Hebrews

To Do Thy Will Oh God

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 21-33

Genre: Lecture

Track: 21

Dictation Name: RR198L21

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. The Lord is nigh to all them that call upon him, to all them that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desires of them that fear Him, He will also hear their cry and will save them. Oh Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come. Let us pray.

Our Father, we come into Thy presence again ever mindful of how good thou art to us, who so often cannot be good to ourselves. Forgive our many sins, bless us in our faithfulness, watch over us and guide us in the way that we should go. We pray for Thy saints everywhere, that they may be under Thy protecting care. We thank Thee especially for the work of Peter Hammond in Africa, and we pray that Thou wouldst give him and Thy saints in that continent a mighty victory against the forces of darkness, of persecution unto death. We come again Oh Lord, to cast our every care upon Thee, knowing Thou carest for us beyond our reckoning, and beyond our ability to fathom. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our Scripture Lesson is Hebrews 10:1-10. Our subject: “To Do Thy Will Oh God.

“1For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

 2For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.

 3But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.

 4For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

 5Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:

 6In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.

 7Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.

 8Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law;

 9Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.

 10By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

Now in verse 1 reference is made to the law. Again this does not refer to the law as a whole, but to the law of sacrifices, to atonement, and to priesthood. Now, unhappily we have many in the church today who generalize that to mean the whole of God’s law, and that is an abuse of exegesis of interpretation. A couple of years ago I saw a sign in one city, as you entered, or as you left: “55 MPH. That’s the law.” Now, did they mean that’s the law concerning witnesses? The law concerning murder? No, they meant the law concerning speed limits. It’s obvious. The context determines everything. So for people to take as they routinely do, the law here, and say: “This has reference to everything in the Pentateuch, all the law of Moses.” The context makes clear that the law here means the sacrificial law. To make law mean more than this means to falsify the letter to the Hebrews.

The reference to repetition, to the fact that the sacrifices were offered year by year continually makes very clear that it is wrong to see any reference here to the law as a whole. And to do so is to pervert the text. Verse 2 reinforces this. If the sacrificial law or if the sacrifices provided atonement in the full sense thereof, then the worshipper would be fully cleansed of his sins, and would have a clear conscience, a clean conscience.

Their status before God would be one of full and final atonement, and no more repetition would be necessary. Again, the reference is to the sacrificial law. The Law of sacrifices and of the priesthood is declared in verse 1 to be a shadow of good things to come. Well, the law of sacrifices points to the atonement. Now, if this applies to the laws with regard to theft, sexual behavior, murder, and so on, how are they a shadow of good things to come? The use of the word shadow is very very important.

The writers of Hebrews are all Jews. And Paul’s background was very strictly so. Here however a line is drawn between Christianity and Judaism, and the readers are expected to see it. As practiced and continued, Judaism is here depicted as dedicated to shadows rather than reality.

When a shadow religion is present, the emphasis is on the presence of appearances rather than the reality. Appearances rather than reality. The shadow is not the man. Man’s action then replace God’s reality because a limitation to the shadows gives priority to the existing practice rather than to Gods full revelation. In other words, if you insist that the shadows are reality, not that which cast the shadow, you are saying that the sacrificial system which was a shadow of the atonement of Christ is more important than the atonement.

Man by his action replaces Gods reality. A limitation on the shadows is not acceptable to him. He gives it priority over Gods full revelation. In contemporary church life, too commonly the shadow of ritual and sacrament are allowed to predominate over the reality they are supposed to set forth. The shadow of ritual leaves the worshipper dependent upon the church rather than the reality of Christ’s atonement which alone can purge the conscience of sin. Verse 3 tells us: “But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. The sacrificial law’s requirement of repetitive sacrifices is an acknowledgment of their limited efficacy. Their constant renewal is a reminder of their limited power.

But there is more. As verse 4 tells us, it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. While the sacrificial animals are an unblemished offering, they are not a voluntary one. None of the animals went voluntarily to the temple to be sacrificed. They never volunteered themselves, nor could their sacrificial death be more than typical, not perfect for perfectly efficacious. Therefore, the necessity for repetition, pointing ahead to that which would take away the type.

In verses 5-7 we have Christ and his self sacrifice contrasted to the animal offerings: “Wherefore when he cometh into the world He saith: Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, but a body has thou prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I “Lo I come in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do Thy will oh God.””

The contrast here is between the involuntary death of sacrificial animals, and the voluntary self sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, truly man and truly God. God who ordained the sacrificial system to set forth the meaning of atonement to mankind, all the same does not see animal sacrifices as full atonement. If any assume that such sacrifices will satisfy God, their offerings are rejected. Sin cannot be propitiated by the blood of Bulls and of goats. Those who sacrifice them had to look ahead to the lamb of God, to the offering God would in due time provide.

Instead a body has been ordained, and prepared for God the Son, in a true incarnation, so that in fulfillment of the covenant God rescues man as truly man yet truly God. The sacrifice made by the son, our great High Priest as well as our representative and vicarious sacrifice is a voluntary one. Unlike the animals sacrifice. In fact he declares through all eternity: “Lo I come in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do Thy will Oh God.” His self sacrifice is thus not only voluntary but foreordained. The book is the Old Testament, and the expression it is written does not mean here that it is merely inscribed but that it is eternally the true word of God. It has the same force as in Matthew 4:4,7,10; where our Lord cites Deuteronomy against Satan saying: “It is written. It is written. It is written.” It refers to the eternal truth of God’s word and being.

Jesus Christ is shown to exemplify the words of Isaiah 6:8; “Here am I, send me.” As members of His new human race we to must echo His words: “Lo I come to do Thy will, oh God. Here am I, send me.”

The purpose of His coming, atonement first of all, is then cited in verses 8-10. In verse 8 to the middle of verse 9, Jesus Christ is the speaker. The sacrificial system is declared inadequate, not acceptable to God as the final solution to sin. Christ himself declared: “Lo, I am come to do Thy will oh God.” By His coming, Jesus Christ terminates the sacrificial system, to establish Gods own way of atonement. The reality has come, verse 10 sums it up. “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all.” As Jesus declared on the cross, “It is finished.” It is accomplished. Atonement has been made, once and for all time.

The finality of Christ is thus emphatically set forth. There is no other way to atonement, no other way to God, no other way to freedom from sin and death, because Jesus Christ is God the Son incarnate. He is the way to knowledge of and communion with God. Jesus Christ declares that He is the door. Access to God is through Him, and none other. Many resent the exclusiveness of Christ’s being, and the exclusiveness of Christian theology. But without exclusiveness there is no truth; black is not white, nor is a dead man alive. There are many ways, some people say, to God; but that cannot be. Truth is singular. There are not many ways to God nor is truth man made although it can be known by man.

But today the most common kind of thinking everywhere is: “There are many ways to God, and there are many truths, so take your pick. Do your own thing. It will lead you to the right end.” Oh? Truth is singular. Black cannot be White, nor White Black. A lie is not the truth. But today even in the church we have the blurring of lines. We have the substitution of ritual for reality, of shadow for substance.

The purpose of the atonement is that as a new creation we serve the Triune God with all our heart mind and being, to do the will of God is the purpose of our regeneration. The letter to the Hebrews is radically oriented to a practical faith. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee for this Thy word. Oh Lord, be merciful unto us, for we are a generation of perverse men; men in love with shadows rather than reality, with form rather than substance; with appearances, not with truth. Make us zealous for Thy truth, make us to know the majesty of Thine atonement. Empower us for service, and make us ever joyful that Thou art the Lord. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

I’m going to throw out something for your reflection. We do live in a time where shadows have replaced reality. Now, think for a moment about what’s happening in the world outside the faith, outside the church. What has a great deal of modern art become? Not reality, but shadows. A radical blurring of reality. You see, we are consistent with what we believe, and if we believe that there is no truth, singular, then we are going to blur everything. And this is what has been done.

In one area of life after another all around us, we see a blurring. It’s as though everyone had suddenly developed bad eyesight and cannot see straight. But the blurring of things is what we like. We’ve developed, our age has, a taste for that. Man is of a piece, as the Bible tells us: “As a man thinketh, so is he.” So because our thinking involves a blurring of truth in our age, we have applied it in one area after another. In avant garde music you have that blurring; one note played endlessly. Or an orchestra sits and plays nothing and that’s a symphony. In all the spheres, the blurring is under way.

In very recent year two books have been written about dishonesty in scholarship; many have, but these two especially come to mind. One of them published very early this year, and what it demonstrated was that some scholars have invented mythical past for Africans, that supposedly they originated everything great in our civilization and the white man and the yellow man stole it from them. They built the pyramids, they developed mathematics, they developed sciences, and the Egyptians and the Greeks started the stealing. Well, when one woman professor exposed this as a fraud, she was attacked. Why? Because, no one saw anything wrong with that kind of dishonest scholarship, so long as it made the African peoples and the American blacks feel good.

No idea of truth, no idea of right and wrong. So when she exposes a scholarly fraud, she is the one who is attacked. The blurring, the shadow, is no longer there. The shadow is gone because the reality is no longer considered. So what do you have? Phantasms of the imagination, replacing even shadow and reality.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Twice here it says that God has no pleasure in burnt offerings or sacrifices, in the Old Testament we are told that this is how men pleased God, and got grace in His sight, could you explain the word that He has no pleasure in burnt sacrifices?

[Rushdoony] Yes, the problem was, and the prophets were the ones who called attention to the fact that God was not pleased with their sacrifices. As long as the sacrifice looked totally ahead to what God intended by it, it was good. But when the sacrifice became and end in itself and when you went, say to the service of the day of atonement and figured: “Oh Good, now my sins for the past year are wiped out, so I’ve got a fresh start for this year. So I’ve got a clean slate for a while.” That mentality crept in, and so as against that the prophets said: “God takes no pleasure in your sacrifices, because they are meaningless, they are empty, they have no content.”

To bring that up to date, we could say of some men who are in the church and have grown up in it, and they feel it’s good for business reasons or social reasons to be there. And they go every Sunday and they tithe faithfully. And they feel that since they have done that that they have a license to cheat or to commit adultery. As though they bought something by going to church and tithing, or by doing this that and the other thing for the church. Do you see the analogy?

This is what is involved in this kind of thing. And that’s what the prophets condemned. And of course as we can see, Christ came and most of the people clung to the shadows. And today we see all around us in the church people clinging to the shadows, and outside the church not even the shadows.

Any other questions or comments?

[Audience Member] Of what you were saying there is an excellent example in Hebrews 11, with Abraham offering up Isaac. He saw Christ in that.

[Rushdoony] I didn’t quite hear what you said, but I think…

[Audience Member] If Hebrews 11:17-18 we have and excellent example of what you were talking about, when Abraham offered up Isaac. He saw Christ in that.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good. And of course, we have in verse 4: “By Faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Both sacrificed, but Cain’s was not acceptable. Well, if there are no further questions, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, keep us from phantasms and imaginations of the mind, and the worship of shadows. Make us ever faithful to the reality, Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant our father that in Him we may day by day grow in grace, grow in understanding, grow in faithfulness, grow in patience and perseverance unto the end.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.