God’s Plan! Revealed and Finally Realized!

The Plan Executed! (Literally)
Hebrews 9:24-28

† Jesus-Son-Savior †

May the grace of God our Father and our Lord Jesus help you understand the depth of their plan to deliver you to the freedom of Heaven!

Intro: Don’t ask if you don’t want to know!

Imagine if you were a leader, and in your possession came all your competition’s papers. Included in that collection were letters from your own people, who were planning to betray you. How would you handle it?

That very thing happened to Julius Caesar, as he defeated general Pompey. Inside the chest full of documents there were letters from some of the closest people to him, who were seeking to overthrow him.

Charles Spurgeon, a British preacher and historian, included this part of the story, “if Caesar had read those letters it is probable that he would have been so angry with many of his friends that he would have put them to death for playing him false. Fearing this, he magnanimously took the box and destroyed it without reading a single line.” ^[i]

It has been said that what you don’t know can hurt you!

Those were the men who would later, on what became to be known as the Ides of March, stab Julius Caesar was literally stabbed in the back by his friends who had written the letters…

The letters he did not read, identifying his betrayers, the ones who planned his death…

Caeser sacrificed his own life, because he didn’t want to face his betrayers.

Our Lord Jesus was also sacrificed by people he loved… the difference is that He knew it was coming, had known for millennia…

For He not only knew their plan, He was the Father’s plan, the plan for our future and hope!

Law – God knew the content of your life

In our reading from Hebrews this morning, there is a comparison between the Jewish High Priest and Jesus, between the Temple’s holy of Holies and the presence God’s throne in heave.

The Holy of Holies is a picture of the heavenly throne where God the Father dwells. The place where the offering is brought to make payment for our sin, the difference.

The place described as the “place made with human hands,” that is either the Tabernacle or its replacement the temple, was only a temporary fix, the offering having to made, as John writes, “like the high priest here on earth who enters the Most Holy Place year after year with the blood of an animal.”

Why did God provide this way of Old Testament sacrifice?

For the same reason He had a plan: Jesus.

Because unlike Julius Caesar, had read the record, and knew every sin, every bit of work we’ve done to rebel from God and every thought where we decided we know more than God.

God’s read the letters of your life, even the darkest ones…

He knows, He knew those sins, even before we committed them.

Gospel – One final death….

Caesar didn’t want to know his enemies and what they were doing. He sacrificed his own life for blissful ignorance.

God wanted to know His enemies, for only then could He execute His Plan. For His Plan, Jesus, was to be the sacrifice offered to save their lives. That is why the title of this message is – The Plan Executed – Literally. He was the Plan and He was executed for us!

Hear it again from John the apostle,

“Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.”

No sacrifice every year, just Jesus, God’s plan—His only plan from before the foundation of the world to save us, the Plan – had to be executed.

That was what the tabernacle and the Temple pointed to, every sacrifice of every type, that there would be a final sacrifice that would take away our sins.

Domino’s Delivers

So complete a sacrifice, that when Jesus returns, there will be no longer be any need to deal with sin, it was finished off, its power to condemn us stripped away,

Salvation is Greek actually means to deliver. It is not only salvation from sin, but salvation to a new state of life! If you have a pizza delivered, or food from Grubhub, it is only part of the process to pick up the food at the restaurant—there has to be a delivery.

We have to realize that people aren’t just delivered from sin—they are delivered into the presence of God, where they are welcome. Now as the Holy Spirit takes us residence in us—as promised in our Baptism.

Eternally as one day we are welcomed into heaven!

And that is all He comes back to do, the judgment is already secure because of His sacrifice for us on the cross. So we have been saved from and we await being saved to…

Because the Plan was executed for us.

And because of that – we dwell in the peace of God which is beyond all understanding and guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus! AMEN!

^[i] Spurgeon, C. (2017). 300 Sermon Illustrations from Charles Spurgeon (E. Ritzema & L. Smoyer, Eds.). Lexham Press.