Clothed and Robed The High Priest Sprinkles Blood

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. Our reading tonight is all of Leviticus 16.

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All of Leviticus 16. So if you want to open up to Leviticus 16, we will take a look at that as we continue with our look at clothing theology in the

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Bible. Leviticus 16, starting at verse 1. The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they drew near before the

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Lord and died. And the Lord said to Moses, Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die.

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For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. But in this way Aaron shall come into the holy place with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering.

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He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body.

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And he shall tie the linen sash around his waist and wear the linen turban.

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These are holy garments. He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on.

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He shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, one ram for a burnt offering.

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Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.

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Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

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And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.

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And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering.

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But the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

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Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.

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He shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself. He shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the

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Lord, two handfuls of sweet incense, beaten small. And he shall bring it inside the veil, put the incense on the fire before the

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Lord, that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony so that he does not die.

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And he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side.

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And in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.

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Then he shall kill the goat, a sin offering that is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat.

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Thus he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins.

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And so he shall do for the tent of meeting which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness.

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No one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement in the holy place until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for all the assembly of Israel.

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Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat and put it on the horns of the altar all around.

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He shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the people of Israel.

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And when he has made an end of atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, all their transgressions, all their sin, and he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness.

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And the goat shall bear all the iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

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Then Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting and shall take off the linen garments that he put on when he went into the holy place and shall leave them there.

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And he shall bathe his body in water in a holy place and put on his garments and come out and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people and make atonement for himself and for the people.

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And the fat of the sin offering he shall burn on the altar, and he who lets the goat go to Azazel shall wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and afterwards he may come into the camp.

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And the bull for the sin offering and the goat for the sin offering whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place shall be carried outside the camp.

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Their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be burned up with fire, and he who burns them shall wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and afterwards he may come into the camp.

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And that shall be a statute to you forever, that in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month you shall afflict yourselves and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you, for on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you.

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You shall be clean before the Lord from all of your sins. It is a Sabbath, a solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves as a statute forever.

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And the priest who is anointed and consecrated as priest in his father's place shall make atonement wearing the holy linen garments.

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He shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.

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And this shall be a statute forever for you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all of their sins.

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And Aaron did as the Lord commanded. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Leviticus 16, quite a text to try to preach on.

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Seems like a highly technical text, does it not? Do this, do that. Don't do this, don't do that.

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And then if you do this, well, the reason you're doing it is so you won't die. Right? Taking care of our sins and making us clean before God is a bloody affair.

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And one that man, well, we're going to find out, is really not even qualified to do.

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So you'll notice here, I'm going to point this out. I've noticed that since I've moved to a region of the country settled by Norwegians, Norwegians have some pretty interesting ideas.

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Ones that I had never thought of before. And in the Norwegian way of thinking, kind of in the

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Jantaloven spirit, a pastor who wears an awl, white robe, well, there's only one reason for him to do such a thing because he thinks he's all of that.

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But that's not true. You know why Aaron wore the uniform that he wore in this text?

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Because God told him to. Here's the idea. What we wear as pastors actually speaks something about our theology.

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If I were up here in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops, what would you think? Maybe Birkenstocks. What would you think about me then?

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Hmm. Maybe Pastor Roseborough was taking hits off the bong.

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Right? Maybe a little too casual, would it not? Right? A business suit says something too.

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But you'll notice here that what God did for His sinful priests,

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He made them dress up. And He clothed them in white.

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In linen. And they had to take a bath prior to it. Sinful men about to perform operations regarding the atonement of sin first must be covered up, lest they die.

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Covering the man was an important thing. And I would even say that covering your pastor is an important thing as well.

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Because I promise you that your pastor is every bit as sinful and in need of atonement as Aaron was.

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Right? And so you'll notice here in this text that there's a little bit of a theology going on.

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The sinful man needs to be covered up lest he die. I don't know of any pastors who've died for not covering up.

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But the idea is that this is the origin, if you would, of actually covering your pastor.

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Theologically, it says, that man's a sinner. Covering him up does not say, oh, he's super important.

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Covering up says, we don't want to see very much of him. It's actually what it says. And this is what

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God was teaching. And so you'll notice here, as we walked through this text, that well,

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Aaron, to start this whole thing off, had to first make atonement through a bowl offering for his own sins.

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Then, he had to make atonement for the very implements that were going to be used for the sacrifice for all of the nation.

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And then you have this strange thing happen. Very bizarre thing. Two goats. One is a sin offering.

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And the other, Aaron stands over it and prays over it and basically proclaims the sin of the people of Israel, placing the sins on the goat and then driving it off into the wilderness.

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To, what's that word? Azazel. What is

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Azazel? Oh, there's lots of ink spread on this one. Okay. Best way to think of Azazel, they believe

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Azazel is a demon. May even be the devil himself. Okay.

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This is very good theology, by the way. Okay, now. Think for a second, if you would, and see if you can start to make the connection.

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Okay. There's two places that this plays out then in the life of Christ that you can start to see how the typology of the

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Day of Atonement begins to start to make sense. Alright. We'll start with the one that is the more difficult one.

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Jesus, He goes to John the Baptist and He's baptized in a sinner's baptism.

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How many sins did Jesus need to repent of and be forgiven of? Zero. Okay.

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And here's where it gets fun. Immediately after Jesus is baptized, it says in the gospel accounts that the

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Holy Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. Who was He tempted by?

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The devil. Azazel. Okay. So, this is the reason why

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Martin Luther and other theologians, when they see Jesus being baptized, they see the sinners that preceded

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Jesus going into the waters of the baptism in the Jordan as them washing their sins off.

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Jesus goes into the water and He's like a sponge. He takes all that sin and goes...

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fills Himself up with it, right? All the sins are now on Him and He's driven out into the wilderness to Azazel.

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Fascinating way of looking at it. Next way that you can see this in the life of Christ.

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Jesus is on trial. Okay, think about Jesus' trial. While Jesus is on trial,

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Pilate's trying to figure out how to get Him off because he knows Jesus is innocent.

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So, what's Pilate's grand scheme? Well, every year during the

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Passover, we release one of the prisoners. So, we'll bring out the notorious

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Barabbas, have Him here, have Jesus there. We'll let the crowd decide which one they want.

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Interesting, is it not? Oh, by the way, do you know what Barabbas means in Aramaic?

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Son of the Father. Fascinating stuff.

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No joke, that's what His name means. Barabbas. Bar. Son. Abbas. Son of the Father.

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Fascinating. Sit there and go, whoa. Because on the Day of Atonement, which we're reading about here in Leviticus, Yom Kippur, you have the two goats.

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And so it plays out typologically in two different places, and it's brilliant on the part of the

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Holy Spirit because you start to make these connections. You sit there and go, there's no way any human being could have put this together.

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No way. Moses wrote Leviticus, what? 1500, 1524

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BC, somewhere in there, right? Jesus is crucified 1500 years later.

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How can you make this connection? You can't. There is a single author, by the way, in all of Scripture, and that's the

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Holy Spirit. He can do all kinds of things. And when you start to look for these things, it's like the best

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Easter egg hunt ever because you can start to trace these motifs and it's rather fascinating.

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So here we learn that Aaron has to dress up. The guy who drives the goat out into the wilderness to Azazel, he has to dress up.

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Cover up everybody. Dress them in white. These are uniforms God's doing. Cover that sinner up.

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And sinners need to be clothed. They need to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And next week, we're going to take a look at the end of the book.

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So if you don't know how it all ends, spoiler alert, next week you're going to hear the end of the story. It's fantastic.

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And wait till you see what we're going to be wearing. It's fantastic. But that's for next week.

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So now, in order to kind of unpack this, rather than rereading

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Leviticus 16, what I'd like to do is do kind of an extended look at the book of Hebrews that tells us what all of this means.

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So if you want to look in your Bible, I apologize for the length, but let's start in Hebrews 7, starting at verse 1.

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And here's the fascinating thing about Jesus. He is not a priest in the order of Aaron.

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He's from the tribe of Judah. There are no priests from Judah's tribe.

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Instead, what we learn from the divine author of the book of Hebrews, is that Jesus is our high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

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And if you remember back in the book of Genesis, Abraham, after he conquered the guys who took

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Sodom and Gomorrah and had captured Lot and his family and taken them into captivity, there was a little bit of a war that went on.

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The Sodom and Gomorrah kings lost. And so Abraham went and rescued them, rescued

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Lot, and then he was all done. He had all the booty of the battle.

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And he tithed off of that. He tithed. The person he tithed to was this character that makes like a cameo appearance in the book of Genesis, never to be seen again until mentioned here in the book of Hebrews.

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And it's a guy by the name of Melchizedek, king of Salem, king of peace. That's how his name works out.

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And Abraham tithes to him. And when Melchizedek shows up, he shows up with two very important things.

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Bread and wine. He's sitting there going, whoa, it's like this

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Melchizedek guy reminds me of somebody I know from the New Testament. Right.

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Exactly. I think it was him. So we read here in Hebrews 7, starting verse 1.

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For this Melchizedek, the king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met

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Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and he blessed him. And to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything.

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He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, which is what Melchizedek means.

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And then he is also king of Salem, that is, the king of peace. Or you can say the king of shalom.

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That's really a good way to think about Melchizedek. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither a beginning of days nor an end of life, but resembling the

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Son of God, he continues a priest forever. See how this great man, to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the spoils, and those descendants of Levi who received the priestly office, have a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people, that is, from their brothers, though these also are descended from Abraham.

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But this man, Melchizedek, who does not have his descent from them, received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.

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And Abraham indeed had the promises. It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior.

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In the one case tithes are received by mortal men, but in the other case by one of whom it is testified that he lives.

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One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when

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Melchizedek met him. Now if perfection had been attainable through the

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Levitical priesthood, for under it the people received the law, what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek rather than the one named after the order of Aaron?

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For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well.

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For the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe from which no one has ever served at the altar.

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For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah. And in connection with that tribe,

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Moses said nothing about priests. In fact, this is most certainly true. This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek who has become a priest not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.

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For it is witnessed of him, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

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For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness.

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For the law made nothing perfect. Listen to that. The Torah, the law, made nothing perfect.

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Nothing. But on the other hand, a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God.

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And it was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such by an oath.

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But this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him, the

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Lord has sworn and he will not change his mind. You are a priest forever.

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And you'll notice that he's quoting there another passage of scripture. So this makes

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Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. Now real quick, covenant.

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Kind of important talk, a little technical here. Covenant, if you would, is a contract and that always implies that there's at least two parties.

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There's generally a sign of the covenant and associated with the covenant are promises and then curses if the requirements of the covenant are not met, right?

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And so the Mosaic covenant which shows up after God had made his covenant with Abraham cannot overthrow the promises that were given to Abraham.

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It was never intended to do so. But Jesus comes along and we hear in the Lord's Supper, take drink, this is the blood of the new covenant shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.

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So this is why we have our Bible split in two. Old Testament, you can even translate

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Testament there as covenant and New Testament, new covenant. We are under the new covenant, not the old.

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And so Jesus is our high priest, not somebody descended from Levi. And so this makes

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Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. Oh indeed, it is better. For the former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office.

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See, that's the kind of thorny thing. It's that those

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Levitical priests, you can only be a Levitical priest for about as long as you were alive.

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And once you were dead, it was the next generation that would come and come and come. Same with pastors. I don't know if you've noticed,

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Kongsvinger has been here longer than any of us. And when you look at the photos on the wall of some of the previous pastors, you just realize

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I'm just the latest guy. Kongsvinger will be here long after I'm gone, right?

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Yeah, this is how this works. But Jesus is not like me and He's not like Aaron because He has an indestructible life.

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But He, Jesus, holds His priesthood permanently because He continues forever.

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Consequently, He is able to save to the utmost or the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him since He always lives to make intercession for them.

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And you'll notice here something. I'm not seeing anything about what Jesus has to wear.

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Think about that. Aaron had to dress up. He had to cover up. Otherwise, he would die.

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I'm not seeing the same theology as it pertains to Jesus. It's as if He's already clothed in perfect righteousness, which is maybe the reason why

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He's able to save us to the uttermost. I love that. Able to save to the uttermost. Oh, that means sinners like me and like you to the uttermost.

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Huzzah! We're saved. So, it was indeed fitting that we should have such a High Priest. Holy.

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Innocent. Unstained. Separated from sinners. And exalted above the heavens.

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He has no need like those High Priests to offer sacrifices daily, first for His own sins and then for those of the people, since He did this once for all when

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He offered up Himself. And that's the difference between Jesus and Aaron. Aaron, you'll notice, sacrificed for Himself.

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Got to cleanse the altar. Got to cleanse the implements. Then finally the sin offering for the people. Jesus skips all of that.

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There's not a single sin offering necessary for Christ. So, we continue.

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For the law appoints men in their weakness as High Priests, which is why they have to dress up.

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Why God has to cover them. But the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a

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Son who has been made perfect forever. Now, the point in what we are saying is this.

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We have such a High Priest. One who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the

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Majesty in Heaven. A minister in holy places in the true tent that the

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Lord set up. Not man. Now, fascinating here. Think about this.

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When we talk about Jesus' offices, Jesus is a prophet for sure.

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He has a prophetic calling. He is a prophet in the very true sense. He's also a king. He is the direct descendant and heir to the throne of David.

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But here it talks about Jesus as priest. So Jesus is prophet.

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He's king. He's priest. And so this is talking about Jesus' priestly office. And because we've never seen, if you would, how the tabernacle and the temple worked with the blood sacrifices and all that kind of stuff.

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We weren't there for the three in the afternoon sacrifice of the

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Lamb and the prayers that were put up before God. We never saw any of this.

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The smells or the sounds or anything that goes along with it. And so it's easy for us to forget and not think of Jesus as our high priest.

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It sounds very Jewish. Yeah, I know. It does. But see, that's the thing.

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We're grafted into Israel. And Jesus is our high priest. Not Caiaphas.

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Christ. So, the one who is seated at the right throne of the Majesty, a minister in holy places is the true tent that the

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Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer.

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Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.

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They serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly thing. That's an important statement.

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The temple that existed in Jerusalem up until 70 A .D., it was only a shadow of the heavenly temple.

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The heavenly tabernacle. And so all the talk that there is today about rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, if that was the shadow and Jesus is the fulfillment, is it really a good idea or a good thing to rebuild the shadow?

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No, it's not. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.

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But, as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises.

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For the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

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For he finds fault with them when he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

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Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

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For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the

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Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds.

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I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach one his neighbor and one his brother, saying,

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Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful towards their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

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Some of the worst sentences of all of Scripture are the ones in which God says,

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I'm going to remember your sins. Trust me, you don't want that.

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The promises of the new covenant is that God is merciful towards us, and He remembers our sins no more.

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There's a reason for this. So in speaking of a new covenant, He makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

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And it has. There is no temple today. Not one. So now, even the first covenant had regulations for worship, an earthly place of holiness.

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For a tent was prepared, the first section in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence.

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It's called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the most holy place, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all the sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron's staff that budded and the tablets of the covenant.

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Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.

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A little bit of a historical note. In Jewish history, in the intertestamental period, there was a scoundrel by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes, and he's notorious for having sacrificed a pig on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem.

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But one of the things that Antiochus Epiphanes did, he wanted to see what was in the holy of holies.

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And being a pagan, he had an expectation because he'd been in temples before.

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And in the inner sanctum of the temples, always you would have the big statue of the God, if it was the temple of Zeus or Artemis or whatever.

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Inside the big inner sanctum, inside the core, if you would, the mind of the temple, there would be the statue.

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And he was utterly amazed by the fact that when he went behind the curtain, although he shouldn't have been there, there was nothing.

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It was the only temple he'd ever been in where the God who was worshipped wasn't in the temple.

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He didn't get it. You see, He was there. So the preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section performing their ritual duties, but in the second, only the high priest goes, and he only goes but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.

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By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age.

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According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshipper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of the

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Reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation,

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He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

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For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification 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, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living

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God. Therefore, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

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For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established, for it takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.

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Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood, for when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both, the book itself and all the people, saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

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Real quick, hyssop, okay? Hyssop makes several spots, important spots in the

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Bible. One place we see hyssop is at the Passover, the very first one celebrated in Egypt, where they took hyssop and they took the blood of the

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Passover lambs and they used hyssop to wipe the doors with the blood of the lambs so that the destroyer would pass over, right?

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When Jesus is on the cross, hyssop makes an appearance. Do you remember where?

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He says he thirsts. And they go and take a sponge, fill it with wine vinegar, and put it on a hyssop stick to raise it up to him.

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Important that it shows up there, right? They start connecting these things and he said, whoa, yeah, okay.

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So in the same way, he sprinkled with blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship.

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Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. Here's an important statement, one of the most important statements in all of Scripture.

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Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. It seems cruel, doesn't it?

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But it's not. Christ willingly shed his blood for the forgiveness of our sins.

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He was unlike the Aaronic priest that we read about in Leviticus 16. He didn't have to offer himself, offer sacrifices for his sins, cleanse the altar, then finally, once and for all, dressed in order to not be killed.

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It doesn't say anything about Jesus wearing anything here, does it? It just talks about his once for all sacrifice.

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Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, and in this new covenant, God is merciful and he does not remember our iniquities.

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The two go together, and as we get closer and closer, we'll be at Good Friday before we know it.

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It's less than two weeks away. When we get to Good Friday, think of these things as you hear the story of the passion of Christ in this crucifixion.

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So thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

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For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

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Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have to offer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

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But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

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And just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

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So now, two completely different things all together. The temple and the day of atonement, which is a shadow of what was to come, who is

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Christ, who is the true temple. And now we see His fulfilling of all things.

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These sacrifices cannot purify a conscience. Christ's can.

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His once -for -all sacrifice was for all people at all times in every place, you and me included.

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And it's important then to know what does Jesus do to the temple once His sacrifice for our sins is completed?

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What does He do to it? Let me read from Matthew's Gospel, Matthew 27, 45 -51.

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Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.

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And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, that is my

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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man's calling for Elijah.

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One of them at once took a sponge filled with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait, let's see whether Elijah will come to save him.

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And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

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And notice the direction. From top to bottom. And the earth shook, the rocks were split.

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He cried out with a loud voice, we learned from the other Gospels. The thing He cried out is, to tell us, die.

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It is finished. The once for all sacrifice for our sins that makes it possible so that God can be merciful to us and remember never our iniquities.

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Or as the hymn that we just said, in a watery grave are buried all the sins that Jesus carried.

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His once for all sacrifice. The true high priest. And He's our mediator now in heaven.

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He goes into the copy of the true thing and He says, this thing is done.

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Tears down the separating, the dividing wall if you would. Rips it from top to bottom.

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And no longer is there a holy of holies here on earth. And then from there, it says we learn, at some point in all of this,

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He actually goes to heaven with His own blood. And there on the heavenly altar, on the horns of the altar and the mercy seat which are the real things in heaven, puts

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His blood where it needs to be. And the wrath of God is propitiated forever.

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Our sins are atoned for. It is finished. Christ is our high priest. And unlike the sinful priests of the

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Old Testament era who had to be covered up because of their sinfulness, Christ is never once described as wearing anything or being necessary for Him to wear anything.

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In fact, as I pointed out the first week of Lent, Jesus performs

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His atoning work for our sins totally in the nude, suspended between heaven and earth.

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He's the only one that could do that. Think about it.

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In the name of Jesus, Amen. Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950, 470th

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Avenue, NW, Oslo, MN 56744 And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950, 470th

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Avenue, NW, Oslo, MN 56744 We thank you for your support.

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