Yr B, Pentecost 24                         November 17, 2024
Hebrews 9:24-28                          Pastor Ryan Wolfe

“A Better End is Coming!”
1) By a better sacrifice
2) To a better place

Over the years there have been a number of TV shows that my wife and I have enjoyed watching. My favorites tend to be the kind of shows that tell a story and build up characters over time. A lot of my favorites fall into the sci-fi category, or comedy. If you’ve ever invested hours and care into a show like that, then you know how disappointing a bad ending can be. You can watch a show for years, fall in love with characters and stories, and then – in one season, or even one episode they ruin it. It happens in movies too. The movie’s going well, and then suddenly it feels like they just realized they’re 10 minutes away from over and they try to get it all done. I hate a bad ending to a good show.

I think that’s the way a lot of people view the end of the world. They (we?) think life in this world really hasn’t been that bad. And when they read parts of the Bible like our readings today that talk about judgment at the end, they see a bad ending to a good world. We know better though. We know that Judgment Day means A Better End Is Coming. A better end that comes to us by Jesus’ better sacrifice. An end that’s better because it leads us to a better place.

Before we look ahead to Jesus’ return, and to the better place that comes with it, we need to take a brief look back. To see the work that Jesus did in order to make that better ending possible. And seeing this text’s description of Jesus’ work we have to look back even further than him. The book of Hebrews is one of my favorites in the New Testament. It’s a book of comparisons. God compares Jesus to the angels, to Moses, to the high priests, all kinds of things from the Old Testament. Repeatedly though we see that Jesus is greater. In fact, that’s the simple theme of the book. Jesus is better. These verses in chapter nine in front of us follow that same line of thought. Here we see that Jesus is better than the Old Testament sacrifices.

Now, the point of the whole system of sacrifices that God set up for his Old Testament people is really very clear. With these sacrifices and rules, God was telling his people. “I am holy. You are not. Your sins separate you from me because I am a perfect God who cannot tolerate imperfection, but… (And that’s an important word here!) but by the blood of a substitute, I will make you mine again.” In the sacrifices God showed his people with vivid and graphic detail that sin must be punished. And they were reminded of that point frequently. Doing the math from Numbers 28 for the seventh month of the year when there were the most festivals, we find Israel offering God over 1000 animals as a nation. Add to that the extra sacrifices that the people could make whenever they felt guilty about a particular sin or blessed in a special way, and we realize there was always something being sacrificed.

There was one sacrifice in particular though, that was the center of the whole system. And this is the one that the writer of Hebrews refers to in our text. The Day of Atonement. On this one day of the year, the high priest was allowed to come into the innermost room of the tabernacle, or the temple, the room that was called “the Most Holy Place.” It was in this room that the Ark of the Covenant was kept, and in there that God made his presence visible. But Leviticus 16 shows us that there were a host of rules and regulations that had to be followed before this sacrifice could even be made. The high priest first had to make a sacrifice to symbolically purify himself. He had to wash and change his clothes. Only after that could he come into the holy presence of God. The high priest would then sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant and the people’s relationship would be symbolically restored with God. Once again they were reminded of the future sacrifice that would one day save them for real.

For the people of Israel, this must have been a bittersweet ending to the day. Yes, they were reminded again that God would one day send a final sacrifice to save them once and for all, but the next morning when the people woke up, they would wake to the smell of more sacrifices being brought to God for their sins. They would again hear the bleating of sheep as more animals were brought into the courtyard to die in place of the people. Because those sacrifices were mere shadows of the future they had to be repeated day after day. Year after year.

But fast-forward 1400 years from the time of Moses to the time of Jesus. Shift your focus from the lamb on the altar to the man on the cross. From the shadow to the reality. And now you see the better sacrifice. Unlike all those Old Testament sacrifices that had to be repeated day after day, Jesus sacrificed himself once. He suffered once. Was crucified once. Died and was buried once. And by that one-time offering, he removed the guilt of our sin forever. In Hebrews 10:11 God tells us that the no Old Testament sacrifice could ever take away sins. They were pictures of a sacrifice that was still coming. A bull is just a bull and a lamb is just a lamb. Jesus, though, is the sinless Son of God. His better sacrifice makes us one with God eternally. That’s what our text means when it says, “But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

The Greek word for “to do away with” has at its root the picture of setting something off to the side and declaring it void, ignoring it. By his sacrifice, Jesus takes the guilt of our sins away from us and cancels it out. And his one sacrifice did this for all people for all time. The Bible tells us that every person who knows this truth, who has that hope for heaven is judged “not guilty” already. We don’t fear Judgment Day, or for most of us perhaps the private judgment day when we stand before God at the moment of our death. We’re not afraid because our crimes have been punished. And our peace came from the one who sacrificed himself for us. Jesus is indeed the better sacrifice that delivers to us the better ending.

And when that day comes, when Jesus returns to the world he died for, it will not be like the first time he came. The first time he came in humility so that he could make the sacrifice to save us. And so there was no fanfare or great announcements to the world that God was among men. But Jesus’ return will be everything that Daniel said it would be and more. A time of great distress (could be already happening or still to come) and then the dead of all time will rise. It will indeed be the end of the world as we know it. But is that a bad ending to a good thing? Or a good ending to a bad thing. Judgment Day will mean the end of political division and war. The end of cancer. The end of death itself. No more famine or starvation for the poor. No more poor for that matter. No more child abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, nothing like that. No more struggle against sin. No more guilt or shame. Everything that exists as a result of sin will fall away. Judgment Day is an ending, yes, but it’s a better ending, not a bitter one. And part of the reason it’s better, is that is the day of our entry into a better place.

The last verse of our text tells us, “He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” The first time Jesus came was for one purpose – to bear our sin. The next time he comes for one purpose again. To bring us the full benefit of salvation. Go back to that idea of the Old Testament priests. We are like the Israelites waiting outside the temple to welcome back the high priest from that special holy place. To see him and know that the sacrifice is done.

But our high priest Jesus didn’t just enter a room in a temple. He entered heaven itself. And when he returns from that Holy Place, we discover an ending that doesn’t end at sunset but one that lasts forever. The day after Judgment Day is just one in a countless number in which our sins remain forgiven and our home remains with Jesus. This is the better place that we celebrated two weeks ago on All Saints Day. The place where the dead in Christ already are. The place Jesus promises he is preparing for us. A place where God says there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. A place where God himself wipes away every tear from our eyes. A better ending. A better place. A better life. So Christians, look to Judgment Day with clearer eyes. For those without faith, yes it is a day to fear and dread. For us, it is a day that can’t come soon enough.

And that’s exactly the point. We are different from the world. In how we live. How we work. Where we put our time and energy and focus. And we do it because we know this world is not the good place we want to be. It’s just the time before. Through the eyes of faith, we know that God has already judged us. We are already declared “not guilty” in Christ. Know this: when God looks at you he sees your Savior and not your sin. So turn from that sin and put your trust in the better sacrifice. The sacrifice that leads to a better ending. A better ending that leaves us in the best place. There won’t be any letdown at the end of this world’s story. It’s already written. Already done. We’re just in the final countdown waiting for the great Day of the Lord. So wait with eagerness and with joy. Amen