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The sermon teaches that Christ’s single sacrifice fully and finally accomplishes salvation, unlike the repeated sacrifices of the Old Testament priesthood. His sitting at God’s right hand demonstrates both the completion of His work and His supreme exaltation as the God-man. Believers are truly united to Christ, represented in heaven, and promised participation in His glory. Christ will return in certain triumph, subduing His enemies; those who reject Him face final judgment and everlasting punishment.
Theological center: The crucified God-man has completed the atonement, been exalted to the Father’s right hand, and will bring His united people into glory while judging His enemies.
Applications: Look to the exalted Christ · Expect Christ’s return · Rejoice in finished salvation · Turn from rebellion against Christ
Primary texts: Hebrews 10:11-14 · Philippians 2:9 · Ephesians 2:6
“This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.” Hebrews 10:12-13 AT the Lord’s table we wish to have no subject for contemplation but our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and we have generally been wont to consider Him as the crucified One, “the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” while we have had before us the emblems of His broken body and of His blood shed for many for the remission of sins. But I am not quite sure that the crucified Savior is the only appropriate theme, although, perhaps, the most so. It is well to remember how our Savior left us—by what road He traveled through the shadows of death. But I think it is quite as well to recollect what He is doing while He is away from us—to remember the high glories to which the crucified Savior has attained. And it is, perhaps, as much calculated to cheer our spirits to behold Him on His throne as to consider Him on His cross. We have seen Him on His cross, in some sense. That is to say, the eyes of men on earth did see the crucified Savior. But we have no idea of what His glories are above. They surpass our highest thought. Yet faith can see the Savior exalted on His throne, and surely there is no subject that can keep our expectations alive, or cheer our drooping faith better than to consider, that while our Savior is absent, He is absent on His throne, and that when He left His church to sorrow for Him, He has not left us comfortless—He has promised to come to us—that while He tarries, He is reigning, and that while He is absent, He is sitting high on His Father’s throne. The apostle shows here the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice over that of every other priest. “Every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man,” or priest—for the word “man,” is not in the original, “after he had offered one sacrifice for sins,” had finished His work and forever, He “sat down.” You see the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice rests in this, that the priest offered continually, and after he had slaughtered one lamb, another was needed. After one scapegoat was driven into the wilderness, a scapegoat was needed the next year, “but this man, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins,” did what thousands of scapegoats never did, and what hundreds of thousands of lambs never could effect. He perfected our salvation and worked out an entire atonement for the sins of all His chosen ones. We shall notice, in the first place,…