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Good morning. My name is Paul Deschamps. I'm a church planting resident now. So that's exciting, and it's a great joy to be here this morning.

I have really exciting news to share. As you can tell, Jeff is not here this morning, as well as many other people in our leadership—people that have been a huge part of our church. The reason they're not here this morning is cause for a huge celebration. This morning, they are worshiping with our sister church, Reconciliation. And you'll notice I'm saying sister church and not daughter church.

Reconciliation, if you aren't aware, we sent them out as a church plant in 2020. They went out and boldly, under the leadership of Russell McCutcheon, planted a church in Southeast Raleigh. And today is the day that we are marking what we in the PCA call their particularization—which is just a fancy word for they're moving out of mom and dad's house. They are becoming their own, particularized individual church this morning, and they're celebrating that.

Let's—this is a good time for Presbyterians to clap. This is a huge moment of celebration, and we can be so thankful for the work that God is doing in and through that church to spread the gospel and advance the kingdom in Southeast Raleigh.

I'm going to pray for them and for us this morning as we jump in.

Father, we praise you and we bless you that your idea for the church to go forth to proclaim the good news of your gospel is happening. Your church is growing, people are moving from death to life, from shame to forgiveness, living as sons and daughters in your family. We thank you for Russell and his leadership. We thank you for the leadership that has been called out of that congregation and for there to be a new church here in Raleigh. We pray that you will continue to bless their work for many, many years to come. We look forward to celebrating with them more in person the good things that you're doing through that church. Pray that you meet us here this morning. You're good, Lord. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Scripture Reading

If you would turn with me this morning to Hebrews chapter nine. If you have a Bible, that's great. If not, we'll have the text up here or it's in a bulletin. I'm going to do us a favor. I'm going to read this to us. Normally, it's a practice of our church that we read this out loud together, but this is a pretty lengthy passage. So I'm just going to read this for us, so you guys can sit back, relax, and listen to God's word.

Now the first covenant also had regulations for ministry and an earthly sanctuary. For a tabernacle was set up, and in the first room, which is called the holy place, were the lampstand and the table and the presentation loaves. Behind the second curtain was a tent called the most holy place. It had the gold altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered with gold on all sides, in which was a gold jar containing the manna, Aaron's staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. The cherubim of glory were above the ark, overshadowing the mercy seat. But we're not able to speak about these things in detail right now.

While these things were prepared like this, the priests enter the first room repeatedly, performing their ministry. But the high priest alone enters the second room, and he does that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit was making it clear that the way into the most holy place had not yet been disclosed while the first tabernacle was still standing. This is a symbol for the present time, during which gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the worshippers' conscience. They are physical regulations and only deal with food, drink, and various washings, imposed until the time of the new order.

But Christ has appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come. In the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands—that is, not of this creation—he entered the most holy place once for all time, not with the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. — Hebrews 9:1-28

For the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow, sprinkling those who are defiled sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God. Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant. So that those who are called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance because a death has taken place for redemption from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. Where a will exists, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will is valid only when people die. Since it is never in effect while the one who made it is living. That is why the first covenant was inaugurated with blood. For when every command had been proclaimed by Moses to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats along with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God has ordained for you. In the same way, he sprinkled the tabernacle and all the articles of worship with blood. According to the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands, only a model of the true one, but into heaven itself so that he might now appear in the presence of God for us. He did not do this to offer himself many times as the high priest enters the sanctuary yearly with the blood of another. Otherwise, he would have to suffer many times since the foundation of the world. But now he has appeared one time at the end of the ages for the removal of the sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for people to die once and after this judgment, so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. — Hebrews 9

Friends, this is the word of the Lord. Jesus, would you meet us in this text? Would you send your spirit to engrave these truths onto our heart? May we know that we are yours. Pray this in your name. Amen.

So I feel like this morning, we could just say amen and pray. That was a lot for us to get through, and the beauty of this passage is we've been singing the truths of it all morning. All the words that we've been hearing in the songs in our liturgy this morning is truth that finds its nexus. It's the peak of its argument here in this passage. So we're going to lighten things up a minute. We're going to talk about the internet. The internet has, without a doubt, been one of the most important and culturally transformative innovations of our time. I think we would all agree with that. But of all the things that the internet is good for, one of my favorite trends over the last few years has been that of pet shaming. Now, if you're not familiar, it's the practice of catching your pet doing something dumb, and then taking a picture of them with a sign stating their crime. And I have a few to share with you this morning because that's fun.

The first one says, "I have eaten two bibles in the last week. There are better ways to feast on God's word."

Next, we have this lovely puppy who says, "Killed Yoda, I did. The force was with me, Dublin. Sorry Dublin, you are now on the dark side."

Next one, we have this cute guy. He says, "I locked myself in the bathroom to eat diapers and then I let myself out."

And lastly, we have this sweet pup. "I ate Christmas."

Now, this is what the internet's for. Am I right, friends? It's funny to look at these pictures of guilty dogs who ate a couch and are sitting in the carnage. But I would argue that it's much less funny if these were people. There's no lack of shaming that happens online. We're all no stranger to it. But it is a very uncomfortable conversation to expose someone's guilt. And yet we all have it.

The pastor Jack Miller is famous for saying this: "Cheer up. You're worse than you think. But God's grace is greater than you can possibly imagine."

And this is the good news of this passage. Jesus Christ offers us a superior, unparalleled access to God to release us of our guilt and offer us hope. Guilt can be a good thing. Psychologists maintain that human beings have the capacity for guilt to restrain our selfish actions. Dogs eat the Christmas presents because they want to.

But humans all have what we call a conscience—like the shoulder angels that pop up in cartoons. They serve as a moral guidance needed to restrain us most of the time from committing great acts of evil against one another. But this is where the Bible and culture split.

Culture maintains that all people are inherently good and from time to time, through failure of conscience or selfish ambition, they may act evil. But for the Christian, we have to ask: What does good really mean? Is there a standard of good? How do we know that we are good?

For the Christian, God is our standard of good. The Bible teaches us that only God is good. He alone is the measure, the standard of righteousness, of holiness, of goodness. When we stand and compare ourselves with God's righteousness, we fall woefully short.

There are none who are righteous. No, not one.

All of our righteous deeds are as filthy rags.

Friends, this is what we call sin.

The Mark Missed

I have been watching a lot of the Olympics over the last week, and one of the events that I like to watch is archery. I think it's amazing. But did you know that the word sin is a Greek archery term? It means you missed. That's it. You missed the bull's eye. You missed the mark.

As I watched the most skilled archers in the world compete, none of them hit the bull's eye every time. At the most high level, in every round, someone missed at least a little, sometimes a lot. Even on the best day, sin. Isn't that like us? I know from my life that if God is the perfect standard for who I'm supposed to be, for how I'm supposed to live, most of the time I don't just miss the bull's eye. I don't even hit the target.

The Story God Is Writing

Last week, Jeff was talking about introducing the idea of the new covenant, and he asked us to be people who will trust the story that God is writing. The main arc of that story—the whole meta-narrative, big picture arc of the whole Bible—is that God desires to be united to his people. He made us, he loves us, and he will stop at nothing to be with us.

If we look back at the creation story in Genesis, we see this creative God who builds this world and then delights to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve. But it doesn't last long, does it? We get to chapter three. In Genesis three, Adam and Eve doubt God's goodness and they trust their own story, and they miss the mark. Sin enters the world.

But there's an interesting thing that happens in the conversation between Adam and God after sin has entered the world. Even though they've sinned, God still comes looking for them. When he finds them, they're hiding because they were naked and they were ashamed. And God asks questions here. He asks, "Who told you that you were naked?" How do you know what that means? God is so caring of Adam in this moment. He doesn't jump down his throat and say, "You screwed it up. I can't believe you did that. What an idiot? What did you do?" But he understands that something's different in Adam's heart.

In missing the mark of God's righteousness, Adam felt exposure, guilt, and shame. And it brought separation—a rift between God and man. Man was no longer able to walk with God. He could not be obedient enough. He could not be good enough, righteous enough to earn his way back.

We feel this in our own personal relationships, do we not? When we've wronged one another, it's hard to go back to being in good standing. It's hard to move closer together. How much more do we do this with God? But we couldn't go back to God. So God would come to us.

Two Kinds of Guilt

Guilt is something we all deal with. I've heard it said that there are two kinds of guilt. There is overt guilt—this is the guilt where we know we did something wrong, that we have blood on our hands, we have skeletons in the closet, we have secrets that we don't want anyone to find out. We know we did it. We're guilty.

But then there's covert guilt. This is that inner sense that something's wrong. That we are wrong. The feeling of shame. Author and shame researcher Brené Brown says, "Shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is 'I am bad.' Guilt is 'I did something bad.'"

How many of you, if you did something that was hurtful to me, would be willing to say, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake"? Guilt says, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake." Shame says, "I'm sorry, I am a mistake."

The problem here is that over time the line between our actions and our identity blurs. We do this to the positive. We do this with things like our professions. We don't introduce ourselves to one another and say, "Hi, I'm Bob. I work in engineering." No, we say, "Hi, I'm Bob. I'm an engineer." The things we do and the people that we are come together. But this happens on the negative as well. A person who steals things—he's a thief.

A person who struggles with abuse of alcohol doesn't have a struggle, he's an alcoholic. And on and on, these identity names grow that are inseparable from our actions. And if you think this isn't true, when you look in the mirror, what do you see? What do you hope other people don't see? We all have a sign that we could hold up like the pets and be exposed of our shame.

But this is the gospel. This is where the gospel breaks in. See, the gospel is understanding that we are all people of great guilt. We are all guilty of sin and Jesus came and he dealt with it.

The heart of this chapter of Hebrews is answering this question: How do we as sinful people reconcile our guilt with God? The concept that the writer of Hebrews is dealing with in chapter nine is something that we call atonement. Now atonement is the way in which reparations are made between two parties. It is the act of restoration. And for Christians, it's the act of restoration between God and man.

Now, here's what it's not. We often get this confused. Atonement is not the same as justification. Justification and atonement are two really important big churchy theological words. But when we look at the book of Romans, Romans is the book about justification and Hebrews is the book about atonement.

See, justification is a legal word. It's a courtroom word but atonement is a process word. Justification is the legal declaration that we have been made righteous in the eyes of God. It's the not guilty verdict that we receive. Justification is the what of our salvation. Now, atonement is how our salvation was paid for. God cares about justice and it would be a violation of justice for our debts to go unpaid. Atonement is our payment due.

Now, atonement, the theological concept of atonement, it doesn't apply to our interpersonal relationships. Like, if today, one of you backs into my car, you can't be like, I'm forgiven because of Jesus' work. I'm sorry, but I'm forgiven. I'm gonna still expect you to pay for my car. We still have to restore broken things together in community. We still have to make it right.

But sin is not something that we can make right.

The wages of sin is death — Romans 3

That sin is the eternal separation from the one who made you. That sin is the great chasm that separates us from God that we cannot cross. And so what is atonement? It's the path across the chasm. It's God's design to fix, restore, and reconcile himself to his people.

The Superior Sacrifice

Now throughout the book of Hebrews, the writer has used a pattern to highlight how superior Jesus is. And here is comparing how God had instructed his people to worship him under the old covenant versus the ministry of the new covenant. And it's a call to look back at the old and then behold how much better the new is. It's a less than and better than line of thinking. And this calls us back to the memory of the people to truly examine the worship practices under the old covenant. And what we read, what we look at is called the sacrificial system.

The whole book of Leviticus outlines the practice of how sacrifices were to be practiced, and the expectations that God's people would follow as they lived in the wilderness and they worshiped at the tabernacle. Now, their worship at the tabernacle or the tent of meeting was the place set apart for God to meet with them and God had set apart priests to offer up sacrifices for the people daily to instruct them in cleanliness and ceremonial rights that they needed to perform.

Now, I'm going to borrow a line from the text and say, it's not possible to speak in detail about all these things here. We could go on and on about all the signs and symbols in the old covenant. But because the center of this text and the centerpiece of the worship of the old covenant, the centerpiece, the middle point of the book of Leviticus chapter 16 is on what's called the day of atonement. This is the day of worship. The annual day, the once a year time when all of your sins, including your unknown sins would be atoned for.

It's the day where the high priest, he would purify himself. He would offer up a sacrifice for himself, and then he would go in to the second inner room of the tabernacle, the most holy place, the holy of holies, which contained the ark of the covenant. Just essentially is a treasure chest full of the most important keepsakes from Israel's history to point them to remind them about God's faithfulness. And he would enter this chamber only for a few minutes carrying with him the blood of bulls, and he would sprinkle that on the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant, which was essentially the throne room of God. He would go in there and he would offer up blood to the Lord, and he would say, we see the cost of our sin. We know that our actions bring death. You are a god of mercy. Please forgive us.

But a problem with this system is that it was endless and it was limited.

So verse nine tells us that the blood of goats and bulls cannot cleanse a guilty conscience. The life of an animal is not the same as the life of a person. The sacrifice of a goat is insufficient to pay for the guilt that you and I feel.

For average Joe Israelite, their access to God was extremely limited. They couldn't enter into God's presence. Only the high priest could do that. At best, they could get into the courtyard to offer up their animal and their offering to give to the priest who would then perform this act of atonement on their behalf. That's as close as they could get. They had to depend on the high priest and once a year, they waited on baited breath as he would go into the presence of God and offer up this blood sacrifice as a way of cleansing their conscience.

I can imagine the sense of relief that they might have felt when he came back out and they felt, "God has accepted the sacrifice. There's been atonement made for my sins. I'm forgiven." But then on the way home from the worship service, when their kid starts mouthing off and they say something bad or they have an impure thought, or Monday morning rolls around and they gotta go to work and they feel this new sense of guilt and shame all over again. Imagine waiting another whole year to go and perform this rite over and over again. It's pointing us to the need of a better sacrifice.

Were good and faithful people. They worshiped God with regularity and humility. It's real worship of the real God but it was done at a distance. It was done in a way that pointed to a greater need to be filled. The old system was deficient. It was superficial. It was external, and it was planned like that. God did this on purpose. It did nothing to clean our heart, and it pointed us to our need of a better saving.

Sacrifices do not remove sin. They remind us of sin. They remind us of our need of a savior. Atonement is something that we can't take for granted because the holiness of God is a real thing. But the question is: do you wanna worship God from a distance, or do you wanna worship God in a way that provides full access? Jesus makes this possible.

The Significance of Blood

I've often wondered: why was the sacrificial system so bloody? Why did the payment for sin bring about so much death? If you go to Jerusalem, you go to the site where the temple was, you can see in the streets that the streets are constructed with a gutter system for the blood spilled at the temple to flow down into the Kidron Valley. They built a system, they built a city with a sacrificial plumbing system to handle all the blood that was poured out for sins. There's so much blood.

Now, I have to admit, sometimes Christianity sounds kinda weird. If you're new to a church and you walked in this morning, you're like, "Why are we talking and singing about so much blood?" It's kinda off-putting. And you're right. Blood is life-giving. This life-giving liquid flows in our veins. It does all these amazing things like carry oxygen to our organs, carries antibodies, carries our genetic codes, cells, platelets. All the amazing things that blood does is happening inside us. But spilling blood brings death. The constant presence, the stain, the stench, the flies, and so on that must have accompanied the sacrificial system was a constant reminder that sin brings death. Why would you wanna go back to that?

And if the old covenant was true and the blood of goats and bulls sprinkled on the mercy seat of the tabernacle was good enough for temporary purification for sins, how much greater is the blood of Jesus? He is the eternal one. He is the one whose sacrifice is good for eternity. One time, once and for all. He's the perfect one. He was sinless, blameless, spotless—the perfect sacrifice. He was the willing one. He's not an animal who would give its life unknowingly, but he's a person, compassionate, full of knowledge of his actions, and he gave his life willingly in our place.

Confessing our sin and our need of Jesus as our savior erases our guilt. And as verse 14 says, it purifies our conscience. We can stand in full assurance that we are forgiven. And when we place our faith in Jesus, he erases our guilt. He offers us a new life in him. He reveals to us a life that's filled with hope.

There's this interesting turn of phrase that happens. I'm not sure if you caught it as I was reading it to you. It happens in verses 15 through 17. The text has been talking about how Jesus through the shedding of his blood and the inauguration of the new covenant, but suddenly there's this funny twist where he starts talking about a will. Do you hear that? Do you guys catch that?

Now, when he says "a will," he's meaning like a will when someone dies. When they write their last will and testament and they designate someone who's still alive who will become the beneficiary of their estate.

Now why is this so interesting in these verses is that both in this section, the words covenant and will are used, but in the Greek, they're the same word. Why would our translations do this? Because we've been talking through the inauguration of the new covenant, and now we'll be talking about the inauguration of a will.

When we think about what a covenant is, a covenant has long been understood as a promise. And the underlying theme of all covenantal theology is resting on our hope of God's promises that he will be our God and we will be his people. It's that same arc—remember? God's desire to be with his people. This promise is really his will. It's his guarantee. It's his desire and his last wishes. These verses tell us that through the death of Jesus, God's will has been activated. We are the beneficiaries.

Now imagine with me, if you will, for a minute that you had a really rich uncle that you never knew you had. And one day, this man dies and in the reading of his will, he has left all the riches of his estate to his only living relative—you. I know this sounds like Mr. Deeds, but I just came up with it myself. There's never been a hypothetical situation like this before.

All of a sudden, the stroke of a signature, the death certificate, all that was his becomes yours. His mansion, his helicopter, his Scrooge McDuck vault full of money—all of it. You have full privilege. You have full access to his entire kingdom. Now, are any few of us who would long to go back to our old ways of living paycheck to paycheck wondering if we have enough to get by? We would want to receive that.

As beneficiaries of the new covenant, of the new will, we no longer have to live spiritually paycheck to paycheck with limited access to God. Through Jesus, we are given full access. We're given a new name. Christian means I belong to Christ. I'm his. It's our new family name. We are no longer strangers to God. We're family with all the rights and benefits contained.

The Meaning of Atonement

The purpose of atonement is unity. It is for us to be one with Christ. The English term atonement was developed in the sixteenth century, and it was just a combination—it's a little cheesy. It was the combination of "at" and "onement." They created the word atonement. So atonement really means to be set as one, to be reconciled. It's literally "at-onement." He's our God. We are his people.

And all we have to do to claim our inheritance is to place our faith and trust that Jesus died to save sinners, and he rose again to conquer the grave. He is making all that is painful and broken come untrue. He gives us the longing of our hearts. We no longer need an annual ceremony of atonement to ease our conscience. No animal could do what Christ did. He poured his own blood out on the cross as a once and for all sacrifice to save sinners.

His death was an act of mercy. The punishment that we deserved, Jesus took. Justification is an act of mercy, but atonement is an act of grace. We get forgiven, and then we get brought in. We get welcomed into the family of God. Through his blood, we are forgiven. We're heirs. We're sons and daughters of the Most High King. We're blessed saints. And we are those people who sit here today and worship and celebrate not out of fear and worry that our atonement is enough, but with longing expectation that he's coming back and will be with us forever.

Prayer

Let me pray for us. Father, would these words be true in our lives today? For any who are hearing these words and have not made a decision to follow you, would they hear your voice and your call? Would they hear your forgiveness? Would they receive your grace? And would they come to you laying down their grief and their guilt and their shame and claim your forgiveness and your healing and your wholeness? Would we be a people who are at one with you, unified with you forever? I pray this in your name.

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