Hebrews Lesson 157 April 30, 2009
NKJ John 17:17 "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.
Okay, we've seen that in Hebrews 9 (and also in Hebrews 10) that this is one of the finest and most in-depth chapters in the Scriptures to define the work of Christ on the cross - taking those Old Testament types (those divinely designated symbols) in the Day of Atonement, the feast day, the sacrifices, the Ark of the Covenant, in the various offerings - the guilt offering, the thanksgiving offerings, the meal offering, burnt offerings all those different offerings. This all comes together in the person and work of Christ. So that ties it all together.
Now we've come to the end of chapter 9. We looked at that last time. So I just want to start there to pick up the thread and go over some things in the first couple of verses that I hit on last time; and then we will proceed on down through the chapter.
Hebrews 9:28 says:
NKJ Hebrews 9:28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.
That refers to the First Advent and to His work on the cross during the First Advent.
It goes on to say:
To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
He will appear a second time for salvation. So you have this contrast between the "once" in the first phrase and the "second" time in that second clause. The first clause contrasts to the second clause - First Advent versus a Second Advent. That has to do with His future second return which is related to glorification. Even though the church will have already been raptured and have their resurrected and rewarded bodies by that time – if this applies to the church, it could just be a general statement referring to the Second Coming. But, it incorporates all of that together in one summary statement that He will appear again and we will be glorified.
To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
I pointed out last time that this is the expected response of all believers. Whether they have it or not is another story. But, that is the expected response.
Now the key word that we see in 9:28 is that word "once." That is the Greek word hapax. It is related to a word that we will see again when we get down to verse 10. So look down the page to verse 10 and we read:
NKJ Hebrews 10:10 By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
That is a form of the word hapax. It's ephapax, and it emphasizes the sufficiency of that one time sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
We saw last time that this begins with an introductory preposition here houtos (an adverb rather) indicating "in this manner Christ also"
NKJ Hebrews 9:28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.
That word offering is one of two words that are used in this section at the beginning that are built off the same Greek root word. You have prosphero, and then you have the word anaphero. The root word there (phero) - that verb means to carry something from one place to another. The prepositional prefix there indicates – with anaphero, it indicates up or up to – to carry something up to someplace. Prosphero, the preposition pros indicates directionality and taking it to or towards something. So they're similar words, but the word prosphero is used for bringing an offering and anaphero has the idea of bringing that sacrifice up to the altar. So we have both words used here. Prosphero is used first - Christ because He had been offered – precedes the action.
NKJ Hebrews 9:28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
That's phase 3 glorification
Then we come into the next chapter, but you need read this without that chapter break because in the original it was just a flow in the thought of the writer. So, I'm going to read it that way.
NKJ Hebrews 9:28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
NKJ Hebrews 10:1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.
That first word that we find there shows that it is an explanation related to His work on the cross - that once-for-all sacrifice. Now it's going to explain why His sacrifice had to happen. So the focal point of this passage is on the superiority of Christ's sacrifice for two reasons. First all, because it's a true substitution; it is a true substitution. In the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings, they were animal sacrifices and an animal cannot stand in the place of man. A human being has to die for a human being. So the first thing that is being emphasized in this section is that with Jesus' offering with His sacrifice on the cross, there is a real substitution man-for-man so that the sin penalty can be paid for by His death on the cross.
The second thing that comes out in this section is that the human sacrifice had to be qualified as without sin. He had to be human. That's the first point. He had to be true humanity. So we have this emphasis all the way through this section on His body. That's emphasizing that He is a true human with a physical body. It wasn't just an apparition. The second thing is that He's qualified as being without sin. That's indicated by His attitude which is the reason for the quote from Psalm 40:5-6.
So we read here:
NKJ Hebrews 10:1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.
Now that's a lot of clauses and phrases piled up together. You get sort of confused when you track through it; but the main thought is that the Law can never make perfect those who draw near. That's what this is saying.
For the law can never make perfect
Or, bring to maturity.
those who approach.
It had a limitation. It could not bring true justification, and it cannot bring maturity.
So let's break it down a little bit.
NKJ Hebrews 10:1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come
That word shadow is the Greek word skia which refers to a shade or a shadow. It's not a technical word. It just refers to any kind of shadow that is formed when light comes against any particular object. So the shadow shows you a faint image of that which casts the shadow. But the ultimate reality is that which casts the shadow, not the shadow itself.
So the law is the shadow and it gives an outline or a hint about the nature of that which causes the shadow. That's the ultimate reality. So we see how the shadow is similar to a type and there is an ultimate reality and that's the antitype or that which casts the shadow.
NKJ Hebrews 10:1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come
…which focuses on the cross.
and not the very image of the things
Now that word for form is the word eikon. This is where we get the word for an icon. It goes back to this word, and it has to do with an image or a likeness or a reproduction. It was originally used in Classical Greek to refer to a painted image. It would refer to a statue. It would not refer to the original, but only to a painted image or reflection of the original.
The word is used 23 times in the New Testament. It is used to refer to man as the image of God. So we reflect something about God. As we mature as believers, Romans 8:29 says that we are conformed to the image of Christ. So again we are to reflect Christ's character. But, when it's used in a context like this where there's a contrast between the shadow and the eikon - in Koine Greek the word eikon no longer is used just to refer to that reflection, but to the original. So that's what it refers to here is the idea of the original. The law was a shadow, and it wasn't the original. It wasn't the prototype. The prototype is what is accomplished on the cross by Christ's death. The Law and the sacrifices and the feast days like the Day of Atonement simply were a pale reflection of what would take place on the cross. But, they were designed to foreshadow and to teach things about what Jesus would do on the cross.
So the writer is saying, "For the Law since it's only a shadow, only a pale reflection of the good things to come"… and it's not the original prototype of things…
can never
Stated very strongly.
with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.
…reference to the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement. Every year, Yom Kippur, you offer the same sacrifices again and again and again.. It's good enough for one year, but that's it. It doesn't go beyond that. So, it's not sufficient. It's limited. So the law keeps the same sacrifice going year after year; and it can never make perfect those who draw near.
Now these are the sacrifices that they offered. That's our word prosphero again. Here it's a present active indicative. It's a gnomic present indicating that this is speaking about an ongoing regular type of activity that would take place year after year after year after year.
But the main verb here is teleioo which means to make complete - make complete or to bring to completion or to maturity. It's not that idea of perfection. I'm not sure if the English word perfect at the time the King James translators were translating had that idea of completion or not. But, the word perfect in modern English has the connotation of being flawless or being without sin. We are never made perfect. There is no such doctrine as perfectionism from the Bible.
Now there were those coming out of a Wesleyan tradition (followers of John Wesley and Methodist theology) starting with Wesley and on through the 19th century who had a doctrine of perfectionism. They believed that Christians could reach a stage of being perfect. But they also have a low view of sin. That means they have a rather narrow view of sin. I mean if you only have 5 things that are sins, as long as you don't do those 5 things, then you don't sin. But if you don't include things like anger and irritation and fear and worry and anxiety as sins; then your sins are only the fearsome 5 or the terrible two - then you can pretty much be perfect and be without sin. There are people that are in certain denominations who swear that they haven't sinned in years.
"What about that? Are you real proud about that?" (I always wanted to ask somebody that." "Does that make you feel real proud?"
Okay, so the idea there of teleioo all through the Scripture this whole word group (We've talked about this before.) has the idea of bringing to completion or maturity. In the process of maturity we become what God wants us to be reflecting the image of Jesus Christ, the character of Christ. So the point that he is making is that these sacrifices are incapable of doing that.
Now it seems to me because of where we're going is that this may have more to do with positional sanctification than experiential sanctification. We'll get to that when we get down to verse 10.
Verse 2 states:
NKJ Hebrews 10:2 For
Word of contrast
then would they not have ceased to be offered?
In other words, wouldn't they have stopped doing this year after year after year if they actually brought about sanctification, if they actually brought about maturity, if they actually cleansed sin? So he draws the contrast.
For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.
Now this is an important verse to pay attention to, especially in terms of some of the words that are used here. In the beginning it starts off with the word epei which is a conjunction (a temporal conjunction) in the Greek, indicating when or after or because or in contrast to or otherwise. It has a range of meanings depending on the context. So it starts off – probably, otherwise indicating this contrast.
NKJ Hebrews 10:2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered?
Now that seems to be a little awkward way of expressing it in English; but actually it's not a bad translation. The main verb there is to cease which is the word pauo. This is the same word used over in that passage in 1 Corinthians 13 when Paul says that tongues will cease. It means just to stop, to come to a complete cessation of something. So he is asking the question:
NKJ Hebrews 10:2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered?
Then we have a second verb – that same word we have seen twice in this passage, prosphero meaning to offer or to bring an offering or a sacrifice to the altar. It's used in conjunction with the finite verb in order to complete the idea.
So he's saying, "Otherwise would they not have ceased or completely stopped bringing, offering these sacrifices because the worshippers…"
There we have the word, the verb actually latruo used as a participle. It's those who are coming to serve God through worship in the Temple.
because the worshipers, having once been cleansed,
When we see that word "once" we have that same word we've seen once before and that's the word hapax. It means one time. If you want to use your pen and circle it, you can go back to 9:28 where we have the word "Christ offered once" circle that. Then go down to verse 2 here and when you have the word "once" occur again, circle that again. Then you can circle it again down when you get to verse 10 and we have the last phrase "once for all." That's connecting the dots and tying the whole passage together emphasizing that once-for-all work that Christ did on the cross.
So the writer is saying:
NKJ Hebrews 10:2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.
Now what kind of cleansing is that? Is that experiential ongoing cleansing or is that experiential cleansing? Is that experiential or is that once-for-all positional? It's positional because it deals with entering into that positional relationship with Christ that our sins are forgiven.
Remember the four kinds of forgiveness we talked about.
- Judicial forgiveness occurred at the cross.
- Positional forgiveness occurs when you trust Christ as your Savior were identified with His death.
- Then we have experiential forgiveness when we confess our sins.
- Then relational forgiveness to one another when we are to forgive one another as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us.
So here we have the word cleansing used comparable to the second type of forgiveness which is positional forgiveness, positional cleansing, positional sanctification.
For the worshipers, once purified,
That initial positional act that occurs when we trust Christ as our Savior…
would have had no more consciousness of sins.
The consciousness there refers to that realization of personal guilt - not guilt feelings, but the realization that they have violated the standard of God.
NKJ Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
NKJ Hebrews 10:2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.
So he is drawing the contrast between the limitations of those Jewish offerings, the Old Testament offerings and the work that Christ does on the cross.
Then the next two verses are fairly simple to understand.
NKJ Hebrews 10:3 But in those sacrifices
That is the sacrifices of the Old Testament.
there is a reminder of sins every year.
The sacrifices on the Day of Atonement – year after year after year you just have to keep coming back and make those same sacrifices. So there is always a reminder that the problem (the sin problem) has not be finally, fully, sufficiently dealt with.
NKJ Hebrews 10:4 For
Explanation in verse 4.
it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.
… to remove sin. It's impossible. Here we have a Greek word aphaireo which means to detach something by force, to take it away, to remove it, to cut it off, or to cause a state or condition to cease. That's the idea.
It's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to bring it to cessation, to end it. That's the same idea as we had back in verse 2 with pauo. (For then would they not have ceased?) So aphaireo here has that idea of bringing it to a cessation.
The blood of bulls and goats can't bring it to a cessation; they cannot take away sins.
Now we come to interesting rather interesting. Beginning in verse 5 and verse 6, we have an extended quotation from the Old Testament from Psalm 40:6-8. So in 10:5-6, they quote these verses from the Old Testament. This is the only place that I know of in the New Testament where you have a quote of two verses and then the next two verses re-quote those two verses. And if the Holy Spirit's going to emphasize through that much repetition; then we need to pay attention to what he's saying. That means that this application of an Old Testament passage to the cross is crucial for understanding the work of Christ on the cross; and it's focusing not as much on His work as on His mentality, on His thinking, on His willing submission to do the will of God. That's the focal point. It's not on His work per say; it's on His qualification to do the work because He is completely submitted to the will of the Father. That's the thrust of this quote. So let's look at verses 5 and then 6.
Hebrews 10:5 says:
NKJ Hebrews 10:5 Therefore, when He came into the world,
Now that's the First Advent. This is using a psalm (Psalm 40:6) to illustrate the attitude that Jesus Christ had when He came at the First Advent, when He was incarnate in that infant.
He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
It is a statement toward God. The "you" is pointed toward God the Father.
"Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me.
Now we've got to get into some details on this and we will in just a minute. This is a quotation that comes out of the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Hebrew Old Testament doesn't read like this. The Hebrew Old Testament says:
Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but an ear you have opened for Me.
But, when the rabbis translated that second phrase into the Septuagint, they translated it as "a body you have prepared for Me." Now that's interesting how and why they did that. We'll come to that in just a minute. There are a couple of things I want to point out as we look at this.
This is related to Hebrews 2:14 because the focus here is on the body that has been prepared for Him.
NKJ Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
It's a body that you've prepared for Me.
Then in verse 9 His coming to do the will.
NKJ Hebrews 10:9 then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God." He takes away the first that He may establish the second.
Then in verse 10:
NKJ Hebrews 10:10 By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
There is this focus on the human body, the physical body of the Lord Jesus Christ and the emphasis is on His humanity - not just the physical body, but on His humanity. We see this in other passages such as Hebrews 2:14 which reads:
NKJ Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood,
Who are the children? That is us, mankind. We share in flesh and blood. That is our nature.
He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
He has the same physical body we do. This is what John is saying at the beginning of 1 John. In 1 John 1:1 John says:
NKJ 1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning,
Then listen to what he says:
which we have heard,
Empirical evidence - we heard Him. Our ears were vibrated by the sound of His voice
which we have seen with our eyes,
We not only heard Him, but we saw Him.
which we have looked upon,
We didn't just have a glance at Him. We saw Him. We gazed upon Him intently. We observed Him for years.
and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life –
We touched Him. He had a real physical body. It wasn't just some sort of aberration. There was solid empirical evidence that He was a man.
NKJ 1 John 1:2 the life was manifested, and we have seen,
Notice how he goes back and he reiterates this for emphasis.
and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us --
He repeats that.
NKJ 1 John 1:3 that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
How much more can he say? This was real life, flesh and blood. This was a human being, and we couldn't have observed it any differently to come to that conclusion. We could not have been deceived. So He had to appear as a man in order to go to the cross to die in our place
Then in 1 Peter 2:24 we have the same kind of a statement made by Peter. Remember both Peter and John were with the Lord at the Mount of Transfiguration observing His transformation and the revealing of His deity.
NKJ 1 Peter 2:24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, healed.
Notice the emphasis there. It is in His humanity where He paid the penalty for our sins. The Greek word that's translated "bore: there King James and New King James is that word we've looked at already, anaphero - to bring something to offer as a sacrifice. It has the idea of to carry something to the altar.
that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness -- by whose stripes you were
It's not just about getting into heaven. He pays the penalty on the cross so that we can live differently because of what He has done on the cross. This phrase "dying to sin and living to righteousness" is related to the Christian life. It's related to phase 2. Paul does the same thing in Romans 6. He says:
NKJ Romans 6:4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
See the point of getting saved isn't just so you can get to heaven. It's so that you can serve God in this present life by maturing and growing as a believer to demonstrate that God's plan is good and perfect and acceptable. (Romans 12:2)
Now these verses come out of Psalm 40 so let's take a look at Psalm 40. So, if you want to you can turn back to that passage in the Old Testament. We'll take a few minutes just to talk about the original context. It's a psalm of David. It doesn't tell us anything in the original about the circumstances that brought about this thanksgiving psalm. There is a focus on thankfulness to God in this psalm in the first ten verses. The first ten verses focus on David expressing his thankfulness to God because God is the one who has preserved Him; God is the one who's protected him in the midst of the trials.
He says:
NKJ Psalm 40:1 To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me, And heard my cry.
The word there for waiting is the same word we have over in Isaiah 40:31.
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.
NKJ Psalm 40:1 To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the LORD;
He responded to my prayers.
And He inclined to me, And heard my cry.
Those two lines are in synonymous parallelism.
NKJ Psalm 40:2 He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,
This is a graphic description of the adversity that he was going through.
Out of the miry clay,
See the contrast between the miry clay. Anybody around Houston who's walked around out in a field in the last couple of days after that 10 or 12 inch rain we had and had their feet stuck in the mud, has an understanding of this miry clay that is pictured here. You just can't move. It grabs your shoes and you're stuck there.
In contrast:
And set my feet upon a rock,
A solid place
And established my steps.
NKJ Psalm 40:3 He has put a new song in my mouth -- Praise to our God; Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the LORD.
That idea of a new song...it's not a new kind of music. It is a new psalm of praise that grows out of a new experience of God's work in someone's life. It is not an excuse to go out and change the forms and functions of music like we have between traditional hymns versus a lot of the more contemporary music.
And as I pointed on the series I did a couple of years ago what changes music is worldview. When worldview changes, the music changes. We went back and traced that all the way from the early years of Christianity, the influence of Neo-Platonism on art and music and then the shift Aristotelianism and how that changed art and music. Then we went into the Renaissance period and showed how as the worldview changed, art and music changed. We got into the 19th century in a post- Kantian and Hegelian and idealistic period. The art and the music changed. You go through various decades of the 20th century and as the worldview shifts, the art and music changes. The church unfortunately throughout much of history has taken the music that comes out of the world system shaped by a non-biblical worldview and tries to marry that to Scripture. Today in the context we have around us, you'll often hear people try to justify that and say,"Let's sing a new song. That's what we're doing. We're tired of that old traditional hymn music. We need to have a new song and new music."
That's not what this phrase means anywhere in the Scripture. You always sing a new song as a result a new song of praise - as a result of a new experience of God's grace and work in your life. So that's the idea, not a new kind of music, a new kind of praise.
NKJ Psalm 40:3 He has put a new song in my mouth -- Praise to our God; Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the LORD.
…as they hear the recitation of what God has done. See that's the idea in the psalms. There is a recitation of how God has worked in the believer's life to deliver them. As they put this to music and all of the artistry that's involved in that – writing, crafting the poetry and the stanzas in order to make all of the rhythm and meter work with the music – all that's involved in that. Then the end result is that as people hear this beautiful work of art that is expressing what God has done. The focus is on the content expressing what God has done. Then many will see it and the response will be the fear of the Lord.
And will trust in the LORD.
Then he goes on to say in verse 4:
NKJ Psalm 40:4 Blessed is that man who makes the LORD his trust, And does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.
NKJ Psalm 40:5 Many, O LORD my God, are Your wonderful works Which You have done; And Your thoughts toward us Cannot be recounted to You in order; If I would declare and speak of them, They are more than can be numbered.
Then he says:
NKJ Psalm 40:6 Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.
Notice how this next verse flows directly out of what he has said before. David when he is writing this psalm is writing in terms of his own relationship to God. It is not written as a prophecy. You go to some psalms like Psalm 22. It's clearly a prophecy that is related to the Messiah. There are other psalms that are clearly understood to apply to the Messiah. Psalm 2 is one that we spent a lot of time on; but, this is not a psalm that if you read it and interpret it in its original context and original meaning that you would ever guess that this is talking about the Messiah.
This is where we get into (and I'm not going to get into a technical discussion of this but this is where you get into) a lot of discussion in the whole study of hermeneutics or the science and principles of interpretation which is one of the reasons that I brought Dr. Thomas in for the Chafer Conference this year - is to go over these principles and to emphasize the fact that in interpreting Scripture you emphasize the single meaning of the text. It doesn't have multiple meanings.
Often when you see Old Testament passages quoted or used in the New Testament, you go back and you see how they're used in the original context and you say, "How in the world did they ever do that?" And, can we do that? Those are the two questions – how did they do that (the writers of the New Testament) and can we do that?"
See you have some people today coming up with various hermeneutical systems to try to say, "Well, we can do the same things when we study the Bible and we try to apply these things to our present experience."
That's one of the issues at the root of the shift at Dallas Seminary from a traditional view of dispensationalism to progressive dispensationalism and you have this invention of what they call complementary hermeneutics.
Another thing that's come up and we missed this year at the conference because Arnold couldn't be here. He was going to present a paper on critiquing this view of what's called Pesher hermeneutics. Pesher hermeneutics refers to the kind of interpretation that the rabbis were using that's evident in the Midrash which are the commentaries of the rabbis wrote on the Old Testament where it's a non-literal interpretation.
You have theologian-scholars coming along today and say, "That's really what the writers of the New Testament were doing. They come out of a Jewish background and so they're using a Pesher or Midrashic type of hermeneutic in order to interpret the Old Testament."
It's a non-literal, non-grammatical interpretation. That's just dead wrong. But see once you start developing a way of interpreting the Scripture where you get away from a literal historical grammatical interpretation, then you just start making things up. It may sound very sophisticated and you may have lots of intricate biblical arguments that confuse everybody.
So they think, "Oh wow! This guy's got so much learning. He's got three PhD's and he's written 25 books and all of a sudden he's got this break through in interpreting the Scripture."
But he has violated the time honored principles of a literal interpretation and the single meaning of the text. So this is a classical example of that kind of thing.
So one of the things that Dr. Thomas said was you have to recognize that the writer of the psalms meant one thing in that context. Now that could be used or applied by a writer of the New Testament to Jesus because Jesus is paralleling that attitude so that the attitude that David exhibits here in his maturity, his devotion to God, his dependence upon God, his willingness to completely obey the Lord isn't perfect though. I mean perfect in the sense of flawless. But it is an imperfect shadow or reflection or type in this case of the attitude that Jesus has. So the writer of Hebrews is going to take that attitude that's expressed by David here and he's going to apply it as a type to Jesus Christ.
But the writer of Hebrews can do that. You and I can't and no professor at any seminary can because we're not inspired by the Holy Spirit. It's not the Holy Spirit who is guiding us in doing that. That's what Dr. Thomas uses - a somewhat maybe a little unfamiliar or unwieldy phrase. He talks about inspired sensus plenior. Sensus plenior is a fancy Latin word for full meaning of the text.
What you have in the discussion is people (theologians) who come along and say, "Well, they unpack this sensus plenior. It means more than what's just there in terms of a literal, grammatical interpretation so we can do the same thing."
No we can't. We can't go back and unpack stuff that may not be there. Only if you are inspired by the Holy Spirit as the New Testament writers were. So they can under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they can take these texts and assign typological meaning to them because God is directing them to do so. But, we can't do that. So that's what we see here. This is expressing David's devotion to God recognizing the limitations of the sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law in his dispensation. He recognizes that it had value ritually, but it doesn't have value in terms of the reality of an individual's personal spiritual life and it's sufficiency to solve the sin problem.
So he says:
NKJ Hebrews 10:5 Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me.
"You wanted something more than that."
Then the next verse says:
NKJ Psalm 40:6 Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.
Now there are some who try to make a connection. You'll read this or hear this from somebody here or there that this really goes back to the practice in Leviticus where if a person had been an indentured slave and they had worked off their debt to whoever they were indentured to and at the end they decided, "You know I don't' real well with financial responsibility. You know I keep getting those credit card offers in the mail and I keep getting the credit card. The next thing you know I'm extended in debt again. You know the President's not going to bail me out so I've got to go indenture myself to somebody and work that debt off. So I'm tired of doing that so I'm going to become a permanent slave, voluntarily, because I can't handle individual responsibility very well."
So they would go and they would have their ear lobe pierced with an awl to signify that they had voluntary entered into this servitude, this slavery. That's the idea of slavery that you have that's authorized by the Mosaic Law. It's not the kind of permanent chattel slavery that was part of the South in America prior to the American War Between the States. That's what made it different. You could always work your way out. There was always the freedom that came at the year of Jubilee and the Sabbatical years. There was always the option to freedom. But, you chose permanent slavery because you couldn't handle the responsibility of your finances yourself. You would always get in trouble. So that was the idea.
So some people say that's what is being said here because literally the Hebrew says, "My ears you have digged out".
That word that's used for digging out could be used to indicate the piercing of the ear with the awl. But that doesn't fit the context. The context is talking about his response to God's Word.
He says:
My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.
"My ears you have opened by Your Word. It is your Word that has come to me and I'm responding to it in obedience."
That's the context that's mirrored in verse 8.
NKJ Psalm 40:8 I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law is within my heart."
How does it get there? Well in the New Covenant, it's going to be placed there; but in the old covenant you had to hear the Word of the Lord, listen to it and respond to it.
So what David is saying is, "God you don't desire the external ritual formality of the sacrifices. That just relates to the worship in the Tabernacle or the Temple. My ears you have opened. I'm responsive to your Word."
Burnt offering which was a picture of an individual's devotion, commitment to God - the whole sacrifice remember is burned up so that all the smoke goes up to God. The Hebrew word olah for ascent – some people want to call it the ascent offering. Everything is burned up going up to God indicating that you have completely committed yourself to God. So you have a reference to burnt offering.
The sin offering - see he recognizes he needs to bring a sin offering. Christ didn't need to bring a sin offering.
NKJ Psalm 40:6 Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.
That's not what gets you saved.
NKJ Psalm 40:8 I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law is within my heart."
This is David expressing within his own spiritual life his commitment to God. But, because he's fallen, because he's got a sin nature it is limited. Many of us have made similar – saying "Lord, "I want to give complete obedience to you." But we know that 10 minutes later we're going to fall on our faces. David did too - many, many times. But that's the original context.
So let's make one more point. When you have that phrase in verse 6 "my ears you have opened" in the Septuagint when the rabbis translated that into Greek, they translated it as "a body" in some manuscripts. In some manuscripts, probably these represent the manuscripts that the apostles had.
It's interesting. I kept reading this and I've heard this over the years that "this was a body prepared for me" was the reading in the Septuagint. So I pulled out my Septuagint. I read it. That's not what it says in my Septuagint. I looked in the Septuagint copies that are in both of my computer programs and that's not what it said there.
Then today I was finally reading something and in a footnote the writer said in the Ross edition (that's the standard scholarly edition of the Septuagint that we have today), it translates it along with the Masoretic text. Then it listed the various other versions of the Septuagint, the various other manuscripts that have been found that don't read that way. That's the manuscript apparently that the writer of Hebrews had where it was translated not "my ears you've opened" but "a body you have prepared for me."
It's getting the essence. It's like a thought translation. It's almost like a paraphrase. It's almost like the NIV. It's not a word-for-word translation. It's a thought translation. That the idea behind my ears you have opened is this idea of expressing that my ears are a part of the body and then exchanging the word opened to prepared – you prepared my body, my ears so that I could hear your word. So they took that idea and made that the translation. That's almost as accurate as the NIV is in places. (Y'all were supposed to laugh at that.) Because when you get into thought translations, you lose many times. The interpreter is in interpreting, I mean the translator is interpreting; he's not translating. If he's interpreting it wrong, then the translation doesn't really have anything to do with what the original says. You really have to jump through some hoops to get to that, but that's what is read in many of the Septuagint copies.
Now the interesting thing is that because of what the writer of Hebrews is saying under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, even though that's not an accurate translation of the Hebrew; it does express a truth that the Holy Spirit wants to emphasize. So the Septuagint is quoted under inspiration which means it is now inerrant. It is now the inspired Word of God; and it is applied to Jesus Christ in terms of His attitude at the incarnation that God the Father has prepared a physical body, a human body just for Him that through that He would be able to accomplish His mission. It goes all the way back to Adam that when God the Father (and let's me a little anthropomorphic here) is (you know) spitting into the dust of the earth and mixing up all the chemicals of the soil to make that body for Adam; what's going on in His head is He is going to design a body that would be the best of all possible bodies for Him to express His love and His person and His character through.
So, we look the way we look not by pure chance. We don't look this way because God said, "You know. We'll give him two legs and a straight spine so they'll have good balance. We'll stick some little gyroscope inside their ears so they're not going to get dizzy and fall down. And we're going to do these other things.
But, God is thinking in terms of the fact that He Himself is going to inhabit this body; and it is through that physical body made the way He's going to make it and design it that He is going to best express all that He is. That's what we see in John 1 that it is through the incarnation of Christ that we can see God. We can learn about God. So the body isn't the way it is just by chance. God designed it specifically - because of all the possible bodies. Just think about that. If you think that first Star Wars movie that came out (whenever it was, 1977) and the famous barroom scene. You go in there and human imagination makes all these different critters and creatures from all the different places. And you have the Star Trek movies with the Klingons and Romulans and all these other - the tribbles and all these other space creatures. There are all these different kinds of bodies God could have come up with as the body He was going to express Himself through. But He chose this body to look this way with two legs and two arms and two eyes and a nose and a mouth that is the way He could best express all that He is and all that He wanted to communicate to man. So it's not by chance.
Now the writer of Hebrews quotes the passage verbatim bringing out the point in 5 and 6 again.
NKJ Hebrews 10:6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure.
That is merely ritual.
Verse 7, he quotes from Psalm 40:6.
NKJ Hebrews 10:7 Then I said, 'Behold, I have come --
Then the writer of Hebrews inserts this.
In the volume of the book it is written of Me -- To do Your will, O God.' "
Now look what He does. This is really interesting. In verse 8, now he's going to repeat it again in case you missed it the first time
NKJ Hebrews 10:8 Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the law),
In case you missed it, I want to repeat the verse one more time.
NKJ Hebrews 10:9 then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God."
Then the writer makes his point.
He takes away the first that He may establish the second.
What's the first? The first is the Mosaic Law, the first covenant, the old covenant, the temporary covenant.
that He may establish the second.
…which is the New Covenant which is cut at the cross which pays the full penalty for sin
Then in verse 10 he says:
NKJ Hebrews 10:10 By that
By what? He goes back to verse 9.
that
…the second which refers to the death of Christ on the cross.
will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Let me go back. Your will – that's the word thelema that God has expressing God's will. "Behold I come to do your will."
Then in verse 10 he says:
NKJ Hebrews 10:10 By that will
I keep wanting to re-punctuate this and I get..but it's not.
NKJ Hebrews 10:10 By that will
Two thoughts – by this will. By what will? By the will of God, by God's plan which establishes the second covenant as the once-for-all sacrifice for sin.
we have been sanctified
Now that's an interesting phrase in the Greek. It is a phrase that Greek students love to talk about. It's called a periphrastic participle – periphrastic perfect participle. I just love the alliteration. It's when you have a compound of a finite verb (the verb to be which means is); and then you have a perfect participle which is completed action. You have the same structure in Ephesians 2:8-9.
NKJ Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
NKJ Ephesians 2:9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
We translate that in English "you have been saved" because we are emphasizing a past completed action. That's the perfect tense of the participle. But the present tense of the finite verb emphasizes the present reality of that past completed action. Now a perfect tense can do that all by itself. But when you use this kind of a construction with a present tense verb and a perfect participle, it leaves you without doubt as to what the writer is saying. I think the best way to translate it is:
For by grace you right now have already been saved by faith.
That "already have been" – it emphasizes that it was completed in the past and it's focusing on your present circumstances as a result of a completed past action. So the writer of Hebrews uses that same grammatical construction.
He says, "By this will,", that is the will of the Father which Jesus Christ is completely submitted to, "we have already been sanctified."
It is completed. This goes back to phase 1 sanctification, our positional sanctification.
By that will that God has that Jesus Christ committed Himself to – that plan that God had to completely pay the penalty for sin on the cross. When we trust Christ as our Savior at that instant we're positionally sanctified. So we've already been sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ.
Once again it's emphasizing the humanity of Jesus Christ. Why is that so important?
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Ephapax again – it's sufficient. It only had to happen one time in contrast to these sacrifices that had to go on and on and on. But the question is – why is the humanity of Christ so important? The simple answer is that only someone who is true humanity that was related to Adam could pay for everybody else. See, we're all related to Adam. There is a genetic connection between all of us. Now the angels don't have that. Each angel is created individually. There is no genetic linkage there. They're not all one in the first angel. They're all individual species. We are all one species. We're all the same. So, one of us can die for all of us because there's that connection. So Jesus had to be true humanity so that He could die as a substitute for all of humanity. An animal couldn't do it. Some other species couldn't do it. An angel couldn't have done it. He can't die to provide salvation for the angels.
Some people say, "Well, maybe if demons or Satan believed in Jesus, they could be saved."
No, they can't. He's dying for human beings. He's not dying for angels. He's not the God-angel. He's the God-man. So He stands only in our place as a true human being. Because He is, we have a complete final sufficient salvation. So we can rejoice over that and go forward. Now that is what the writer of Hebrews is going to use as His basis for talking about the importance of ongoing sanctification which is what will come out in the warning section when we get down to verse 26. Before we get there we have to go through the next 15 verses. We'll start that next time.
Let's bow our heads in closing prayer.
Illustrations