Ritual Vs. Reality

Hebrews 9

I heard a preacher pray before his sermon on this chapter and he said this: “we are no longer involved in a ritual but we are involved in a reality........Thank you, Father, that we do not worship in the shadows, that we do not bow before a pale copy of truth but that we have real substance. We have the reality himself, Jesus Christ, God in us.”

That is a great opening in to this study of Hebrews 9......Verses 1-10 are the rituals and from verse 11 on, the Holy Spirit teaches us about the real substance, the reality of Jesus Christ as having fulfilled all of the requirements of the law, once...… “It is finished”.

The writer/Holy Spirit gives a short understanding of what the details of the rituals were, the priestly duty that he has been comparing in the previous chapters...

Verses 1-5........At the tabernacle of God, this is where they met with God.....The details of these things can be found in Exodus chapters (25-40)

Narrowing in on the worship and the place where they met with God.......

The Holy Place......this is the first room of the tabernacle .............Verse 6 will explain

The Holy of Holies........This is where the ark of the covenant was.......This was all separated by a veil......Exodus 25:8–9 “And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.”

4. A few details.....The golden altar of incense was outside the Holy of Holies, however the high-priests on the day of Atonement would bring incense from the altar of incense into the Holy of Holies.......This marked the entrance into the Holy of Holies.

The High-Priest would go behind the veil once a year.....pouring the blood in the mercy seat (the lid of the ark), in which 2 cherubim's were and in the midst of those cherubim's is where God’s Shekinah Glory would appear.

The ark had things in it.......the Golden jar that held the manna....Exodus 16:32 “And Moses said, This is the thing which the Lord commandeth, Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt.”

Aaron’s rod that budded.....Numbers 17:8 “And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds.”

They took 12 rods from each tribe and Aaron’s rod budded and produced almonds, Moses took them all out and the Lord told him to take Aaron’s back.

The tables of the covenant.....Exodus 25:16 “And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee.” ......This is the stones that the 10 commandments was written upon.

In verse 5 the writer/Holy Spirit is not going to go on with much detail, because that will take away the main point.......

Verse 6-10 the writer brings us to the limitations of the Old Covenant......

The priests were daily entering in and out of the “Holy Place”, but only once a year into the Holy of Holies......

Numbers 18:6 “And I, behold, I have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of Israel: to you they are given as a gift for the Lord, to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.”

In essence, he teaches that Hebrews 9:6 highlights how the Levitical priests continually ministered in the outer tabernacle (the Holy Place), performing prescribed duties—lighting the lampstand, arranging the bread, offering incense. Yet all of this ministry was never finished.

Leviticus 16:16 “And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.”

The shedding of blood and sprinkled onto the mercy seat had to be done for the priest and the people, every year.

Sins of ignorance......Sin is defined by God’s character, not human awareness. A sin committed unknowingly is still a violation of God’s holiness. The Old Testament sacrifices for unintentional sin prove that culpability exists even without conscious rebellion.

John Macarthur said this about verse 9 about the symbol.....… “The Levitical system was a parable, an object lesson, about what was to come in Christ.”

Perfect consciences......The Old Testament never fully took away the guilt and was only good till the next sin....it never washed the sinner completely clean!

Macarthur said also that the Levitical ordinances required visible actions without changing the inner man.......

Verses 11-28......But when Christ appeared as the Great High Priest............The good things to come.........Christ is in the presence of God on our behalf, ministering for us......Hebrews 7:25 “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” .........He is in the Holy Place once and for all......ETERNAL REDEMPTION........

Bring dead men to life.......to serve the living God.......this is what a dead man is to God, those that does not live unto Him and Christ come and brought us back to that life! The only life!

I finally have words to put why I hate the “Christ is better” wording

“To count all as loss is not ultimately about what we give up.

It is about what we gain.

Christ is not merely better than everything else.

He renders everything else small by comparison.”

I’d argue that renders everything else useless by comparison