Hebrews 9:11-14, 1 John 2:1-3
May 11, 2025
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“There is a state of perfect peace with God to be attained under imperfect obedience. Nothing can give perfect peace of conscience with God but what can make atonement for sin.”

~ An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews by John Owen (1616-1683), an English Puritan Nonconformist church leader, and theologian

“What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?”

~ John Gresham Machen (1881-1937), American professor & writer

“Remember what St. John says ‘If our heart condemn us, God is stronger than our heart.’ The feeling of being, or not being, forgiven and loved, is not what matters. One must come down to brass tacks. If there is a particular sin on your conscience, repent and confess it. If there isn’t, tell the despondent devil not to be silly. You can’t help hearing his voice (the odious inner radio) but you must treat it merely like a buzzing in your ears or any other irrational nuisance… The sense of dereliction cannot be a bad symptom for Our Lord Himself experienced it in its depth—‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’”

~ C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

Sermon Passage

Hebrews 9:11-14, 1 John 2:1-3 (ESV)

Hebrews 9

¹¹ But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) ¹² he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. ¹³ For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, ¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

1 John

¹ My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. ² He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.