How to Be Holy An Ouline

I'm in 1 Peter 1, 15-21. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. And if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot he was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God so this was a reading of the word of God You may be seated.

You may have noticed that I just read the same verses this week as I read last week. We're not quite big enough yet as a church that I can tell everybody was here last week. I can count you. So everybody should have that somewhat familiar to them. And if you remember, last week what we talked about was that Peter gives us a command to be holy, as God is holy.

And then I told you that I believe the rest of the book of Peter is really an outworking of that command. It's the implementation of the general thing that he told you. In some words you might say it's the case law for the law that he gave you. So Brother Roberts helped us out this week, and on the last page of your bulletin, he printed the outline that I made of verses 17 to 20, really 21 maybe too in there, so that you might be able to follow along better today, or if you take notes, you could take the notes in the right spot.

So that's there for you if you would like. So just a reminder, last week we looked at the verses 17 to 20, where it says that we are to fear Yahweh. That is really the first element in any type of understanding whatsoever, but in particular to try to strive to be holy. We are to remember that this world is not your home. That's referenced by the reminder that you are in exile in verse 17.

Oh, I'm sorry. The first thing was to remember that you're adopted by God. So it says, if you call on Him as Father. That was verse 17 as well. The fourth thing in the outline that we're to remember is to remember that you were not bought with perishable things. The fifth thing was to remember the futile ways that you inherited from your forefathers.

The fifth thing... I don't remember what number. Maybe that's the sixth thing. I'm sorry. I didn't number them, I put little stars next to them. I should have used numbers.

Remember the precious blood of Christ, which is what you were bought with. And then finally, the last thing I noted is just remember that Jesus is resurrected, that he lives. There are a lot more things in verses 17 to 21 that we could pull out to talk about. But these are the ones that I wanted to outline as how Peter gives you to implement the rule to be holy as he is holy.

To the argument that might say, when the Bible tells us to be holy, since we can't be holy, that requires you to have your faith in Christ because he was holy on your behalf. That is true. but when Peter tells us be holy as he is holy it's not a command to just trust in Christ's holiness it is actually a command to practically live out the holiness that you have been granted by God through your faith in Christ to live out the sanctification that God has given you so there's more to it than just be holy so just I believe Jesus was holy on my behalf and so there's other parts of scripture where God says you're not going to go to heaven unless you obey all my commands and it's like well obviously Jesus did that for us so I wanted to clarify that so the first point, remember that you're adopted by God we did look at that already a couple times now that is the basis of our salvation is that we were not children of God and God has made us children he has adopted us into his family adoption is a beautiful thing that we have. We have a picture of God's adoption of us when we see adoption in this world.

One thing to note, when a child is adopted, I would say probably never, but there's probably exceptions, but as a normal rule, it's the parent that picks who they're adopting. Children generally don't pick their adoptive parents. And it's the same with us and God. So fear Yahweh, the first point. We're going to probably go a little quick on a couple of these, because I think we already talked about this one a little.

But if you look at Psalm 34, which I think Peter had in mind when he wrote this letter, you'll see in Psalm 34, in verse 9, David says, O fear Yahweh, you as saints, for those who fear Him have no lack. In verse 10, then he says, the young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek Yahweh lack no good thing. It's reminiscent of Psalm 84 as well.

He says come O children listen to me I will teach you the fear of Yahweh And then he goes on to talk about the type of man that fears Yahweh and basically it a man that keeps his tongue from evil and doesn lie And we pointed out last week that Peter quotes that section in his third chapter of his epistle. So what we have is this concept of fearing God, which is lost in our society today. Probably every preacher, though, of almost every time that ever lived, would have said the same thing I just said.

I think to the true Christian who loves God and wants to keep his commandments and sees the devastation that sin causes in this world I think we've always lived at a time that we thought we're exiles in a land that has lost the fear of the Lord so I think there's a sense of uniqueness we feel and I think that it can almost be prideful at times for us to think that we live in the worst time or we live in the time where there's the most rampant sin and all these things, if you ever think about the first century Christians, where they were in Rome, and if you ever read about what Rome was doing in the first century, I don't think we can think that we're so uniquely bothered by sinners around us. If you think about what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah with Lot and Sodom, I think sometimes we forget there were other cities that were all participating in this same stuff. This was a whole region that was pursuing unnatural desires and pursuing the lust of their flesh.

So this is not new. God flooded the earth because man was so evil back in Genesis 6. And so we're surrounded by difficulty and we're surrounded by evil. But I think it should actually give you a bit of comfort to think that God's people, since the beginning of time have always felt the way that you feel about what's around you. It said Lot was vexed all the time by the evil around him.

And so I think that should bring you some comfort to know that God has always seen his people through. But we want to fear Yahweh and we want to proclaim that to the nations. Proverbs 3, verse 7, right after the pretty well-known verses, where we say, trust in Yahweh with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.

And then He says, be not wise in your own eyes. Fear Yahweh and turn away from evil. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fools despise knowledge and instruction, right? The fear of Yahweh though, it's a misunderstood concept. And I think it's something that you should think about, meditate on.

I wish I could explain it better sometimes. Maybe we need to do a sermon just on the fear of God sometime. But I think that one of the things that we should be able to do is honestly say in our hearts that we don't maybe truly think we understand it. We can pray that God would give us a fear of Yahweh. And it's not just, oh be reverent. There's a trembling before Him that we are to have.

There's a real fear, not of judgment, not of condemnation, but there is a sense that God is to be feared. And if you don't fear Him, it's probably because you have too high of thoughts of yourself or too low of thoughts of God. Proverbs 16.6, the other verse I referenced, the same concept. I'm just showing you that this is throughout the Bible. The Lord writes, by steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for.

And by the fear of Yahweh, one turns away from evil. So for the most part, the turning away from evil and the fear of Yahweh is equivocated throughout the Old Testament. And if you read these things with covenant eyes, we'll say what you see is that these are terms that are almost exclusively referring to God's elect people and how their disposition toward Him should be.

When you become a Christian, when you're saved by grace through faith, you should turn away from evil. It's really a simple concept in our heads. You should fear the Lord. The lack of fearing God will lead you to run to evil instead of away from evil. So remember you're adopted by God. That will help you in your holiness walk.

Remember to fear God. And I think pray about God giving you the right fear of Him that is true. Not the kind of fear we see in a horror movie. Even if there's a bad storm and you're driving home, there's some scariness there, but it's not the same. You should fear the God that controls every raindrop more than the storm anyway. So remember that this is not your home.

That's the third point. So turn to 1 Peter 2. I see you guys have the outline, so you can beat me there. If I say it wrong, you can find it yourself. I guess. It's the first time I gave you all the verses beforehand.

But in 1 Peter 2, which again, I'm telling you, this is an extension of what I'll say is like the thesis given in chapter 1. Peter says in verses 11 and 12, he says, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners in exile. So he refers to their sojourning. He refers to the fact that they're in exile. He's reminding them of this fact. He says, abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

Abstain from the passions of the flesh. Well, what does that mean? He's saying turn away from evil. He's saying be holy. It's the same concept. Abstain from the passions of your flesh, which wage war against your soul.

It's a warning. If you give in to the passions of your flesh, you're waging war against your own soul. And you may be exposing yourself as not a true Christian. So abstain from the passions of the flesh Do you know what your passions of the flesh are Do you know the things that you seem to struggle with Do you know the sins in your life that you should be particularly concerned about in your prayer life?

These are things that we should be mindful of. They're things we should be thoughtful of. I'll just use a quick example. Brother Jason has a gluten allergy, or whatever you call it, a gluten sensitivity. Is that what you say? Sensitivity.

Very sensitive guy. So, Brother Jason avoids gluten, except when we evangelize, and we go get raisin canes afterwards. That's the one time I know he doesn't. But Brother Jason avoids gluten. And the reason is that he abstains from this thing that maybe isn't really even that bad of a thing. Because he knows how it affects him.

And for us, to abstain from the passions of our flesh is even more serious. Because we're abstaining from evil. And so Paul says, as sojourners and exiles, abstain from the passions of your flesh. And in verse 12, he kind of gives us a little bit of a why. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Now we'll look at this verse in a few weeks or months or whatever, but what I want you to notice is that part of the point here is that Gentiles are going to speak against you as evildoers. He doesn't say if they speak against you as evildoers. It is assumed as exiles in this land that you are going to be spoken against as an evildoer. somebody somewhere is going to call you evil because of the things that you're doing.

And they may be things that are not in fact evil. But because you abstain from the passions of the flesh, because you keep your conduct honorable, when somebody speaks against you as an evildoer, they're going to see your good deeds. So somebody else is going to notice the difference. I promise you that I've seen that happen. a Christian gets accused of doing something wrong.

It's happening right now in California. You guys know who John MacArthur is. John MacArthur's been called an evildoer because he's having church, even though the governor in California said he can't. And what's happened, because John MacArthur continues to be honorable, continues to abstain from the passions of his flesh, and because he's doing the right thing and having church, he's drawing attention. and there's people who see him and they're noticing it and they're actually thanking him for his brave stand and what's interesting is the interview I watched today it was actually a Jewish synagogue that was thanking him for what he's doing standing up against the bad government there which is funny because it says the Gentiles will speak against you but the Jews are actually looking at John MacArthur like hey good job you're doing but if John MacArthur was a dastardly guy this would not be good because he'd be getting the attention because he's standing up against maybe a true evil in that government but then the attention would be drawn to his evil deeds and so we're thankful for faithful Christians that abstain from the passions of the flesh so that we can see their good deeds and 1 John just going to remind you 1 John chapter 2 John says do not love the world or the things in the world if anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him for all that is in the world the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world but here's what I want you to key in on for this point verse 17 and the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

If you will remember that this world is not your home, if you will remember that you are in exile here, you are a sojourner here, and that honestly, every pain you feel, every time you decide to abstain from the passions of the flesh, and you do what God has commanded, and you do what is considered righteous, no matter how difficult it is for you, I can promise you there is an expiration date on it. One day, that difficulty will be no more. And whoever does the will of God abides forever.

So it is the things you do for the Lord that last forever. There are people all over this world right now receiving their rewards in this world for the good things they do. There are people genuinely doing good things. they're praying, they're donating to charity they may be doing churchy stuff they may be Christians doing Christian-y things and they are proclaiming their goodness that everybody might know and they're being noticed and in their hearts they want to be noticed by men and they aren't content to only be noticed by God and they're receiving their reward in this life and not the next and so remember this world is not your home this is supposed to be an encouragement to you You're adopted by God.

You are to fear God. He's granted you that fear. Remember that you're in exile here. So as difficult as it is, there's an expiration date. And God will deliver you from your exile. And remember that you were bought not with perishable things.

So in verse 18, 1 Peter 1, he says, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold. So you were bought And I think I may have mentioned this last week but I mention it again and if I didn you hearing it You were ransomed It was like you were in captivity It like you were a hostage It like you were kidnapped And you were ransomed out of it, in a sense. There was a payment made for you to be delivered from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of God's Son.

And that price was what? anybody know off the top of your head did God supply all the gold in the world to Satan so that you could be delivered from sin is that what happened is it like the lion the witch in the wardrobe where the lion dies so that the white witch can get what she wanted and then she'll release the people is that how the Bible works no no Yeah, the book wasn't about the Bible. It's a different story. But some people think that that story is kind of about Jesus because the lion dies and the lion is supposed to be the Jesus character.

But that's actually a really bad view of Jesus' atonement. And so what we believe is that God is the one who is angry with sinners. and we believe that God is the one who then sent his son into the world to die for sinners and it's God who unleashed his wrath upon his only son who willingly took that wrath for sinners and it's God who raised him from the dead and so all the things that happen in the atonement are of God none of them are things so get this image out of your mind of you're in the bonds of Satan and God has to give Satan a little something to let you out it's not how it works and it's a popular view of things look at 1 Corinthians 6 20 19 we'll have a whole sentence Paul says or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God but listen he says you are not your own for you were bought with a price and thus what therefore so glorify God in your body this teaching in particularly 20th and 21st century American Christianity that you can get saved and do whatever you want with your body and do whatever you want with your mind and with your life is a lie from hell you are owned by God if you are a Christian if you are not a Christian you are still ultimately owned by God but temporarily hopefully you are going to become a Christian but at least for the time being you're actually in a domain of darkness and you have a different king and a different father but God owns Christians and if you remember that you were bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ if you remember that it wasn't it wasn't as simple as God snapping his fingers and paying off kidnappers with gold and silver God has all gold and silver he invented gold and silver, just think about that if we found a little nugget of it we'd all freak out and keep digging and see if we got more because we think it would offer so much security for the rest of our life if we struck gold, right? And yet God just spoke it into existence and He uses it to pave the roads in heaven.

Think about that. His son's blood, though, now that was precious because your sin was insurmountable by any other means. And we're going to get to that, so I don't want to get ahead of myself. but I want you to remember that your sin is why Jesus had to die your sin was so great that if you would have spent the next 2,500 million years doing nothing but righteous deeds you would not have even scratched the surface of starting to pay back the debt that you owe to the God that created you that you sinned against but one drop of Jesus' blood would have been enough and so the precious blood of Christ the word precious is not used a whole lot in the Bible but it's used in 1 Peter and it's used to describe Jesus' blood and it's used to describe a woman's conduct and we'll get to that in a couple months too but Jesus' blood is precious and if you thought about the fact that Jesus' blood had to be shed for your sins before you indulge in the passions of your flesh I like to believe some of us would turn away from those a little more often than we do I like to believe if it was on your mind that Jesus died for you when you sit down and you start doing something on your computer or on the TV or when you start getting angry or when you're thinking about gossip or slander or just wasting time that God's given you to use for his glory I'd like to believe we'd start to act differently if it was actually something we meditated upon salvation isn't something that just happened on August 14, 2012 when you wrote in your Bible that you believe in Jesus or whatever it is that's not when salvation happened and now you just do what you want Jesus Christ shed his blood for you saints and you should glorify God in your body in Hebrews 9, 1-4 we're reminded we're going to be in Hebrews 9 in fact if you're going to if you're going to go home and you're going to study the scriptures this week and you don't already have some plan you want to be on like Hebrews 9 and 10 is what's going to what you should read more because I can't read enough of it in the sermon that I want to or just read the whole time so Hebrews 9 and 10 would be great studies for you this week Hebrews 9, just at the beginning though, I always say Paul.

I have to say the apostle, because I don't know for sure it was Paul. Now, even the first couple, but doesn't it sound like Paul? I mean, has anybody read Hebrews and thought? Yeah, I mean, it sounds like Paul, right? And I know I've heard the arguments for Luke and Apollos and whatever, but... Now, even the first covenant had regulations for worship in an earthly place of holiness, for a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence.

Now, I just want you to listen real quick, just for the word gold. I just thought it was neat how much gold is in here. It is called the holy place. behind the second curtain was a second section called the most holy place having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold in which was a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron's staff that budded and the tablets of the covenant and it's just this idea of gold everywhere and just for us to think about that much gold even just gold overlay that's a lot I mean this was expensive this was precious we call it a precious metal because it's rare and it's valuable and yet it's nothing it doesn't do anything for your sin but Jesus' blood is precious and that's what God used to ransom you so you were not bought with perishable things remember that, you were bought with the precious blood of Christ and so I want us now to think about the futile ways that we inherited from our forefathers Now this is an interesting phrase, because depending on who your forefathers are, you may think something differently.

And so one of the questions we are supposed to ask ourselves when we're reading the Scriptures is, who is it written to? And how would they have understood it? Because oftentimes, how the original audience would have understood it gives us a good indicator of what the original author of the Scripture meant by it as well. and so if you just think if you think real simply here if you read a book that was written a hundred years ago and the book said something was sick you would think it meant someone was ill because that's what the word sick meant a hundred years ago and we would have understood the word sick to mean that if you read something that was written in the 21st century the word sick has other meanings now that people have used and have become colloquial enough that we would have to understand if that's what that author's intention was at the time.

So if you want to be a good communicator, one thing you can try to do is use words that actually convey the thoughts that you have so that the words, if you look at a dictionary definition of those words, will actually show people what you meant. So if you constantly have to say, well, what I meant was, and what I meant was, that's not helpful, especially in a church teaching setting. I understand sometimes in our homes we use some slang.

But anybody here that married somebody from a different region of the world, you've probably dealt with just different habits we had. But when Peter says, remember the feudal ways, he says, knowing you were ransomed from the feudal ways, so you're ransomed from them. There's two thoughts to this that I have. Some people think that Peter was writing to Gentiles. they say that they think he was writing to Gentiles because later in chapter 4, in verse 3, Peter says the time that has passed suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passion, strunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.

So Peter references all these Gentile things as things that we don't need to do anymore. And so I've heard the argument that that's Peter's way of talking to the Gentiles. And so in chapter 1, he's saying the Gentiles were ransomed from these feudal ways. So the Gentile ways were feudal, and they've been ransomed out of it. Now, but what I find interesting is I don't think that's the case.

And at least not exclusively. certainly writing to some Gentiles. Well, I'm half Gentile. You guys are all Gentiles as far as I know. I'm actually half Jew. We'll talk about that at fellowship time. But the believers that Peter's writing to, we talked about when we went through the very first verse that some of these believers may have been the very people who were there at Pentecost.

Because these regions that are listed were regions that were present at Pentecost And the whole purpose of that was that there were Jewish people who were coming to Jerusalem for the Pentecost. And that's where they heard the speech and then went back into their regions. And secondly, and this is how I've always read this verse. It's just recently that I read some things that said they thought it was Gentiles.

What's more futile than the Old Covenant in comparison to the precious blood of Christ? So let's take a look at that in case you don't know what I meant. so look at Hebrews 9 again so now I'm skipping a little bit but we'll go back to Psalm 40 which is in your notes but in Hebrews 9 we're going to read here about the old covenant the writer says in the first verse now even the first covenant had regulations for worship so the idea is this there's this old covenant way of worship and there's an old covenant way of coming to God and it required a whole bunch of things to happen and we'll look at some of them and as he says in verse 5 of these things we cannot now speak in detail I like that I going to insert that in like every sermon I think now But the idea is this is that the Jews really had these ways You would be a bad Jew if you lived in the Old Covenant times and you didn't obey the rules that God gave in the Old Covenant. You would have been an unfaithful Jew if you didn't bring your sacrifice, if you didn't bring the lamb on Passover and do all the things that God told people that they had to do in the Old Covenant.

But, as wonderful as the Old Covenant is because God gave it, as wonderful as it is because it painted a great picture of Jesus Christ who was to come, it was futile for actually forgiving the sins of people. That's the point I'm trying to make. And so, if you're a Jew who has inherited from your forefathers the old covenant way of doing things, but your forefathers have not passed down the faith that is actually behind the old covenant, the belief in the Messiah that God would provide, you have a futile way inherited from your forefathers.

Look at any practicing Jew today that doesn't believe in Jesus. If you look at a practicing Jew today and think that that's somehow a good and faithful thing, it's not. A Jew today that rejects Jesus but practices their Jewish religion is practicing futile ways. They're practicing religious works that cannot save them. It's utterly serious. These are futile ways.

Now, does it mean it's bad things? No. The things that God told ancient Israel to do were very good things. They were actually the right things. God is always right. But they were insufficient to save you from your sin.

Just like gold and silver are insufficient to save you and to ransom you from the domain of darkness, the Old Covenant was insufficient to actually forgive any sin. So look at Hebrews 9.22. The writer says, Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood. So we're talking about blood. Okay, Jesus' blood is important here, but in this case it was the blood of animals.

It says, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it is necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites. So this is reminiscent of the fact that if you read through the Old Testament, Exodus, Leviticus and stuff, you'll remember that there was all this stuff in the temple, right? There was the altar, and there were all sorts of things in there.

But there were these times that the priests would get the blood, and they'd sprinkle it all over the place. It was kind of gross sounding when you think about it, which sin is gross, right? So it makes sense. But they would sprinkle this blood all over the place. It wasn't just cut up the animal and eat it. There was a lot more going on. of these things we can speak now in detail.

How's that? He says, For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands. So Christ has entered somewhere different than the holy of holies that Moses wrote the plans for that we made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. nor was it to offer himself repeatedly this is important if you have any Roman Catholic friends as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world but as it is he appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself You were bought with a price, not with the futile ways that you inherited from your forefathers.

Every way that you've received from man to save yourself, whether it's psychotherapy, whether it's the Enneagram, whether it's Roman Catholicism, whether it's Islam, whether it's finding yourself, whether it's Zen Buddhism, whether it's the Dalai Lama and his sayings that he comes up with, whether it's the United States of America winning another war or whatever's going to happen. all the ways that we've inherited from our forefathers that somehow you think are going to make you no longer feel guilty for the stain of sin that you have on your conscience they're all worthless the word futile means useless sometimes I wish it said useless in the Bible because I think sometimes futile is not a common word but Jesus Christ once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself He doesn't get re-sacrificed every week. He's not offered every week. He's not transubstantiated into the body and blood at the Roman Holy Eucharist, they call it.

Lowercase h there, unholy. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once, to bear the sins of many will appear a second time. not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him that's your hope dear Christian that's why you can be holy in this life even when it's hard that's why man you can love nasty wives women you can submit to worthless man children you can obey parents that fail all the time You can go to work and you can obey an earthly master who unfair We could all be sold into slavery tomorrow, and we could willingly submit to our slave master as good servants of Jesus Christ, because Christ will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him. We're going to be delivered, dear saints.

It's guaranteed. There's nothing more certain. It's more certain that Jesus is coming back than you're sitting here right now. Do you understand that? We can all be deceived about ourselves right now and about each other. Jesus is coming back, and that is certain.

So He did it once, though. It's important. But listen, for since the law, again, forget chapter break. once in a while read books without the chapters. I almost want to buy that huge set of Bibles they have that have no chapter breaks. It's really expensive and it's not worth having a second set of Bibles for that. But once in a while just read it without the chapter break.

Four, since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near. The law is a shadow of the things to come. Shadows don't really give you much information. It tells you there's somebody there.

You can't really tell even how big they are unless there's somebody right next to them. And even then, the angle of the sun could make the shadows distorted. You can't tell any facial features. There's no depth. Shadows are so far from the real picture, it's crazy. If I saw your shadow, and I also saw a picture of you, It would be infinitely different concepts that I could get from those two images.

Shadows tell you nearly nothing, but they just point you in the right direction. Four, since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Peter, in his letter, is thinking these same thoughts here. This Old Testament system was never intended to forgive sins.

That's where futile ways that people have inherited from their forefathers started to come in. When people started to think it was them working into the law, working the law themselves, that would earn their righteousness. In Romans 9, Paul says, maybe it was Romans 10, Paul says being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own they did not submit to God's righteousness seeking to establish their own righteousness that was Israel's problem Israel's problem wasn't that they didn't have God's perfect revelation to them Israel's problem was that the perfect revelation they had they decided by their own righteousness they were going to fulfill it not by the righteousness of Christ and again they had the scriptures that pointed to Christ which we're about to read in Psalm 40.

For it's impossible, verse 4 of Hebrews 10, it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. That bopped me right in the head when I first read it. I thought that's what took away sin before Jesus came. That's not it. Jesus is the only one that takes away sins. These were pictures.

And so the writer says, consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, and it's interesting, I don't remember where he said this exactly. sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.

Does that sound familiar to anybody? Where's it from? Couldn't say it. What? Yeah, Brother Jason just read it. But I was reading Hebrews.

And the writer of Hebrews said, when Jesus came into the world, he said this. The writer of Hebrews was a witness of the Son of God walking the earth. Remember Psalm 40? In sacrifices and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. He says there. In Hebrews he says, but you have prepared a body for me. he says burn offering and sin offering you have not required but God does require those things he says in Psalm 51 that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart oh God you will not despise he says if he wanted sacrifice he would give it David had everything in Psalm 51 David could have sacrificed all the sheep of Israel he knew it wasn't going to pay his sin debt and so God has told us over and over throughout the Old Testament, and then in the New Testament, shedding light on the Old Testament, which then sheds light back on the life of Christ for us, that the whole time the plan was not that sacrifices and offerings were what was required to forgive a man his sins.

Sacrifices and offerings were not what's required in Psalm 40 for God to hear you cry. It's Jesus Christ being your mediator is why God hears your cry. Sacrifices and offerings of these animals aren't what draws you up out of the pit of destruction, out of a miry bog It not what sets your feet upon a rock It not what puts a new song in your mouth It not It at the end here Oh, I delight to do your will, O my God, your laws within my heart, verse 8.

Sacrifices and offerings aren't what put God's law in your heart. It's the Holy Spirit dwelling in you because Jesus bought you with his precious blood. So when you look at Hebrews 9 and Hebrews 10 this week, and you look at Psalm 40, I want you to think about the fact that you are saved by the precious blood of Christ. You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, what was passed down to you, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. so not only is silver or gold worthless to save you the ways that have been passed down from your forefathers is worthless only Jesus saves only Jesus saves and so in Hebrews 10 oh I did read all that already I thought I didn't finish Hebrews 10 so when you look at 1 Peter and you think about being ransomed from the futile ways by Jesus Christ himself.

What does Peter kind of conclude that little sentence with? He says, Who was like the Lamb without blemish or spot. So you look at Exodus 12 and you can see about the Passover and you can understand how the Passover pointed to Jesus. He says, He was foreknown before the foundation of the world. So Jesus has always been known by God. He's intimately in relationship with God, but was made manifest.

He was revealed to us in the last times for the sake of you. Revealed to us for your sake. Who through Him are believers in God. So it's through Jesus that you're a believer in God. Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Let's remember, when you think about Jesus, when you think about Jesus coming back, when you think about Him dying on the cross, when you think about Him living a perfect life that you couldn't live, living it on your behalf.

When you think about Jesus interceding for you with God. Brother Jason quoted Jesus' prayer in John 17 where he says, sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. When you think about those things, do not neglect the fact that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead. That is our hope. Because he lives, we can face tomorrow, right?

So Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, given glory. And so because Jesus was raised from the dead, you have hope. So now your faith and hope are in God. So one more scripture for you. Psalm 1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked useless ways inherited from your forefathers nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

These are the things that our world does, right? This is our world system. in a nutshell, counsel the wicked, standing with sinners, sitting with scoffers. It's funny that scoffers sit too. They can't even get up to scoff. But his delight is in the law of Yahweh. And on his law he meditates day and night.

That is where your faith and your hope are, in God's word. That is how you be holy as he is holy. Charles Spurgeon said, We inherit from our fathers much sin and little wisdom. They can only leave us what they themselves possessed. So may we give a better inheritance to people than some of our forefathers. By the grace of Christ.

Father, we thank you that you are the author of salvation. we had no hope but Jesus Christ came and did everything necessary to fulfill all righteousness and we humbly come to you today and ask you to grant that salvation to all those among us who have not yet tasted and seen that the Lord is good we ask you to edify those of us who are saints already that we may be holy as he is holy and not for any personal goals not so that we can puff ourselves up or just be proud, but Lord, for your glory, because Jesus is coming again. Help us to endure with patience and with perseverance, like a good soldier, the difficulties that will be faced if we are to walk contrary to this world system and walk side by side with Jesus Christ. In his name I pray.

Amen. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us, and I also have a personal website, michaelcoughlin.net. You can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures