Heavenly Reality of Atonement
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
We don’t do all the smells and bells and incense and sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament. You might read through your Leviticus and other Torah books, and you’ll say “we don’t do any of this stuff when the local church gathers for corporate worship”
So what was the point of it? Why was it essential for God’s people for 1 and a half thousand years, where they were judged based on whether they followed the regulations, and then 2000 years ago it all seemed to become irrelevant.
Did God change his mind?
Did God decide he wants to be worshipped differently now?
No: "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.” Nu 23:19.
The Old Covenant, including what we call the temple cult, (which is not an obscure religious group), that is, the system of worship and sacrifices around the tabernacle and llater the permanent temple. The OC including the temple cultus was designed and intended by God as part of his unfolding plan of salvation.
Sometimes when you’re making artwork, or if you’re working in the workshop to create some object, sometimes you need to make a template, or a mold or a jig. You need something that is the imprint of what you’re really making, so that when you come to make the thing that you really want to make, it is perfectly shaped.
Yet sometimes it feels like you spend sooooooo much time on the mould, or soooooo much time on the jig that it feels like you’re wasting time and effort. But the perfect template enables you to build the finished product in all it’s glory!
The Temple system of the Old Covenant was a template, it was a jig used by God. When you look at it on it’s own, sometimes it’s confusing; why is it this shape? why does this bit stick out over here? it’s not very aesthetically pleasing....
Yet, through Jesus Christ we soon see that the Old Covenant is mold, it is an imprint of the better and newer coevenant, but it is not the NC itself!
The point of a jig is not the jig itself, but what comes out of the jig.
The Old Covenant is meant to prepare us for Jesus and for the New Covenant in Jesus, and our passage today shows us how the Temple system of atonement if the template, the shadow of the thing we really need.
So for Christians in the early church who would have been tempted to keep worshiping at the Temple, this is passage would have helped them see how going back to the Jerusalem temple was to go back to the jig. It’s a shadow, and the reality has come!
This reality brings 4 notable differences compared to the Old:
complete forgiveness of sins,
eternal salvation,
purified consciences, and
direct access to God.
As we make our way through the 3 portions of our passage, we’ll see these differences revealed.
Our High Priest Enters the Tabernacle
Our High Priest Enters the Tabernacle
Earlier ch 9 we explored the details of the tabernacle
a holy place where God meets with his people
Holy artefacts in there that reveal the nature of relationship with God
There were two zones inside the tabernacle proper, a holy place and a most holy place.
Only the preistd could go into the first section, and only the HP could go in to the second section and that but once a year.
He would come before the presence of God, enthroned above the Ark of the Covenant - the chest that respresented the Covenant God had made with his people.
Because of sin, atonement needed to be made; the temple and the people needed to be purified.
Now, how does this Old system fit with our High Priest?
We have Jesus, who is our HP in the NC.
He is not from the line of Aaron, he’s not a Levite like the earthly mortal men who served in the tabernacle. Instead Jesus is from a different linage, a spiritual linage, he is a Melchizedekian priest who has no beginning and no end, appointed by God forever.
We only need 1 HP, because our HP never dies. He never needs to be replaced!
Our HP has come into the temple to make atonement. But not the earthly jig, not the shaddow on earth, he entered the real deal - the presence of God in heaven.
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.
Good things that have come - the NC, the New age, the kingdom of God
Come to the tabernacle - the heavenly throne room!
Jesus is our HP, but he does not use blood of calves and goats like Aaronic HP.
His own blood - sacrificed in his crucufuxion.
Made atonement that secures and eternal redemption - not temporary like earthly HP
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.
External ritual, external purification, Jeus brings internal purification.
The external rites pointed out the need for purification, but only the blood of Christ could actually bring it!
The works of the OT were not “dead” as in not honouring to God, but dead in the sense that they cannot bring life, and they have passed away. No more tabernacle ritual!
Christ offered himself in worshipful service, he was the perfect sacrifice.
The earthly copies were a template of What Jesus would do, and he has done it, entering into the heavenly places.
Our High Priest Mediates the New Covenant
Our High Priest Mediates the New Covenant
Therefore he 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.
As HP he is new mediator, to bring eternal inheritance.
To whom, those who are called, those sheep who hear Jesus’ voice, those who God justifies and glorifies.
If you hear the call, then come! Receive this!
A death has occured to redeem you, and those under the OC from transgressions.
He explains:
For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.
Pun/play on words. In greek the same word for covenant is also the word for a will, as in the document that says what to do with your estate after you die. We have a similar word in English called a Testament - that’s why our Bible is in two parts that we call the Old and New Testament, broadly refering to the fact that the OT is focused on the OC and the NT on the NC.
Whether we’re talkin Ancient covenant treaties, or estate wills, somone has to die.
The first covenant had dead animals:
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.”
And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
This NC is secured with the blood of Jesus! He is the sacrifice needed.
That’s why in communion we symbolically receive the cup as the blood of Christ, cutting a New Covenant!
But Jesus is not just the secrifice, he is also the HP.
Our High Priest offers Himself as Sacrifice
Our High Priest offers Himself as Sacrifice
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. 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.
The earthly things mimiked the heavenly reality.
Nut the better and full reality is here.
Why wants a trailer when they can have the feature presentation? Who wants entree when they can have the main course? Who wants the template when they can have the finished product?
Jesus did the “real” HP service in a way that Aaron only shadowed.
And Jesus did it onece for all!
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 had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. 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.
We do not sacrifice Jesus over and over again. Once for all.
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes 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.
Now but not yet - we have salvation but not fully realised.
Jeus is coming again!
So What?
So What?
Jog/Template/mold
“When compared to Mosaic tabernacle worship (vv. 1–10), the new covenant high priesthood of Jesus provides a single superior sacrifice in a superior heavenly tabernacle (which stands for God’s very presence); and thus it brings
complete forgiveness of sins,
eternal salvation,
purified consciences, and
direct access to God.”
Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 2374.
Jesus is coming again to save those who are eagerly waiting for him!
