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Well, if you would turn this morning in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 9, we’ll be reading
verses 1 through 10.
This is the Word of God from Hebrews chapter 9.
Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness.
Where a tent was prepared, the first section in which were the lampstand and the table
and the bread of the presence, it is 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 sides with gold, in which was
a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron’s staff that budded and the tablets of the covenant.
Of it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat.
Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section
performing their ritual duties.
But into the second section only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not
without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of
the people.
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.
According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience
of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations
for the body imposed until the time of reformation.
You may be seated.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, we thank you that you have inspired this word
many centuries ago, that you have preserved it for us to read and study and find life
in.
We need your blessing, your help, Lord, that you might be present in the proclamation of
this word, that you might give food to your people.
Lord, we ask that you would feed your people, ask that the Spirit might be present in the
hearing and the preaching of your word, that you might be glorified and your saints might
be built up.
We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Well, the title this morning of this message is An Illustration of Alienation.
But first, how do you handle conflict?
Now, typically in films, there are two types of responses when a couple has conflict.
On the one hand are those that fly into a rage, yelling at each other.
On the other are those who become extra polite, even offering to do favors for the other.
Now, on the outside, for the naive observer, it might appear as suddenly, there is nothing
wrong.
The famous, dangerous, wifely answer, everything’s fine, might be a classic example of this.
On the outside, these responses appear to be smoothing over the difficulties, diffusing
the situation and diminishing the differences.
But to the perceptive viewer, the discerning husband, things are obviously not fine.
The polite assertions and interactions serve to solidify the separation, coldly cutting
the other off as the words are wielded like walls.
And despite appearances, the polite niceties performed perfunctually do not placate the
divide between the parties they actually deepen it.
As the couple proceeds to politely patch over disagreements with their words, they both
know that implicitly the opposite is intended to happen.
Now, we’ve become so used to this phenomenon in films that I would guess many of us rarely
give it a second thought.
Yet isn’t it odd to think that the polite words, assuring the other that everything
is fine, actually are sometimes intended to convey and achieve the opposite meaning.
Now, in our passage this morning, we have an irony.
The writer declares that the mosaic tabernacle of the Old Covenant, while being in access
of accessibility to God, served also as a parable of partition.
The tabernacle and all that went along with it, while it was God’s means of dwelling
with his people Israel, it was at the same time a proclamation of their distance and
their separation.
While the stated purpose of the tabernacle was to bring God close to the people of Israel,
the author of Hebrews sees it as signifying their separation.
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.
As we look at the passage this morning, we’ll consider three degrees of separation in the
Old Covenant, which fade away in the New Covenant.
Number one is physical furnishings.
Number two, mandated mediators, and number three, culpable consciences.
So number one is physical furnishings.
This we see in verses one through five of chapter nine.
The physical furnishings of the original tabernacle, while providing a way for God to meet with
his people, also highlighted the immense separation that was inevitably present.
We find the tabernacle described in verses one through five.
Verse one.
The first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness.
In verse one, the author uses two terms which bring out the distance and inferiority of
the Old Covenant.
Now if you first read that and you thought that regulations for worship sounds more like
a procedure than a relationship, you’d be right.
The word translated regulations has strong legal connotations.
The Old Covenant was established and maintained in a more distant and regulated manner.
The tabernacle procedures which we read in Leviticus 16 already, while graciously given
by God, were nonetheless a way of ensuring the people kept their distance from God.
Like the fence that Moses put up around Mount Sinai in Exodus 20, the regulations for worship
kept the people alive, but they also hindered intimacy.
But secondly, the author of Hebrews describes the tabernacle with this term earthly.
We saw this contrast when we looked at the previous chapter, chapter eight in verse five,
in which Jesus’ work as a high priest is presented as superior because he entered the heavenly
tabernacle.
Now we noted last time that the heavenly there was used to describe more the quality of the
tabernacle than its location.
And similarly here, while the Mosaic tabernacle did exist on earth, the writer of Hebrews
is not highlighting its location, but its quality.
It’s an earthly tabernacle which cannot fully solve the heavenly problems.
Earthly is incomplete.
It is meant to sketch out and foreshadow and illustrate true heavenly realities.
Now as the author of Hebrews begins to detail the specifics of this earthly place of holiness
in our text, he describes it in the order in which you might encounter it if you were
walking in.
Verse two, for a tent was prepared, the first section in which were the lampstand and the
table and the bread of the presence.
It is called the holy place.
The tabernacle in the Old Testament was set up in three sections all in all.
There was an outer courtyard in which the priests and Levites washed things, cut up
animals for sacrifices, and placed them on the large bronze altar.
This courtyard was where the Israelites themselves could enter if they were bringing a sacrifice.
They would bring their offering to the priest and participate to a degree in the sacrifices
by eating a part of the sacrifice sometimes and participating in other ways.
The author of Hebrews skipped right over this outer section, this outer courtyard, and moving
past this, he takes us right into the inner tent, which is completely enclosed.
This inner tent, as a whole, was called the holy place.
As our passage points out, and it contained a few elements of furniture, and we see the
lampstand listed, which provided light for this otherwise dark room and a table with
fresh bread on it.
But verse three is where we get to the author’s main point of this description.
The second curtain was a second section called the most holy place.
The holy place itself was separated from the rest of the courtyard by a curtain, by a tent
all around.
But even the holy place, there was another curtain, a section of separation.
Now, technically, the whole tabernacle is a single tent, which is why most translations
in ESV say first section and second section.
But the word is literally tent that we see in our passage.
And you probably have a footnote in your Bibles referencing this.
The author of Hebrews is not confused about the number of tents.
He knows there’s a single tent, as he references in other places.
But he’s emphasizing here the distinction.
He’s highlighting the separation between the sections.
So he calls each of them separate tents.
One tent for the priest to go, another tent for the high priest to go once a year.
Passing through this second curtain, the writer of Hebrews draws our attention to what lies
in the holy of holies.
Verse four and five.
Having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with
gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and there in staff that butted, and
the tablets of the covenant, and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the
mercy seat.
Of these things, we cannot now speak in detail.
We’re struck in the description by the gold everywhere.
This was the closest thing on earth to God’s presence within the old covenant.
Now in his description, the writer is going back to the ark of the covenant as it was
in Moses’ day.
The contents of the ark of the covenant represented several aspects of God’s covenant with Israel.
The manna was God’s daily provision for Israel in the wilderness.
Every morning they woke up to their daily bread, who would be there waiting for them.
No more, no less, just enough for each day, but as reliably present as the sun rising.
The second, we see the rod of Aaron.
This came about as a direct challenge to Moses and Aaron’s appointment by God.
God had told them that he would settle the leadership dispute once and for all by doing
a miracle during the night.
All the contestants laid their staffs before the Lord, and in the morning, only Aaron’s
staff had not only sprouted leaves, but it had flower buds, and some of the buds had
bloomed, and some of those flowers had bloomed and produced ripe almonds all in one night.
And this rod was placed in the ark of the covenant as a perpetual reminder of God’s
appointment of Aaron and his sons to be the priests.
Finally we see that the ark contained the two tablets of stone, God’s law summarized
into ten commandments and written by his very own finger, the foundation of his covenant
with Israel as permanent as stone.
And we could go on and have a whole sermon based on the contents of the ark of the covenant,
but as the author of Hebrews says, of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
One detail that has puzzled people about this description in Hebrews 9 of the Holy of Holies
is that it places the altar of incense as being behind the veil in the section with
the ark of the covenant.
We know from reading Exodus 30 verse 6 or Leviticus 16 verses 12 and 18 that we read
already that this altar was originally placed in front of the veil in the holy place where
the lamp stand and the table of the bread were.
Some commentators suggest that since the author of Hebrews is thinking especially about the
day of atonement, he mentions the altar as behind the curtain.
As we saw by reading Leviticus 16 earlier, on that day not only was incense burned on
the altar, like the rest of the year, but the altar was specially cleansed with that
blood on that day alone, which was then also sprinkled in front of the ark of the covenant.
Combined with the fact that in verse 13 of Leviticus 16, Leviticus 16 13 describes the
priest taking the burning incense from the altar to cover the mercy seat with a cloud
of smoke.
It says, and put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense
may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony so that the high priest does not
die.
Now ultimately it’s not fully clear why the author of Hebrews describes the altar behind
the curtain when it wasn’t originally there in Moses’ time.
But his main point is clear.
There’s several degrees of separation highlighted even by the structure and furniture of the
old covenant regulations for worship.
But as we continue in our passage, the author then describes the mediators or the liturgists,
the priests who serve within this structure.
So secondly we see the mandated mediators in verses six through nine.
Verse six, these preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the
first section performing their ritual duties.
The ongoing nature of the work is quite explicit.
The priests go regularly.
They keep going and going and going.
Here as with the earlier reference to section, the word is literally tent.
They go into the first tent.
The priests keep going into the first tent over and over.
The scene is busy with priests going and coming, back and forth.
And then we have an ironically used word which is translated here as performing, but in other
places is often translated as completing.
These priests keep on completing their services, their ritual duties.
They keep on completing these duties in the earthly tabernacle which cannot bring completion
in the heavenly tabernacle.
These earthly priests can’t even go into the inner earthly tent, the holy of holies, much
less the heavenly tabernacle.
This is highlighted in verse seven.
But into the second section only the high priest goes and he but once a year and not
without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.
As we step past the busyness of the first section we find a curtain restricting access.
The old covenant tabernacle had many restrictions on who could enter where and when and how
often and the holy place was completely off limits to any except the priest alone.
But the inner sanctuary, the second tent, the holy of holies behind the curtain was
off limits to everyone except the high priest alone and even the high priest was only permitted
once a year on the day of atonement.
As verse seven reminds us he had to bring blood.
Once a year as outlined in Leviticus 16 that we read earlier the high priest is commanded
to go into God’s presence with an offering for sin.
But as a sinner himself the high priest had to make two sets of sacrifices.
Before he could even bring a sacrifice on behalf of the people he had to make a sacrifice
for his own sins for himself.
Only then could he bring a sacrifice on behalf of the people.
And then look at this phrase for the unintentional sins of the people.
Now while this is a common phrase in the Old Testament, Leviticus 4.13 or 5.18 talks about
offering sacrifices for the unintentional sins of the people.
The word unintentional here could actually be better translated as ignorant.
I think the author of Hebrews is bringing out a different aspect.
Typically that Greek word translated unintentional sins of the people that’s used in other places
is the word involuntary.
But the word here in this case that we have is ignorant.
The word that we find in our passage is referring to ignorance.
And it’s likely the author of Hebrews is making a different point than merely the unintentional
sins of the people which the priest regularly offered sacrifices for.
And this seems to be another ironic description of the Old Covenant and its procedures.
One commentator finds the word choice to be very significant.
He says to be ignorant is to not know God and his wisdom.
Ignorance of God’s instructions for life leads to futility and sinful behavior.
Idolaters are characterized by their ignorance of God as are those who rebel against God.
The author’s choice of this terminology serves as a subtle reminder of the ineffectiveness
of the Old Covenant atonement rituals.
Despite the performance of the prescribed atonement rituals, the people did not have
a genuine fellowship with God.
They still did not know him.
And we talked about last time in chapter 8 about how the New Covenant it says in verse
11 that they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest and how this New Covenant
is more about a genuine fellowship with God.
And so here in this verse we have the writer emphasizing the ignorance, the distance.
The people were outside, separated from God, and even the high priest’s work could not
fully bridge the gap that remained between the people and God.
High priests could enter the veil on their behalf, but he could not tear down the veils.
Indeed, if he were to tear down the curtains, it would only be deadly for the people.
The curtains, the tents, the sacrifices, the rituals, and the priests were all established
by God to keep the people safe.
Life in the Old Covenant entailed keeping a safe distance from the Holy God.
And fellowship with God was established with strict limits restricted to mandatory channels.
Now, if you’ve been keeping up with the news, you might have heard about the United States
of America meeting and negotiating with various countries around the world.
It’s always a big deal when the top leaders actually meet face to face.
Most often the meetings are held between second, third, or fourth tier leaders of each country.
You might send the vice president, or the secretary of state, or even simply a lower
level diplomat.
They’re often dispatched to make negotiations, settle disputes, or establish a relationship.
But when the president of the United States himself meets face to face with a leader of
another country, it’s a big deal.
In the Old Covenant, direct talks didn’t happen.
My people will get in touch with your people was the way things went.
Contact with God was mandated through restricted, mandated mediators.
This is what we see in verse eight.
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.
He mentions the Holy Spirit.
Not only is the Holy Spirit the one who inspired the scriptures, including the Old Testament,
but he’s present throughout the Old Testament, although hidden in various ways.
But we see him mentioned even in the building of the tabernacle.
In Exodus 31, verses one through 11, God tells Moses that the Spirit of God, that is the
Holy Spirit, has filled two men who are in charge of designing and crafting the artistic
elements of the tabernacle.
So all these elaborate furnishings and sacrificial practices were given at the direction of and
inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
And yet we see that the point of all this elaborate furniture, clothing, sacrifice and
ceremonies of the Old Covenant, which allowed God to dwell with his people safely, served
ultimately to illustrate the people’s distance from God.
Though the tabernacle was made to symbolize God setting his people apart by dwelling with
them in their midst, it was also intended by the Holy Spirit to signify their distance
and alienation from God.
Notice the use of the word way in verse eight.
This is a deliberate word choice because it doesn’t show up in any of the Old Testament
language used to describe the tabernacle or the day of atonement.
But it does resonate with what Jesus said about himself in John 14, six.
Well familiar passage, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to me except through, no one comes to the father except through me.
And later we’ll see the same thing brought up in Hebrews 10, verse 20.
We’ll see the author return to this idea by the new and living way that Jesus opened for
us through the curtain that is through his flesh.
So here in Hebrews nine, we have the negative.
The way to God in the Old Covenant was shut because of the people’s sin.
This is why Jesus is absolutely indispensable to the Christian faith.
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics and cults throughout the ages boil down to
human efforts trying to get to God apart from Jesus, which means on your own merits somehow
in one way or another.
Christian Judaism today, which has rejected Jesus the Messiah, is another attempt to get
to God by going down a dead end.
As we see with the established tabernacle at God’s directive in the Old Testament,
the people’s sin make all roads, all attempts to get to God, dead ends.
On their own, they’re all dead ends.
The only way to find forgiveness, peace, and fellowship with God is through Jesus.
The language here in verse eight reminds me of a quote from Lord of the Rings.
Perhaps you Lord of the Rings fans might remember the quote in Return of the Kings, which resonates.
The way is shut was made by those who were dead and the dead keep it.
The way is shut.
This is what the author of Hebrews is saying, the Holy Spirit is showing us through the
establishment of the earthly tabernacle and its priests.
But he qualifies this closure.
He says as long as the first tent is still standing.
Now while this could mean while it exists physically, but if it were to mean that, that
would simply mean that destroying this physical tabernacle, as the Babylonians did in 587,
or the Romans would later do to the Terrid’s temple in 70 AD, would solve the problem and
open up the way.
But this word standing can also refer to legal standing, meaning legally binding in place.
While the Old Covenant remains legally binding, access to God is shut, awaiting the new and
living way who will open it.
The fact is these outward settings and circumstances of physical furniture, mandated mediators
as well, we’re really pointing to a deeper reality.
The ultimate problem and our third degree of separation that we see in our passage,
are culpable consciences.
Number three that we see in verses 9 and 10 is our culpable consciences.
Perhaps the biggest degree of separation is our culpable consciences, the fact that we
are guilty.
Verses 9 and 10, according to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot
perfect the conscience of the worshiper.
The deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed
until the time of Reformation.
The Old Covenant regulations affected the exterior reality, but were ineffective at
touching the heavenly reality and relieving the conscience.
And we often speak of the conscience as a moral compass, designed by God to correspond
to cosmic right and wrong.
Compass of course is a small device that sits in your hand, has a small arm which spins
on a dial.
If working correctly, it will be affected by Earth’s magnetic field running through
the earth and will rotate until it lines up with magnetic north.
The compass doesn’t determine north, it detects it.
And similarly the human conscience is designed to detect right and wrong, not determine them.
But the scriptures are under no illusion that the conscience has been unaffected by
sin.
The fact that people can be said to be dead in sin and yet have any sense of right and
wrong is a gracious gift from God that we might call common grace.
But by God’s grace, humans who reject ultimate right and wrong and continue to choose evil
also continue to be pricked by their consciences.
And yet the conscience, each of our consciences is not immune to acts that violate what it
tells us, it dictates.
When your conscience tells you something is wrong and you continue to do it, scripture
says you’re on a dangerous path.
Because as you continue to act against your conscience, you do dead in or harden your
conscience so that it’s less and less effective at indicating true right and wrong.
What we want ideally is to have consciences which correspond accurately to cosmic morality
as prescribed by God.
Our consciences can go wrong in two ways.
They can tell us things are wrong when they’re actually right, or they can tell us things
are right when they’re actually wrong.
And both of these errors require calibration with the word of God, which is why it’s so
important to be consistently reading God’s word yourself.
But the point that Hebrews chapter 9 verse 10 is emphasizing is that the ineffectiveness
of the old covenant at perfecting or completing, or we might say resolving, the conscience
of the worshiper.
The old obsolete covenant was ineffective at resolving that persistent sense of guilt
despite all of the rituals, sacrifices, offerings, and washings.
Why is this important?
Because despite man’s fallen efforts to distort and suppress the testimony of his own conscience,
it continues to speak, declaring his guilt.
Current focus of secular psychology is on silencing the negative voices in our heads
and replacing them with positive affirmations.
Now in the abstract, this is a good thing.
Christians often find themselves believing lies about themselves, others, or God.
And they need to accurately receive and believe God’s promises found in his word to combat
falsehoods about themselves, others, and God.
But the problem for secular psychology comes when these positive affirmations are not rooted
in reality.
When it is the negative voices which are true, simply reciting positive affirmations doesn’t
change anything.
If a criminal who’s truly guilty and accurately sentenced, no amount of positive affirmations
about his innocence will change his objective reality.
We live in a time in which many in our culture have been trying to bend reality to match
internal affirmations that people make about themselves, even to such things as basic and
immutable as biological sex.
While attempting to change your gender by willing yourself to be different is patently
ineffective.
Less obviously, but no less ineffective, is the effort to absolve cosmic guilt by forgiving
yourself or by pushing it out of your mind.
It is like attempting to absolve a massive tax debt to the IRS by neglecting to check
your mail.
Ignoring the mail won’t make it go away.
Forcing yourself not to worry about it is unlikely to last very long once the real world
consequences kick in.
The IRS has ways of collecting debt which reach far beyond sending threatening letters.
Of course, they can withhold tax credits, garnish wages, even confiscate property, and
they don’t care about your personal beliefs to the contrary.
Another response to cosmic guilt is attempting to earn your way out of it on your own merits.
But this is as futile as performing volunteer community service to get the IRS off your
back.
While community service might get you kudos from neighbors and friends, it carries no
monetary value to lessen your debt.
What you need in that case is cold, hard cash, and a lot of it probably.
Lending in debt, even if it is legitimate, generates a nagging sense of unsettledness.
My wife and I spent a year living on borrowed funds as our house sale dragged on far longer
than we anticipated.
It didn’t keep us up every night, but we weren’t fully at peace until the house was sold and
our debts were paid off.
During that period, I looked into the popular option of taking on more debt in one big loan
in order to pay off the other loans.
While that might make sense in some cases, it doesn’t bring closure to the problem.
In many ways, the Old Covenant was providing loan consolidation.
The sacrifices, offerings, and washings couldn’t do anything more than kick the can down the
road.
They were all meant to point ahead to Jesus Christ Himself, who wouldn’t borrow from
anyone and wouldn’t give out any loans.
The forgiveness that Jesus gives is paid for by His own blood and backed by His own sinless
merit.
He doesn’t offer His righteousness on loan either.
He gives His righteousness permanently.
The only way to find true peace in your conscience is to have your objective guilt dealt with.
That way, when Satan tries to bring it back up, or when your own mind starts to play tricks
with you, you have something solid to rest on, Jesus’ objective sacrifice, which paid
the penalty for your sin and gifted His own merit to your account, counting you as righteous
in God’s sight.
That phrase at the end of verse 10 in our passage is translated in the ESV as until
the time of Reformation, but it could also be translated until when things would be made
right.
That’s the Christian’s hope.
Things really will be all right one day.
It’s not simply a wish or a desire, it’s a confident belief based on God’s own promise
that He will make all things right.
And it starts with you and me becoming right with God right now.
Weekly, even daily, we must get right with God.
This path is repentance.
Because of Jesus, the way to God is open.
Repent of your sin, abandon it, and embrace and pursue Christ.
Whether it’s your first time, or your hundredth or thousandth time, repentance remains the
pathway to getting right with God, so that when He returns to finally make all things
right, it will be all right for you.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in Heaven, we thank you that though you gave these symbols and shadows in the
Old Covenant, these necessary preparations, regulations for worship, that they were pointing
beyond themselves, pointing to our need of the one who would tear down the curtains and
give us true access to God.
We thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice that we can rest in.
Lord, we ask that you would give us the grace to daily repent of our sins, to look to Christ,
and not stay distant, alienated, but come close.
Find that fellowship with Christ.
Lord, we pray all these things in His name.
Amen.
Well, in response, let’s turn in our hymnals, and let’s rise and sing number 275.
Let’s rise and sing 275, arise my soul, arise.