Keeping Jesus at the Center

Hebrews 9:11-14

Keeping Jesus at the Center of Everything

Now turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, and

the ninth chapter. And as you’re doing that, let me take this opportunity to

welcome back many of our college students…and I see scattered here and there

throughout the congregation, back for Thanksgiving. We miss you; wonderful to

see you all here again this morning. I trust you’ve had a wonderful time with

your family.

Now our text is going to be found in verses 13-14 of

Hebrews 9, but in order for us to catch something of a context, and because it

is crucial that we do catch something of a context here, I want us to begin to

read back in the eighth chapter and the very final verse of chapter eight. And

before we read the passage together, let’s ask God’s blessing. Let’s pray.

Father, we dare not even read the Scriptures

unless You come and help us understand. So Holy Spirit, illuminate our minds and

our hearts, and move our affections as we read Your word. You caused it to be

written; holy men of old wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So

once again we ask, come; help us to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, and

all for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Hebrews 8, beginning at verse 13:

“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.

“Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an

earthly place of holiness. 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. 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. Above 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 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.

“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) 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. 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 Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience

from dead works to serve the living God.”

Amen. May God bless to us that reading of His holy and

inerrant word.

Now as we were reading that section, if you haven’t

been in it recently you might be asking yourselves, “What in the world has all

of that to do with me?” We live in a very different world. We don’t live in the

world of tents with outer sections and inner sections, Holy Place and Most Holy

Place. We live in a world of laptops and iPods and Blue Tooth…and hand

sanitizers. And antibiotics. And scented candles. And pristine offices with air

conditioning. And beach homes. And I could go on. It’s a very different world to

the world that’s being described here in Hebrews 8 and 9 that we were just

reading together.

You might be saying, “I’ve never seen the blood of

bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer.”

I grew up on a farm–you know this already. I only went to

an abattoir [slaughterhouse] once. I was a teenager…I was 13, 14,

somewhere around there. I remember it as though it were yesterday. I can still

bring to mind now…I’m not going to describe it to you, but I can still bring to

mind of something that’s forty years ago. I could describe the layout of the

abattoir, the geography of it. I can remember some of the instruments. I can

remember the killing of an animal — a cow…and the rest of it. I can remember the

smell vividly (and I grew up on a farm).

Most of us have never seen the ritual sacrifice of a

bull or a goat, or this red heifer — something that’s described in Numbers 19.

Well, some of you have. Some of you have just done it

yesterday, the day before. Hunters, you can enter into this world a little bit.

Some of us may find it a little more difficult, a little more strange. The

closest you come to meat is Kroger or Sam’s, and then you perhaps don’t handle

it. You carefully remove the cellophane and just let it fall into the pan, and

you carefully sear it. You wash your hands with a ritual now that is done almost

automatically (we trust).

So what do you do with a passage like this? You might

be tempted to say, “This has nothing to do with me.” You might dismiss it. You

might nod off for 25 minutes or so until the service ends, safe and secure in

the thought that “This passage has nothing whatsoever to do with me. It may be

of interest to those who like this sort of thing, but it’s of no interest to

me.” And I want to tell you this morning that this has everything to do with

you, and everything to do with me.

This passage is describing for us a “how much more”

argument. It’s drawing a contrast (actually several contrasts) between worship

under the old covenant and worship under the new covenant; worship that involved

tents, tabernacles, temples, outer courts, inner courts, the sacrifice of

animals, the shedding of blood, ritual cleansing….and the blood of Jesus. I want

us this morning to give our attention to this. Maybe some of it is strange;

maybe some of it is very strange, but I want to say to you this morning that

unless we are covered by the blood of Jesus, then we’re lost. And unless we’re

covered by the blood of Jesus on the Day of Judgment, we are lost forever. So

give our attention to this we must.

There are four contrasts established in this

passage. Look at verses 13 and 14:

“If the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the

ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purifications of the flesh…”

I. A contrast in time.

Let’s pause there. You notice back in verse 9 the

opening verse is describing for us the tabernacle. It’s describing what he calls

a tent, the tent which as you well recall was divided into two sections: an

outer court and an inner court — the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place — and

separated by a veil. Only the high priest could ever enter into the Most Holy

Place, and then only once a year, and then not without the blood of atonement.

He’s told us that he hasn’t time to describe everything about the geography and

the significance of all of the furniture and paraphernalia of the tabernacle,

but he says in verse 9 that by this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into

the Holy Place is not yet opened, as long as the first section is still

standing. And then in parentheses in verse 9: “…which is symbolic for the

present age.” There’s something called “the present age.”

Now drop your eyes down to the end of verse 10,

because we see a contrast. There’s something called “the time of reformation.”

There’s the present age, and there’s the time of reformation. The time of

reformation is the time when all of these Old Testament things get reformed, get

changed. We understand what the time of reformation means. It’s the new

covenant. It’s New Testament worship. It’s worship as you and I know it, coming

in the name of Jesus Christ into the presence of our Father clutching only the

name of Christ, believing solely in Him. No ritual sacrifices. The only red

thing in here is the carpet and what you’re sitting on, at least if you’re down

here. The time of reformation. We live in the time of reformation. We don’t

worship in tents. We don’t worship in a tabernacle. We don’t worship in a

temple. We don’t slaughter bulls and goats and heifers.

But wasn’t the writer of Hebrews living in the days

of reformation? How come he says “which is symbolic for the present age”? That

sounds like the age in which he was living. How come he’s calling the age in

which he was living after Christ, after the cross, after resurrection–how come

he’s still calling it “the present age”? Isn’t it the age of the reformation?

Well, no. He’s writing to Jews — Christian Jews,

believing Jews, Jewish Christians; Jewish Christians who perhaps were still

worshiping in the temple. How long after their conversion would Jews stop going

to the temple? If you lived in Jerusalem, you’d always gone to the temple. You’d

gone there perhaps every day. When would you stop going to the temple? You’d go

to the synagogue. You’d worship Jesus. But perhaps you’d still be going to the

temple. I think some of them were still going there; that’s a part of the reason

why the writer of Hebrews is writing this letter. Some of these Jewish

Christians had been persecuted by fellow Jews. Some of them had apostatized.

Some of them were finding the way forward difficult. He’s writing to them to

instruct them. He’s writing to them to encourage them. And for some of them who

are still attending the temple…and the temple wouldn’t be destroyed until A.D.

70…Hebrews is written probably in the early 60’s. There may be five, six, seven

years more before the temple is finally destroyed and this temptation would no

longer be theirs. But for the time being some of them are still living in the

present age.

Turn back again to that closing verse of chapter 8.

You see the clue?

“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.”

It hasn’t quite vanished away yet. In

theory it has; there should have been no need to go to the temple once Jesus had

died and had risen again. But some of them are still going there, and until the

temple actually got destroyed when Emperor Titus would come and destroy

Jerusalem and destroy the temple along with it, it is ready to vanish away but

it is not yet. He’s drawing a contrast in time. There’s the present age — it’s

actually the old covenant with its ritual, with its sacrifices, with its

tabernacle and tents and temples and so on — and then there’s the time of

reformation. A contrast in time.

II.

A contrast about blood.

The second contrast is a contrast about blood.

The blood of bulls and goats, the blood of a red heifer [a ritual described in

Numbers 19]…and the blood of Christ. The blood of Jesus. There’s the blood of

animals that was offered over and over and over, and there’s the blood of Christ

that was offered once. Once for all. Never to be repeated ever again. A blood

that seemed by its constant repetition offered not only on behalf of the people

but also on behalf of the high priest, a blood that seemed to indicate that it

was ineffective. Whatever it was pointing to, whatever it was demonstrating, it

was essentially ineffective because you had to do it over and over and over.

And then there’s the blood of Jesus that was offered

once for all, that secured an eternal redemption, that speaks of power and

efficacy and accomplishment. We’re talking about, yes, what older theologians

might have called blood theology. Now not everybody likes blood theology.

Bishop Spong — Bishop Shelby Spong has written: “I choose to loathe rather than

worship a deity that required the sacrifice of His Son.” 1 I choose to loathe such a

deity, he says; but we glory in it. We glory in it. Robert Lowery’s hymn:

“O precious is the flow

That makes me white as snow.

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Or we sing William Cowper’s hymn:

“There is a fountain filled with

blood

Drawn from Emanuel’s veins,

And sinners plunged beneath that

flood

Lose all their guilty stains.”

Or we sing Charles Wesley’s hymn:

“Jesus, Thy

blood and righteousness…”

[actually I think it’s von Zinzendorf’s hymn, isn’t it?]

“My beauty are, my glorious

dress;

‘Midst flaming worlds, in these

arrayed,

With joy … I lift up my head.”

There’s a contrast here between the blood of animals and

the blood of Jesus.

What did the shedding of the blood of these animals

signify? Well, it signified many things. It signified that without the shedding

of blood there is no remission of sins. It signified what the curse of the

covenant actually meant: that the soul that sins shall die; that in order for

atonement to be made, in order for sinners to be reconciled to God, in order for

sinners to be redeemed and set free from their bondage, a price has to be made

and that price is the death of a sacrificial victim.

But these animals could never atone for sin. They

could not do that. They were wholly incapable of doing that despite the fact

that they were carefully chosen. They were unable to forgive sins, and God sends

His own Son, of which these were just types and foreshadowings. And He sent His

Son into this world to die for us, to shed His blood for us, to be our

substitute, to be our sin-bearer, to take upon himself our sins, to receive the

judgment that our sins deserved; that “He was made sin for us, who knew no sin

that we might be reckoned the righteousness of God in Him.” There’s a contrast

here between old covenant and new covenant — the “present age,” as he calls it,

and the age of reformation. But there’s a contrast here also between blood: the

blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes, the sprinkling of the ashes of a

heifer for uncleanliness…and the blood of Jesus

that cleanses from all sin.

III. A contrast about

conscience.

But there’s a third contrast. There’s a contrast

about conscience. A contrast about conscience. What the writer of Hebrews is

endeavoring to say to us is that the very repetition of these sacrifices under

the old covenant in what he calls “the present age” (because the temple was

still standing)…what these constant sacrifices of animals seemed to portray was

that they could never cleanse the conscience. All they could do was purify to

the sanctifying of the flesh.

He makes this strange allusion to the ashes, the

sprinkling of the ashes of an heifer. It’s a ritual you’ll find in Numbers 19.

Supposing you lived under the old covenant. Supposing

you lived in, say, Nazareth. Not in Jerusalem, but Nazareth. And that would be a

two-day journey or so, maybe three, to Jerusalem. Just like Thanksgiving, like

some of you are sitting all in families here, with grandparents and parents and

children. And you’d all be obligated if you lived in Nazareth for one of the

great feasts like the Day of Atonement. You’d be obligated to go to Jerusalem.

You’d have to make that trek. You’d have to shut up shop and take your wife and

parents and Aunt Maude and the children and the bairns, and take them all to

Jerusalem. Some of them perhaps couldn’t walk, so they would go in a cart.

Imagine. Just let yourself imagine for a minute that you’re making your way to

Jerusalem. And Aunt Maude is 98. You know…it’s warm, and she’s sort of nodding

off, and she’s leaning up against you. Her head is on your shoulder. And all of

a sudden you realize she’s awful quiet. And you know, you reach out your hand

and you say, “Aunt Maude?” And there’s no response. And lo and behold, horror of

horrors, Aunt Maude had died in the cart on the way to Jerusalem.

And now what? Well, of course there’s a funeral, but

you can’t go to the temple now. You are ritually unclean now because you’ve

touched someone who’s dead. It was the price of living under the old covenant.

God was teaching them like children the consequences of living in a fallen

world, about the extremity of sin. And the only way to recover from that was to

undergo this ritual of the sprinkling of the ashes of the heifer. A red heifer

(red perhaps being significant because of its color and blood and so on) was

ritually killed outside of the camp. The priest would dip his finger in its

blood and sprinkle it in the direction of the tabernacle, and then it was burnt

and the ashes were put in water. And this water containing these ashes was used

for this ritual purification…until you touched another dead body, and you’d have

to go through it all again. And you know there are times in our lives when it’s

impossible not to touch a dead body. Well, perhaps not for some of us now, but

in those days it certainly wasn’t.

Do you understand? There’s a contrast here about

conscience. All these Old Testament rituals could ever do was sanctify

externally to the purifying of the flesh, but couldn’t cleanse the conscience.

They couldn’t take away guilt, and that’s our great problem, isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what college you go to,

whether you won or lost, what your income is, what your job is. Doesn’t matter.

It’s the same problem. We all have it. It’s the problem of a guilty conscience.

Not just guilt feelings, but guilt in the sight of God. Because we’re all

sinners. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none

righteous, no, not one.” That’s your problem; it’s my problem.

How can I find a gracious God? It was Luther’s

great question. How can I find a gracious God? How can I find someone who

will cleanse my conscience? Who can present me faultless before God’s throne of

judgment? How can I find the answer to the predicament that sin brings me to?

That when I’m brought before the Day of Judgment and brought before that grand

assize, I’m brought before the sovereign God of the universe — how can I pass

that? How can I get through that?

And do you see what the writer of Hebrews is saying

to these Jewish Christians? The blood of bulls and goats and the ashes, the

sprinkling of the ashes of an heifer, all that did was purify to the sanctifying

of the flesh. It was all external. But the blood of Christ can cleanse our

conscience. It can do what nothing else can do: enable me, a guilty sinner, to

come before God–the only God there is, a holy, righteous God, and I can call Him

“Abba!” I can call Him “Father!” I can come where no priest could go. I come

beyond the veil, the veil that was rent at the death of Jesus, because I can

come into God’s presence. It’s a contrast about conscience.

“Jesus, my great High Priest,

Offered His blood and died.

My guilty conscience seeks

No sacrifice beside.”

Isn’t that what we sing?

IV. A contrast about life and

death.

And there’s a fourth contrast, a contrast about

life and death. Because the writer of Hebrews says, you know, there’s a

sense in which the unbeliever, the unregenerate person, for all the works that

he does…and some of those works are good in themselves, but all they do is lead

to death. Dead works is what he calls them.

But what does the blood

of Christ do? It cleanses our conscience. And you notice the

language that he uses in verse 14? It purifies “our conscience from dead works

to serve the living God.” In Greek, and also in Hebrew, the word to serve…the

verb to serve belongs to the same family as the verb to worship.

To serve, to worship; to worship is to serve; to serve is to worship. I’ve been

set free by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, who shed His blood for me…who

died for me…that I might worship Him…that I might serve Him…that I might be able

to say this morning,

“Praise, my soul, the King of

heaven!

To His feet thy tribute bring;

Ransomed, healed, restored,

forgiven,

Who, like me, His praise to

sing?”

Is that your song this morning? Because I want to say to

you, whoever you may be and whatever it is that you’ve done, Jesus says to you,

“Come unto Me…come unto Me, all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I

will give you rest.”

He will set you free; free to serve Him, free to worship

Him.