very important. This is not just a theological point because remember, a comparison is being made, covenant to covenant, new perfect covenant to the covenant being replaced. His appearance is before God in heaven itself. And his priesthood operates outside of the created realm. Get this. It's not constrained by moral limitations, sin, and it's not constrained by physical limitations, time and space.

Most of you, most of us have had a chance, maybe backing up into the spring, but to take a trip, to have a vacation this summer. Think about where you went, what you did, a favorite memory. And for most of us, whether it was a trip or an ice cream shop at the park, what do we have to memorialize this? If you pull out your phone, you got pictures, right? Most of us have pictures.

I can remember the hubaloo of trying to get 36 of us in a family photo on the front porch of a VRBO rental this summer. But we got the picture, right. My mom has that photographs. They help us to remember. Think about this.

God's throne room is not something that can be photographed. It's not something where photographer could stand or camera could operate.

And I don't just say that to try to dig into the deep metaphysical part of this theological point. Look at our text. What does our text say? It emphasizes it's not of this creation, right? Those are the words in our text. It's not of this creation because it's another reminder that the office of Christ, his priestly office, transcends the realities that we are confined to in this material order. And the reason it's making that point is to describe his superior office in the way that he makes all earthly temples and tabernacles and religious rituals obsolete. And Mark Keon says it this way. He's like,

"The author's emphasis on Christ's superiority isn't abstract theology. I love this. It's pastoral urgency." - Mark Keon

That's the reason it matters. The essential message is that now that Christ has come, Israel's traditions, the Old Covenant, what they had put their hope in, has been superseded and fulfilled in Christ, and it is in him alone that salvation, forgiveness, sanctification and redemption can be found. And what is the point of Hebrews, the message? There is no turning back now that we have this knowledge, now that we have been called to this new covenant, there is no turning back.

The readers must not desert Jesus and place their trust back in Judaism, as there is no hope in this system now that Christ has come.

Fifth, how did he enter?

This was preached. This was given as a letter, as a sermon, and preached primarily and originally to a Jewish audience. And this next part was extraordinarily significant because when the preacher spoke those words in verse 12, what did all of their minds say? When they heard that, what did their minds say and what did they hear? Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur. When they heard that, they're like, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. We're talking about the Day of Atonement. It's hard for us to relate because we don't have anything remotely like that in our faith tradition. It's very obvious.

If you look today, we're going to take the Lord's Supper together. We do baptisms together as ordinances that God has given us in the New Covenant. And David and Jay and other people who serve in the church put a lot of effort and to get ready for communion or baptisms. But there's nothing that we do. We can't understand what Yom Kippur was like, what the Day of Atonement was like.

The Day of atonement was 25 ritualistic steps that culminated with the nation waiting, standing around and waiting to see if the offering, if all the steps that leading up to it, entering into the holy of holies, if the offering of the High Priest was going to be accepted to appease God, or if the priest was going to be consumed by fire, struck down by the hand of God. We can't relate. The Day of Atonement happened once a year. The High priest approached the Mercy seat where God's symbolic presence dwelt on earth. You can read all about it.

These steps that are extracted, you can read this in Leviticus 16. And it started. It had to be followed, followed in a very specific order. This was given, given to Aaron, passed down and was followed.

The priest bathed and then dressed. Even his garments were described, prescribed by God. There were multiple sacrifices leading up to even being able to go into the holy of holies. They were both by the congregation, the nation, the priests, and the high priest. And it moved forward in a very specific way, ritualistically precise steps, one at a time.

And the high priest very notably had to be first making a sacrifice to atone for his own sins. That had to be done before he could proceed to offer atonement for the sins of the people. And I know how sinful and wicked my own heart is. And you can think of your own hearts. Can you imagine the burden of making sure that you had confessed and atoned for a year's worth of sin, a year's worth of missing the Mark?

There were things like the priests had to cast lots over certain animals and then kill one, release one. Don taught us about taking coal and incense into the inner space, so the incense, both in fragrance and in smoke, could cloud the mercy seat, cloud further the presence of the Lord. And that singular most holy day was the most solemn act of atonement for a year's worth of sin by a whole nation.

And at the end of it, in that system, if God was appeased and the high priest survived the encounter with God's presence and walked out to finish the steps to wind down the day of atonement, immediately the clock started ticking because next year Yom Kippur was coming again, and the whole thing had to be repeated again.

But Christ's entry into the holy place, not made of this created realm, shows us the shadows, but it also shows us the distinct and decisive differences that highlight God's plan in abolishing the temporal and replacing it with something eternally effective. And that is through the work and sacrifice of our great high priest. Because Christ's offering and his work bridged bridged the created material world that that we live in and are constrained to in the heavenly realm beyond the created. His work bridged that his sacrifice was offered and made here on a cross that had been made by Roman hands. But his sacrifice was presented in heaven in a place not made by human hands and not of this creation.

And I love this statement in that his blood, his shed blood functions at the same time as both payment and credential payment for us, credential of who he is as high priest. And he shed his blood to atone for us. And that same shed blood is the proof that the work is finished and that he has entered and begun his office as priest. And when John in his Gospel says, here is Jesus, he is the way, he's the way through the opened curtain, he is the way to what used to separate us from God. He is, as John MacArthur puts it, access to God.

Sixth, why did he enter?

Why? We don't have to look very far this week in our text for our application, because the text explicitly gives us the application of why did Christ enter as priest on our behalf? It says it right in the text to secure an eternal redemption and to purify our conscience from dead works so that we can serve the living God. Listen to this quote by Piper. This was given 12 years ago for context, but he says

"So here we are in this modern age of science, of space travel, of email, heart transplants, instant replay, beepers and 911. And yet our problem is fundamentally the same as it's always been. Our consciences condemn us and make us feel unacceptable to God. We are alienated from God. We don't feel good enough to come to Him. And no matter how distorted our consciences are, that much is true. It's true we are not good enough to come to Him. We can cut ourselves, we can throw our children into some sacred river, we can give a million dollars to United Way, we can serve in a soup kitchen over thanksgiving or any more of a hundred forms of penance and self injury, and the result is always the same. The stain remains and death is terrifying." - John Piper

We know that our conscience is defiled, but not with external things like touching a corpse, a dirty diaper, or a piece of pork. Because Jesus says in Scripture that it's what comes out of us, Mark 7 that defiles us and not what goes in.

It's because we're defiled by attitudes like pride, self pity, bitterness, lust, envy, jealousy, covetousness, apathy and fear. That's what defiles us. And verse 14 says that these are dead works. They have no spiritual life in them. They don't come from regenerated new life. They come from death. And what do these works lead to? Just death. They are works that lead to death. And that's what makes us feel hopeless in our consciences.

Under the covenant of law, the Mosaic covenant, the people of Israel practiced and observed rituals of purification that were intended only to address outward cleanliness and make the people ceremoniously clean, to give them a chance to worship God. These weren't things that they made up to be clear. These were things that God gave to Israel as a system. But he intentionally decreed and gave them a system that was fundamentally limited. It was limited by God itself in its temporality and its efficacy. And the reason was to point to Christ because our sin, my sin, our sin, nature, require, demand more than external ritualism.

But yet isn't that what our hearts constantly want to retreat to? We know it from Scripture, we know it in our head. And yet I am insistent on wanting to retreat constantly to external ritualism. I want to find my hope in my own dead ritualistic works instead of preaching the gospel to myself every day and looking to the once for all sacrifice of Christ that cleanses me at the heart level, that purifies my conscience instead of just rinsing off the surface with a few good ritualistic works, the great high priest entered the holy place of heaven to provide what the covenant of law never could. And that's the cleansing of the deepest part of who you are and where we operate, our conscience, our knowledge of truth.

And it's his sacrifice that can purify my conscience of dead works and purify me of self reliance and self idolatry.

In Hebrews as we're being preached to, as we read this, we're being taught that our hearts are aware that we have offended God's code and we fall short of his expectations. And how do we respond to that? Do we retreat into self idolatry and religious religiosity?

Remember, in addition to that, we also have an accuser who every day wants to remind you, remind me of my failures, my falling short, and then in that tempt me to sprint toward a self centered solution.

But Christ's perfect sacrifice is here to combat guilt at its source. My heart, my conscience, his presented work transforms my inner man by allowing me to rest, to know and to rest in the hope in the remedy that the Father gave through the Son by the Spirit are passages decidedly trinitarian, all of which are things that were not possible under the covenant of law that only pointed forward. And it's the transforming and cleansing work of Christ that can free our hearts from guilt and self reliance. And what does our text say? It can turn us loose. It can free us to worship God with a cleared conscience.

There was a famous theologian, and you're going to recognize his name when I tell you in a minute. But there was a famous theologian who left his house early to go to the best seminary of his day. When he got there and began his studies, instead of finding truth and finding Christ, he found religion. He became so consumed with obeying and obedience to religious rules, without realizing it, he drowned in pride.

In one of his letters he wrote, he went so far, comparing himself to others, to say that based on this moral code, I am sinless I am irreproachable because how I obey. Religion and his pursuit of legalism led him to relentlessly judge and attack Christ followers, and in that to completely lose focus of the object of his faith.

One day, through an absolute miracle, his eyes were finally opened to who Christ was. And when his eyes were open to that truth, the lie that he had been putting his confidence in was exposed and he began to refer to his acts as garbage and publicly declared himself to be the greatest sinner of his day.

But through that Revelation of who Christ was, God transformed his heart from self idolatry to kingdom service. And he later wrote this,

"abandoning the impossible effort to manufacture my own goodness through religious performance and instead receiving the unconditional worth that God freely gives to those who trust in Christ." - Paul

And that, of course, is a modern rewrite of Philippians 3:9,

"that I might gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, that depends on faith." - Philippians 3:9

That theologian, of course, is Paul, the Apostle Paul. And if it happened to him, it is happening to us, whether we recognize it or not.

We all routinely lose focus on the object of our faith, turn our eyes from the Savior and turn our eyes to self. But in God's mercy, in God's mercy. The outcome is not determined by how hard we try.

The outcome has been determined by the one who declared that the work is finished.

Watch this clip and see how DA Carson states what I just stated.

"Picture 2 Jews by the name of Smith and Brown, remarkably Jewish names, The day before the first Passover, having a little discussion in the land of Goshen. And Smith says to Brown, boy, are you a little nervous about what's going to happen tonight. Brown says, well, God told us what to do through his servant Moses. You don't have to be nervous. Haven't you slaughtered the lamb and daubed the two doorposts with blood? Put blood on the lintel? Haven't you done that? You're all ready and packed to go. You're going to eat the whole Passover meal with your family. Of course I've done that. I'm not stupid. But it's still pretty scary when you think of all the things that have happened around here recently. You know, flies and river turning to blood and it's pretty awful. And now there's a threat of the firstborn being killed. You know, it's all right for you. You got three sons. I've only got one And I love my Charlie. And the angel of death is passing through tonight. You know, I know what God says and I put the blood there, but it's pretty scary. I'll be glad when this night is over. And the other one responds, bring it on. I trust the promises of God. That night, the angel of death swept through the land which one lost his son? And the answer, of course, is neither. Because death doesn't pass over them on the ground of the intensity or the clarity of the faith exercised, but on the ground of the blood of the lamb. That's what silences the accuser. The blood silences the accuser of the brothers. As he accuses us before God, he silences our consciences when he accuses us directly. How many times do we writhe in agony asking if God can ever love us enough, if God can ever care for us enough, after we've done such stupid sins, sinful rebellious things after being Christians for 40 years, what are you going to say? Well, you know, God, I tried hard. You know, I did. I did my best. It was. It was a bad moment. No, no, no, no. I have no other argument. I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me. We overcome him by the blood of the Lamb. There is the ground of all human assurance before God. There is the ground of our faith. Not guaranteeing intensity of faith, so fickle are we. It's not the intensity of our faith, but the object of our faith that saves. They overcome him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb." - D.A. Carson

So to echo that and to close this morning above, I shared a quote with Piper and this is the end of the quote and it's a fitting end for us today. In this text, the only answer in this modern age, as in every other age, is the blood of Christ in application this week, when your conscience rises up and condemns you, where will you turn?

Let's all turn to Hebrews 9:14, which gives us the answer. We turn to Christ. We turn to the blood of Christ. We turn to the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give us relief in life and give us peace in death.

Jesus, will you continue by your kindness to make clear to us we have been freed from temporal ineffective solutions. We've been freed from the need to ever rely on self.

We have an answer and a hope in the once for all perfect sacrifice of Christ.

God, your design is to deliver us from our guilty conscience. Your design is for our heart to rest in the work of Christ. Your design is for us to have access to you and to your promises through Jesus. And may we claim that and rest in that. In the name of Christ, amen.

Sermons

The 5 W’s and an H - Hebrews 9:11-14 - August 2, 2026 - Rick Sutherland