The Shadow of the Old

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Turn with me, please, to the book of Hebrews, chapter 9. Hebrews, chapter 9.
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We are continuing a lengthy study of the book of Hebrews, and we now come to a very challenging text.
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Hebrews, chapter 9. Before we look to the Word of God, let us pray together.
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Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do pray that in this hour by Your Spirit You will help to lift up our hearts and our minds that we might understand
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Your Word. Lord, help us to realize that we are indeed handling the very Word of God.
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Give us obedient hearts indeed. Give us a desire to understand and to make application.
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All to Your honor and glory, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. We have been working through the book of Hebrews, and I will tell you that for many months
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I have seen this chapter coming, and as tremendous and weighty as this chapter is, it has scared me to death.
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Mainly because there are such tremendous difficulties to try to work through, and many of these difficulties would, quite honestly, be much more easily handled in a
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Sunday school type situation, a classroom type situation. Some of these texts are extremely difficult to work into a sermon format.
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But we have already worked through difficult texts in the past, and at this church we believe that all of the text of Scripture comes from God, that it is
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God -breathed. We are not like many who pick and choose what is more important than other texts.
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And so we need to work through these texts. And as we read this chapter, you will see that there are some, well,
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I believe, some of the most important statements found in all of the
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Word of God made about the atoning work of Jesus Christ. The difficulties aren't so much there as the
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Old Testament argumentation that leads the author to make these statements. Now, if you're visiting with us, let me just mention that we have emphasized repeatedly over the well over a year we've been working through the book of Hebrews when
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I have filled the pulpit, that this is a work of apologetic. It is a work of defense.
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It is a work written to Jewish Christians almost certainly prior to the destruction of the temple in AD 70, probably in the 6th and 7th decades of the 1st century, where they were being put under tremendous pressure to go back to the old ways, to go back to Judaism, to give up this cult of Christianity and to go back to the old ways.
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And we have followed the argument as the author has worked us all the way through the supremacy of Christ in so many different ways.
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And we just saw in the 8th chapter the new covenant, the covenant in the blood of Christ, its supremacy, its superiority to the old covenant.
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In fact, the last chapter had ended when he said a new covenant. He has made the first obsolete, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
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And so now we come to the 9th chapter, and I'm going to read all the way through the chapter. We are not going to get anywhere near all the way through the chapter today,
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I assure you. But so that you can see somewhat to have a road map of why we need to dig in and work through some difficult sections, you can see the golden nuggets that are there and how it all comes together as one argument.
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So, here we have Hebrews 9. Now, even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary.
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For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread.
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This is called the holy place. Behind the second veil there was a tabernacle, which is called the holy of holies, having a golden altar of incense and the
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Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna and Aaron's rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant, and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat.
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But of these things we cannot now speak in detail. Now, when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle, performing the divine worship.
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But in 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.
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The Holy Spirit is signifying 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 the present time.
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Accordingly, both gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.
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But when Christ appeared as a high priest for the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and cows, but through his own blood, he entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
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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
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Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living
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God? For this reason, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
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For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives.
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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 law.
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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,
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This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you. In the same way, he sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood.
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And according to the law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
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Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
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For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.
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Nor was it that he would offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.
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Otherwise, he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once, at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
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And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him.
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Now you can see, as we have worked through this chapter, that we do indeed have here some of the greatest statements regarding the sacrifice of Christ in all of Scripture.
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But they are couched within an argument drawn once again from the Old Testament. And we have said many times, as we have worked through Hebrews, that the main reason this book seems to be a closed book to many people today is pretty simple.
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It requires an understanding, a knowledge of the Old Testament. In fact, it assumes, on the part of its readers, an intimacy with the
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Old Testament that very, very few people today possess. So as a result, when the context of the argument you're making is unknown to the people to whom you're making it, well, your argument is not going to carry as much weight.
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And that's what we face today. This morning our task is to get to the first golden nugget.
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To get through the description of the tabernacle. Remember, this is specifically, initially about the tabernacle, not the temple.
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I mean, the temple was set up in the same way, but there was a difference between the tabernacle, the traveling temple that traveled with the people of Israel during their wanderings, and then the established temple of the days of Jesus and the days of this particular writer before it was destroyed by Titus and the
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Roman legions in A .D. 70. But you have to work through this description, and the big challenge
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I have is real simple. There is a problem in the description. Now, I could probably get away with not saying anything about it.
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I could probably just skip over it. I could probably just go right on by, and only a few of you here would have a problem with that.
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Only a few of you might catch it, because you might be looking and going, wait a minute, wait a minute. But you know me,
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I can't do that. As most of you know, if you're visiting, maybe you might not know, but as most of you know,
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I get to travel literally around the world these days, and one of the things that I say when
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I'm speaking overseas, when I was preaching in Dublin just a couple of weeks ago, for example, is we honor the
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Word of God by trying to understand what it's saying, and at our church, we don't skip over the tough parts.
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Well, now I've got to live with my own claims. There's a challenge here, and I will be honest, in all the debates that I've done, all the atheists,
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Muslims, Mormons, whoever it might be that I've debated, no one has ever raised this issue, which makes me wonder whether I should raise it myself, to be perfectly honest with you.
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But it's there, and by working through it, I think that our confidence in the
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Word of God and the method that we need to use to listen to the
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Word of God will be informed, and we will be edified. Well, what am I referring to? Well, let's look back at the description.
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The writer begins by saying, well look, the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and it had the earthly sanctuary.
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We all know that. We all know that first covenant, which is growing old and obsolete and is about to pass away.
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It had regulations of divine worship. Now to be perfectly honest with you, there's a strong temptation if you stop right here, and I could preach the rest of the morning on the fact that God has the right to regulate
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His own worship. And in light of what we see in many churches today, it might not be a bad idea if I did that, but I'd be preaching to the choir.
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Because if you're here, you already believe that. There are lots of places you could go to right down the road where you'd be much more entertained and the people up front would be dressed in a much more contemporary fashion and wouldn't have quite so much of the snow in the beard.
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And the sermon wouldn't last as long and be much more interestingly decorated.
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We did finally get rid of Eddie and Lucy's flowers, but they were here almost ten years. That was good. But, you know,
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I mean, things would be different. But you're here because you actually do believe that the central act of worship is the proclamation of the
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Word of God and that God has the right to determine what is pleasing in His worship and what is not. So, I'm not going to go there.
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But, I think it is a very valid application of the statement. Then we have, just briefly, because notice at the end of verse 5 the author says, but of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
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But he does, through verses 2 through 5, give us a description of the accoutrements, the furnishings, the layout of the earthly sanctuary.
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Remember, his argument is the earthly sanctuary is but a shadow of the reality in Heaven that Moses is told, make it this way and do it exactly because this is a shadow of the heavenly reality.
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So, this is an earthly example of what the heavenly is actually like.
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That's why it needs to be done exactly. So, we have a description of the tabernacle, the tent that was prepared, the outer one.
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Now, actually, when you think about it, there was a covering that went all the way around.
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I think we actually even have a picture of this in the Sunday school room next door there. But, if you remember your
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Sunday school lessons, you remember what the tabernacle looked like. Some of your study Bibles will have something in your study
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Bibles referring to the same thing. You might be able to see it. But, there was a tabernacle and this is talking about the inner tabernacle where you have the holy place and then what's called the holy of holies, which is just a
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Hebrew way of saying the holiest place. And so, there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread.
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It was literally called, I think some translations say, the show bread or the bread of the presence. There were 12 loaves for each of the tribes of Israel and they were to be changed out each week and it was representative of the people of Israel.
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This is called the holy place. Behind the second veil, there was a tabernacle which is called the holy of holies, having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold in which was a golden jar holding the manna and Aaron's rod which budded and the tables of the covenant and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat.
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But, of these things, we cannot now speak in detail. Now, if we were doing this in the
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Sunday school class, I would stop right now and I would ask for a show of hands of anyone who can see what a problem is.
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But, we're not going to do that because we're not in the Sunday school class. But, if you happen to be an expert on the location of everything in the temple and, by the way, pretty much all
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Jewish people were. I mean, this was the central place of worship. We know that, for example,
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Josephus, Philo the Jew, Philo's living hundreds of miles away.
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They all know exactly how the temple was laid out. They know where everything is.
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It was part and parcel. I mean, if you think the Baptist Catechism is a part of what we do with young people around here, the layout of the temple was something that every little
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Jewish boy and girl knew. And, if you happen to be someone like that and you listen to this description, you immediately went, um, there's something out of place.
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There's something out of place. Now, that sort of depends on which translation you're looking at because some translators have looked at the beginning phrase of verse 4.
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The golden altar of incense. There's the problem.
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Some people have said, no, this isn't the old golden altar of incense. This is the censer that he would take into the
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Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. So, it's something different. Pretty hard to prove that.
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And, if that's the case, then he forgot the golden altar of incense, which is in the holy place.
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The golden altar of incense is right before the veil.
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And, in fact, we know from the Old Testament that part of the ritual of the Day of Atonement was putting blood upon the horns of this altar.
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So, if you say, well, if you get around this by saying, well, the golden altar of incense, that's not really the golden altar of incense.
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It's just the censer you bring into the Holy of Holies. Now he's forgotten one of the major parts in the holy place, which is the golden altar of incense.
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Really no reason to go there. But the point is this. The golden altar of incense in the
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Days of the Temple, and as far as we can tell, looking at the layout as it is presented in the
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Old Testament, the golden altar of incense was not in the holiest place.
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It was in the holy place. I mean, think about it. What was Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, doing?
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Remember in the Gospel of Luke? He was chosen by Lot. He was a priest.
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And what they would have in that day, in fact, it's fascinating. We actually have records going back to this time period. We can sort of see when his family would have been up for Lot to have offered incense.
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Remember, he was to offer incense. Well, where would that take place? It took place in the holy place.
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And he would go in and he would offer incense upon this very altar. Now, he was not a high priest.
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And so, he would not have been going into the holy place because even as this text itself says, that only happens once a year when the high priest brings the blood of the sacrifice in on the
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Day of the Atonement. You may recall, I don't know how many months ago it was now, when we went through, I believe it was chapter 5, we went back to Leviticus chapter 16 and we looked very carefully.
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Or maybe it was chapter 7. One of those two places. We went back to Leviticus chapter 16. We looked at the Day of Atonement there.
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And we saw how the high priest did that. And so, that's what Zechariah was doing. This is the very altar that he would have been offering incense upon as the normal part of priestly duties.
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And a normal priest could go into the holy place, but only the high priest could go into the holiest place.
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And that was on the Day of Atonement. And so, here's the issue. Why does the writer do this?
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Well, I've spent a lot of time on this. I've read and read and read all sorts of stuff on this particular subject.
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And the answers range widely. You will, of course, have on the left -hand side of the spectrum, those who will simply say, hey, he blew it.
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Made a mistake. Easy to do. Move on from there. Those are the same people who would believe that this is just one person's understanding of divine things and therefore doesn't really have a whole lot of authority or outside of authority that we might give to the ruminations of one particular person.
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They don't really believe in the inspiration of Scripture. But that really doesn't fit for us. And so, what can we do?
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Well, there have been all sorts of suggested understandings. As I mentioned, some people say that this isn't the altar, it's a censer, but that leaves other issues that become a bit of a problem.
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There were some scribes, interestingly enough. There are a couple of manuscripts where that entire phrase has been moved back a couple of verses.
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Whoops! Not supposed to be there. Let's move it back to where it's supposed to be here. And so, there are a couple of manuscripts where the scribes said, which at least gives me some confidence that the scribe had some idea what the
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Old Testament was, which is a good thing, I suppose. But how do we understand it? Well, this is where we illustrate,
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I think, our need to avoid being modernist snobs.
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Modernist snobs. I don't know about you, but I have to deal with historical issues fairly often.
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I have to deal with history. And there is an attitude today amongst many, many people that if you don't have technology like we have, if you don't have your cell phone and your computer,
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I mean, how could anyone have ever really known anything before Google? I mean, that's where everybody goes first now isn't it?
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How could anyone have really understood anything before the modern day? There is a modern hubris that immediately makes us jump to the conclusion that even though we're reading what is clearly the writings of someone who said, you know,
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I can't go into detail about this now, it's a summary thing. Well, he just must have been wrong. And I may be even more sensitive to this than other folks because, as some of you know,
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I've written a few books myself. And it's amazing how many people will take an off -handed comment that I might make on a radio program.
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You know, I did a national radio program this week, the Janet Mefford Show, and a caller called in and, as I recall, asked something about the subject of the canon scripture.
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I think I might have gotten 15 to 20 seconds into my response when in my earphones
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I hear the music coming up, which means we're coming up on a hard break. So I have another maybe 15 seconds before all of it's over with.
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Now, I have to summarize things pretty quickly at that point. And it really bothers me when people will take a hurried summary like that and accuse me of basically being an idiot, and they won't take the time to read entire chapters in published books that I've written on the same subject that go into much more detail and background issues and all the rest of that stuff.
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It bothers me. And it should bother us that frequently that's what we do to people in the past too.
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We jump to conclusions without actually stepping back and going, is there an honest, not without trying to just cover for somebody, but is there an honest way to understand these things without accusing the author of basically having made a lame -brained mistake?
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A mistake that any Jewish boy would never have made. I mean, here's the guy.
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Listen to the argument of the book of Hebrews. Listen to how many times he quotes from the Old Testament. And go, do you really think he's just that ignorant of where things were?
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He just transposed things? I don't think so. It seems sensible to conclude that our author, so far from being guilty of having just blown it, was actually making an argument, basing his statements upon an argument, but then he doesn't expand upon the argument.
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You see, there was a tradition in that day which recognized a special doctrinal association that existed between that golden altar of incense and the
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Holy of Holies. Some of you who have studied the Old Testament know that there's a tremendous set of resources.
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Oftentimes, the best commentaries are the older commentaries. But there's a set of commentaries by Kyle and Delitzsch that says, its place was to be in front of the curtain which concealed the
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Ark of the Covenant before the Kippurath. The Kippurath is the place of atonement.
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We would call it the Ark, but actually on top of the Ark, the covering. Kippurath means covering. So that although it really stood in the holy place between the candlestick on the south side and the table on the north side, it was placed in the closest relationship to the
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Kippurath and for this reason is not only connected with the most holy place in 1
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Kings 6 .22, but is reckoned in Hebrews 9 .4 as part of the furniture of the most holy place.
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Now, you might notice the reference that was made there to 1 Kings 16 .22 which says,
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He overlaid the whole house with gold until all the house was finished. Also the whole altar which was by the inner sanctuary
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He overlaid with gold. Now when you look at the original language for that it's almost difficult to understand exactly where it is being referred to given its association with the veil at that point.
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Others were led to the decision that we should rather find a theological idea than an archaeological error in this particular passage.
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What would the argument be then? What would the argument be? Well, one person has put it this way.
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Certainly the distinctive Christian understanding which our author is intent on imparting and which evidently involves the association of the altar of incense with the
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Holy of Holies, the former symbolizing the prayers of God's people and the latter the heavenly sanctuary is confirmed in Revelation 3 .8
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and following where it is said that in the celestial reality Remember, what's the author's idea?
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The heavenly is the real. The earthly is to represent what is in the heavenly. In Revelation 3 .8
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where it is said that in the celestial reality incense is offered with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne.
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Keep that in mind. The alignment of the brazen altar of sacrifice the golden altar of incense and the mercy seat though each was located in a different division of the tabernacle or its precincts namely in the courtyard, the holy place and the
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Holy of Holies respectively was undoubtedly an arrangement of the greatest significance. The straight line which connected these three with each other indicated clearly the line of propitiation and atonement appointed by God.
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Accordingly, on the day of atonement the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies bearing with him the blood of the spotless victim vicariously slain on the altar of sacrifice and also the incense from the altar of incense which when sprinkled on the live coals generated a sweet smelling cloud symbolical as we have mentioned of the prayers of the people as the atoning blood was applied to the mercy seat.
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Indeed, the closeness of the association was further demonstrated by the fact that the blood of the sin offering was also applied by the high priest to what?
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To the altar of sacrifice and the altar of incense. Bearing in mind that the principal focus of our author's exposition is the day of atonement and the fulfillment of all that is ceremonial portended in the perfect high priestly work of Christ the appropriateness of his association of the altar of incense with the
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Holy of Holies becomes evident. And so there was in fact even in Jewish liturgical writings a connection of this altar of incense with the
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Holy of Holies itself. And so there seems to have been an even deeper argument that the
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Christians were making that he says, well we can't go into detail now. He could have if he had chosen to do so.
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But he lays these things out and he associates theologically the golden altar of incense with the
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Holy of Holies. Now you can imagine if any of my opponents were to raise this issue in a cross -examination period during a debate it would be pretty difficult to summarize all of that in the normally 30 to 60 seconds that I'm normally given to do so.
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But that's why you don't do meaningful theology in 30 to 60 seconds. This is the kind of issue that cannot be answered on Twitter.
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The older folks in the audience have no idea what that means but the younger folks understand. The older folks you only have 140 characters per tweet.
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That's why you can't really do in -depth theology on Twitter. So there you have the argument.
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It seems that the Jewish understanding the Christians took that and said look, each of these things are pointing to fulfillments in Christ and what you have here then is you have this line of atonement from the courtyard into the holy place into the
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Holy of Holies. The blood is brought in and that altar of incense then is considered to be part of the very holy place itself, the holiest place itself for it too receives the blood of the sacrifice, the blood put upon the horns of the altar to purify it in that process of atonement on the days of atonement.
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Now, verse 6. When these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship.
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This was the daily thing. But in 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.
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Second big tough issue. Ever caught that phrase there?
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The sins of the people committed what? In ignorance. In ignorance.
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And that is a literal rendering of the phrase. And that is what we have in the
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Old Testament. If you look back at Leviticus 4 .1, then Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, speak to the sons of Israel saying, if a person sins unintentionally in any of the things which the
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Lord has committed not to be done, and commits any of them, if the anointed priest sins so as to bring guilt on the people, then let him offer the
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Lord a bowl without the effect of the sin offering the sin he has committed, etc. So you have this concept of an unintentional sin.
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A sin of ignorance. Same thing in Leviticus 5 .17. Now, if a person sins and does any of the things which the
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Lord has commanded not to be done, though he was unaware, still he is guilty and shall bear his punishment.
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He is then to bring to the priest a ram without defect from the flock according to your valuation for a guilt offering, so the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his error in which he sinned unintentionally and did not know it, and it will be forgiven him.
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It is a guilt offering. He was certainly guilty before the
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Lord. So it was not that this means that this is excused, but there was a recognition that there could be ignorance and violation of God's law based upon that ignorance.
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So, why would this statement be made? Because clearly, there are also offerings for other kinds of sin.
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I mean, we have David, and David didn't sin in ignorance, and yet there is forgiveness for his sin.
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So, why mention this? Well, it's possible. I'm not certain that we really want to go here.
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But one possibility we might want to think about is that the author is stating, he's going to make the argument in verse 9, that these sacrifices cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience.
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Is he making the argument that the extent of these offerings is limited to those sins committed in ignorance so that there needs to be a greater means of forgiveness because we all know what sins bother us in our conscience?
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The ones that we know we committed and that we committed willfully. Is that part of the argument?
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Or is he just simply borrowing Old Testament language here and saying that the need for purification would include even those sins which are committed in ignorance?
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I'm not sure which direction to go on that, but we should note the use of the term here because there have been some people who, again, if you don't listen to all of Scripture, if you don't allow
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Scripture to be a united whole, if you do not allow Scripture to have one supernatural author in the person of the
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Holy Spirit, and I'm not saying that we can't look at what Paul writes and what John writes, but unfortunately, people lose their balance on that.
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You know, there's two excesses. The one excess on this one side, you don't even allow for authors to have different emphases and different things are important to them.
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The excess on the other side is you can just chop the Bible up into all sorts of pieces and set authors at conflict with one another.
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In between is a recognition that God used each person. They had their own vocabulary, their own interests, their own focuses, and yet you still have, as Jesus said, the
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Spirit speaking through the Scriptures. And so you have this harmony, but it's not just a surface level harmony.
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It's a harmony that exists at a much deeper level. And so people who ignore all of that will say things like, well, you see, those offerings were just for offerings that were done, sins that were done in ignorance.
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And people in the early church, there were people who developed, they didn't really have the whole canon available to them, but they, a canon of Scripture, all the
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Scripture available to them, but a lot of people developed the idea that all your sins up to your baptism were forgiven, but after that, you're toast.
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So you commit one sin after baptism, oh well, that's what Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 were all about from their perspective.
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And so, ignorance, that's one thing, but the high -handed sin, well, the sin done willfully, no forgiveness for that.
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None whatsoever. That's going to really cut into the writer of Hebrews presentation, but that's how people understood it.
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And there are still some who would take the text in that way. I don't think there's any reason to do that, as we will see, especially in chapters 9 and 10.
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So, having reminded his audience of what they already knew about how the
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Day of Atonement took place and the offering of the blood, then we have these words. The Holy Spirit is signifying this.
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Now stop a second. The Holy Spirit is signifying this? In what way?
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Well, in the entire layout of what we have recorded for us in Scripture concerning how everything was put into the temple.
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And so, not only is the Holy Spirit involved in the superintending of the construction of those materials, remember even in the
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Old Testament, the Spirit gave special gifts to men so they might be able to do the things necessary to fulfill the command of God to make the tabernacle exactly as God wanted it to be.
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But also we have another of the many places in Scripture where the Spirit's central role in the inspiration of Scripture and the preservation of Scripture down to our day is seen.
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The Holy Spirit is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing.
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Words that would really not make a whole lot of sense if this book was written after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.
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Another reason why I think it's very clear it was written prior to that time. But notice the understanding of the author.
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The Holy Spirit is signifying that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time.
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So what he's saying is we look at the way the things have been arranged. We look at the priesthood.
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We look at the type of sacrifices that were offered. And what it's telling us is the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed.
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It's pointing forward to a fulfillment. This is the whole argument of the book of Hebrews.
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Types and shadows pointing to the greater fulfillment. And so he says, both gifts and sacrifices are offered, and were continuing to be offered at this point in time in the temple, which cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations to the body imposed until a time of reformation.
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Now, there are many who would balk at such a statement because they would say,
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Oh, but, was there not a deep spiritual significance in what took place in the worship in the temple?
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And of course there was. I mean, we have evidence of that even in the New Testament in the sense that when
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Jesus is brought to the temple as a child, who was there?
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People that you can't convince me didn't know the Lord. You have
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Simeon and Anna, special individuals who had personal communion with God, and are you going to tell me that they looked at the
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Old Testament and they looked at the Scriptures and they looked at the sacrifices and they heard the sounds of sacrifice and smelled the smells of sacrifice, which would have been rather overpowering.
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And as they stood there in tune with the Spirit of God, there was nothing about that that made them look towards something greater?
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Of course not. They were looking for something greater. They saw what these things meant.
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And so, what does he mean that they cannot make the worship a perfect in conscience since they were into food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of Reformation?
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Well, we need to be careful that we do not go beyond what the author himself is arguing.
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What the author is arguing is that these external things, their importance and their meaning is what they pointed to.
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And the point that's going to be brought from all this is once what they have pointed to comes into reality as it has in the sacrifice of Christ, they cease to function in the way they once did.
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Now, it's fascinating to me. This does have application to us today. You might say, well, this is all very interesting historically.
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And yeah, I can certainly see how this would have been relevant to the Jewish Christian in that day. The temple is still standing.
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There's this pressure to come back to it. The grandeur of the temple, all the rest of this. And to be confirmed in your belief that none of that anymore is pleasing to God because God has testified of Himself in having raised
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Jesus Christ from the dead. To keep doing that is to say that God has lied in the resurrection. And that's true.
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You can see how that's relevant. But how would that be relevant to us today? I mean, there's no more temple anymore. There are no more sacrifices.
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Well, I had a really interesting illustration of why this is relevant just this week.
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I was reading a brand new book that has come out called A Law, A Christian Response.
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And the thesis of the book is that you can be a believing
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Christian and not have any objection to the central teachings of the
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Quran. That all this fighting going on, we just aren't understanding each other properly.
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Now, there's a lot in the book that obviously I will have to deal with in other contexts.
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And I will not burden you with any of that. But, one of the primary arguments that was made in the book is, look, we shouldn't be considering Muslims to be worshiping a different God because you don't think that the
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Jews worship a different God. Do they?
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Now, clearly, the writer of the book of Hebrews would have said, our
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God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. No question about it. And certainly, the
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Muslims say the same thing. They say, our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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No question about it. But here's the real question. Did the New Testament writers believe that for someone who knows about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, would the temple sacrifices any longer be an option for them?
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Would it be pleasing worship to God to offer those sacrifices?
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The answer of the writer of the Hebrews is rather obvious, isn't it? In the next chapter, he's going to say, anyone who goes back to the old ways is trampling underfoot the blood of the
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Son of God. He's spitting upon Christ. He's committing the greatest act of apostasy that can be made.
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And so, if there was a temple built today, who knows how in the world that would happen, but if there was one, and the
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Jews started offering sacrifices, would those be pleasing to God? Not from a biblical perspective.
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And clearly, Islam, the writer of the Quran, knew who Jesus was and denied every central element of what makes
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Jesus Christ unique. And so, to say, well, we worship the same
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God, even though I am saying that what that God has testified of Himself in the incarnation, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the entirety of the gospel is false, to say we're still worshiping the same
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God seems to be playing games with language, as I understand it.
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And so there is relevance to be seen because you see, the writer is in no way, shape, or form saying that these regulations about food and drink and various washings, regulations the body imposed until the time of Reformation, he said the
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Holy Spirit gave those things. They were divinely given by God.
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But they've been fulfilled. They've been completed. Their purpose is finished.
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That's going to become very much a linchpin of his argument. But notice in closing, all that we had to go through to get here.
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Because if you were reading with me carefully through chapter 9, verse 11 is our first golden nugget.
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But when Christ appeared as a high priest to the good things to come, He entered to the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, as they say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and cows, but through His own blood
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He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. Wow!
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The foundation of the atonement. The meaning of the atonement. All the rest of the stuff.
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But what's the context? What brings us there? So often these texts, we grab them, we pull them out, and we work with them, but we don't see that there is a context that brought us there.
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And it is our conviction here that when you want to mine the gold of Scripture, you've got to work through everything to get there.
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It takes some work. I realize trying to think through these things with me this morning was not the easiest thing you could have been doing this morning.
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But when we dig in and when we follow the argument, at least in the future, you can say this with honesty.
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When you look at someone and you quote verses 11 -12, you're not just proof texting.
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You know what comes before. You know what comes after. And you've done the work to be able to say, here is the actual argument of this text.
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It really is saying that Jesus Christ was a high priest with the good things to come.
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You'll understand what those good things to come were. Well, especially if you come back this evening when we actually touch on this text.
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But the point is, you'll be able to say, yes, I know where that comes from. And it increases one's confidence.
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And let's just be honest, one's integrity in being able to say, the
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Word of God really does say this. Not just proof texting something. Not just pulling something out. But when we do come to it, we can say, you know,
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I've walked through the book of Hebrews and this argument is consistent all the way through.
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And so, what have we seen today? God determines what's right in His own worship.
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We need to be slow to jump to accusations of error when there are other answers that are to be given.
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An argument is being made by the author that even the Holy Spirit has signified that the purpose of His organizing the worship the way
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He did was all to look forward to the very center point of history.
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The center point of history in all of the New Testament is the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not die upon a hill outside of Jerusalem outside of a context.
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And then the church came along and just made something up to explain it. God had been working with His people.
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He had designed a prophetic word to give testimony to the truthfulness of the sacrifice of Christ long before.
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That was the power of the message then. It very much continues to be the power of the message today as well.
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The same Holy Spirit who signified to them is the same Holy Spirit who in our midst testifies of the truthfulness of the
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Gospel of Jesus Christ to this day. Let's pray together. Our gracious and merciful
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Triune God, we thank You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for what You have done in the
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Gospel. That glorious Gospel founded in the sovereignty of the
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Father's decree worked out in the condescension and sacrifice of the
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Son applied by the Spirit. And O Lord, this day as we have struggled with Your Word, as we have had to think back upon the most ancient portions of Your revelation and to think about how
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You have commanded men to worship You, we have done so in the honest hope and sincere conviction that by doing so, our confidence in Your Word and our confidence and understanding of Your Gospel might be increased.
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And Lord, as we consider the sacrifice of the eternal Son of God, may
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You increase our understanding. May You increase our confidence. May You help us to see how in our everyday life our standing before You is all dependent upon that glorious accomplishment.
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As we read from the Gospel of John, our Lord said, It is finished. May You help us to understand that and live in light of it.
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If there be any here who do not know the finished work, Father, may
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You be pleased to draw Your people unto Yourself. Show Yourself powerful. We pray in Christ's name,