Hebrews 9:15-22

We will take a two-week break from the devotionals whilst my family and I are in San Antonio for some time together and the World Discipleship Summit.  Thanks for your understanding.

15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance —now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

16 In the case of a will,[d] it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. 19 When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20 He said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.”[e] 21 In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Dig Deeper

The young man had come to visit a marriage counselor because he was in desperate grief over the state of his marriage.  He had married the woman of his dreams just four years ago, less than a year after graduating from college.  Things started out okay but they quickly turned sour.  He discovered that his wife was just not the person that he thought she was, and of course had no idea that in the mind of his new wife, he was not the same man that she thought she was marrying.  The first year had been a constant struggle although they didn’t argue much.  As time went on they simply began to drift from one another in their hearts and eventually got to a point where they barely talked and didn’t care that much about or for one another anymore.  That is when things took a turn for the worse and the young man noticed that they began to argue frequently and his wife became rather spiteful and vindictive and often seemed to try to hurt or humiliate him when she had the chance.  As a means of last resort, he had come to see a highly recommended marriage specialist to see if anything could be done to save their fragile marriage.  After listening to all of the problems that they were mired in, the counselor got up, slowly walked out of the room and closed the door.  After a puzzling absence of several minutes, the counselor returned with a laminated card that was about the size of a half-sheet of paper.  Without a word the counselor handed the young man the card, thanked him for coming in, and turned around and left.  With the counselor gone, the man looked down at the card and realized that it was a list of twenty rules for not getting yourself into a bad marriage.  On the back side were the ten warning signs of a clunker marriage.  Dismayed and feeling worse, the young man left the office with little intention of ever returning.

Of course a bunch of rules of how to stay out of a bad marriage and warning signs of such a marriage do very little good to someone stuck in one.  They offer no actual solution or way out.  It’s a little like stumbling upon a man trapped in a narrow fifteen -foot hole in the ground and dropping down a sheet of safety tips for how to avoid falling into holes.  It only accuses and points out the problem without offering any hope or actual salvation. 

In some very real ways, that was the problem of the Old Testament.  It pointed out the problems and even highlighted the condition that fallen humanity was in, but never offered a permanent solution to a fallen humanity and could never do so.  But imagine if the young man in the above scenario, got home and noticed very small lettering on the back of the card at the bottom that informed him that if he would come back in next week, steps would be taken to immediately heal his marriage permanently.  Do you think he would return the next week?  Or do you think he would cling to that card and just keep reading the steps of the things that he didn’t do and that had caused him to be mired in this mess in the first place?  The Law and the Old Covenant were good and right but they could only show the problem and could not provide a permanent cure to one who was already fallen and sinful.  They could tell you how to avoid a ditch but incapable of throwing down a rope to pull you out.

That is why there was a need for a new covenant.  This was a vital point of understanding both for Jews who had not yet believed and for Jewish Christians who were weakening in their resolve to trust in Christ to understand.  Jesus Christ came to do what no Old Covenant priest could do.  He was a mediator, to be certain, but so were the Levitical priests.  The difference was that he was both mediator of a New Covenant and the ransom that brought that Covenant about and set the captive free from their sin.  He was the prescription and not just the description of the problem. 

The idea of “covenant” is obviously central to this passage but a slight difficulty arises in verses 16 and 17, where the same word for “covenant” is used in those verses as is used in the rest of the section, but it is translated “will.”  It seems likely that Hebrews is intentionally playing off of the double meaning of a word that can mean both “covenant” and “will”.  There is much to attract us to this possibility because using the double meanings of words to make a point was a favorite technique of Alexandrian scholars in the first century (and if Apollos of Alexandria was the author of Hebrews then that would make sense).  If this was the intent then, this would have been considered a rather clever exposition of Scripture.  In this understanding, the author is telling us that the first Covenant is an arrangement that is similar to a will in that it must be enacted with blood, as a will is only enacted with death.  The point is that the death and bloodshed of Christ served as the necessary means to enact the Covenant and the will between God and humanity.  The simple conclusion was that Jesus had to die in order for the Covenant to be enacted (This is a vital point for those that would argue the lack of necessity of being baptized into the life of Christ for the forgiveness of sin based on the instance of salvation coming to the “thief on the cross,” who was never baptized.  But, as Jesus had yet to die, the New Covenant had yet to be enacted and so his salvation at the time was an Old Covenant salvation.)

The substance behind the idea of life and blood being a necessity for atonement comes from Leviticus 17:11, which states “ For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”  What was true in the Old Covenant, is equally true in the New. 

Moses enacted the first Covenant with the blood of animals which served as a substitute sacrifice.  But it pointed to the need for a very real sacrifice of blood to bring about a covenant.  As verse 22 states clearly, “the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”  This verse brings to mind not only Leviticus 17:11 but the confirmation of Christ himself of this truth: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).  This all reminds us of two truths.  The first is that sin is truly a terrible offense that demands a high price.  The second is that forgiveness is expensive because of the high cost of sin.  The blood of Christ, the Son of God, is not cheap thing and without his blood there is no forgiveness. 

The point of all of this is that the sacrifice and blood of animals was a tragic outpouring of blood and life that was brought about by the sin of human beings in their rebellion against God.  The blood of those animals signified that the outpouring of life was necessary to deal with sin, though, was pointing to a deeper truth: those sacrifices weren’t the end in themselves but signposts to the shocking, self-sacrificing love of God.  A covenant, like a will, could only come into force through death and sacrifice and it was the self-sacrifice of Christ that brought about this New Covenant.  The blood of all of those animals under the Old Covenant symbolized and pointed ahead to the greatest sacrifice of all, God’s own sacrifice. 

It is not as though the blood of animals was pointing ahead to a time when humans would actually have to pay the penalty of their own sin.  No, those sacrifices were teaching about the severity of sin and the sacrifice needed to atone for those sins, but that sacrifice would come from God himself.  As mind-blowing as it sounds, God would shed his own blood as a payment for the rebellion enacted against himself, the innocent party.  Before Jesus’ death on the Cross, of course, no one would have or could have imagined that God would become human and give his own life, shedding his own blood and in so doing, all of the symbols and signs would find the reality in the only way that they ever really could.  The redemption of God’s people came at the highest price imaginable, that of the blood of Jesus Christ (Acts 20:28).

“Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”  That is the reality.  Sin is so severe an offense that is requires a life to atone for it.  There are no loopholes, no other ways around it.  Sin cannot be overlooked by good behavior or good works.  The only way that eternal redemption could be brought about was through the self-sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.  No amount of ceremony, religion, good behavior, priestly activity, or animal sacrifice will do.  There is no space here for self-sufficiency.  Jesus alone solved a problem that we created and salvation is found in him alone.  That should give us pause as we consider the significance of the New Covenant and the meaning of the death of Christ and how we should respond in our own own lives.

Devotional Thought

It is important to remind ourselves often of the fact that our salvation rests on the sacrifice and blood of Jesus Christ.  How often in our Christian lives, though, do we forget that and start to become self-sufficient rather than completely relying upon God?  Take some time to assess yourself today?  Do you truly rely upon God for everything in your life or do you tend to forget that without the blood of Christ we have nothing?

Hebrews 9:11-14

The Blood of Christ

11 But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here,[a] he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. 12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining[b] eternal redemption. 13 The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,[c] so that we may serve the living God!

Dig Deeper

It seems to be a fairly obvious point these days that we live in a time where symbol is valued over substance.  As long as you have good intentions or say the right things, little attention seems to be paid to whether your ideas work or not.  That certainly seems to be the case in the political world, but it has spread far beyond that.  We have become a society that is satisfied with giving every kid in a sports league a trophy because it symbolizes their achievement, never stopping to think that if everyone gets a trophy it no longer means anything, and the symbolism of a trophy is pointless.  Feeling good has replaced being good.  The examples of this are far too numerous to consider all of them but they are on display nearly everywhere we look.  We take a group of teens and ask them to eat nothing but rice for a week or to sleep in a cardboard box for a weekend in the name of raising their awareness of the plight of others.  As nice as such symbolic efforts might be, we must be clear that they don’t really change anything, if (as is most often the case these days) no subsequent and sustained action is taken in response to the symbolic act.  The participants walk away convinced that they are more in touch and better equipped to help but the reality is they have accomplished nothing.  I’m not arguing that raising awareness cannot be a valuable tool at times, but it is no replacement for action, and that’s usually what happens in our world today. 

Facebook and other social media sites have become bastions of this symbolism over substance phenomenon.  Everywhere you look you see solicitations to “like” someone’s status, or share a picture of a victim of some terrible crime, or an appeal to sign up for this petition so that we can stop this latest atrocity.  As wonderful as those causes might be, and aside from the fact that many of those things are nothing more than scams, those things accomplish nothing.  The people feel better but they have done nothing more than engage in empty symbolism.  Nothing captures that more clearly than the recent KONY ‘12 campaign (my apologies if you don’t know what that is).  This campaign quickly became the popular rage on the internet with people flocking to “raise awareness” of the atrocities committed by this Ugandan warlord.  People raised a few bucks and increased awareness and then sat back without ever considering that what they were doing will very likely not have any impact because the situation over there is incredibly complex.  They also never considered that what they were engaging in could likely create more problems than they help.  But what does that matter?  As long as we feel better, that’s all that matters, right?.

There is just a huge difference between symbolism and substance, and it is that difference that lies at the heart of this passage.  The Old Covenant was a good thing and certainly God gave it to his people as  means for them to enter into relationship with him, but the message that he was constantly sending them at the same was that it was symbolic.  It never accomplished, and never could accomplish, God’s ultimate plan for his people.  The Old Covenant was full of symbolic actions.  The priest put on all the right clothes and went through ceremonial cleansing and the like.  Animals would be brought forth and sacrificed.  There blood would be sprinkled in all of the right places as they entered into the earthly Tabernacle in the wilderness, and the Temple in Jerusalem after that.   Every year on the Day of Atonement, the priest would enter into the Most Holy Place and make atonement before God for the sin of all the people, including himself.

That’s not to say that all of that had no effect at all.  It did, to a degree, but at the heart of it all, it was symbolic.  It pointed to the sin that God’s people had and their desperate need for that sin to be removed so that they could truly enter into God’s presence.  The blood of an unblemished sacrifice was necessary in order to enact this needed forgiveness.  Yet, the whole Old Covenant sacrificial system was only a symbol.  That is why the procedures of the Old Covenant had to be repeated over and over again.  It was merely a symbol, with little in the way of the substance that was needed.

The reason that it was symbolic and didn’t get to the heart of the need is that it was all external and the real problem was internal.  The problem with sin is that is a blemish on our consciences.  Sin causes our hearts to be separated from God.  And while the Old Covenant system pointed to an internal cleansing that would bring true transformation, it could never bring it about.  That is why the Old Testament prophets repeatedly commanded God’s people to embrace the heart of serving God through actions of mercy and love, rather than just going through the external motions of the sacrificial system.

Jesus Christ, however, was not about symbolism.  He was the real deal.  He was all substance.  He was the High Priest that brought everything that the Old Covenant and the old priesthood could only anticipate and point to.  He didn’t walk into the earthly Tabernacle and engage in those good, but wholly symbolic sacrifices.  He was the true sacrifice and he went into the true heavenly Most Holy Place.  He brought about true redemption, true forgiveness, and true completion of God’s Covenant.  This was not symbolism but was what God’s people had been waiting for.  And because it was the real substance it brought about an eternal redemption.  There was nothing more that anyone had to wait for.  The ultimate and final sacrifice had come.

But the appeal of any symbolic act is that it makes the participant feel better.  Symbolic acts are  tangible as they are usually designed to help someone see a picture in a very emotional way of the real thing.  Now, symbols can be extremely powerful and effective.  That is why God used symbolism so often.  But it is dangerous when we start to value the symbol over the substance.  Just as engaging in symbolic acts that make us feel better but don’t change anything is problematic, how much more so when God’s people were considering abandoning the substance of the New Covenant and returning to the symbolic.  It had an appeal, of course, as symbols always do because you could touch it and see it and feel that emotional connection but that’s all the Old Covenant could ever do. 

Only Jesus could bring about true redemption that would last and that enacted the internal transformation that is needed in order to be reconciled to God.  That is one of the big reasons that those who reject Christ and mock him never understand what coming to Christ is all about.  They are stuck on the external and, thus, will never come in contact with the internal solution that only entering into Covenant with God through the blood of Christ can bring about.

External cleaning has some value, of course, and the Old Covenant certainly brought that about.  But Jesus Christ was superior because he replaced the temporary symbol with a permanent reality.  In fact there are three important aspects about this that we have alluded to already but should take the time to delineate specifically.

First, Christ’s sacrifice was offered in the heavenly Temple through the eternal Spirit.  It is not as though the writer is arguing that the heavenly realm is real while the physical realm is an inferior shadow realm.  But the reality is that the physical separation between the physical realm and the heavenly realm was a result and a symbol of the more important spiritual separation that occurred as a result of sin.  Thus, only Christ could enter into the spiritual realm and bring about the true work of redemption that was needed.

Second, the sacrifice was not that of an animal but was his own blood.  That is something that an Old Covenant priest would never be able to do.  The sacrifice had to be unblemished and only the Messiah could present himself as an adequate sacrifice.  As shocking as that might have seemed for a priest to sacrifice himself, it was the only means to bring about eternal redemption.

Third, this sacrifice was perfect.  It was the real substance and that meant that the effects of that sacrifice were eternal and could never be made null and void.

Finding out that we have the real thing and not just a symbol should be a cause for true celebration and joy.  No longer do we have to wait or hope or struggle with guilt and shame.  The real has come and our sin has been redeemed.  We have eternal forgiveness and can celebrate in that forever.

Devotional Thought

Under the temporary atonement of the Old Covenant, God called his people to act in mercy and love for others in response to the grace and mercy that he had shown for them.  How much greater should our response be as a result of receiving the ultimate and permanent act of grace and mercy in the life of Jesus Christ?  What will your response be to the permanent forgiveness of your sin be this week?

Hebrews 7:1-10

7 This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, 2 and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, the name Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.” 3 Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.

4 Just think how great he was: Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder! 5 Now the law requires the descendants of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people —that is, from their fellow Israelites—even though they also are descended from Abraham. 6 This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi, yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. 7 And without doubt the lesser is blessed by the greater. 8 In the one case, the tenth is collected by people who die; but in the other case, by him who is declared to be living. 9 One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, 10 because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor.

Dig Deeper

I have the pleasure and privilege of having a wife who is fun, loving, kind, hard-working, and incredibly smart.  She works as a nurse in a critical care unit at a big hospital in our area and she is very good at what she does.  She goes through incredibly difficult circumstances daily on her job and handles them with grace and a deep sense of care for each patient.  But she often comes home and will try to tell me some incredible story that took place on her unit or fill me in on the ongoing saga of a patient struggling to regain their health (while always strictly observing patient confidentiality).  That might not sound that bad but there is a challenge in there for me.  Most of the time I don’t have the foggiest clue of what she’s talking about.  I might grasp that there was a conflict over method of care between two nurses, or a doctor is trying some new method that a nurse doesn’t like, or various things like that, but she tends to use the proper medical terms for conditions and treatments and completely loses me.  I get a vague idea of the story that she is trying to tell me but if you were to ask me to explain to someone else what she just told me I wouldn’t have a chance.  Not only do I not understand many of the terms and words she uses, I don’t think I could even spell most of them.  What I have discovered, however, is that when I ask her to clarify a few things or remind her to put it in simple English for me then I can usually follow along quite nicely and get a pretty good idea of what she is trying to convey to me.  I have discovered, much to my delight, that once I got an understanding of the culture at the hospital and get a feel for some of the procedures and expectations, and once I can actually recognize and know the meaning of a few basic terms, the stories are quite engrossing and interesting.  On top of that, being able to understand what my wife is actually talking about helps open a whole new window of understanding and appreciation for her on my part.

The book of Hebrews is widely accepted to be one of the more difficult books in the New Testament to read and fully understand, and this passage on Melchizedek certainly ranks up there as perhaps the most difficult passage to decipher in the whole book.  In fact, it is pretty common for someone to refer to this section on Melchizedek if someone wants to make a joke about someone preaching on something that no one understands.  The reason that this passage can be so difficult is not that there is no value in it for us and it is not that there was something wrong with the author who was so smart that he just went off prattling on about things that no one would have or could have really understood.  The problem is that we are not familiar with the world of priests, Temples, tithes, sacrifices, and so on.  Not only are we not familiar with Melchizedek, most of us would probably have trouble spelling his name without looking and an even harder time pronouncing his name.  Then we have to add to that the fact that the writer, particularly in this section, engages in a style of writing and logic with which we are wholly unfamiliar.  The sum of all of that leads us to find passages like this quite a mystery and we start to treat them like the commercials in a recorded television program, nothing more than something to skip over quickly.  But if we slow down, take the time to learn a few basic principles and terms, just like my wife’s stories, we will find that they are treasure troves of interesting and important information in the goal to help us understand the superiority of Jesus in his role as high priest.

Three times already Hebrews has mentioned Melchizedek (5:6; 10; 6:20) and that the Messiah is a priest in the order of the same name.  Now he is finally ready to unpack that statement and unfurl the significance.  Melchizedek is a rather shadowy figure who is mentioned just twice in the Old Testament and is referred to by no other New Testament authors.  Psalm 110, a messianic Psalm which was much beloved and studied by the early Christians and a passage to which the author of Hebrews has already turned several times.  Psalm 110 is a majestic Psalm that looks forward to the rule of the Messiah.  Yahweh calls the Messiah “lord” and tells him to sit in his throne room with him until he has made the enemies of the Messiah a footstool.  Yahweh will not change his mind in giving the Messiah the scepter of power and dominion, declares the Psalmist, precisely because the Messiah is “a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.”  This was a strange prophecy both because of the relative obscurity of Melchizedek and because of the absolute rarity of mixing the roles of king and priest in Israel. 

The only other mention of Melchizedek in the Old Testament comes in Genesis 14 as Abraham returns from a successful foray to retrieve his nephew Lot from a collection of kings who stormed into Sodom, among other places, and took Lot and his entire household as captives.  The king of Salem, Melchizedek, approached Abraham (then Abram), gave him bread and wine, blessed him, and Abraham responded by giving him a tenth of everything that he captured in the conquest.  That’s all we know about Melchizedek, just three short verses in Genesis and the stunning prophecy in Psalm 110 that the Messiah would reign forever in his priestly order.

Before we begin to understand this passage at all, and the author of Hebrews’ comments on Melchizedek we must understand a fairly common technique of understanding the Torah and the other Scriptures in the Old Testament that were common in Jewish circles in the first century.  They read the stories in the Torah as though they were a self-sustained world.  If something was not written in the text then it had no interpretive reality in the real world.  So if a text does not say that someone died, then in the world of textual interpretation, they did not die.  To look at the passage in Genesis with that eye helps us greatly to understand what Hebrews is saying.  According to the text of Genesis, Melchizedek just appears on the scene as a high priest.  He precedes the Law and the Aaronic priesthood and so has no connection to them and is not bound by them.  In the world of the text, Melchizedek has no parents and did not come upon his priesthood through any specific lineage or any other means, and it never came to an end because it does not record him dying and passing it on.  He simply was the king of Salem (ancient Jerusalem) and the priest of God.  We know nothing more about him.  This allowed the Psalmist, through the inspiration of the Spirit, to declare that God had used that enigmatic scene to foreshadow and teach something vital about the coming Messiah and his role.

The passages concerning Melchizedek are so mysterious that it has led some to declare that Melchizedek was not just a type or a foreshadowing of the Messiah but was actually the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ himself.  Given the austerity with which Hebrews treats the priest that might seem attractive but is really not necessary, and is not at all the point of the author.  If he wanted to say that Jesus was Melchizedek he would have just said so, but he doesn’t.  Melchizedek wasn’t Christ, but he did bear some important resemblances to him.

In some important ways, the Melchizedek of the text (not necessarily the Melchizedek of real life) foreshadowed the priestly vocation of the Messiah.  This priesthood was not based on lineage, a prestigious pedigree, or the Law but was based solely on the assumed appointment by God.  He was both the “king of righteousness” and “the king of peace.  In those ways, he resembled the Son of God and pointed to his Messiah-ship and priesthood which was also appointed by God apart from the Law or the order of Aaron.  The Messiah too was the king of peace and righteousness.  In addition, Just as the Melchizedek of the text was a priestly order forever (because in the text his priesthood had no beginning and no end) so this character of the text pointed to the Messiah that would rule as the high priest for God’s people forever.

Having established that there were two completely separate priestly orders established by God, Hebrews sets about in verses 4-10 to show that the one, the order of Melchizedek which pointed to the Messiah, was far superior to Aaron’s priestly order, just as the Messiah was superior to every aspect of the Old Testament.  Specifically we are given four distinct aspects of the superiority of the Melchizedekian priesthood.  The first is that Abraham gave him a tenth of his spoils.  Since the Aaronic priesthood traced its lineage back to Abraham it was significant that Abraham humbled himself before Melchizedek’s priesthood and gave a tithe of reverence to God by giving it to Melchizedek.  Second, Melchizedek spoke a blessing over the one who was the recipient of God’s promises, showing that he was superior in his access and ability to confer blessings directly from God.  Abraham received blessings from God but Melchizedek gave them.  Third, Levi who was the ancestor of the Aaronic priesthood gave his homage and tithe, in effect, to Melchizedek because he was still “in the body of his ancestor.”  The author tacitly admits that this point might be stretching it a bit, as he says “one might even say,” but he no doubt felt that his overall point was still quite sound.  Finally, the Melchizedekian priesthood is superior because his order does not come to an end.  The Melchizedek of the text did not die and end his reign (using the same “world of the text” logic that led Jews to assume that God continued to rest from his initial work of physical creation because there was no end drawn to his resting in the seventh day of creation in Genesis 2) just as the Messiah’s reign will never end. 

There are three big conclusions that can be drawn at this point, then, based on what we have already learned about this order of Melchizedek to which Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment.  First, this priestly order was superior and eternal which was in sharp contrast to the priesthood of Aaron which was limited by the physical realm.  Second, it meant that the Temple and the corresponding priesthood of the Temple were unnecessary.  You don’t need the picture of a beautiful landscape when you are standing right in front of the real thing.  Third, Complete confidence and faith could be placed in Jesus as the true high priest that would go on without end.  There was no need to look to the Levitical priesthood of the Law because it was inferior, temporary, and of a different order than the Scriptures themselves pointed to as the priesthood of the Messiah.  The Messiah had arrived and those who really wanted to be God’s people had better take notice and cling to him as their one and only priest.  These issues become pressing for us because, although we may not be tempted to turn to the Levitical priesthood we still need to cling to the Messiah as our high priest, our only means of access to God.

 

  Devotional Thought

As we read and study Hebrews it is vital to always keep the practical aspects on our heart and not get lost in the majesty of the deep teaching itself.  Knowing that Jesus is our eternal high priest in the order of Melchizedek matters in keeping us focused and faithful in the kingdom of God.  Spend some time today focusing on just why this aspect of Jesus is so important and what it means in your daily walk as a disciple.

Hebrews 8:7-13

7 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 But God found fault with the people and said[b]:

“The days are coming, declares the Lord,

    when I will make a new covenant

with the people of Israel

    and with the people of Judah.

9 It will not be like the covenant

    I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand

    to lead them out of Egypt,

because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,

    and I turned away from them,

declares the Lord.

10 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel

    after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my laws in their minds

    and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God,

    and they will be my people.

11 No longer will they teach their neighbor,

    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they will all know me,

    from the least of them to the greatest.

12 For I will forgive their wickedness

    and will remember their sins no more. ”[c]

13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.

Dig Deeper

Most people that I know that are married first went through a period of engagement before they were actually married.  I have seen people remain in the state of being engaged to be married for as much as several years and as little as two months.  The period of engagement is an incredible time where a couple commits to one another deeply, yet at the same time looks forward to the marriage itself and begins to prepare for that.  Traditionally, the period of engagement is a wonderful time of commitment and building relationship.  There are wonderful advantages to being engaged.  It is an exciting period where people begin the process of meshing their lives together and preparing to spend the rest of their lives as one flesh.  This period of engagement anticipates and points forward, of course, to the time when the couple will be married.  In a very real sense, the engagement in our culture (at least American culture) is a type of covenant relationship (or maybe a pre-covenant relationship, so to speak) but it points to a greater one.  There are certain privileges and advantages in which an engaged couple cannot, or at least should not if they are following God’s will, participate in.  Those things come with the greater covenant of marriage to which their engagement points.

Speaking for myself, I enjoyed my time of engagement.  It was wonderful and exciting, but I enjoy being married even more.  I love my wife and I love my marriage and I love the covenant of marriage.  Yet, there are times when things can get rough and we have to work very hard in our marriage.  At no time, however, have I ever considered the thought of stepping out of the marriage and returning to the period of just being engaged.  Don’t get me wrong, as I said, our engagement was a great time, but marriage is better and even when things have been a little rough at times (and they’ve never been all that rough to be honest), I have never started to think that it would be better to just go back to being engaged and lose the privileges of marriage.  That would be crazy.

And yet, in some very real parallels, that is what Hebrews wants to warn those struggling in their faith to stay away from.  Some had hit the rocky and difficult time in their covenant with Christ and rather than remaining faithful and working through the issues by reminding themselves just how incredible it was to be in covenant with him, they had walked away and returned, in many cases, to their Jewish beliefs.  This was tantamount to dissolving a marriage and going back to being engaged.  And it was just as crazy in the mind of the author of Hebrews.

In what ways was this like leaving a marriage and going back to the pre-marriage state?  Well, the Old Covenant was not exactly like an engagement in that it was a very real covenant relationship with Israel, not just a state before the real covenant.  But it was never designed to be the once-for-all, definitive and permanent covenant between God and his people.  One might think so, of course, if they read some of the Covenant language from the Old Testament that talks about God creating a Covenant forever with his people.  On one hand, that was absolutely true.  But on the other hand, God had always pointed ahead to the fact that he had a better Covenant in mind that he wanted for his people.  That God would always have a Covenant with his people was the eternal part; the specific aspects of the Old Covenant, however, were never to be eternal.  When a couple gets married, you see, it doesn’t break the covenant of their engagement, it fulfills it and brings it into a better covenant state.  That’s what God wanted for his people.  He wasn’t breaking the Old Covenant, but he was bringing them in the better Covenant state that he had always promised.

That is precisely why our author turns to Jeremiah 31 in this section.  Throughout this sermon/lesson, the writer has systematically expounded about certain Old Testament passages to make his point concerning the superiority of Christ and his Covenant.  In chapters 3 and 4 the focus was on Psalm 95 as the author urged his readers not to harden their hearts like the Exodus generation and the people of David’s day.  Then in chapters 5 through the beginning of 8, the attention turned to Palm 110, as the author basically taught through the Messianic and practical significance of that important Psalm.  Now he turns to Jeremiah 31 (and will continue to discuss it through the end of chapter 10), a passage where God promises that one day he will establish a New Covenant with his people.  The central theme of all of these passages is that while God had established something good with Israel, he promised something better yet to come; not all that unlike a an engaged couple being promised that there is something better yet to come in the covenant of marriage.

In fact his quote from Jeremiah 31 is the longest New Testament quote of an Old Testament passage in the entire Bible.  And just as the promise of an eternal priesthood in the order of Melchizedek pointed to the fact that the old priesthood was inferior and thus, obsolete, so the promise of a new covenant meant that the old was inferior and just as obsolete.  It was not as though God was simply nullifying the Old Covenant, however.  He was fulfilling the Old Covenant through the coming of something better.  Just as a caterpillar does not die when it transforms into a butterfly and an engagement is not broken but becomes something better when that couple is married, so the Old Covenant was transformed into a better Covenant.

The context of Jeremiah 31 included the comforting words of Yaweh through his prophet for a struggling people who would be returning from exile in Babylon.  They had been faithless to the Covenant with their God and had paid the price as he removed his hedge of protection from them and allowed them to taste the bitter brew of disobedience to God.  That was the problem with the Old Covenant, points out the writer of Hebrews.  It wasn’t that the Old Covenant was bad as though God had intentionally given the people a skunk just for laughs.  The problem was that it didn’t enable the people to transform.  It didn’t allow them to truly escape the slavery of sin.  It was inadequate for the permanent needs of humanity and that is exactly what God wanted his people to learn.  He wanted them to enjoy the first Covenant but to look forward to the ultimate Covenant every bit as much as he did.  So, he promised them that a day was coming when he would bring about that better Covenant.

This new Covenant would be with the people of Israel, and that was certainly true, because as the Gospel writers go to great lengths to demonstrate, Jesus was the true and valid representative of Israel.  In a sense, he became Israel, God’s Son, and is the recipient of all of the promises given to Israel.  This Covenant would engulf and surpass the Old Covenant in an even greater way than a marriage engulfs and surpasses an engagement.  This Covenant would ensure Covenant faithfulness on the part of God’s people because their status would not be balanced on temporal things like the Law and the Levitical Priesthood.  It would be based on Jesus Christ himself.  He is faithful to the Covenant and because we can lay down our lives and enter into his, we are allowed to enjoy the covenant faithfulness of the life of Christ.

Jeremiah goes on to describe the differences between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant in broad strokes, and the differences are stark.  The difference is so striking that they are less like the differences between an engagement and a marriage and more like the betrothal period of an arranged marriage and the actual marriage that is the result of love, choice, passion, and commitment.  No longer would people simply be born into the Covenant without really knowing who the Lord is and having to be taught to be obedient to it by parents, the priesthood, and the rest of the society.  No longer, in other words, would it be a religion where people were called to be conformed externally by the rule of the Law.  In this New Covenant, God’s people would respond to God’s call and choose to enter into his family.  They will know the Lord, every one of them, because they will have exercised faith in the life of Christ and embraced the new life that he offered.  In that New Covenant, sin wouldn’t just be covered over by animal sacrifices that could only picture true forgiveness of sin without ever actually giving it.  In Christ, sin is erased from God’s memory, not meaning that God will have a true memory lapse but that he will not act on the deserved consequences of sin.  In the New Covenant that God was promising, sin would truly be forgiven.  That is something that the Old Covenant could never offer and could never, ever achieve.

Hebrews draws this section to a close by making a point that should be obvious now and is very similar to the one he made about the redundancy of the Old Covenant priesthood.  Just as God, in pointing to a new priesthood, made the old one obsolete, so in promising a New Covenant he made the Old Covenant equally obsolete.  Once your married, you don’t need to be engaged anymore and now that the readers of Hebrews were members of the New Covenant, to return to the old and obsolete one where sin could never be fully forgiven would be crazy.  It would be to cling to what was to soon disappear.  To cling to it would be to lose sight of reality, it would be foolish, and indeed it would be idolatrous by exalting the Old over what God had always promised for his people.

Devotional Thought

Most of us are probably not tempted to walk away from the New Covenant in order to return to the Old Covenant, but I think that many of us can be tempted, from time to time, to leave our marriage with God in order to return to the revelry of our old lives before we entered into Covenant with God.  Spend some time contemplating how this passage helps you during times like those when you are tempted.

Hebrews 9:1-10

Due to our annual Camp Burns next week, where we have 20 pre-teen and teen boys stay at our house for a spiritual and physical boot camp, I will be unable to post any devotionals next week.

9 Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. 2 A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand and the table with its consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. 3 Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, 4 which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. 5 Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover. But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.

6 When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry. 7 But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. 8 The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still functioning. 9 This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. 10 They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings —external regulations applying until the time of the new order.

Dig Deeper

My youngest son recently began taking lessons in Tae Kwon Do. He enjoys going a great deal and is doing pretty well so far. There is a routine and discipline to learning the art of Tae Kwon Do which he appreciates. The school itself is well-run and has friendly instructors who are not only well-versed in teaching Tae Kwon Do, they also expect and demand respect, honor, and integrity on the part of the students. As part of that, there is a whole system of hierarchy inherent into the martial arts that is rather ritualized. Those that have attained the level of black belt, for instance, have greater privileges and responsibilities that go along with their higher rank. They can do things that not all students can do, they stand in the front of line-ups while the lower ranks stand in the back, and so on. They also have a changing room that is only accessible to those of that rank. Other students are not ever allowed to even go into that room. I appreciate the whole idea of that because it serves as a powerful illustration and reminder for the younger students like my son that they have much more to work for and attain to yet. They don’t have access to that room but that is really just a picture. It’s a living illustration that they don’t yet have a high-ranking belt; they haven’t put in all the work necessary yet to have access to that level of belt, that level of respect, and that level of honor. But the fact that some can go in there also serves as a picture to them that some day they might be able to go into that room themselves.

In a sense, that was one of the purposes of the Tabernacle and Temple under the Old Covenant. They certainly served an important function during those times in and of themselves, and were, in a very real sense, the center of life in ancient Israel. But they also served as a powerful picture or illustration of the then current state of affairs between God and his people. The Israelites would have understood that of course and heartily agreed with that assessment. What they did not seem to fully realize was that the system of having the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place not only signified the state between God and men at the time but also was a picture of what was to come under the New Covenant. It was an illustration that the readers of Hebrews needed to understand because it was a picture of what was now available in Christ.

At first blush, following the author’s line of thinking from the last words of chapter 8 to the beginning of chapter 9, seems a bit disconnected. The author just completed a long quote from Jeremiah, pointing ahead to God’s promise of the New Covenant and the fact that those promises had now been fulfilled in Christ, the fulfillment of the better Covenant. How then does it make sense that he immediately launches into a detailed discussion of the procedures of the Tabernacle? The author himself will answer that question, but let’s try to follow along with his point first.

He has already laid out the idea that there are, in a sense, two covenants, although he will imply throughout the coming chapters that the second Covenant is really a fulfillment of and a bettering of the first Covenant rather than simply a replacement as though the second were something entirely new from the first. That first Covenant was full of regulations and specific stipulations for how God expected his people to come into his presence through the Tabernacle (and eventually the Temple which would replace the Tabernacle).

As the writer begins to mention the Tabernacle, he briefly describes the set up, the furniture, and some of the important items found inside. There were two inner rooms that were considered sacred and cordoned off from the rest of the Tabernacle. The first was called the Holy Place and it contained the lampstand and a table with the showbread on it. But there was a second curtain which closed off the Most Holy Place, or what was also called the Holy of Holies. That room contained the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant, which held a jar of manna from the Wilderness, Aaron’s staff, and the copies of the stone tablets of the Covenant. Covering the Ark was the lid crowned with cherubim. The purpose for the detail beyond just giving a clear mental picture of the two rooms is unknown. Just as the author lays out all of those details, he stops in the middle of his thought and says that there is no place for a discussion of those details. We can only imagine that the author felt that there was significance in those things but these were some of those deeper details of the faith that his readers were not quite ready for yet in their state of spiritual immaturity. We must also conclude that the Holy Spirit felt that the bulk of those details, as interesting as they might be, was unnecessary for us to know. So, we must humbly follow along with the author as much as we would like to know the rest of his thoughts on these matters.

He avoided the temptation to stray too far off track, however, and zeros in on the point he is making. In the Holy place, only the priests could enter into that part of the Tabernacle and carry on their ministry. And only the high priest could enter into the Most Holy Place and that was only allowed once a year by God. In addition to that, the priest could only enter after the shedding of blood and making an offering, albeit a temporary one, for the sin of the people and himself. The Most Holy Place was virtually closed to God’s people. They could never enter into that inner room and connect with God’s presence.

Verse 9, then, is the key to following the logic of this section. Why all of this discussion about the Tabernacle on the heels of talking about the superiority of the New Covenant? It was because the whole process was used by the Holy Spirit to provide an illustration for God’s people from which to learn. The existence of the two rooms was a picture of the two Covenants and their accompanying access to God. In the first room, only the priests could enter but even they could not go into the second room directly. They only had access to it by means of being represented by the high priest. This was a picture of the two covenants. The high priest, Jesus, had gone into the Most Holy Place and provided the blood and sacrifice so that all of God’s people could have access to God through him. The Old Covenant was pictured by all of the external ceremonies performed in the Holy Place but the New Covenant was pictured by the high priestly access to the Most Holy Place. Because of Jesus and his work to bring about the New Covenant, all of Jesus’ people could have access to God’s Most Holy presence.

No priest of the Tabernacle or the Temple would get the chance to go into the Holy of Holies and pass it up. Of course that would not have been an option for the average priest, but they certainly would not have been given the sanctioned opportunity to go in there and decide instead to just be satisfied with the Holy Place. The author doesn’t directly make that point, but that is his implication. If the two rooms of the Tabernacle were a picture of the two Covenants, then belonging to the second Covenant, where God’s people had direct access to the throne room of God through Jesus Christ and deciding to return to the first room, the first Covenant would be ridiculous. It would be to walk away from the real thing and embrace the shadow.

Those in Christ had indeed been allowed to enter into the Most Holy Place through the advent of the New Covenant and they needed to be quite clear about what they had and what they would be giving up if they took their eyes off of Jesus and grew weary in their faith. We too can get distracted by so many things in our lives that are far less substantial than the Old Covenant itself. The writer of Hebrews was implying that leaving Christ would be like walking out of the Most Holy Place and going back to the Holy Place. For us, though, it can be much more like strolling out of the Most Holy Place, striding out of the Temple grounds and boldly jumping into a mud pit. It is vitally important that we keep our gaze fixed on the superiority of Christ and his Covenant. He is not just greater than the Old Covenant but is far greater than worldly success, comfort, leisure, or anything else that the world can try to distract us with. In that truth we find one of the great themes that lies just beneath the surface throughout the book of Hebrews, but which will finally burst forth on the scene in chapter 12: Keep you eyes fixed on Jesus as the only one that can truly bring you into the presence of God.

Devotional Thought

What process do you have in your life to help you assess whether or not you have kept your eyes focused on Jesus and the wonderful benefits of his Covenant? Maybe you’re constantly assessing yourself against the Word of God, or through prayer, or with the input of other Christians. Whatever the means or combination of methods, when was the last time you really made sure that your eyes were still focused on Jesus and that your life matched where you think your eyes are?