RESURRECTION SUNDAY - HEBREWS 9:1-15 - The Unfading Sanctuary

Introduction

A number of years ago in my former life, I was part of a church missions conference focusing on reaching the Hindu people in Northern New Jersey. One session consisted of a tour of a nearby Hindu mandir, or temple, that was under construction at that time—it was one of the most ambitious projects of its day, a massive temple encompassing 11 thousand square feet, made out of pink stone imported from India.

Instead of touring the inside of the temple with the rest of the group, I took a walk around the property to have a look at the ongoing construction. As I wandered through the accessible parts of the property, I came upon a large pile of broken stone blocks—some of the very same pink stone blocks that had been imported from India to build this magnificent shrine. And I remember thinking, “Even as they are building this impressive temple, it is already beginning to crumble!” All of their hard word to create a sanctuary for them to approach their gods in worship, and it was falling apart even as they were constructing it.

Consider for a moment the flow of the author of Hebrews’ argument here as we come to Chapter 9. He has been building his case to say that Jesus Christ has no rival as Savior; there is nothing to be gained by going back to the Old Testament Law of Moses to find a sufficient relationship with God, as the Jewish Christians whom Hebrews was addressed to were contemplating. Last week we considered the author’s message in Chapter 8, that Jesus Christ is a more excellent priest than anything Father Abraham or Aaron could offer, and He serves in a more excellent sanctuary than anything the Old Covenant had to offer.

Here in Chapter 9 Hebrews expands on that statement from Chapter 8—we have here an extended discussion of a comparison between the Old Covenant tabernacle where the Levitical priests served and the true tabernacle of Christ (Heb 8:2)

Hebrews 8:2 (LSB)

a minister in the holy places and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.

And what we will see here in these verses this morning is a comparison between the temporary, imperfect tabernacle of the Old Covenant compared with the unfading, heavenly tabernacle of Christ. The original readers of Hebrews were still contemplating whether they could approach God more meaningfully through their own rituals and traditions handed down from Moses and the Old Covenant; that faith in Jesus was a good thing, as far as it went, but real holiness and true spirituality could only be found in the old paths of the Mosaic Law.

But the writer of Hebrews is warning them that if they tried to create their own patterns of worship and approach to God based on their own work through the Old Testament Law, they were doomed to failure. Like our Hindu neighbors diligently building a pink stone shrine to their idols, they would find themselves trying to worship in a temple that was falling apart around them.

Now, we are gathered here on Resurrection Sunday morning—Easter Sunday. And there are all kinds of reasons people show up in church on Easter Sunday—some people go every week and so Easter Sunday is no different. Some go because they are visiting family for the weekend who are church-goers; some go because it seems like a good thing to do on Easter; some go because it seems like God would be pleased with them for attending; some just go out of curiosity; some go because they are struggling with guilt or despair and hope to find answers.

Whatever the reason you are here this morning, we are so thrilled to have you here with us! And on this Resurrection Sunday, no matter what the reason you have come here to worship, we want you to see from these Scriptures that

The RISEN Christ is your only REAL SANCTUARY

The Hebrew Christians who received this letter were being tempted to think that their own efforts at good works and holiness could be added to what Jesus had done for them by going back to the requirements of the Law of Moses. And so in the first ten verses of Chapter 9, the writer of Hebrews describes for us exactly what it would mean to rely on

I. The FAILING tabernacle of MOSES (Hebrews 9:1-10)

The first five verses of the chapter give a brief description of the layout and furnishings of the Old Testament tabernacle:

Hebrews 9:1–5 (LSB)

Now even the first covenant had requirements of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle prepared: the first part, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread, which is called the holy place. And behind the second veil there was a tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies, having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod which budded, and the 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.

Notice in particular that there was an outer court (v. 2, “the first part...”) which contained a lampstand, a table of showbread, and a golden incense altar right in front of the veil that led into the inner sanctuary where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The author lays out this description in the first five verses so that he can make his point about the failings of this sanctuary. In verses 6-7 he demonstrates that the Old Covenant tabernacle

Cannot be PURIFIED completely (vv. 6-7; cp. Heb 9:19-23)

This is his meaning in verses 6-7 of our text:

Hebrews 9:6–7 (LSB)

Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the first part of the tabernacle performing the divine worship, but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.

As we’ve noted previously, the work of the priests in the Old Covenant tabernacle was never done—fresh holy bread had to be baked every day (Ex. 25:30), the golden lampstand had to be trimmed and filled with oil and kept burning 24/7 (Ex. 27:20), incense had to be burned twice a day on the altar in front of the veil of the Ark (Exodus 30:7-9). The tabernacle of Moses had to be constantly maintained and kept up, because it was always going stale, burning out or fading away.

And more than that, that tabernacle had to be constantly purified by the sprinkling of blood—look further down in our text at verses 21-22:

Hebrews 9:21–22 (LSB)

And in the same way, both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry he sprinkled with the blood. And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

The earthly sanctuary was continually defiled because it was inhabited and accessed by sinful men. It was a fading and failing tabernacle of fragile holiness; it had to be sprinkled again and again with the blood of a sacrifice so that it would still be fit for the worship of YHWH.

Can’t you see this in your own life? All of your own attempts to arrange your own worthiness before God are as fragile as that tabernacle. “God, get me out of this and I swear I’ll never tell a lie again!” A fragile vow, isn’t it? “I want God to see how serious I am about Him, so I am going to start going to church every week so He will see how sincere I am!” How long does that last? Can’t you see that all your attempts to arrange for your own approach to God by your deeds will inevitably go stale, burn out, dissipate and fade away… You can never stop trying to be good enough; there will always be another duty, another obligation, another way to “prove” that you are a good person in God’s sight.

But the failing tabernacle of Moses—the attempt to approach God by your own good works—will never be pure enough for God. And the writer of Hebrews goes on in verse 7 to point out another failing of the old tabernacle—it

Cannot atone for INTENTIONAL sin (v. 7; cp. Num 15:27-31)

Hebrews 9:7 (LSB)

but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.

The Old Testament Law of Moses provided for a person to come and receive forgiveness for unintentional sins or sins of ignorance. In the Old Testament book of Numbers, Chapter 15, we read Num 15:27-28

Numbers 15:27–28 (LSB)

‘Also if one person sins unintentionally, then he shall bring near a one year old female goat for a sin offering. ‘And the priest shall make atonement before Yahweh for the person who goes astray when he sins unintentionally, making atonement for him that he may be pardoned.

But there was no provision for forgiveness of sins that were knowingly done against YHWH:

Numbers 15:30–31 (LSB)

‘But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, that one is blaspheming Yahweh; and that person shall be cut off from among his people. ‘Because he has despised the word of Yahweh and has broken His commandment, that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt will be on him.’”

How many times do we try to excuse our guilt in a situation by saying, “I didn’t know it was wrong!” (“Sorry, officer, I never saw any speed limit sign!”) But very rarely do we ever admit to deliberately transgressing a law, do we? (“Sure, officer, I knew the speed limit was 15, but I decided I’d rather do 60—yeah, I know it’s a school zone, I don’t care!”) Because we know there is no excuse for high-handed rebellion.

And so often that is why we decide we’d rather come up with our own strategies for dealing with guilt and shame rather than come before God—because we know we have no excuse. Our own ramshackle tabernacles that we try to construct out of our own good deeds are totally worthless when it comes to finding forgiveness for our outright rebellion against God. We can come up with enough excuses and explanations and defenses for “not knowing any better” regarding some behavior, but the real guilt that we bear before God of knowing what He requires of us and simply refusing to obey Him is something that we cannot remove by any efforts of our own.

Because the truth is our own efforts to be holy or religious or righteous on our own

Cannot cleanse the CONSCIENCE (vv. 8-10)

Look at verses 8-10:

Hebrews 9:8–10 (LSB)

The Holy Spirit is indicating this, that the way into the holy places has not yet been manifested while that first part of the tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, requirements for the body imposed until a time of reformation.

Oh, the old fading tabernacle of the works of the Law can make you look really righteous on the outside—it can create an external conformity to a standard of goodness—but it cannot take away the load of a guilty conscience. You can create a pretty impressive showing of a good, moral, upstanding pillar of society: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent—and still be tormented by a guilty conscience that accuses you before God. But the Scripture declares here that there is no way you can be free of that guilt on your own.

If your only approach to God consists of your abilities to keep your own good works from becoming stale and burnt out and faded away, then God’s Word warns you that that “veil” between you and God still stands—that inner voice that reminds you of your wickedness and unworthiness, that brings up those accusations in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep, that drives you into more and more desperate attempts to prove that you really are a good person (and fails every time)—can’t you see that you will never be acceptable before God through the fading, failing, fragile tabernacle of your own attempts at righteousness?

The fading tabernacle of Moses cannot offer you any hope of being right with God—the risen Christ Himself is your only real sanctuary.

And so in verses 11-15, see the contrast that the author of Hebrews is making between the failing tabernacle of Moses and

II. The PERFECT tabernacle of CHRIST (Hebrews 9:11-15)

Hebrews 9:11–12 (LSB)

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy places once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

The tabernacle that Moses built was only ever meant to be a shadow, a precursor, a model. It was never meant to be the actual means by which we were purified before God—it was an example of what Jesus would do with His own body, the True Tabernacle—when He came. In His death on that Cross, our access to God was

Purified by a SINGLE blood sacrifice (vv. 11-12; cp. v. 8)

That veil that stood between the worshipper and the mercy of God in the Holy of Holies could never be pierced by the blood of the goats and calves that the priests offered over and over for centuries. There was no way to keep that sanctuary pure and free from sin, because it was continually inhabited by sinful men trying in their sinful imperfections to offer a sacrifice good enough to pierce that veil.

But on that fateful Friday afternoon, as Jesus Christ spilled His life’s blood on that Cross, the moment He cried out “It is finished!” (John 19:30), that veil was torn from top to bottom!

Matthew 27:50–51 (LSB)

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.

That veil that divided you from God’s mercy has been torn asunder by the death of Christ! The shadow tabernacle swallowed up every last drop of blood ever sprinkled on it, because the blood-guilt that stood against us could never be satisfied with goats and calves. The only way was for you to shed your own life’s blood—but then you would be dead and in your grave and unable to receive any of the mercy you would have bought with your own blood.

The only solution—and see here the matchless wisdom and love of your God!—was for Christ the Sinless One to shed His blood to atone for your sin, and for Christ the Deathless One to rise again after His sacrifice to apply that atonement to you, “entering the holy places once for all, having obtained an eternal redemption! (v. 12)!

And not only does the blood of the Perfect Sacrifice of Christ open up the way for you to come to God’s mercy, His blood does for you what you could never do on your own—the cleansing blood of Christ

Creates in you a CLEAN CONSCIENCE (vv. 13-14; cp. Numbers 19:9, 11-12)

Hebrews 9:13–14 (LSB)

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

These verses are painting an exquisite picture of what Christ has done for us that we will completely miss if we have not graduated from our prerequisite studies in the Old Testament Law. The reference the author makes here to “the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled” come from the book of Numbers, Chapter 19—you can turn there with me for a moment in order to see this (page 127 in the pew Bible). In verse 9 we read

Numbers 19:9 (LSB)

‘Now a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the congregation of the sons of Israel shall keep it as water to remove impurity; it is purification from sin.

And down in verses 11-12, we see what that water was used for:

Numbers 19:11–12 (LSB)

‘The one who touches the corpse of any person shall be unclean for seven days. ‘That one shall purify himself from uncleanness with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and then he will be clean...

Do you see it? The ashes of the heifer were to be mixed with water and used to purify someone who had come into contact with a dead body. The only way to be purified from contact with dead bodies was to be washed with the ashes of a heifer—but here in our text we see that the blood of Christ cleanses our conscience from the dead works we have done!

Don’t miss this here, beloved—all the so-called “good deeds” you have ever done to try to earn your way into God’s mercy are nothing but death to you. And when you think about it you can see, can’t you, that all your attempts at earning God’s favor on your own merits have all failed. No matter what you do to appease your conscience before God, nothing works. That guilt is still there; that shame and regret and embarrassment over your failure to achieve a right standing before God on your own hangs like dead weight on your spirit.

But Christ’s blood will cleanse you of that guilty conscience like nothing else ever could! Because here is the power of Christ’s blood, shed in the unfading sanctuary of His own body—His blood creates in you a clean conscience because it

Redeems you from your UNFORGIVABLE trespasses (v. 15; cp. Isaiah 53:8)

That fading tabernacle of Moses could not cleanse you from your high-handed rebellion against God. It provided sacrifices for unintentional sins, the sins you try to excuse— “It wasn’t my fault; I didn’t know any better; I was forced into it; it wasn’t really a sin...” But the only remedy in the Old Law for intentional rebellion was to be cut off from God and His people.

But see the glory of the New Covenant sealed by the blood of Christ on that Cross—He was cut off as a transgressor in your place!

Isaiah 53:8 (LSB)

By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living, That for the transgression of my people, striking was due to Him?

Friend, because of the death of Christ on that Cross, there is no more barrier between you and the mercy of God! No matter how guilty your conscience, no matter how high-handed your rebellion, no matter how much you have hated God or His people, no matter how badly your attempts to muster up your own goodness have failed, no matter how many times you’ve tried to “turn over a new leaf” or “start over”, you will never be able to cross that barrier on your own.

How many times have you been told that the key to gaining a clean conscience lies in the ability to “forgive yourself”? Or the solution to the guilt and shame you carry is to convince yourself that you simply shouldn’t be guilty; that guilt is the result of other people telling you you’re guilty? But you know, don’t you, deep down inside that you are guilty before God—that you have good reason to have a guilty conscience? Every good thing you’ve tried to do to impress God has grown stale; every “light” you’ve tried to bring into the darkness of your shame has burnt out; every candle you’ve lit to cover up the stench of your past has faded away.

The truth is that you can no more forgive yourself than a drowning man can pull himself up out of the water; you can no more talk yourself out of your guilty conscience than a cancer patient can talk her tumors out of existence.

This is the Good News for you this Resurrection Sunday—the barrier between you and God’s mercy has been torn away by the blood of Christ! The sanctuary is filled with the perfections of Christ’s work that can never grow stale or burn out or fade away—and when you come to Him by faith, He credits all of those works to you! The Holy of Holies is no longer a dark, terrifying place where the presence of God will strike dead a careless priest; it is now your home before God, not to be accessed once a year but entered continually:

Hebrews 9:15 (LSB)

And for this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the trespasses that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

So here is the invitation to you this morning—this eternal inheritance is yours today, but only through the blood of Christ. Stop trying to accomplish your own right relationship with God by your own ramshackle tabernacle of your own good works—only death will cleanse your conscience and atone for your guilt and satisfy the requirements of God’s perfect Law of righteousness. Christ died in your place and shed His blood instead of yours—not to cleanse the heavenly tabernacle (for how could a heavenly tabernacle be defiled?)—but to make safe passage for you to come to the Holy of Holies!

Beloved, the way to God’s mercy is open to you because of Christ’s sacrifice! There is now nothing that stands in the way—not your past, not your failures, not the stale and burnt out and faded attempts to please Him, not your guilty conscience, not anything! It stands before you today, open and free and yours for the taking because your Savior paved the way with His own blood! Why would you not fly to Him for mercy and forgiveness and new life? Lay aside all of your guilt, all of your failure, all of your heavy burden of dead works that could never cleanse your conscience—confess all of it before Him, and through the blood of His sacrifice fly to your only real sanctuary—your crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Hebrews 13:20–21 (LSB)

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________