The day before Christmas in 2006 is also the 4th Sunday in Advent with the three readings being Micah 5:2-5a (Bethlehem); Hebrews 10:5-10 (Establishes the second) and Luke 1:39-56 (Mary visits Elizabeth). Chosen to apply this Sunday is Hebrews 10:8 with special attention to, “Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire nor had pleasure in them.”

I’m confident that this verse would have come as quite a shock to the thousands of Israelites who regularly offered sacrifices to God prior to the time of the arrival of the Messiah. Of course, even when Jesus came to fulfill all those Messianic prophecies, there was no joy in Judea to hear that offerings and sacrifices no longer cut it with the holy God. You can only imagine the reaction of the Luke 18 Pharisee who regularly thanked God that he was not like sinful publicans as he followed the rules on fasting, Sabbath worship, tithing, etc. etc.

The writer to the Hebrews is in essence doing a Law/Gospel distinction. By the time that the new religion of Judaism had broken on to the scene after the Babylonian captivity, it was not just that the temple had been replaced with synagogues, priests with rabbis and doing sacrifices with the reading of the Law. What made matters worse was that salvation was encouraged through a keeping of the Law and specifically all those ceremonial laws as found in the books of Moses.

Jesus Himself put it this way: “You have made the temple a den of robbers!” For sure, anytime we offer to God our offerings and sacrifices as a way of earning our way into His good graces, we have added to the cross of Christ. And, of course, when you add to the cross of Christ, you subtract from it. Many Israelites had confused the Law with the Gospel in making their ceremonial obedience as a foundation for their salvation rather than as a response of a grateful heart to God for already being totally saved through the works, sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In verse 9, the taking away of the first to establish the second refers to the eradication of that old covenant swearing in ceremony of Exodus 24 which based one’s salvation upon the promise to obey all that God commanded. Of course, a few chapters later these same folks ended up creating a golden calf to worship!

The new covenant based not on the sacrifice of animals but the sacrifice of God Himself assured the believer in Christ not only of the forgivness of sins but also of the everlasting fellowship with the God Whom he had considered as an enemy just shortly before a Spirit-empowered conversion. Jesus, Who knew no sin became sin for you that you might become the righteousness of God because of Him. How sweet the sound that indeed saved a poor wretch as me and…you!