Jesus’ Heavenly Offering

Transcript

So, what I want us to consider this evening is Jesus' heavenly offering, and this is going to be a comparison of how sacrifice has worked in the New Covenant and the Old Covenant. So that of course begs the question, where do we actually learn about Jesus' offering? Ephesians 5 and verse 2 reads, Walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Likewise in Isaiah 53.10 it reads, But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. If he would render himself as a guilt offering, he will see his offspring, he will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. Now the reason why I bring these two verses out at the start is because these are some of the only verses which speak about Jesus' work in the terms of sacrifice and offering according to the law. In fact, Ephesians 5 verse 2 is the only New Testament passage outside of Hebrews which describes any of Jesus' work as a sacrifice or an offering in explicit terms. There's a number of other passages which we can argue make allusions or indirect comparison with aspects of the law, but noticing the absence of explicit connection I think really hammers home the point that Hebrews is really interested in this question in a way that not many other books, well actually no other book is interested in this to the same level of depth. Other passages, as I said, can be understood as referencing Old Testament sacrifices, but only indirectly. And the whole epistle of Hebrews, particularly the run from chapter 5 to chapter 10, helps us to understand Jesus' role and his continued work through a comparison with the processes present in the law of Moses. So we're told about what Jesus has done and is doing through comparison to the law, which requires us to understand the law, to understand what Hebrews is talking about Christ doing. So if we need to understand the law, to understand the comparison, we're best to ask ourselves the question, what actually is an offering according to the law? Well, in the original Hebrew, the word which we have for offering, karban, it's generally accepted to drive from the root karab, which means to draw near. Now this helps us to understand the basic meaning of offerings in two ways. It draws our mind to entering God's presence. So we go to where God is and we're going to give him something. We're going to give him a gift. And this idea of gift giving is really central to how all of the offerings work. This is why it's really important that you're giving a good gift and not a bad one. And for this reason, passages which are focused on sacrificial method, how to present a sacrifice. So many of the chapters in Leviticus and a few other passages as well are generally concerned with two ideas. Firstly, how is it that a gift can be sent to God? What do I need to do to get it there? And secondly, what type of gift God would like to receive? Now, both of these things are really important and we all know this because we've given gifts to people before. It's no good for me to want to give Butch a gift if I don't know his postage address. That wouldn't work very well. I might be able to find Butch a really nice gift that he'd really appreciate, but that doesn't mean anything if I can't get it to him. Particularly not in my case when I'm over the Atlantic. But the other case is also true. It's no good for me to know Butch's postal address if I'm going to send him something he's not going to like. I don't think Butch would appreciate receiving a Lakers jersey. So it's important to both know how to get the gift to where you want to get it and what type of gift is going to be appreciated. And this idea of gift giving I think really helps us to appreciate some of the complexities in the law. Another thing that can help us to attach a little bit more meaning and understanding to what can be quite an opaque part of scripture really. It can be very dense and difficult to read. It's not an uncommon thing that when we're reading Leviticus, we do often get quite tempted to give up. It's very dense. It's very far from us. We don't live out the scenario which is being described. It's very alien and for that reason this step-by-step instruction can be very difficult to really latch onto. It would be a bit like reading an Ikea instruction manual when you've not actually got the pieces. There's nothing about that sort of procedural and technical writing that's it's very difficult to access that when we're not actually going out and doing. But a comparison with offerings in the law and the offerings that happen in pagan context which we might know about from reading wider literature or perhaps just our wider knowledge of culture. We've seen something in a film. The context in which an offering happens is totally different. In the law of Moses, an offering occurs within a covenant relationship. God is in a relationship with a person and then he affords them the opportunity to give him gifts. This is totally how offerings function in pagan contexts. In pagan contexts, the gods aren't really that concerned with you until you've got something they want. Often in pagan contexts, you'll see a kind of bargaining go on. A little bit of I get what I want, you get what you want. It's mightily convenient that the god of whatever part of life that you're happening to struggle with right now, you know, it just so happens that the god who controls the harvest happens to want your goat. And there's another difference in regulation that in the Bible, we have a extremely, extremely thorough and explained system of how and when to give it. God is really interested in telling us exactly when and how to the extent that it's actually difficult for us to read. That's how committed he is to helping us to understand the when and the how, but that's completely not the case in any pagan context where the wants and the desires of the are so opaque and difficult to understand that spiritists and oracles need to be consulted to figure out what the gods want and how to get it to them. What gifts do they want is another very varied thing in pagan contexts. The deities don't reveal what they want. You have to intuit it or rely on some sort of expert, as I said, a medium or an oracle to try and tell you how, whereas in God's case, in the case of Leviticus, God's going to tell you exactly what he wants and when he wants it in really, really specific detail. And why do they want gifts is another big difference. In pagan contexts, the image is sustenance, that you give the gods meals and they sustain themselves from their eating, so they need what you've got. Whereas in one of the Psalms, unfortunately, I can't remember which one, God actually makes fun of the idea that he would need to eat what we have to offer. God made all things. He doesn't need our goats or our bulls or our rams. He doesn't need them. He made them. What the sacrifice is doing for the deity is similar, I suppose, to what happens when a child gives its parent a necklace made out of pasta. There's nothing about the gift itself that is guaranteeing a positive reaction. In fact, I've got a good example with me right here. This is a bookmark that was made for me by my sister-in-law who's 10. There's nothing about the material composition of the bookmark. There's nothing about the material composition of the pasta necklace. It's not that every mother really deeply needs and yearns for a pasta necklace and their life won't be complete without it. In fact, they may well die if they don't have one. It's not in our need for the gift. It's the fact that we, as the recipient of the gift, care about the relationship. That's what makes us care about the gifts that we get from children. That the gift is how the child shows that they care to you. Because you care about them, you care about the gift. This is how and why God cares about offerings. They are the way that he graciously has extended to the people. He's told them what he wants and how he wants it to be done. He's showing them what they need to do so that they can show him how much he means to them. And this, of course, is really centered on the idea that God, unlike any other type of God, in any other religion or context, God doesn't need sacrifice. The fact that God can refuse Israel's sacrifice, which he does all over the Old Testament, he'll refuse them for a whole host of reasons. The fact that he can refuse them shows that he doesn't need them. Sacrifices aren't magic tricks which compel God to do what people want him to. We can't trick God into giving us what we want. We do not have the ability to compel him. God has allowed the system of sacrifice to function because he's gracious and has compassion for the frailties of humanity. The gift works not because of what the gift is made of. The gift works because the relationship that we have to God, that Israel had to God, is important to God and is important to those who are giving him gifts. Hence, in Leviticus 17 verse 11, God says, the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. I have imbued blood with this power because I care about this effect. I want to give you, my people Israel, the ability to deal with this problem. And so through this comparison, we can hopefully see that the law and the system of sacrifices is an extension of God's grace to his people, that he is giving them a means to approach him. But not all the offerings are about sin, and this really shows us sort of the richness of the system of sacrifice and offering. It's only the offerings which I've highlighted in red, the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the day of atonement, which make explicit reference to sin. The ones in purple, the burnt offering contains the phrase, make atonement for him, but that has its own complex interpretation. So the burnt offering may have some reference to sin, but it's not totally explicit, and the priestly ordination offerings contain a sin offering, but as we'll get into later, the sin offering and the guilt offering do more than just deal with moral problems. But we can see here that the fact that the majority of the types of offerings are not explicitly about sin, that the relationship between God and mankind is so much broader than dealing with this moral problem, that the system of offerings and sacrifices is all about God dwelling with his people, and ideally speaking, the relationship between them working. Now he has put in place the sin offering, the guilt offering, the day of atonement, and all these systems to help them deal with things when they're not working, but we can see here that there's offerings for the purpose of maintaining the relationship, maintaining closeness between God and mankind when things are working well. Now we're not going to look at the process of every offering here, but we're going to take a sort of zoomed out look at the process of every offering which happens in the law. A gift is selected. This happens first. This will typically be an unblemished animal or a gift from the harvest. Either way, we probably don't naturally think about how difficult an unblemished animal is to find. Well, yeah, I don't know how many of you live near sheep, but I do, and having lived near farms for a decent bit of my life and having seen many lambs being born and walking around in their early stage of life, one thing that you will notice is how many of them injure themselves. They injure themselves all the time. In fact, you see an awful lot of animals cripple and injure themselves. We may not actually have considered that maintaining an unblemished animal could actually be a bit of a challenge. Trying to keep an animal safe so that it remains in the perfect state to give as a gift to God could be quite an intensive process. Likewise, a gift from the harvest. This is a really significant outlay for somebody whose entire subsistence relies upon the harvest yield. It's a profound act of faith to literally give away your source of food to God. The gift is brought before the priest or the priests, and this is partially for the purpose of them inspecting it and making sure it's good enough. This work of the priests serves to help the people to understand and to give a gift that's going to be accepted. The priest then either aids or actually performs the presentation of the offering. Now, the reason for that slash there is that depending on the passage, it's described differently. In Leviticus, the process seems to talk through an individual person going through the process of preparing the sacrifice, whereas by the time we get to the period of the temple and the descriptions of offerings, it seems to be the case that the priests are doing nearly all of it. But this preparation of the offering involves the slaughter of the animal and the portioning. There's actually about butchery and then read some of the instructions in Leviticus. It's actually really quite technical stuff. There's splitting of the fat surrounding individual organs. There's a lot of really complicated work going on. The animal is prepared and portioned, so different parts of the animal are typically going to different places, so the blood is gathered and put aside. Depending on the offering, different bits are going to go to different places. The offering is then presented, and this happens in a number of different ways depending on the offering we're talking about. This can happen by the altar, in which case typically the image is sweet smelling savour, so you burn it and the smoke rises up into heaven and it pleases God because of the smell. Another presentation format is blood manipulation. This is the gathering of blood and the sprinkling of it on various things, the painting of it on various things, and the pouring out of blood on various things. So this will be the horns of the altar, the sides of the tent itself. Another presentation format is waving, so a portion of the sacrifice is held up in the air and it is waved, and heaving is the same. After this, additional elements will be performed, so that would be disposal of any unwanted parts. So in some of the offerings, not all of the parts get sent to God, so in sin offerings it's only the fat which is sent to God and the blood, whereas the rest of the animal is taken outside of the camp into a clean location and burned. So there's unwanted parts, and if it's a peace offering, which is the only type of offering where non-priests get to eat of it, portions of the offering are then eaten. So we can see here that there's a detailed step-by-step process by which offerings are given, and we'll also see the importance of the distinction between offering and slaughter. The death of the animal is not the end of the process. It's a necessary step, but it's not the sum total. And there's a host of passages which describe these two aspects as distinct. A useful one, which you can turn to in your own time if you're interested, is in Leviticus 45, in which the role of the Levites is described for the temple vision, in which certain priests have their role restricted to only being able to perform the slaughter, while others still get performed the presentation. So there's a distinction there. Now this idea of blood manipulation, the putting of blood on various things, is extremely alien to us. Blood now is gross. We, generally speaking, in our poetry, our metaphors, if you talk about somebody having blood on their hands, you're talking about a murderer. If you're talking about blood, you're talking about killing. You're talking about death. This is not the case in the law. In the law, blood is used to consecrate, to sanctify, or to cleanse that which it's applied to, which is so different to our modern ideas about blood as a potential contagion. This blood gets applied to people, the horns and sides of altars, the tabernacle itself, and in the Passover, it gets applied to doorposts. The basic logic is this, as Leviticus 17.11 reads, For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. The importance of blood in the sacrifices is about blood's symbolic association with life, not death. It means completely the opposite thing to that which it means for us. One aspect that can make Leviticus a little bit difficult is the word atonement. In Tindale's English translation of the Old Testament, he used the words make atonement to translate the with the phrase Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, it's that word. But it's not the most literal translation that could be proposed, and in some places where it's used, particularly in sacrificial contexts, it can actually obscure some of the detail of the process. The word literally means to cover or to pitch, in the way that you would smear the inside of a boat to waterproof it. So Moses's basket was pitched with this word, was pitched to make it waterproof. It has the sense of thoroughly covering, and it shows up in a whole host of places. A good example is when Jacob sends gifts to cover Esau's face, in the sense that it covers Esau's frown and makes him no longer displeased in Jacob's mind. That's what he's hoping for. But in sacrificial contexts, this literal meaning of covering or pitching more clearly indicates the purpose of blood in the law, that the life in the blood is being used to cover over the death which has defiled various persons and objects. That life is being painted onto death, and that life is overcoming death. Death really is the center of how the logic of impurity works through the whole of the law. Impurity can be split into two categories, and both prevented a person entering into God's presence. Firstly, ritual impurity, and this is what we would use to talk about what would arise from contact with death. So this is what happens to you if you go and you touch a corpse. This impurity does not imply that the impure person was an immoral person. So ritual impurity happens for a whole host of non-morally corrupt reasons. For example, a woman immediately after childbirth is in a state of ritual impurity, but it's very clear biblically there's nothing morally wrong with giving birth. In fact, be fruitful and multiply is the first thing that God commanded. So clearly, ritual impurity can arise from morally good things. Likewise, it happens for morally neutral reasons. For example, illness, leprosy being a very famous example. I think it's fair to categorize ritual impurity as being about the visible signs and reminders of death, and that the laws concerning ritual impurity serve to remind us and to remind the that human mortality, our mortal state, prevents us from truly dwelling with God. That our bodies are not fit to enter his presence in the full sense. And this is why all of those characters when they see God face to face fear for their lives. Now, we don't have many examples of them dying, but their fear is something that we should remember. The other type of impurity is moral impurity. And your moral impurity would arise from performing unlawful acts. And this impurity would show that a person was going towards death. As we all know, the wages of sin is death. So our moral, our moral state also puts us in this position of associating ourselves with death. And it reminds us that the problem of mortality has sin at its root. So when we talk about this painting of blood to overcome impurity, we're talking about life overcoming death. Both ritual and moral impurity can be seen to transfer between people and objects. This is what really drives so many of the precautions present in the law. So this is this is why it's important that you're careful about what you do and you don't touch. Ritual impurity would spread when a clean person or a clean object would touch an impure thing, for example, a corpse. This is why you'd need to be careful about going into a sick person's house. This is why you'd need to be careful about what chairs you sit on. As some of the some of the law instructs us, but we're used to that ritual impurity traveling. We're maybe not used to the idea of moral impurity traveling. If you turn with me to Leviticus and chapter 20, we see an example of moral impurity traveling. Reading from Leviticus 20, any man from the sons of Israel or from the aliens adjoining in Israel who gives any of his offspring to Molech will surely be put to death. The people of the land will stone him with stones. I will also set my face that against that man and will cut him off from among his people because he has given some of his offspring to Molech so as to defile my sanctuary and to profane my holy name. So the sanctuary of God, the most holy place, is defiled when a child is offered to Molech. Now I don't suppose that sacrifices to Molech are happening in the tabernacle, but it gives us the picture that the sin of sacrificing a child to Molech is so disgusting to God that the most holy place where he resides becomes odious to him because of the sins of the people. And this is even more clearly communicated to us in chapter 16, where in verse 16 it's written, he the priest will make atonement for the holy place because of the impurities of the sons of Israel and because of their transgressions in regard to all their sins. And thus he will do for the tent of meeting which abides with them in the midst of their impurities. That the fact that Israel's moral state was compromised, that their works were evil, and that they offended God, this would make the tent of meeting, the place where God had chosen to put his name, the place in which God was choosing to dwell with his people, would become corrupted and defiled because the relationship was breaking down. And so we can see here that the state of the holy place, the state of the temple, is so important, and this is why the day of atonement happens, and why it is that the holy place and the temple itself is consecrated on the day of atonement, that the sacrifice which deals with all Israel's sin cleans up figuratively the most holy place. All these issues of death, these issues of impurity, they are resolved in the law by way of the application of life, which is the pouring out and the painting on of blood. And in this way the law declares, it teaches us, that life will triumph over death, and that triumph occurs in its fullest sense in the heavenly work of Christ Jesus. And so the role of Christ's offering in the atonement is shown to us by what was achieved to a limited extent in the law of Moses. The offerings and the ordinances of the law did a of things. They gave a way to overcome ritual and moral impurity, so the sin offering and the guilt offering was how the people would overcome their moral failures and their states of impurity, which would arise for a host of reasons. It inaugurated and it maintained the covenant. If we turn to Exodus 24, reading from verse 3, then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances, and all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words which the Lord has spoken we will do. Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord, and he arose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel. He sent young men of the sons of Israel and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed bulls as peace offerings to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins and the other half of the blood he sprinkled upon the altar. And he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and they said, all that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient. So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. So it inaugurated the covenant. This use of blood prepared the people to be God's covenant people. It made them holy that he would dwell with them. And in that sense enabled God to dwell with his people. In chapter 29 of Exodus in verses 42 to 46 we get given a few verses that explain that process. It shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the doorway of the tent of meeting before the Lord where I will meet with you to speak with you there. I will meet there with the sons of Israel and it shall be consecrated by my glory. I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to minister as priests before me. I will dwell among the sons of Israel and I will be their God and they will know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I may dwell among them. I am the Lord their God. This dwelling of God with his people is the center of the law. And later on we get given the sense that the system of the tabernacle is one of the ways in which God has granted his people access to him in prayer. Reading from 1 Kings chapter 8 verse 27. Which your servant will pray toward this place listen to the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place here in heaven your dwelling place hear and forgive that the temple which God has chosen to put his name becomes the central aspect of how prayer prayer is mediated and it's maybe for this reason that Daniel prays facing Jerusalem and so this gives us some some implication of what it is about Jesus's offering that's so important that we should be on the lookout for what Jesus's sacrifice does to ritual and moral impurity the state of death what it does regarding covenant what it does regarding the ability of God to dwell with his people and what it does regarding prayer and as we read in in chapter 9 all those things came up but it's really important at this point to say that this is not the sum total of the atonement and I don't want any of you to think that I'm saying that it is the New Testament is using a really wide host of images to describe how Jesus's work saves and not all of them line up really easily the important thing here is that we're able to accept all of them in their own individual contexts in what they're describing so we're not going to read all of these passages but all of these all of these images do describe an aspect of Jesus's work we're given images of ransom that Jesus is Jesus's work pays pays the cost by which God claims us from another owner which is presumably the personification of sin as our master it's also described as a purchase presumably in similar language we're also spoken of as adopted through the work of Christ we in other in other passages which are vaguely similar we see passages talking about how we slaves to sin but now we are slaves to God this is similar to the the purchase idea so we've gone from one owner to another from one family to another other passages talk about Christ being victorious over the forces of darkness again we've got a personification of the problem of sin so we're speaking speaking with devil language here so Hebrews 2 14 to 15 says that Christ defeated him who had the power of death which is the devil and in first John 3 8 Christ's arrival is described as happening for the purpose of destroying the works of the devil the point here is saying that Christ has defeated the problem of sin in a global scale Christ has also come as the second Adam and is man's representative so death has come to us all through Adam sin but life is coming to us all through the second Adam through Christ's perfect life and work so having having considered that that broad picture of all of the ways in which Christ is working I want us to notice the unique things which are being said us in Hebrews about Christ's ministry and work now we've already established that Hebrews is unique in its in its level of interest in Jesus's offering and Hebrews answers the following questions about Jesus's offering and his ongoing work firstly how can Jesus serve as a priest and secondly what does that priestly work achieve so to that first question how can Jesus serve as a priest well there is actually a problem that Hebrews gives us a way to overcome and the problem is that God gave the role of priests in the tabernacle and later in the temple only to Levites and Jesus is not a Levite and so Jesus's priesthood appears to violate the law of Moses what's what's very interesting about the way that Hebrews deals with this problem is that it doesn't simply say well that's a restriction of the law the law's over Jesus can be a priest tada the argument is completely different in fact Hebrews concedes how realistic and reasonable this concern is he writes for it's evident that our Lord was descended from Judah a tribe with reference to which Moses spoke nothing concerning priests and furthermore he says now if he were on earth he would not be a priest at all since there are those who offer the gifts according to the law and so Hebrews concedes to the idea that Jesus wouldn't be able to be a priest in in the tabernacle on earth which which is quite it's a very it's a very weird verse really Hebrews 8 4 but the answer to this problem is what's given to us in Hebrews chapter 7 and Hebrews chapter 8 that God has appointed Jesus to serve as the high priest of a different order of priests and as the high priest of a different tabernacle Jesus' priestly work takes place in the heavenly tabernacle the one which God made and Moses copied and according to the priesthood of Melchizedek in Hebrews 7 the order of Melchizedek is explained to us Hebrews 7 reading from verse 4 now observe how great this man was to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the choice of spoils and those indeed of the sons of Elevi who received the priest's office have the commandment in the law to collect a tenth from the people that is from their brothers although they are descended from Abraham but the one whose genealogy is not traced from them collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed the one who had the promises but without any dispute the lesser is blessed by the greater in this case mortal men received tithes but in this case one receives them of whom it is witness that he lives on and so to speak through Abraham even Levi who received tithes paid tithes for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood for on the basis of it people received the law what further need was there for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek and not be designated according to order of Aaron so the argument is that Melchizedek's order is ordained by God Melchizedek was a legitimate priest and that Christ is an order a priest of that order as it is written you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek and furthermore Melchizedek's order is older than Aaron's it came first and it's greater than Aaron's because Abraham paid tithes if Melchizedek is Abraham's greater then he's definitely Levi's greater is the argument and in Hebrews 8 we're given an explanation of the heavenly tabernacle which is greater than the one on earth reading from Hebrews 8 verse 1 now the main point in what we what has been said is this we have such a high priest who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of majesty in the the Lord had pitched and not man for every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices so it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer now if you were on earth he would not be a priest at all since there are those who offer gifts according to the law who serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle for see he says that you make all things according to the which was shown you on the mountain but now he has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as he also is the mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises so Hebrews appeals to the fact that God showed Moses a tabernacle to copy to to give us a location which is not on earth which does not violate the promise to Levi for Christ to offer his sacrifice and furthermore because it is the original the true the true tabernacle the one which God had made and which the ones on earth were only ever a copy of it's obviously greater so Christ is a priest of a better order serving in a better tabernacle and so we can we can begin to see here how Christ's sacrifice his work as a priest would be overwhelmingly more effective than anything that the law did having shown us the credentials that Jesus has to serve as our high Hebrews shows us why Christ is able to present a better offering Hebrews 7 if you turn there with me verse 23 to 28 tells us just how Christ presents a better offering the former priests on the one hand existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing Jesus on the other hand because he continues forever holds his priesthood therefore he's able to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them for it is fitting for us to have such a high priest holy innocent undefiled separate from sinners and exalted above the heavens who does not need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people because he did this once for all when he offered up himself for the law appoints high priests who are weak but the word of the oath which came after the law appoints a son made perfect forever so Christ is not subject to sin he is not subject to death he does not need to make repeated offerings and he does not need to leave the presence of God all of these things which are true of Christ after his bodily resurrection when he is raised to the resurrection body he is given a new body a body which is incorruptible what Hebrews calls an indestructible life this new body gives him the ability to dwell in God's presence forever and serve as a priest better than any who had gone before so what offering did Jesus perform and we've considered a little bit all those different sacrifices which did different things and at the end of Hebrews we're getting we're given a host of different allusions to different different processes in the law in Hebrews 9 we're given a of connections reading from verse 6 now when these things had been so prepared the priests continually entered the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship but into the second only the high priest enters once a year not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance the holy spirit signifies this that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing which is a symbol for present time accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience since they relate only to food and to drink in various washings regulation on the body imposed until a time of reformation but when christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands which is to say not of this creation and not through the blood of goats and calves but through blood he entered the holy place once and for all having obtained eternal redemption for if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh how much more will the blood of christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to god cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living god this is the day of atonement the offering in leviticus chapter 16 in which the high priest entered into the holy place to make an atonement for the sins of the whole people consecrating and purifying the sanctuary the most holy place and dealing with sin on a national level and so we can infer that christ's sacrifice deals with sin on a total level for all those who are part of his covenant hebrews 9 continues in verse 15 for this reason he's the mediator new covenant and we read this we read this earlier so we won't read it in full but the point arrives in verse 18 therefore even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood for when every commandment had been spoken by moses to all the people according to the law he took the blood of the calves and the goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying this is the blood of the covenant which god commanded you so christ's sacrifice inaugurates a covenant in a similar manner it began the new covenant and it's not a coincidence at the breaking of bread bread that christ said this is my blood of the new covenant as it's written in luke's gospel we're invited not just in hebrews but also in the gospels to to think in covenantal terms about jesus's sacrifice it also consecrated the tabernacle reading from verse 21 god for us so in the same way as the tabernacle was consecrated for worship the heavenly tabernacle which we the very throne of grace which we are encouraged to approach with boldness in in hebrews has been consecrated for us to use later on in hebrews 13 we're given a few other connections in hebrews 13 verse 10 we're met with a very confusing statement we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat by implication we have the right to eat of the altar which christ has made an offering upon which i think invites us to think of the breaking of bread as a peace offering and as a Passover and so it's not a coincidence as i said that christ said this is the blood of the covenant and also that he said i have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you and in the next verse it says for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp therefore jesus also that he might sanctify the people through his own blood suffered outside the gate jesus's earthly suffering according to hebrews is compared to the disposal of the necessary components of sin offerings that it was burned and destroyed outside the camp in the same way and so jesus's sacrifice is being compared to the sin offerings in general which helps us again to strengthen that comparison to the day of atonement and so what does this all do for us well it inaugurates a new covenant it prepares the heavenly tabernacle for our use it gives us a means of accessing god's presence it gives us surety of the forgiveness of sins and it furthers god's plan to perfectly dwell with his people and so through the system of the law which god graciously extended to his people in the past which gave them a limited means of dwelling with him we in the present age before the fullness of the completion of god's plan have been given a more full a fuller and superior means of dwelling with god that we get to approach god with confidence in prayer in an unprecedented manner but even this will pale in comparison in comparison to what is to come in the kingdom of god which he has set up which he will set up and he will establish for the people which have been reconciled to him by the work of his son and only in that day where god's plan to dwell with his people in the fullest will be fully realized and so hebrews invites us to see the present day not as the last step in god's plan but as a new step up from what was before but still a step down from that which awaits us in the age to come god-willing thank you