Worship
In The Earthly Tabernacle (ch. 9:1-10)
Without going into detail the first 5 verses speak of
the Old Testament Tabernacle. It had an outer court and then within the
tent had two sections. The two
parts were divided by a curtain. On
one side of the curtain was the
Holy Place
, while on the other side was the
Most Holy Place
where the presence of God dwelt. Only
the high priest entered that room, and that was only once a year.
In all three areas of the tabernacle there were certain items that
were used in the various aspects of the ceremonial functions that were
demanded by the Law.
In the verses following, the explanation of the
tabernacle continues. One
thing to note in verse 7, it says that the High Priest had to take blood
with him when he went into the most holy place once a year.
The shedding of blood is most important in relation to our standing
before God. The life of our
body is found in blood. When
man sinned in the beginning we all died.
To make things right God demanded that someone else had to die in
order to reconcile us back to God. In
the Old Testament, God said that animals were sufficient for the time
being. Yet animal blood would
not satisfy God forever.
This picture of the high priest going into the
Most Holy Place
with blood once a year is
obviously a picture of what Jesus did for us.
The Old Testament rituals were symbolic of the real thing.
When Jesus shed His blood, and as it dripped down from the cross on
to the ground, was the real presentation of a blood sacrifice to God.
It is interesting to note that the priests of old
made sacrifices for the “sins of ignorance” as seen in verse 7.
Sins of ignorance mean sins that are committed unknowingly.
The priest didn’t just make sacrifices for known sin, but for
unknown sin. This meant that
God needed these sacrifices to be made.
I would think then that God views sin as sin, whether we know we
are sinning or not. If the
priests had to offer sacrifices for unknown sin, then Jesus would have had
to do the same. Thus the point should be made, whether we understand
something to be sin or not it does not really make a difference.
It is still sin, and we are still sinning, and God does not like
it. Therefore Jesus had to die
for such sin. Also, there is
no excuse for us when we sin in ignorance because God still views it as
sin.
In verse 8 the writer says that all this was symbolic
and that this was in one way the Holy Spirit saying something to the
people. He was saying “that
they way into the Most Holy place was not yet disclosed
as long as the first tabernacle was still standing.
Verse 9 begins by saying that “this is all an
illustration”. That is what
the Old Covenant in all of its various aspects was all about.
It was an illustration of the good things to come that can be found
in Jesus. The writer goes on
to say that all “the gifts and sacrifices could not clear the conscience
of the worshiper”. Yet that
is not the case with the New Covenant.
The fact is that Jesus has shed His blood and that
God accepts His sacrifice. When
we trust Jesus to represent us before God as He does, God accepts us.
We therefore are no longer guilty as a result of our sin.
As a result of this fact our conscience should no longer bother us
and tell us that we are guilty and not accepted by God. My conscience is
free from and negative thinking. It
is free from any so-called guilty feelings, even we should
understand that guilt is not a feeling.
It is a position in which we stand before God.
If as Christians our conscience still condemns us, then we do not
properly understand the words and the teachings that are proclaimed here
in the book of Hebrews. Once
understanding the gospel, we will have no problem with our conscience
condemning ourselves.
The writer closes this section by telling us that all
aspects of the Old Covenant were external to us.
The intent of the New Covenant is that God’s ways are internal,
that is within us, because of His Spirit that dwells in all born again
Christians.
The
Blood Of Christ (ch.9:11:28)
In verse 11 the writer says that Christ came to be
our Great High Priest and serves in a sanctuary that is not made with
hands. He says this in the
present tense because this has already come about.
This is not something that we are looking forward to.
Right now our Lord is our High Priest in Heaven.
He is serving us, by representing us before God.
Jesus is much like a lawyer. God,
the judge sees our sinfulness and wants to condemn us, but Jesus the
lawyer states that the punishment as already been made for our sinfulness,
thus we are free from any condemnation and punishment.
It says in verse 12 that Jesus has entered this
Most Holy Place
, not with the blood of animals, but with His own blood.
When Jesus ascended back to His Father, He entered into the
presence of God. He did this
once and for all never having to do it again.
His sacrifice is a one time event. Once and for all time He has
redeemed us, or reconciled us back to the Father.
He has paid the necessary price for this reconciliation. This is
what the word redemption means, as seen here in verse 12.
Once again, in verses 13 and 14 the author tells us
that the sacrifices of animals just didn’t do it.
Yet the blood sacrifice of Jesus is able to “cleanse our
conscience”. Once again, our
conscience doesn’t have to worry about being guilty since God doesn’t
view us as being guilty any longer. Now
that our conscience is clean, we can serve God as we were meant to serve
Him. We no longer have to
worry about our sinful condition getting in the way, because God views us
as perfectly righteous.
In verse 14 the writer says that we are cleansed from
”acts that lead to death”. These
acts that lead to death have been talked about earlier.
They are all of the good works that people did over the centuries
to try to make things right before God.
All these acts, or good works simply lead to death.
They really cannot help us in our search for acceptance with God.
Verse 15 tells us that Christ has become a mediator.
A mediator is someone that stands between two people and works out
a solution to bring the two people together.
Jesus has done just that for us.
He has worked out the solution by becoming “a ransom”.
This means that He paid the necessary price to bring us and God
together. The writer also says
that “he has set us free from our sins”.
We are set free from God’s wrath that would punish us for our
sin. We have also been set
free from our sin since the Holy Spirit lives within us and we now have
the ability to begin to overcome sin.
In the next paragraph the writer compares both the
Old Covenant and the New Covenant with a will.
With a will, the will does not take effect until the person to whom
the will has been written for dies. The
author explains that when Moses received the Old Covenant he went through
a ritual that included the death and sacrifice of an animal.
Even the giving of the Old Covenant could not be finalized without
an animal dying. Moses had to
sprinkle everything in the tabernacle with blood. This would make it clean
in the presence of God.
Verse 22 is a well known Scripture.
It says that “without the shedding of blood there is no
forgiveness of sins”. This
was the case in the Old Covenant and it is the case in the New Covenant.
In verse 23 and 24 we continue the re-occurring theme
of the New Covenant being better than the Old Covenant.
The tabernacle and all that is in it needed to be cleansed with the
blood sacrifices, yet there is
a real tabernacle in Heaven that is far better than the earthly one and
with a better sacrifice. Once
again the author says that Jesus is in Heaven
appearing “for us in the presence of God”. This is the duty of
our Most High Priest. I have
said it before, just as the writer of this book has said it before, and
that is, Jesus is still serving us today. He is like a lawyer,
representing us in the presence of God.
How we need His representation.
God may view us as sinless but we still sin, and for this reason I
believe we still need a High Priest to represent us before God.
In verse 26 it says that Jesus “has appeared once
and for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of
Himself”. Has sin been
totally done away with yet? Not
quite. Our sin, once we trust
Jesus, has been done away with in the sense that God does not view us as
sinners any longer. Yet there
will come a day, which is a result of the cross, when there will be no
more sin. At that time all of
the various aspects of the cross will finally be realized.
Notice the phrase, “at the end of the ages”.
Could this suggest that there has been many ages in the past?
It possibly could? Those
who believe in the gap theory, that is, an age or ages of time between
Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 would use this verse to support their
position.
Verse 27 says that we all will die at some point, and
after this death we will face the judgement of God.
The judgement of God, and just what will happen on that day is
somewhat obscure, at least in my thinking .
Yet know this, there will be a judgement day when all things will
be reconciled. Our only hope
is in the fact that Jesus is now, and will at that day represent us before
God as our High Priest. If we
have failed to allow Jesus to represent us, then we will be doomed
forever. Only Jesus can defend
us successfully on that day.
The author closes this chapter by saying that Jesus
will return, not to deal with our sin, since that has already been done,
but to give us the totality of our salvation, that we are waiting for.
Once again, this shows us that salvation is a progressive thing.
We were saved. We are
being saved, and we will be saved. All
three aspects of salvation can be found in Scripture.
Christ’s
Sacrifice Once For All (ch.
10:1-18)
Verse 1 is one of those verses that puts the Law in
its place, when it says that the Law “is only a shadow of the good
things that are coming”. Some
of these good things are already ours in Christ, and some are still to
come in the next age.
The verse goes on to say because the Law is not the
real thing, but only a shadow, it can’t make people perfect.
If God’s Law can’t make people perfect then any man made law
can’t either. One problem
with the church over the centuries is that we have substituted God’s Old
Testament Law with our own written or unwritten laws in order to be saved,
or maintain our salvation, or to reach some kind of righteous standard.
If God’s Law can’t make us perfect, then nothing that we do can
make us perfect either.
How do we then become perfect?
As we have seen over again, God views us as perfect because of the
perfect sacrifice Jesus has made. In
one real sense of the word, we are perfect, yet in our earthly reality we
are far from that.
We should note in
verse 2 that the people of the Old Testament “felt guilty for their
sins”. In reality, guilt is
not a feeling, but a position in which we stand before the Lord.
Without allowing Jesus to
be our High Priest, we are guilty, whether we feel guilty or not.
Once allowing Jesus to become our High Priest, we are no longer
guilty, whether we feel that ou not. Yet
many of us still have feelings resulting from our positional guilt.
Making daily sacrifices for our sins, only reminds us that we are
still sinners and thus we still “feel guilty”.
Yet when we understand that Jesus died once and for all to take
away this position of guilt, we no longer need to feel guilty.
And even if we do feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings and
He knows that we aren’t guilty anyway, as John says in 1 John 3:20.
Some Christians still suffer needlessly with
so-called guilty feelings. To
appease these feelings, they do all sorts of good things.
Maybe they teach Sunday school.
Maybe they do lots of things in the local church, all to appease
these feelings, but this is the same as offering Old Testament style
sacrifices to God. There is
nothing that we can do to rid ourselves from
this positional guilt. If
the feeling of guilt remains, we should go back to the Bible to understand
what Jesus has done for us.
In verses 5 through 7 we see once again yet another
prophetic Psalm. The writer
says that Christ quoted this Psalm when He came into the world.
This would suggest that
the pre-existing Son of God said these words as He entered the babies body
that God gave to Him to reside in while
on earth. The quote says that God was never interested in animal
sacrifices. What God was most
interested in was preparing a body for Jesus to live in.
This is a picture of what theologians call the “incarnation”.
This means that the pre-existing Son of God, came to live in an
earthly body.
The Psalm quotes Jesus as saying, “here I am … I
have come to do your will”. This
is what God in Heaven wanted to see and hear all along.
This means more to Him than all of the sacrifices ever committed in
Old Testament times. Just a
few simple words, “here I am … I have come to do your will, O God”.
I can imagine as Jesus entered the body of that little baby Him
declaring these words. This
was the beginning of His earthly ministry.
This was the beginning of the institution of
the New Covenant.
Verse 9 says it clearly once again, that God “set
aside the first (Law) to establish the second”.
The outworking of Jesus saying, “here I am.
I have come to do your will” took place on the cross.
At that time the Old Covenant was “set aside”.
This sacrifice of Jesus “has made us holy’ (ch.10:10).
Verse 11 says that “day after day priests stand and
perform religious duties”. It
is very ironic as the writer of Hebrews writes this letter that the
priests were still performing their ritualistic duties. This verse is in
the present tense. The sad
thing is that they were doing all of this for nothing.
Jesus had once and for all made His sacrifice.
Beyond His sacrifice there are no sacrifices to be made.
Verse 12 says that after Jesus made His great
sacrifice “he sat down at the right hand of God”.
Whether there is a literal seat that Jesus is sitting in or not can
be debated, but we know in the culture in which these words were written,
this phrase tells the readers that Jesus is now in a place of final
authority. He was at one point
in time a living sacrifice, but now He is the Lord of all things “until
all of His enemies become His footstool”.
This will happen at His second coming to earth and when everyone is
judged by God Himself.
In verse 14 we see that “we are being made
perfect”, yet in verse 10 it says that we “have been made holy”.
This is the continuous nature of our salvation seen here.
In one sense we have already been made perfect because God views us
as perfect, yet in another since He is changing us into someone who will
be perfect. Then still, this
change will reach its ultimate fulfillment when Jesus gives us our new and
glorified bodies.
The writer in verses 16 and 17 quotes Jer. 31:33 and
34 as he did earlier. He says
that the Holy Spirit also testifies to these facts as well.
By quoting an Old Testament prophecy the writer is saying that the
Holy Spirit years ago was speaking to us about these things.
He said, “I will put my laws in their heart’s … and remember
their sin no more”. We have
talked about this earlier. Once
again, in one sense of the word this has come true already, yet the
totality of this prophecy will not come true until Jesus returns for us.
Verse 18 is important.
It says, “where these have been forgiven there is no longer any
sacrifice for sins”. You and
I have been forgiven by God of all of our sins, both past present and
future. This is so if we have
accepted His forgiveness. If
this indeed is the case then there are no other sacrifices to be made to
make us right with God. We can
do nothing to make ourselves right with God.
Jesus has done it all for us. This
does not mean that we should not live sacrificially.
It means that our sacrificial living is a result of our love and
thankfulness towards Jesus. The
good things we now do does not make us right before God.
They are a result of us being made right before God and our being
thankful for this fact.
A
Call To Persevere (ch. 10:19-39)
In verse 22 the author encourages his readers “to
draw near to God with a sincere heart, in the full assurance of
faith…”. In Old Testament
times we could not come near to God. Only
the High Priest once a year could do this.
But now as the writer of Hebrews
says that Jesus, through his death has ripped open the curtain, the
dividing wall, so we can come right into God’s presence.
And we can do it with all confidence knowing that God wants us in
His presence. The words
“assurance of faith”,
means that we can be sure in the trust that we
have in Jesus that allows this to happen.
The words “having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse
us from a guilty conscience”, is
somewhat symbolic and refers back to the idea that everything in Old
Testament days that were associated with the
Temple
had to be sprinkled with blood. So
in a symbolic sense, our hearts have been sprinkled with the blood of
Jesus, making us clean. This
would in turn take away any feelings of guilt in our conscience due to our
sin. Yet not only our
hearts are cleaned but all of us is clean for it goes on to say that
“our bodies have been washed with pure water”.
In verse 23 he encourages the readers “to hold
unswervingly to their hope”. This
always seems to be a problem with mankind.
We tend to not hold on to our hope in Jesus.
Many give up somewhere along the way.
This verse tells us that God is faithful and He will bring about
what He has promised. If we
don’t give up, we will eventually be a part of the fulfillment of all of
God’s promises.
“Let us consider how we may spur one another on
towards love and good deeds”. It
seems that we are actually encouraged to think
of ways to help each other in the doing of good.
I am sure that the writer is not speaking of nagging.
I think he is suggesting creative and positive ways of
encouragement.
In verse 25 he continues these words of encouragement
by telling these people to continue to meet together.
It appears that some of them had stopped meeting together. Once
your hope, or your trust in Jesus begins to falter, the next step is not
to meet with fellow Christians. He
is saying, as each day gets closer to “the Day”, meaning Christ’s
return, we should be gathering more often.
This does not necessarily mean
gathering in traditional style meetings.
This simply means getting together for support and encouragement
wherever and whenever, and with whoever.
The times will get harder and harder for Christians as time goes
on. We will need this personal
support. Meetings just won't
cut it then.
The next paragraph that begins with verse 26 is
important and needs some thought given to it.
It begins with these words, “if we deliberately keep on sinning
after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is
left”. First of all the
writer is not talking about “sins of ignorance here as he did in the
last chapter. He is speaking
about “willfully sinning”, after receiving the truth.
This person became a
Christian. He says that there
are no sacrifices that can be made for these sins.
You cannot go and offer some kind of animal sacrifice because they
have been done away. Jesus
Himself will never offer Himself for any other sins.
His sacrifice was a one time event.
So don’t think deliberately sinning can be atoned for by any
other means other than the sacrifice Jesus already made.
We need to keep this verse in context with the rest
of Scripture. We are saved by
grace alone and not by good works. We
stay saved by grace alone, not by good works.
Logically speaking then, we don’t get unsaved by bad works, but
by rejecting Jesus and His grace. What
is being said here is that if you willfully sin, you are in the process of
rejecting Jesus and what He did for you.
You are openly and blatantly defying God Himself, and thus you are
on dangerous ground. You have
not yet fallen away, but you are getting close to it.
Then if you continue on this path of willfully sinning and thus
turn from God, you will face “a fearful expectation of judgement and a
raging fire that will consume the enemies of God”.
These are strong and powerful words. God will judge people.
He is a consuming fire for those who reject Him.
In verse 28 the author says that “anyone who
rejected the Law of Moses died without mercy”.
Notice the word “rejected” used here.
He uses the word “rejected” in the context of willfully sinning
as seen above. This sheds
light on the one who willfully sins in the above verse.
The underlying reason why he is willfully sinning is because he is
in the process of “rejecting” God,
and for this reason he is in danger of God’s judgement of fire.
If a person died without mercy in Old Testament days
because he rejected the Law, “how much more severely do you think a man
deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot”.
I would think that death is a pretty severe
punishment. What could
be more severe? Well eternal
death can be more severe. Eternal
death means to experience the dying process for eternity.
That is to say, continually feeling the pain of death without
Christ for every moment in eternity. Eternal death is not just
experiencing death once and after that you are gone with no knowledge of
anything life after death. Eternal
death is constantly dying. I
remember the death of my father who died of cancer. Those last two days
were horrible. He could not
eat. He could not even drink.
You could tell he was thirsty and so you tried to put a few drops
of water on his tongue. He
could not move. He could only
experience the pain of the cancer moving through his body.
At 9:05 PM on June 7, 2001 he died, and it was all over.
This is not so with eternal death.
You simply are in the dying process as my father was, yet for all
eternity.
For the person who sins willfully and rejects God’s
provision for him, he treats the blood of Jesus as a “unholy thing”,
and “insults the Spirit of Grace”. (ch. 10:29)
That doesn’t sound very nice.
The writer quotes from the Law where God says that He
will “avenge and will repay, and judge His people”.
God will judge His people according to this verse.
We often think that God will only judge the sinner, but this is
clearly not the case. How this
judgment of His people will take place, I am not sure.
Yet this verse clearly says that God will judge His people.
“For it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands
of the living God”, is the way in which the writer closes this
paragraph. We use the word
awesome a lot these days, but
I heard someone say that we should only use that word in relation to God.
Only God is awesome. God forbid that we ever fall into His hands.
It is only through Jesus our High Priest that we can possibly be in
God’s presence. We would
burn with eternal fire if Jesus could not protect us.
In the paragraph beginning with verse 32 the author
reminds his readers of earlier days when they had great zeal for Jesus.
In those days they gladly suffered great persecution.
Some were beaten. Some
were put in prison. Some had
their possessions taken away. These
people gladly went through those days because they knew they “had better
and lasting possessions”. They
gladly gave up their temporal things in order to serve God and inherit a
lasting reward in Heaven.
In verse 35 he tells the Hebrews not to throw away
their confidence because they will be rewarded if they hang in until the
end. Verse 36 says, “
you need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will
receive what He has promised”. It
is too easy for us to give up. Obviously
doing the will of God is not always easy.
Thus the definition of the abundant life should never be thought of
as peace, joy and happiness forever without any hint of needing to
persevere through hardships.
In verses 37 and 38 the author reminds the people
that Jesus will return, and that there is no doubt about that, but until
that day, His people must live by faith.
They must live by trusting their entire lives to Jesus.
“And if he shrinks back, I (God) will not be pleased with him”.
We should not be people who shrink back, who go back to the old
life without trusting Jesus.
The writer closes this chapter by stating a positive
word for these people to hold on to. He
says, “we are not of these who shrink back and are destroyed, but are
those who believe and are saved”. Shrinking
back leads to unbelief, and unbelief ends in destruction.
We are of those who trust in Jesus and this trust will result in
our salvation.
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