You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.
Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey Jim, today's our anniversary. Would you rather have a portrait of me or would you rather have me? Oh, as much as I like pictures of you, I would rather have you, the substance over the image. I'm so glad.
So we're going to talk about that today in Hebrews, the reality instead of the picture. Today on More Than Ink. Good morning and welcome to our dining room table in More Than Ink.
This is Dorothy. And this is Jim, and we really do sit at our dining room table. And we're so glad you're with us. Yeah, this is remarkable. Last week, oh my gosh, last week we went head first in the New Covenant, and it's just a remarkable change from the Old Covenant.
Well, it's one of those things you never get over when you've discovered it, and it changes everything. Well, and it is so radically new that even the naming of our Old and New Testament is from that, because Testament is the Latin version of Covenant. So you could actually title the Old Testament the Old Covenant and the New Testament the New Covenant. However, that's slightly unfair, because last week we read in Jeremiah 31 that the New Covenant is written in Jeremiah in the Old Testament.
That's right. So it's sort of wrong division. Well, it is the promise of the New. But the entirety of the New Testament, the entirety of the New Testament centers around the newness of the New Covenant. Which comes to us in Christ, who is the subject of the New Testament. But the High Priest who makes it possible for us to join him in the nearness of God.
So that's not a bad distinction. So today, as we come into Hebrews 9, he's going to help us understand how new the New Covenant is by just doing a little retro tour back into the Temple and the service back in Israel, when the Temple was there and existing and what goes on there. And he'll use this in the subsequent time to really help us contrast. Remember, what they did in the Old Testament was a copy and a shadow of the larger reality. And it was so much so that God said, look Moses, when you build this stuff, when you build this tabernacle and you put all this stuff inside, it has to follow a particular plan, a particular design, because in that design it actually shadows the reality of the real thing. So do it specifically like this, because it's a teaching tool.
It's a teaching tool. It's what the hidden but more substantial reality is. So you need to dust off your Old Testament today, because the Old Testament pictures the Temple, the tabernacle, actually the whole sacrificial system, is a picture of this greater spiritual reality that God wants to teach. Now it was real.
Real people, real time, real place, really something that they did. They did it, yeah. But it was all intended to tutor us, to lead us to Christ, as Paul says in Galatians. So I think sometimes we step into this trap of studying the picture as a road map to a ritual. Oh, this is the way they did it in the Old Testament, so we need to do that too. But here under the New Covenant God is saying, now I want you to understand that I've given you this picture so you can study it for its meaning.
And now I'll tell you what it means. Yeah, look at it like an elementary school text and see what it is, but it's pointing you to the bigger reality. But you can learn from it, and it's very useful, and God did it deliberately so that we'll understand more clearly. And partly what happened with the nation of Israel in those days was that they became so enamored with the ritual that the heart drained away. Well, we are subject to the same danger.
We are vulnerable to that as well. David wrote about it in his Psalm. He says, you're not requiring sacrifices, you want a broken and contrite heart. And Psalm 51 created me a clean heart. There is that longing for the reality of the New Covenant in David. David understood. I think many at the time understood. They got it. They really got the picture. It's a little more opaque to us, but they got the picture, that really we all have deep, deep down problems with sin, and God's looking for a contrite heart, a broken heart. So you know, God had said that to them clear back in Deuteronomy. He said, circumcise your heart.
Circumcise your heart. It's not about what you do, it's about who you are internally, which then plays out in what you do. Yeah, yeah. And by the time of Jesus, they had so enshrined the shadow things, the rituals, that they missed the core, the heart of the thing. Well, by the time of Jesus, it was kind of wearing out its welcome, the Old Covenant. And so that's what he's writing about here, is that now we're in this New Covenant. So let me just review for a second, because these things are really important, these primary contrasts between the Old Covenant and the New. The Old Covenant was written on stone and imposed externally. The New Covenant is written on hearts and internally implanted. The Old Covenant was based on human will and human power.
Yep, yep, we'll do it. Whereas the New Covenant is based on God's power to transform us from within. That human willpower was flawed and insufficient. Right. And you could almost say that the law, the Old Testament law, was given not so much to tell us how to make ourselves better, but to illustrate the fact that we can't.
We can't. Well, I think that's what Paul means when he says the law is your tutor, to lead you to Christ. The law is your tutor. It should take you someplace else. Don't get stuck there. It should take you someplace else. Well, let's do our retro view into the Old Covenant in chapter 9 of Hebrews.
That's what he's doing. We're talking about this earthly tent. You want me to start? Yeah, go ahead. But have your Old Testament ready, because we're going to look at Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and maybe even Deuteronomy. And I have a couple of Isaiah passages written down. So, you know, you're going to need to jot these down.
And by the way, we know these cross-references not because we're brilliant, but because... They're in the column of your Bible. They're in the column of your Bible. And that's why that's such a great Bible resource. If you see those little references, man, go chase those down. And we're going to mention them here.
So you can write them on a side piece of paper as you go, or come on, just open up your Bible and look at the same place we looked, the side column references. Okay, but let me just make an argument here for just reading these Old Testament books, because lots of people have never actually read Exodus. It is a ripping good story.
Now, there are whole big segments that are details of the laws and the ordinances. But if you just focus on the unfolding of the story, it's a remarkable story of God bringing his people out, giving them himself and a way to live in his presence. It's remarkable. Yeah, it's a great story. And it's a great metaphor for God bringing us out of the captivity of sin into a new place of life. Which is what the whole celebration of Passover is about. Yeah, and boy, we don't have time to go into all that stuff.
No, we don't, sorry. Distraction. It is a good story, but it's a good story with a purpose that's for us in terms of our personal experience. Okay, here we go. So read your Old Testament. Here we go. Okay, go ahead.
We're going to jump. We're going to do our retro tour into the Old Covenant, which the writer of Hebrews says is important so we can get the contrast. So here we go, verse one of chapter nine. Now, even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared. That's the tabernacle, and that's the portable temple. The movable temple. The movable temple they had in the desert.
For a tent was prepared. The first section in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of presence. It's called the holy place. And then behind the second curtain, this is inside the tent, 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.
And then above it, above the ark, were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. And of these things, we can't now speak in detail. Well, let's just stop right there before going. Let's do a little. We'll do a little. We can't stop ourselves.
Well, we have more time than the writer of Hebrews did. So he details that inside the structure of that tent, there's actually two rooms inside. There's the front one you walk into, and then there's a back one that has another separated by this curtain, by this veil, we call it.
Two different rooms. Yeah, but when we say veil, we think of something wispy and thin. This was a substantial light blocking drape. It was a big fat piece of cloth. It was heavy. And you can read the description of it in Exodus.
You can, actually. It's really quite something. And when you come into the tabernacle, into the tent, you'd be in that first room. You'd see on the opposite side of the room the fact that this big tent's been cut in half by this substantial piece of cloth. I mean, it's like no entry.
You might as well put a no entry sign there because it's deliberately blocking it. And there was imagery woven into it in gold. Oh, yeah. Imagery of cherubim who guard the holiness of God. That's also documented in the Old Testament, what's on that.
So it was a very clear barrier. So in this first room he talks about, it's called the holy place. That's what he introduces in verse two. And in there is the lampstand and the table and the bread of presence. The light and the bread. The light and the bread. And Jesus said.
What does that point to? I'm the bread of life. I'm the light of the world. I'm the light of the world. Yeah.
I am. Remember he said something greater than the temple is here. Right.
Right. The glory of God is walking among you in the flesh. Again, we could spend hours just sitting here looking at it and reflecting on what this means, especially coming from the New Testament, what Jesus taught. What an incredible thing that here you are, you know you're close to the presence of God because he's on the other side of that curtain. But even this close to him there's something about the fact that being in his proximity is light and bread. Or light which is a way of understanding how things really are if you live in a dark place. I always have to reference going camping because that's the only time I don't have any light in my life is when I go camping.
Well when you're camping and you're walking outside your tent you can't see anything. You just desperately need light to see the way things are. Or we live in a very dark place. And to see the way things really are we need light from an outside source. And that comes from God.
So here you are close to God but not quite in his presence yet. And he provides you with light to be able to see things the way they are. And bread which is a metaphor for the stuff that keeps you alive.
You need food. The necessary sufficiency for life every day. So coming into the presence of God comes from that. So yeah God gave them man in the desert so that they might know that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. So we could go into that forever.
Well we may circle back to that. The symbolism as you come into that first room where you see this lamp stand with these lights on it. And the whole tent itself is light sealed so it's dark. It's only lit by that lamp stand. It's only lit by that lamp stand. And then there's that table and the table that has the bread on it. And it's all covered with gold.
Everything is gold. So in that lamp light it would glow. There would be a radiance apparent. Yeah and other worldliness. A divineness.
A sense of having stepped into a separate place. Something very valuable, very precious, very holy. I mean everything glittered with gold. The lamp stand itself was solid gold. You take one big chunk of gold and you'd hammer it out until it made the shape of this lamp stand.
And by the way, just as an aside trivia wise, that lamp stand has a different number of candles on it than the lamp stand you use at Hanukkah. What? Yeah, go check it out.
We won't talk about that right now. Check it out in Exodus 25. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. But it's this lamp stand that has these lights on it and it lights the whole inside of the thing. Okay, get to the Ark of the Covenant. Well, so then you go to the end of that front room and you get to the curtain. You get to the big fat massive.
Because this is the point of the whole thing. Yeah, and then back there is symbolically the presence of God himself. And so inside that room, inside that back room is the most holy place or other places it's called the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies. You think Holy is Holy? Now you've got Holy of Holies. So now you're symbolically coming into the very presence of God. And there in that room are two different things which are fascinating.
Two different things? Yeah, because we have the incense and the ark. Okay, we have the altar of incense on which the incense, the very specific incense was burned, which would produce a cloud which the scripture says covers the mercy seat.
Covers the ark. And that incense, that cloud of incense represents the prayers of the people. Yep, the prayers that go up. You know, if you know incense, it's smoke that goes up. And that smoke rises up.
And it's smoke that smells good as opposed to the smoke that's clouding our skies right now in Utah. In the actual ark of the covenant, the container that held these massively important reminders of the deepest holy things. And we could spend a lot of time talking about these, and that's why the writer says of these things we can't now speak in detail.
We don't have time to talk about it. But what was in there? It says that there was a golden urn holding the manna, which if you think about this at the time of the writing of Hebrews in the first century, it had been a couple thousand years. 1500 years, probably, since that manna was put in there, if it was still there. But that opens a whole other line of thought. Well, because we know when they picked the manna, it would spoil after a day, unless it was the Sabbath, and then it would last two days. Right. No, what I'm referring to is the fact that the ark of the covenant was disappeared at the time of the fall of Jerusalem, and we don't know what happened to it.
But that's another line of thought. So anyway, inside the ark- I saw the movie, so I'm gonna read this. Stop it.
Stop it. Inside the ark we have that golden urn of manna, and then we have Aaron's staff that budded, which is a fascinating thing. Why is that in there? And then the tablets of the covenant, the stone tablets on which are written, that reduction of those 10 statements, the word of God. The very things Moses brought down the mountain. Written by the finger of God. So those are inside this golden box in the deepest, most holy place inside the tabernacle. Yep.
Yep. And the writer says, now we're not gonna talk about those in any more detail, but they are a copy and a shadow of the true things. Now you listeners, go back and read those accounts of those things. You can find the account of Aaron's staff budding in number 17.
That's a great story. And then he says, and above it all, where the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Take your concordance and look up. Who are the cherubim and where do they show up in the scripture and what are they doing? What seems to be their purpose? It's not those fat little angels fighting around on Valentine's Day?
They are not cute, fat little babies. They are terrifying beings. They are an order of angels that we don't entirely understand, but we know that they are associated with the holiness of God.
Yeah. And the statues of them in gold are posed in such a way as to show them as protecting and caring for. And looking at it focused on the mercy seat, the mercy seat, the place where God, he says, I will meet with you there over the mercy seat. So to be clear, the ark is like a big cedar chest in a sense. But it doesn't have a top. The top is the mercy seat. This thing that's on top of it. But that was removable. But that's removable because it's like a lid. Because they put these things in it. So when you put this lid on top of it, the lid had these two statues of cherubim bowed down covering the stuff inside. Actually in a sense guarding the very preciousness of what's inside. It said that they're actually looking at it.
They're looking at the mercy seat. And you can read that. That's all spelled out in the Old Testament.
What that's like. Oh, read it all in Exodus 25, 26 and 27. But I might mention as well, from an ancient king perspective, a mercy seat was where the king sat in judgment of people and people came to him. So when it says seat, it really does mean seat.
It means actually symbolically with God, although he doesn't have a physical presence. It's where he sits. It's where he sits and reigns from. And this is where he runs everything from in that sense. So in a way, his seat sits on top of the tangible evidence of his promises. Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
So we just don't like, we just don't have time to speak into things in detail. So you study it on your own and see what you find. But when you find that these are a copy or a shadow that teaches something of larger realities, you can sit here, you know, you can sit on the ground and look at this stuff all day and just go, wow, I think I'm getting more out of this all the time. It's a great visible teaching tool about being in the nearness and presence of God.
Well and let me just say here, just probably one of the things we can say for certain is that this Holy of Holies, this ark containing the word of God and the bread of God and the life of God, that stem that sprung to life, really represents the deepest place of our heart. Yeah. And so I'll just let that sit there, where we meet with God according to his mercy. And so let's just let that stew.
Let that stew. There's just so much to learn here. By the way, although he hasn't mentioned it here, a little later, you can't even get in the front entrance of the tent unless you get past the place where they make sacrifices for sin.
That's right. So this all has, I mean, as you go from the outside dirty world and you go into the front of this place, you have to get past the sacrifice for sin. Then you have to get in where you've got the loaves and you've got the light and then you go past that curtain, that big massive veil, and then you're into the Holy.
So in the process of coming from us on the outside world to God, there's a whole bunch of really deliberate teaching tools he uses to tell us about it. Well, and the space goes from large and open to semi-private to profoundly separated. Very intimate. Yeah. Yeah.
And very intimate with God. Yeah. Okay. So that's the picture. He's trying to show us the picture of the old covenant. And then he goes on in verse six. Okay. So these preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section.
Yeah. Performing their ritual duties. But into the second, so he's talking about that Holy of Holies. 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 of the present age. He has opened a secret here for us. 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. Oh, this is so important.
This is big time. Because he's just saying all of that stuff pertains to things that are temporary, that are here and now. Food and drink and washings, right? We get hungry, we get thirsty, we get dirty. Those all pertain to here and now, but it's a picture of something larger and eternal. And a different, what do you want to call, a more profound teleos, a more profound end. A completeness. A completeness.
Yeah. And you won't find that completeness in this. All of those arrangements, the gifts, the sacrifices, everything could not complete, could not be enough to change the conscience, the internal heart of the worshiper. And get you to the intentional goal of where God wants to bring you. But they all point to the fact that we will continually get hungry, we will continually be thirsty, we will continually get dirty, and we need to deal with that thing, need to deal with that stuff. They all point to our continual need.
Yeah. And interestingly enough, even in that first section where you have the bread and you have the light, both of those are daily needs for us. Daily needs for us, which are provided by God. And the way into God's presence, God in the process of us getting to his presence, will provide for us understanding and light and provide what we need on a daily basis. And Jesus said that in the Sermon on the Mount. He says God, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, all that other stuff will come.
You'll be able to fill your belly, don't worry about that. So he says something really interesting here when he says, and all these things are just regulations for the body, at the very end of verse 10, but imposed until the time of reformation. Yes. Yes. They all point to something that is going to happen, that word reformation is such an interesting word, it only shows up here in the entire New Testament. It means until things are finally put right, finally set straight.
Yep. And he's bringing us back to new covenant again, because again, that's the fulfillment of God's promise, not the old covenant. All of those things are put to rest and finally set straight in the sacrifice of Jesus, which he's going to unpack for us in the coming chapters. So everything that you used to do in the old tabernacle and temple, the gifts and the sacrifices they're offered, but they just cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper. So what do they do instead? Well, they remind us of our problem.
They kind of prick our conscience about our need, but they don't solve our conscience about our need. But he's implying that this new covenant is so radically new, maybe it will. And it does. And he'll make that very clear. It will finally put everything right. Put everything right. Yeah. Yeah. Blot out our sins. That's what he's going to do through all this stuff. So the old covenant is very instructive.
Oh, very. And what goes on in the temple is very instructive. You know, I've always thought if I could have a time machine, I could go back some more.
I'd like to go back to the temple, like maybe during Passover, and just hang out there and watch what goes on and then draw all these symbolic teachings about the biggest reality from heaven. As I watch this and say, you know, that actually right there, that's showing me about this and that's showing me about this. And I'm seeing this with eyes that are informed by the Holy Spirit, and I'm understanding what I'm seeing.
Gosh, isn't it a drag, the fact that most Jews came to this whole thing and they didn't catch the big picture, although this is trying to paint the big picture. Many, many did. Many did.
No, exactly. And you see that at the coming of Jesus. There's people who've been waiting for him. They got it. And they recognized him. Yeah, they got it. It wasn't impossible.
It was a mystery that God did not intend to be solved. They got it. See, this is still true. People with a heart after God who really want to know him, the Spirit grants them recognition when they encounter him. People who are pursuing a ritual for the sake of their own righteousness miss it. Yep. And that is still true. Yeah.
There's a blindness, it's a willful, intentional blindness that just keeps you from being able to recognize the truth of it. If I do the thing well enough, I'll be pleasing to God. Yeah.
Yeah. And by the time of Jesus, that's how this law, this new covenant had just gotten twisted. It's like these just aren't things that are tutors to take you to Christ. They thought this was actually the means by which you came to God, by doing these things well enough. And Jesus came out against the Pharisees many times, hitting them with this very thought. You think you look in the scriptures, you think in them you find salvation by doing what they say.
Yeah, you got it wrong. They're important to do, but because they're great teachers about the larger reality. So don't completely disrespect them and disregard them, but they're not the means toward fixing your conscience.
Okay. So God spoke to that definitively when during the life of Jesus, the temple was still standing. Apparently during the time that the book of Hebrews was being written, the temple was still standing.
Yeah, apparently. But historically in 70 AD, when the Romans finally said enough, they leveled the temple and took it down, and it has never been rebuilt. Never been rebuilt. So God spoke and said, that old system is obsolete and passed away because I've given you this new arrangement in Christ.
So we- Talk about a graphic demonstration. We look at these things historically. So there was that, I don't know, 35, 40 years between the time Jesus died and was resurrected and the temple was destroyed when history was moving forward. And Jesus predicted it would happen, not a stone upon another. So he knew it was coming to an end and it was going to crash and burn. Even though those at the time that conversation came up because people said, aren't these great stones?
Isn't this a great building? Okay, so we got to press forward because we're like totally out of time. So just look at where we're going next, verse 11, but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come. Not when Christ appeared as a high priest. Oh my goodness. We'll start into that next week. As a high priest of the good things to come.
Every good thing in him. You got your old covenant and your old covenant priest. Now you got your new covenant and your new covenant priest, Jesus himself, our high priest and our sacrifice who brings us through the curtain, through the veil into the very presence of God. Oh, Amen. And we're going to dwell on that a lot for the next couple of weeks. So read ahead. It's just, it's spine tingling.
So come back and join us. I'm Jim and I'm Dorothy and this is More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org.
