Monday Meditation
April 30, 2012
The Omission
“A body hast Thou prepared Me.
… Lo I come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me, to do Thy will, O God.”
Hebrews 10:5
In Hebrews 10, the Spirit of God goes back to Psalm 40:6-8 to show that when Christ came into the world, God prepared Him a body to enable Him to give that body as a sacrifice at Calvary.
While there are many contrasts with the animal sacrifices and the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, there is also a glaring contrast with Psalm 40. Read it carefully and note the omission of one phrase: “I delight to do Thy will.” In Psalm 40, the writer, going beyond his own experience and speaking prophetically by the Spirit of God, expressed the desire of the Lord Jesus Christ to give God what He always “desired” (Ps 40:6). God’s ultimate desire was never satisfied with the myriads of sacrifices brought to Jewish altars. He was always looking ahead, contemplating a greater and more efficacious sacrifice.
Scholars are quick to point out that Psalm 40 is the Psalm of the Burnt offering. It is the Psalm in which the Lord Jesus is seen delighting to do the will of His Father. In it, He expresses that delight. For those who care to trace it, you can find the four parts of the burnt offering of Leviticus 1 in these verses: His head and the fat; the inward parts and the legs. Every aspect of Him was given over to bringing delight to His Father.
But when we come to Hebrews 10, the words, “I delight to do Thy will” are absent. Why is there no mention of His delight in Hebrews 10? The setting for the chapter is not the burnt offering and the joy the Savior had in fulfilling the Father’s will. Hebrews 10 is the sin offering with all the darkness and dread that was linked with Calvary. While it gave Him pleasure to fulfill the Father’s will, it gave Him no pleasure in bearing sin and suffering for sin. The holy soul of Christ recoiled from the association He would have with sin at Calvary. It groaned under the reality of the interruption of the joy of a fellowship He had within the Godhead from all eternity. There was no “delight’ or pleasure in dealing with the great issue of sin.
Consider:
1. The sacrifices of an old system were repetitive and not final, shadow and not substance, reactive and not redemptive, and a reminder and not a remover.
2. It would be legitimate to translate verse 5 as, “coming into the world.” In other words, when He left heaven and made the descent to earth, these were His parting words to His Father.
3. What do you think the “volume of the book” is?
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