Purification of Sins

Today’s text once again comes from the first few verses of Hebrews chapter one: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 

A few weeks ago, as I began thinking about the messages I plan to bring from the book of Hebrews, I didn’t realize that today’s text which speaks of Christ’s purification of sin would dovetail with the Biblical holy day of Yom Kippur (also known as the Day of Atonement). Yom Kippur, as some of you may know, is the highest of holy days in Jewish faith. It falls on a different day each fall because – like Ash Wednesday, Passover, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday (Easter) – it follows the lunar calendar and not the solar calendar.

This year, Yom Kippur fell on this past Wednesday, October 1. I’ve preached about Yom Kippur before, and I do it again today because repetition is a good method to help retain information. As St Peter wrote to his readers (2 Peter 1:12-15): “I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them.”

There is a researched-based reason for the use of repetition. Studies about what is called the ‘forgetting curve’ demonstrate that people typically forget approximately 50% of new information within one hour. Within 24 hours they’ve forgotten 70% of new information. They’ve lost up to 90% within a week. This rapid decline in memory retention underscores the need for effective reinforcement methods – and those include repetition. That’s why teachers told us to ‘study’ for our tests. 

Thus, the reason for today’s review of things we’ve heard and read before. This information is important to our understanding of and our confidence in our purification of our sins in God’s eyes.

As I just said, the Day of Atonement is the highest holy day in the Jewish faith. It’s the day when many Jews – even non-observant Jews – call to mind their sins and make an appeal to God for forgiveness. This last point is important because Jews – as well as Christians – know that only God can forgive sins committed against Him; And as we all should know, ALL sin, small and big and in between – all sins are ultimately against God and His commandments. Anyone who questions that needs only to take a few minutes to read the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and the Lord’s commandments in His sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters five through seven.

According to the Books of Moses, on the Day of Atonement the high priest received two sacrificial animals from the people. One he slaughtered, catching its blood in a basin and then sprinkled it on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant.

That lid was called the “Mercy Seat.” The Hebrew word for Mercy Seat translates to the Greek word used by the New Testament writers – propitiation – which means “to a make atonement for sins and remove the associated judgment for those sins.” Propitiation is how God’s wrath against the sinner because of their sins is appeased, satisfied, pacified.

The high priest then took the second sacrificial animal, placed both his hands on its head and thereby transferred ALL the sins of the people to the animal. The ‘scapegoat’ (as it was called) was then led out into the desert, never to be seen again. 

In other words, on Yom Kippur, God not only covered the people’s sins with the blood sprinkled on the Mercy Seat, but He also showed them by the Scapegoat that He was forever removing their sins from their midst, just as the Psalmist tells us in Psalm 103, He removed the penitent’s sins “as far as the east is from the west.”

The events of the Day of Atonement was a picture of what God would do 1400 years later on Good Friday when He transferred the sins of the world – including yours and mine – onto His Son, Jesus the Messiah. Jesus filled the role of the sacrificed animal when He spilled His blood on the cross to cover our sins. AND Messiah Jesus filled the role of the scapegoat who took our sins as far from us as east is from the west.

So, in this, and in many other portions and many other ways, God promised humanity a means by which our sins could be purified, purged, completely erased. He promised us an ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ clean over a Magic Slate clean.

Some of you will remember that illustration I used several months ago. I repeat the illustration for the sake of those here who have not heard it.

The Magic Slate is a stiff piece of cardboard about 8 inches wide and maybe 12 inches high. The center of the cardboard is covered with a black waxy film which is then overlaid by a thin translucent sheet. When you write on the sheet with a stylus, the black wax behind it causes marks to appear on the thin overlay. To erase what you wrote, you just lift the translucent film, and all the writing disappears. But you don’t have to look too closely at the black wax underneath to see the indentations of the stylus on the black wax. They are always there.

By contrast, the Etch-A-Sketch is a box of approximately the same length and height as the Magic Slate, but the box has a glass screen coated on the underside with a metallic powder. The box had two knobs, one on the left and one on the right. By turning the knobs, a stylus under the glass moves across the screen either horizontally or vertically and causes marks to appear in the powder under the glass. To erase the marks, the user simply turns the box upside down and shakes it. Doing so causes the lines to completely disappear. But unlike the Magic Slate, the stylus DOES NOT leave any depressions on the glass. Once erased, the user has a completely clean surface on which to write.

When it comes to God's forgiveness of our confessed sins, Christians fall into two general categories of thought. I call them the ‘Magic Slate’ and the ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ categories. Those in the Magic Slate category think that when they confess their sins to God that He ‘lifts’ the translucent film and our sins disappear. But – and to keep the metaphor – God can always see the traces of those sins still embedded in the black wax.

However – and this is the KEY difference – the Magic Slate ‘removal of sins’ is completely contrary to the way the totality of Scripture describes how God treats our confessed sins. When God forgives sins – the Greek word used by the New Testament writers means to ‘remit’ our sins – when God remits our confessed sins, He treats them as if they’d been written on an Etch-A-Sketch. When we confess our sins, God turns the Etch-A-Sketch upside down – again, to keep the metaphor – and gives it a mighty shake.

When Jesus made ‘purification of our sins’ He turned the instrument right side up again, and every trace of our sins – let me say that again for emphasis – EVERY trace of our sins was gone. Completely erased even from God's memory because He CHOOSES to erase those sins from His memory.

The prophet Micah tells us God casts our sins into the depths of the deepest oceans (see Micah 7:19). And in Jeremiah’s prophecy (31:34), God promises the penitent: “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Focus a moment on that last clause: “I will remember their sin no more.”  That means YOUR sin, my sin – everyone whose sins are atoned for by confession and repentance, they are ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ removed – they are PURIFIED by the blood-washed sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb of God. God remembers our sins ‘no more.’

But there is more good news: Because Jesus made purification of sins – even sins for which the Christian is unaware – even THOSE sins are purified by the Son of God. And THAT forgiveness is also pre-figured by Moses in this passage related to the Day of Atonement.  For example, in referencing Leviticus 5:17-18, the writer to the Hebrews, assures the Christian: “Now when these things have been so prepared [meaning the elements of the Tabernacle], the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship, but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year [on Yom Kippur], not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. (Hebrews 9:6-7)

God's incomprehensible mercy displayed on Yom Kippur is a picture, a promise, a foreshadow of the incalculable mercy He would display some 1400 years later on Good Friday. Yom Kippur and Good Friday are evidence that God knows our sin-nature makes it utterly impossible to free ourselves from the penalty of our sins – that penalty being eternal separation from God and eternal death.

Now, all of this raises a logical question: Since, as we’ve already seen, all sins we commit are sins against God, how could Jesus forgive those sins which only God can forgive?

Well, let’s turn for a moment to Matthew chapter nine. When Jesus was about to heal the paralytic, He told the religious leaders present: “So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — He said to the paralytic, “Get up, pick up your bed and go home.” (Matthew 9:6)

How could Jesus forgive sins committed against God? The answer is simple: Because Jesus IS God. Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus is God who took the form of a man. The Scriptures give abundant and repeated evidence of that truth. That’s why in this text I quoted from Matthew the religious leaders accused Jesus of blasphemy because they knew Jesus was claiming to be God.

As for Christ’s deity, look again at the very context of today’s text about Jesus making purification of sins: “God . . has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power.”

When the writer tells us Jesus is the exact representation, the Greek word means He is the ‘precise reproduction’ of God in every respect.” One commentary explains it this way: “He is one who has the whole nature of God in him.”

In other words, God is utterly holy, and therefore Jesus is utterly holy. God is omnipotent, therefore Jesus is omnipotent. God is eternal from before time began, therefore Jesus is eternal before time began.

You will remember some of the profound statements He made to His followers and to His enemies. For example, (John 10:30) “I and the Father are one.” And (John 14:9) “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”

The writer of Hebrews is simply reiterating what we find elsewhere in Scripture about the deity of Jesus. For example, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” (John 1:1-4, 15)

Look also at Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus was born in that little town of Bethlehem: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

And yet again, “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He [i.e. God] Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives . . . Therefore, He [i.e. God] had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation [atonement] for the sins of the people.  (Hebrews 2:14-15, 17)

For millennia, Satan has tried and continues to try to conceal the truth of Jesus’ deity so as to bring the deceived away from God’s Truth and imprison them in error and, ultimately, the Lake of Fire. The history of the Church underscores Satan’s strategy. The earliest heresies are called heresies because they denied the full deity and the simultaneous full humanity of Jesus.

That’s also why modern so-called ‘churches’ are rightly called heretical cults, such as The Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) and Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are heretical because they deny the deity of Jesus. They claim Jesus was a created being.

So, as I conclude this message, let’s go back to our text. When Jesus made purification of sins, the Greek word means to purge, to cleanse, to totally remove the sinners guilt before God. That’s what Jesus meant when He said from that cross, “It is finished.” 

Jesus paid with His life’s blood the penalty our sins deserved. He was our propitiatory sacrifice. His sacrificial death appeased the righteous wrath of God against our sins. And in appeasing God’s wrath, Jesus reconciled God’s enemies – you and me – and brought the Christian into intimate and loving relationship with our Creator.

THAT is why there is no other name under all of heaven given to us whereby we MUST be saved, because only the incarnate God – Jesus – could die for our sins against God.

When Scripture says Jesus made purification of our sins, it means exactly that. Jesus wiped our sins from existence itself. The penitent sinner who comes to Jesus for cleansing will have every stain, every shame, every contamination of sin erased forever.

No wonder the apostle cried out: (Romans 5:1) “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And later cried out: (2 Corinthians 9:15) “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!”