Hebrews 10:1-10 -- Let's fix this once for all
Quick review of where we are. There are two kinds of covenants, two kinds of priesthood, two kinds of law. If this was just talking about Israel and the Jewish nation it would be out of place here in the New Testament. I will use my experience as a teacher to demonstrate these two kinds of laws, but it applies to any work that you do and it applies to governments. There are essentially two systems. In the one system the vast majority of people are “slaves” or “employees” who do what they are told. In the other system you are “the boss”. You walk by faith, you need to pray for wisdom. The ministry of Paul gives us the elemental teachings of the new covenant, James pushes us to maturity. In the elemental teaching you are justified by faith, as you go to maturity faith without works is dead.
1 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.4 It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
The offerings were “an annual reminder”. There is a regular “reset” where you must start over and over. This is because this system is not sustainable. We see this with all the empires. Egypt, Rome, Greece, Meso Persian, Babylonian, etc. They all fell and became dust. There is a fundamental shortcoming in all these empires, they treat people like they are bulls and goats; beasts of burden.
5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; 6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.
This is exactly the same way I feel. Every year the school system has professional developments and a variety of activities to improve the experience for students and yet it seems to me like a hamster wheel. They don’t actually achieve anything. You would think that the goal would be simple, say to improve our test results from the 50th percentile to the top 10 percent. Every year we make small but incremental improvements toward that goal. Perhaps we have 4 or 5 different initiatives, we carefully monitor their impact. If three had a positive impact then we roll out those three schoolwide and come up with three new initiatives to test. In a school with 40 teachers you find the four who showed the most improvement and have them discuss what works and push those strategies out to everyone else if they are practical. But that is not what they do. Instead it is as though every year we are “reinventing the wheel”. Never once in all my experience in the public school have we had teachers at our school step forward and say this is what we did last year that was very effective. Now that is not completely true, we do have meetings and teachers do discuss things they are doing that are effective and this in turn does get shared with the whole school. But they will ask things like “what did you do last week that worked well”. There is no rigorous testing it is all anecdotal, and you can’t tie that to a goal like improving the results on the exam because how do you know if what you did last week will have a positive impact on an exam that is six months away? They treat the teachers like they are dumb beasts of burden. The Lord looked at this situation and said this is not what God desires. God wants results, He wants a perfect work. So what did the Lord have? He had a body, He had a life, instead of giving a cow or goat He gave himself. He put His life on the line. When you become an employee you agree to become a beast of burden, but when you start your own business you put yourself on the line.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, my God.’”
I have a book that summarizes 400 different pedagogical studies and discusses how effective they were. These studies were done scientifically, with controls and tested and measured the results. I have another book that gives you the ten most effective strategies and it is quite eye opening. These books revolutionized my teaching, why should I reinvent the wheel? Why can’t I just take what they discovered and apply it to my teaching? It is a “perfect work” a “once for all” sacrifice. These studies do not specifically apply to my subject, so I must adjust and modify them. I was not directed to do this so if it doesn’t work my review will suffer. There was another teacher that I worked with. This teacher did exactly what the administrators asked her to do. They loved her lessons. She got top marks on her observations. They held her up as an example of what to do. I would visit her class and observe several times a year. We both taught the same subject. Yet despite this I never felt to adopt anything that she did in my classes. Her results were average whereas my students were scoring far above average.
8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Can you imagine how revolutionary this was? If you do away with the sacrifices and offerings you do away with the Jewish religion. No wonder they wanted to kill Him.
We need to measure our work by the results. Many years ago Bush passed the “No Child Left Behind” act and all teachers needed to use data to drive instruction. That meant we had to look at the results to determine what to do. Failing schools were closed. Administrators began telling teachers how to teach and the approach was called “teaching to the test” and it was a dismal failure. Most school administrators do not have a background in math and particularly statistical analysis. Instead of saying “hey I better study up on this” they just assumed they knew what to do. They would look at your results on the exam, pick out 10% of the questions that the students did poorest on and tell the teachers to spend more time on these. Imagine a teacher is “building a house” over the course of the year. You lay a foundation, you put up the structure, you enclose it by putting the roof on, the doors in and the windows in. You connect the electricity, plumbing, do finish work, paint the walls, lay carpet and you are done. Now the student who gets 100 on the exam has a finished house. Others have a house that is almost finished, but can be lived in, they got an 80 or a 75. Still others have a house that has windows, doors, and a roof. They got a 65. What do you think will be the thing that most students didn’t complete? Maybe they didn’t lay the carpet, maybe they didn’t paint all the walls. So the administrator's instruction was like telling the teacher to spend more time on painting walls and laying carpet?! That is idiotic. But many teachers dutifully did what they were told, got horrible results and then said “teaching to the test doesn’t work”. No, assuming you know statistical analysis when you have never studied it, that doesn’t work. Any reasonable person would look at this process and say “how can we do it more efficiently so that more students will get a house that is at least 65% done or 80% done or 90% done? If the problem is that too many students are failing the exam the answer might be to skip teaching about painting walls and laying carpet altogether. Those lessons don’t help anyone get to 65% they only help you get to 100% from 95%. This is what Jesus Christ did, He made a sacrifice “once for all”. That was the most efficient, the most effective.
Quick review of where we are. There are two kinds of covenants, two kinds of priesthood, two kinds of law. If this was just talking about Israel and the Jewish nation it would be out of place here in the New Testament. I will use my experience as a teacher to demonstrate these two kinds of laws, but it applies to any work that you do and it applies to governments. There are essentially two systems. In the one system the vast majority of people are “slaves” or “employees” who do what they are told. In the other system you are “the boss”. You walk by faith, you need to pray for wisdom. The ministry of Paul gives us the elemental teachings of the new covenant, James pushes us to maturity. In the elemental teaching you are justified by faith, as you go to maturity faith without works is dead.
1 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.4 It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
The offerings were “an annual reminder”. There is a regular “reset” where you must start over and over. This is because this system is not sustainable. We see this with all the empires. Egypt, Rome, Greece, Meso Persian, Babylonian, etc. They all fell and became dust. There is a fundamental shortcoming in all these empires, they treat people like they are bulls and goats; beasts of burden.
5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; 6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.
This is exactly the same way I feel. Every year the school system has professional developments and a variety of activities to improve the experience for students and yet it seems to me like a hamster wheel. They don’t actually achieve anything. You would think that the goal would be simple, say to improve our test results from the 50th percentile to the top 10 percent. Every year we make small but incremental improvements toward that goal. Perhaps we have 4 or 5 different initiatives, we carefully monitor their impact. If three had a positive impact then we roll out those three schoolwide and come up with three new initiatives to test. In a school with 40 teachers you find the four who showed the most improvement and have them discuss what works and push those strategies out to everyone else if they are practical. But that is not what they do. Instead it is as though every year we are “reinventing the wheel”. Never once in all my experience in the public school have we had teachers at our school step forward and say this is what we did last year that was very effective. Now that is not completely true, we do have meetings and teachers do discuss things they are doing that are effective and this in turn does get shared with the whole school. But they will ask things like “what did you do last week that worked well”. There is no rigorous testing it is all anecdotal, and you can’t tie that to a goal like improving the results on the exam because how do you know if what you did last week will have a positive impact on an exam that is six months away? They treat the teachers like they are dumb beasts of burden. The Lord looked at this situation and said this is not what God desires. God wants results, He wants a perfect work. So what did the Lord have? He had a body, He had a life, instead of giving a cow or goat He gave himself. He put His life on the line. When you become an employee you agree to become a beast of burden, but when you start your own business you put yourself on the line.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, my God.’”
I have a book that summarizes 400 different pedagogical studies and discusses how effective they were. These studies were done scientifically, with controls and tested and measured the results. I have another book that gives you the ten most effective strategies and it is quite eye opening. These books revolutionized my teaching, why should I reinvent the wheel? Why can’t I just take what they discovered and apply it to my teaching? It is a “perfect work” a “once for all” sacrifice. These studies do not specifically apply to my subject, so I must adjust and modify them. I was not directed to do this so if it doesn’t work my review will suffer. There was another teacher that I worked with. This teacher did exactly what the administrators asked her to do. They loved her lessons. She got top marks on her observations. They held her up as an example of what to do. I would visit her class and observe several times a year. We both taught the same subject. Yet despite this I never felt to adopt anything that she did in my classes. Her results were average whereas my students were scoring far above average.
8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Can you imagine how revolutionary this was? If you do away with the sacrifices and offerings you do away with the Jewish religion. No wonder they wanted to kill Him.
We need to measure our work by the results. Many years ago Bush passed the “No Child Left Behind” act and all teachers needed to use data to drive instruction. That meant we had to look at the results to determine what to do. Failing schools were closed. Administrators began telling teachers how to teach and the approach was called “teaching to the test” and it was a dismal failure. Most school administrators do not have a background in math and particularly statistical analysis. Instead of saying “hey I better study up on this” they just assumed they knew what to do. They would look at your results on the exam, pick out 10% of the questions that the students did poorest on and tell the teachers to spend more time on these. Imagine a teacher is “building a house” over the course of the year. You lay a foundation, you put up the structure, you enclose it by putting the roof on, the doors in and the windows in. You connect the electricity, plumbing, do finish work, paint the walls, lay carpet and you are done. Now the student who gets 100 on the exam has a finished house. Others have a house that is almost finished, but can be lived in, they got an 80 or a 75. Still others have a house that has windows, doors, and a roof. They got a 65. What do you think will be the thing that most students didn’t complete? Maybe they didn’t lay the carpet, maybe they didn’t paint all the walls. So the administrator's instruction was like telling the teacher to spend more time on painting walls and laying carpet?! That is idiotic. But many teachers dutifully did what they were told, got horrible results and then said “teaching to the test doesn’t work”. No, assuming you know statistical analysis when you have never studied it, that doesn’t work. Any reasonable person would look at this process and say “how can we do it more efficiently so that more students will get a house that is at least 65% done or 80% done or 90% done? If the problem is that too many students are failing the exam the answer might be to skip teaching about painting walls and laying carpet altogether. Those lessons don’t help anyone get to 65% they only help you get to 100% from 95%. This is what Jesus Christ did, He made a sacrifice “once for all”. That was the most efficient, the most effective.
This is the way it seems many Christians talk about the rapture. I wonder, what that could mean?