The Main Point - Christ is the Great High Priest who offers one sacrifice for all time
Notes
Transcript
It is often told in movies and myths that people believed there was nothing beyond the horizon.
You would sail off into the distance and drop of the edge of the world.
It is of course a myth, the ancients knew far more about navigation than popular myth and movies gives them credit for.
But this belief that there is nothing out there beyond what we know and see continues to be dangerous today.
Through out history there has been this tension between the familiarity and comfort of what we know and the danger and possibility of something that is new.
This is especially true on matters of faith and an individual’s view of the world.
Most of us don’t like change.
Adventures might be good when we are younger, as long as there is the security of being able to return home at a time of our chosing if we don’t like the experience.
People might live and work in a different country, but they tend to prefer a place that is somewhat similar to what they know.
We are comfortable and feel secure when there is similarity and the security of returning to what we have grown up with.
That is why it is often difficult for people to fully embrace the radical difference of the Gospel.
Everything that people know about religion is challenged when they truly understand what Jesus actually did and what it means for how we live our lives and relate to God.
We can see this very clearly in the letter to the Hebrews.
Over and over again there is this emphasis that with Jesus things are different.
The old religion could never make a person perfect in God’s sight, everything had to be repeated over and over again because it only dealt with things on a temporary basis.
The people who received this letter were Jewish believers who had embraced the message of Jesus, but they were having a hard time lettng go of the old religion they had been raised with.
They were having a hard time seeing over the horizon.
They couldn’t see beyond what they knew, what they were comfortable with so they were holding off on fully embracing the new adventure of totally relying on Jesus.
Instead they wanted to hang onto the old ways, just in case.
Jesus Christ’s death fulfils and replaces the old
Jesus Christ’s death fulfils and replaces the old
The Old Testament religious system was one of endless sacrifices.
Sacrifices which were very important because they symbolised the need of the people to keep on going back to deal with their sins over and over again.
It was a highly regulated system but it was designed to serve the purpose of reminding the people of their failings.
He is the kind of high priest we need because he is holy and blameless, unstained by sin. He has been set apart from sinners and has been given the highest place of honor in heaven. Unlike those other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices every day. They did this for their own sins first and then for the sins of the people. But Jesus did this once for all when he offered himself as the sacrifice for the people’s sins. The law appointed high priests who were limited by human weakness. But after the law was given, God appointed his Son with an oath, and his Son has been made the perfect High Priest forever.
People then were similar to people now.
Each and every day there will be something in your life as there is in mine that isn’t perfect.
A thought, a word, an action or inaction that isn’t pleasing to God.
Let alone the harm we do to ourselves and others.
This is the problem with the Old Testament religious system, in fact with any religious system.
Nothing is dealt with permanenetly.
Sin is repeated and the payment for that sin has to also be repeated over and over again.
But with Jesus things are different.
With Jesus the problem is dealt with once and for all.
Jesus Christ has made atonement in the true heavenly sanctuary
Jesus Christ has made atonement in the true heavenly sanctuary
Jesus has finished the work and that is what the letter to the Hebrews is all about.
The main point is that the endless system of sin and sacrifice for those sins.
The endless system of failing and making payment for those failings is finished.
Simply a perfect priest has made a perfect sacrfice and we no longer have to remain in a system of endless repatition.
Provided we embrace and accept this perfect sacrifice by the perfect priest then everything is dealt with once and for all time.
Heb 8:1–7
Hebrews 8:1–7 (NLT)
Here is the main point: We have a High Priest who sat down in the place of honour beside the throne of the majestic God in heaven. There he ministers in the heavenly Tabernacle, the true place of worship that was built by the Lord and not by human hands. And since every high priest is required to offer gifts and sacrifices, our High Priest must make an offering, too. If he were here on earth, he would not even be a priest, since there already are priests who offer the gifts required by the law. They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven. For when Moses was getting ready to build the Tabernacle, God gave him this warning: “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.” But now Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises. If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it.
When this passage speaks of sitting down it is symbolising completeness.
Sitting down in the place of honour means that the job is done.
The one sacrifice completes the work.
And verse 5 draws upon the picture of Moses in Exodus 25:40 where Moses was given instruction to build the Tabernacle, the place of sacrifice which the people carried with them.
Everything on earth is a copy, a shadow of that which is in heaven.
What Jesus did here on earth with his own sacrifice is completed in heaven when he sits down at the throne of God in heaven.
It is a picture of completion, there is nothing more to do because it has brought in a completely new way of dealing with things.
Once people travelled by foot and horse and cart, perhaps by sailing ship.
It took time to travel any distance.
A journey around the world would take months if not years to complete.
And there was no garantee that you would even make it.
Ship wreckes were common.
Being held up by bandits during the land part of the journey was not unexpected in many places.
Pirates at sea were another hazzard.
And many poeple simply got sick and died.
Today you can drive to the airport in an hour and a half.
Catch a plane and fly to any part of the world in about a day.
Travel is completely different to what it was 200 years ago.
For people from the time of Jesus the saying that any technology sufficiently advanced appears like magic would apply.
There is a new and better way to travel.
Same outcome, you move from one location to another, but entirely different means.
The new covenant that Hebrews chapter 8 speaks of is new in an even better way that the newness of modern transport compared to previous times.
It is completely new.
So new that you and I don’t need to do anything to benefit from this new covenant except simply believe it.
We don’t need to flap our arms up and down when we travel to the airport to board the plane, we simply need to get on the plane and let it take us to where we need to go.
You don’t pedal or flap your arms.
You don’t even need to understand the principals of aeronautics.
You simply get on board.
Have a look at Hebrews 8:7
If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it.
The old way had some faults.
The new way is perfect because it isn’t based on our effort.
It relies on Christ and Christ alone.
Hebrews 8:8-12 speaks of how this new way works.
It quotes a promise given to the Prophet Jeremiah 600 years earlier when he saw the trouble and coming destruction that was about to visit his people.
He knew that the old way wasn’t enough because the people kept on turning their backs towards God and their heart wasn’t in the right place.
He saw that something needed to radically change if people were to walk consistently with God and please him.
The key is in verse 10.
This new covenant isn’t an external system you follow.
It is an internal knowing of God that makes the difference.
Hebrews 8:10
But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
So the question remains for us today.
If God has bought in a new way, a way of knowing hima nd walking with him every day.
A way where our sins are forgiven and where we can come back to him repeatedly when we fail.
What are we going to do about it?
The new way required belief.
If you believed the world was round but never left the shore of your village to find out then you would never experience the truth of your belief.
If you believe the plane can take you across the world without flapping you rarms up and down but you never get on board then you never experience the revolutionary change of life that travel brings.
In a similar way, if we never accept the new way of relating to God that is possible because of Jesus then we will stay stuck in old patterns fo thinking and acting.
We will never know the freedom of a new and better covenant.