058 - The Precious Purchase (4 Sept 2021)

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, I know you like clean things. I do. Yeah. So what do you clean things with?

Hot water, cleanser, sometimes bleach to get all the stains out. Yeah, absolutely. Well, what if I told you today then in today's passage, the writer says that something's not really clean unless it's cleaned with blood. Ooh. Yeah, today.

Today, More Than Ink. Well, a wonderful, wonderful morning to you. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. My gardener, Dorothy, I should say. Yeah, we are here at the end of the summer in our garden extravaganza. It's wild and woolly out there. My master gardener is coming to full fruition.

I've seen tomatoes that I've never seen before. Oh, and they've been so good. They've been really nice. So we're just loving this time of year.

And we're glad that you're with us. We know on Saturday morning you could be out working on your garden and maybe you are. Maybe you're listening on the radio in your pocket. I don't know. But who knows? So we're here. But speaking of food out of the garden today, as we're looking into Hebrews, we're looking at what the writer of Hebrews called solid food. Yeah, definitely. We are right in the middle of the solid food.

Remember a couple chapters back, he kind of hemmed and hawed and said, you know, I don't know if you're ready for this stuff. I don't know. I know. Well, let's do it.

This requires some chewing. Yeah. So this is really, I deliberately decided we would slow down in this section and we're going to say the same thing, almost the same thing for the next three weeks, but in slightly different ways. Well, yeah, from different perspectives and emphasizing different parts of it. And that's because that's what the writer does as well. This is the meatiest part, I think, of the middle of Hebrews. He's trying to get across his transitional connection between the old and new covenant. So if you remember last week, last week we went back into kind of a retro view of the old covenant, what goes in the temple and the sacrifices and all that kind of stuff.

He did that in the beginning of chapter nine. And he was just trying to remind us of what goes on there, physically what goes on that God asked them to do and they obeyed pretty much to do. And we also noted that it was really quite a display of blood that was connected with this. Yeah, very elaborate ceremonies associated with the blood. Yeah, and that was quite a deliberate thing. There's almost nothing in the entire Old Testament account of what goes on in the temple that doesn't somehow have blood connected with it.

And that's not an accident. And that will continue today as we take a look at this. We did the retro view last week and now he's going to segue into how it is that the new covenant is newer than that. So you look like you're going to – Well, I was going to say, let's just read the last couple of verses of where we left off. That's what I was going to suggest. Because I've been thinking about this this afternoon as we've been getting ready to record, or recently.

Let's see. So verses nine and ten, he says that the holy place is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly, both gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience or complete in conscience.

Since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation. Big change. Right. So he's just been saying all of that Old Testament sacrificial system, all of the regulations and the rites and the ceremonies in the tabernacle were a picture until a time when God puts everything right in reality. Right. And that time is now through Christ.

Through Christ. Right. We're not talking way in the future. We're talking now.

But I really do. I love his, I love his mention in verse nine. This is still last week about this conscience, the conscience of the worshiper. Yeah.

And he's going to mention that again today. But what is a conscience? I mean, the conscience is what tells you, just between you and your conscience, convicts you of your own sinfulness. What is right and what is wrong.

What is right and what is wrong. And it sits there and just yaks at you and says, boy, you are really a low life. Well, and how can you quiet your conscience? Yeah.

Right. And it's telling you constantly. And as the writer of Hebrews had said earlier, in these sacrifices, there remains constantly a reminder of our sin. A reminder of sin. Isn't that what your conscience does?

Constantly yammers at you. You screwed up. You broke it.

You were wrong. So as he transitions today into the new covenant, this is really the problem. You can do all the sacrifices you want to. Right. You can sacrifice bulls and goats and all. I mean, you can do this until the cows come home and then you sacrifice them.

But I mean, you could do this forever. But still, it's not going to change the fact that you know the truth about yourself. Right. And because all of these ceremonies you can do with your sacrifices are all external.

External. And you know, when we come to the end of today's passage down in verse 22, the contrast is drawn between the forgiveness and atonement. Right. So in the Old Covenant, our sin was covered and cleansed. But the glory of the new covenant is that God says, I will forgive their sin and there will be no more remembrance. It's a radical freedom from this conscience that conducts us. It's a cleansing of our internal person. This again is another one of the great aspects of the newness of the new covenant. We're talking about life change that is deep at the core of who we are. And I think that's what you lose in the Old Testament. Right, changed inside. Inside. Yeah, it's not just a ritual we go through.

Radical, real transformation. Well, let's just look at it. So we just read in chapter 9 verses 9 and 10, today's new passage is in verse 11. So you want to pick up that for us?

Yeah. You can follow with us in verse 11. So it begins by saying, but when Christ appeared.

Way to change. So it sets up a giant contrast here. 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. Should we stop there? Yeah, I think so.

I think we better. So yeah, let's just remind everybody, I mean, remember we were talking about the high priest who alone could go all the way in as far as you could go into the temple, into the holy of holies. He alone could do that. And could only do it once a year.

Once a year. And with the qualifications of a lot of sacrifices. Better be carrying blood. Right. And so that was the access into the very presence of God.

And that was a restriction then and only quite limited. But now, when you see these mentions in here about Christ appearing as a high priest of these good things, and it says in verse 12 that he entered once for all. That entering, where is that entering?

It's into that holy of holies. And he doesn't have to go in and out and in and out and in and out every year. Right.

Once for all. If you remember back a couple chapters ago, the writer had said he's opened the way, he's opened the veil and anchored the way open for us back in chapter 6. And it's in stark contrast to the high priest back in their day who on the day of atonement had to go in every single year. Right.

Because he kept accumulating all of these sins. And only after this elaborate ritual of sacrifice and carrying the blood in. Right. Sacrificing for himself and his own sins. Right. And sacrificing for the nation. And then even at that, he's saying right here, it doesn't even scratch the surface of your conscience problems.

You still are who you are and you know it. But here Jesus is different. He enters once for all into the holy place.

And remember that holy place symbolically speaking is in the very presence of God. So he enters once for all. Now that all doesn't mean all time, although it does include that. But it means also for all. All of us.

All of everybody. Right. So it's a one time deal and only needs to be that way. And he doesn't need the blood of goats and calves. What a superior thing in that particular sense. But he does go into that holy place by means of blood. And it says in verse 12, by the means of his own blood.

His own blood. The high priest who doesn't sacrifice a goat or a bull, but who has sacrificed himself. So remember we said a couple weeks ago that this is one of the primary differences in practice between the Old Testament or the Old Covenant and the new one. Is that under the Old Covenant there was the constant sacrificing of animals and the applying of animal blood externally. But now we have the eternal blood of the eternal Son of God. The eternal priest once for all covering all.

So in the Old Covenant, in the old temple times, all that blood, all that blood was all pointing toward the real blood of Christ that will be shed for us. That will affect real change. Right.

Not just the appearance of change, but real change which touches the deepest most intimate part of who we are in our conscience. Right. And actually he's going to drive that home in the second half of this chapter which we're going to get to next week when he says he appeared, he appeared, he appeared. Right, right.

He made it real. Yeah, yeah. Everything that all of this other was pointing to. Okay, let's stop for a minute at the beginning of verse 11 because I just paused on this phrase, as a high priest of the good things that have come. Well, what good things? Good things that have come. So that's a good study clue there if the writer says now there's all of these good things that have come through Christ's high priesthood. So be watching now in this passage for what those good things are.

I don't think I'll make a list for you at the moment, but let's point them out as we go through them because he's already named a couple. Eternal redemption. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, which is good news for those of us 2,000 years later. Right. Entering once for all, that's a good thing.

He's entered what? The eternal more perfect tent. Doesn't even belong to this creation, it's an eternal one. Yeah, because remember he said back in chapter 8 that what was going on in the temple during that time was a shadow and a copy of the more substantial reality which is in heaven. It's a spiritual reality, but it's more substantial than this place is. See, that's where we get mixed up because we think, oh, we need a temple, we need something concrete we can see. That's the reality.

That's not the reality at all. Indeed, God decisively removed it. Right. Right? It's gone.

It's gone, yeah. So in this new covenant we should not be expecting to go out and build ourselves a temple. Right.

And sacrifice there. Exactly. That's not just obsolete, it's like just wrong headed in terms of knowing what Christ has done in reality. It denies what Christ has done. Exactly.

It undercuts it and renders it unimportant and invalid. The writer of Hebrews has already said, you know, if you do that there's no help for you. Yeah, that's right. Because you are now sacrificing the blood of a goat for the blood of Christ. Right.

That's very wrong headed. Yeah, and maybe we'll get into this in a little bit, you know, the idea of the blood. Because blood shows up ten times just in this little short passage.

So it must be important. And Leviticus says the life is in the blood. Yep, that's right.

Right? So this is the idea of this substitutionary sacrifice. This blood represents my life. Yeah. And remember in the Old Testament God said the life is in the blood. Right. And it's apparent to people then, you know, anatomically they'd look and they'd say, when an animal loses its blood it loses its life.

It's dead. So symbolically the life is in the blood. Right. And so the issue is that every time you see blood sprinkled around in the Old Testament, it's an issue of restoring life somehow.

Right. And something had to die in order for you to live. Yeah, that's really simple, simple symbology.

Well, but it's a huge, huge idea. And it's so fundamental that it goes all the way back to Genesis 2 and 3. Yeah, it does. It's all God made garments out of skin for Adam and Eve. And something had to die. To cover their nakedness, something had to die.

Yeah. So, you know, we just can't escape that reality. Yeah, and you know when you're sensitized to this imagery of blood, you know, and something has to die, life has to be given from where it had life to you, when you're sensitive to that, then when you start reading the New Testament, you see it everywhere.

Everywhere. You just don't realize it, you know. And we're just, we've become jaded to it, but then if you understand this and the connection to the Old Testament and what's being shown symbolically and graphically at the temple on the blood, then you go, oh, right. So, this is very key stuff to understand, even a lot of what Paul talks about.

So, anyway, we need to push on through here. Okay, so securing an eternal redemption. An eternal redemption.

Boy, does that go on the list of good things. Yeah, an eternal redemption. And I might just point out the fact that the word redemption always means money or it means payment. It's a transaction, a bought back. It's a transaction, something got bought, yeah.

And so, when you see that word right there, it's a buyback. Once for all. Once for all. It's eternally good. And it's eternally good, yeah.

You don't have to keep trying to make the redemption work. He does it through his blood, yeah. So, let's pick it up in verse 13.

13. 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? There's the conscience. Right, he had said in the previous chapter, that's something, purifying the conscience is something that temple rites can never do. No. The blood of goats and bulls doesn't do that. No. It only symbolically represents the cleansing of your body. Yeah. But the conscience is a very internal thing.

The internal. It's a conviction. The heart person. Condemnation of the guilt of your sin, which so many people walk around with today and it causes neuroses left and right. I mean, walking around with this constant awareness of your sinfulness and your proclivity to do evil, which just grosses us out. Who will free us from that kind of burden that lays on our shoulders? And this is exactly what the blood of Christ does.

We're purified from that. So it's really, we say it in other ways in the New Testament, but boy, he's saying it right here. We're dealing with something in the new covenant with this blood of Christ that changes something so profoundly deep inside of us. You might actually say at the spiritual level, which as we talked about before, is actually the larger reality of this whole picture. The reality is the spiritual level.

The shadow and copy is the physical temple and all these other things. So, yeah, without blemish, purifying our conscience from dead works. What do you think about that dead works comment?

What is that? Dead works? That's all the stuff that we did on our own effort, which can never bring life. Right, exactly. If you remember when we looked at Exodus 24 under the old covenant, that people said, God said, you will do this. And the people said, yep, we will. Right. And then the sacrifice was offered and the blood was sprinkled and you agreed, we'll do it by our power and our will.

And how did that work out? But they failed. Right. There is simply, you can always do one more thing. Right. You just can never do enough. Yeah, yeah. And so that whole idea of dead works, that's amplified quite a bit by Paul when he goes through Romans.

And this is exactly what he's talking about here. You can work your tush off trying to make yourself perfect, but you're not going to get there. Not going to get there. It's a dead work.

It's just going to result in death and it just doesn't work. But interestingly enough, what Christ has done for us has now equipped us to serve the living God in a real sense. Rather than just trying to impress Him with our good works and failing all the times and resulting in death, we can now actually serve the living God for real, which is an astonishing flip in the entire equation of the thing.

Rather than hustling all the time, trying to make yourself perfect, trying to purify yourself from those things that you detest about who you are, He has made you clean enough to be able to serve the living God. Remember, the living God who is in the Holy of Holies that you can't approach. Who is the Holy One.

That's right. He is the Holy One. You can't go in there. You can't get in there, except by the way He has provided. And that way provides for an answer to your sin.

Thank God. Boy, that's all just crammed together in that little phrase. Well, and the writer presses on here. He says in verse 15, 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 transgressions committed under the first covenant. So now we're not only talking about an eternal redemption through the eternal spirit, we're talking about an eternal inheritance.

Yes, yes. And we're returning back to that theme we had a long time ago in Hebrews where we talked about God's promises to the nation of Israel. And they did not participate in getting into the Promised Land because they didn't believe His promises could come true, that He could actually fulfill His promises. And that promise is to bring them into the Promised Land and live in a place of rest, kind of a pasture-like thing. And so that's the promises of God. And so because of what Christ has done, then we can receive the promised eternal inheritance.

That's the very thing. It's God's intentions for us to live a life of joy and fullness in His presence, in His nearness, in the place that He provides for us. And because we have a new mediator of this new covenant, we can participate in that promise. Okay, but when do you get an inheritance? When somebody dies. When somebody dies. So the writer's about to introduce another illustration here, and it can be a little bit confusing if you're not paying attention. But then he starts talking about a will, right?

You don't inherit until the person who wrote the will dies. Right. And he's telling you that what you're going to benefit from God's promises are at the cost of a death.

That's right. The death of Christ. I'll take it from here.

Okay, go ahead. So we're in verse 16. So, for instance, 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's not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law has been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet and wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and the people saying, This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. And so in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both a tent, that's the tabernacle, and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, it's like, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood.

With blood. And without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins. There's no forgiveness of sins. So remember, the sins are the problems that keeps us from participating in the promises of God.

Sin costs life. Yep. So he makes his point back in 16 about a will. You guys know about wills.

Right. You know, someone dies and then you benefit. Well, in our particular case with Christ, Christ died and we benefit. And even in the Old Testament, in the Old Covenant, he says, and that was also part and parcel of the symbology in the Old Covenant, was that you can't live unless something dies.

That's why the blood is everywhere. So that is just so drilled into them in the symbology of what they're saying, is that I have sinned, now that's going to cost the life of this animal and this blood represents the life that now is given to me for what I did wrong. So that's very deeply ingrained in the Jewish mindset.

So that's what he says right here as well. So when we talk about Christ and the New Covenant, it's the same thing. Christ must die on our behalf so that his blood gives us life. Okay, so the big contrast, again, between the Old Covenant and the New is that under the Old Covenant, the old way, the blood was sprinkled on as a representation of that life that was given that represents yours. But this is what's so shocking about what Jesus did at the Last Supper when he said this cup is the blood of the New Covenant, or is the New Covenant in my blood. And what does he tell them to do with it?

Drink it. So it becomes you, right? It becomes an internal reality. Yeah, that whole phrase he uses in the Lord's Supper is just infused with this imagery. Infused with this imagery. And so even when they hear the word New Covenant, they'll think Jeremiah 31. When they think blood, they'll think the blood in the temple. That's the representation of the life from something else to me for the benefit of me because of my own sin. Yeah, all of that just is, it's just packed in that this cup is the New Covenant in my blood.

Bam, I think their heads exploded. And that blood of the New Covenant is not animal blood. It is the very blood of the Son of God himself. And the only way you partake that is with this internal change in a spiritual way. In the reality of the changed heart.

Yep, yep. So now he's making this really deep connection that all that blood imagery in the Old Testament, all that blood imagery is all about the blood of Christ. Sacrificed his life, sacrificed for us so that his life can be our life. And because of that, then there's forgiveness of sins, according to verse 22. You hear that all through the New Testament.

And since there's forgiveness of sins, now we can indeed participate cleansed in the promises of God. It made me think of a passage in Ephesians. Ephesians 2, Paul said that, And now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. And brought near to what? Brought near to God himself. So even that right there is harkening back to this imagery of coming near to the presence of God through the blood of Christ. And while you were saying that, I'm thinking of 2 Corinthians 5, 21. It says, He, God, made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Yep, yep, exactly.

Well, we're running a little short on time, but I wanted to leave one picture with you. You know, if you go back to the temple, you go back to the Holy of Holies, you go back to inside the Holy of Holies is the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat. Did you know the high priest would go through once a year, he'd go into that center section where God is, the presence of God, this mercy seat that represented God's promises for us and the path to that mercy seat and the ark. And he would go in there with blood on his finger and he would flick that blood not only on the front of the ark, but also the pathway leading up to the ark. So the very path he took through the veil walking up to the presence of God where the mercy seat was, was all splattered with blood. And in a sense, you could look at that imagery as you walked in there and say, you know, it's very clear that the coming into the presence of God is paved with blood.

So no one comes in the presence of God except for those who are purchased, redeemed, with the blood of Christ. And you know, in the temple during that time, the permanent temple, that Holy of Holies, it was a gold room. Everything was gold inside that room. Boy, it would just look totally stunning and there in stark relief would be the blood.

Splattered on the floor, splattered on the front of the promises of God in his ark. It's just a stunning image. It's a stunning image and unfortunately only the high priest got to see that every year, but I think it was, I think it shuddered. He shuddered every time I saw that.

That's beautiful, pristine golden room and then splattered with blood. That's the only way into the presence of God. So that's what it's meant to teach us and that's what he's making the connection to right here. So, wow.

Got any last comments? It's a lot to think about. It's a ton to think about. Well, I just want our listeners to apply themselves to this passage. Look for the things that are repeated.

Look for the things that he says again and again and again. The forgiveness, the blood, being purified, what is eternal. The eternal redemption, the eternal spirit, the eternal inheritance.

Yeah. Pay attention to those things and write down your questions so you can mull them over and chase down these Old Testament places where these things are described. Exodus and Numbers and Leviticus. All of those cross references should be in your column in your Bible. And we had previously recommended and I highly recommend that if you have little time to go in the Old Testament, go to Leviticus 16 because Leviticus 16 is a really fascinating kind of up close and personal look at what goes on with the blood and what goes on in our behalf.

The actual means by which atonement is made. Yeah. So we're out of time. We hope you join us next week. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we'll see you in the New Covenant in 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. Okay, one of those will work.