Hebrews 9:1-14 // The Real Deal (Part 1)

0:00Today on Growing Through Grace, any attempt to make a holy place on earth is contrary to what God wants, and whether that holy place is Jerusalem, or the Mormon tabernacle, or Mecca, or lords, it's out of step with God's plan to make Jesus the Lord of men's lives. In heaven, in the place of God's willing place, the place that you start long to go or seek to be. You're listening to Growing Through Grace with Pastor Jacob Elon of Morningstar Christian Chapel in

1:07Wittier, California. I don't know if you ever got into building models when you were growing up, but they were usually a scaled down version of some boat or plane or car. Today as we look at Hebrews chapter 9 verses 1 through 14, Pastor Jack will show us God's model of heaven that was given to the Israelites in the wilderness, the tabernacle. So without any delays, let's join our teacher for today's lesson. Here's Pastor Jack. Alright, let's open our Bible tonight, Hebrews chapter 9 verse 1. This evening as we continue our study through the book of Hebrews just to remind you, this letter was certainly written a few years, four to six maybe last years before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans. It was written to a believing congregation of Jewish believers and those who maybe did not yet believe in the Lord as some of the context would explain. And in either event, they had gone through some really tough times. You know, there was some tremendous moves

2:11against the church in 4950 under Claudius when they were expelled from Rome for a while, all of the believers. And now Caesar, Julius Caesar was, I mean, a Neuro sorry, was coming to the throne and and he was going to be a terror to the church. So here are these group of believers who were so put in a spot in a way. You know, their families had set them aside because they had left the faith so to speak for faith in Christ. The Romans were turning on them and the rider which I believed to be Paul, but certainly someone who knew them well and had known them for quite some time, writes this letter so that he might say to them, there's nothing to go back to. You have found through your Jewish roots all that God intended. You have found Jesus. And so he spends the entire book, well, the entire book until we get to chapter 10 and the application begins, comparing Jesus to everything Jewish, an Old Testament, prophets, angels, Joshua, Aaron, the priesthood,

3:18the tabernacle, the temple, the practices and all, all of them to say, you see what you had pointed here. And now you're here. You can't go there. It points here with great respect. And in all of the conversations that he makes in this Hebrews letter, he speaks with tremendous awe of the Old Testament types. He sees them as coming from the Lord. He sees them as very necessary. He honors what God has done. He doesn't chastise or look down upon or somehow diminish them, but he simply wants to say the purposes for which they were given are gone. Jesus has come, end of the story, so to speak. Tonight as we head through chapter 9 in a couple of weeks and then get to chapter 10 and one week in chapter 10 before the application of all of this begins, Paul begins to compare the earthly sanctuary that was built by Moses and by those guys in the wilderness with the real and the genuine and the permanent place where God's presence is there

4:19in the heavenly tabernacle as well. And because Jesus has opened the door for us to come boldly into God's presence, his arguments going to be fairly clear. We can go into the real deal. We don't have to run into the type or into the tent or into the picture or into the symbol or into that portrait, that shadow that one stood because that spoke of heaven and now heaven's doors are open. So don't bother stopping there, just go right in, you know, and come into God's presence prepared for you by the death of Jesus. So in this section, and I love verses 8, 9, and 10 especially in the middle of this, God gives to us not only the portraits and then the fulfillment, but he gives especially to us in verses 8, 9, and 10 the purposes from his heart for why these symbols and types were found there and what they were intended to be used for and why they can be set aside today on this side of Calvary. The Old Testament tabernacle, and he uses the word tabernacle or sanctuary

5:22rather than temple because you will remember I think that for years before David, you know, was allowed to gather and then Solomon to build this very ornate and beautiful and gold filled and large temple, which by the way was David's idea and never really was God's idea. In fact, God said, have I complained up to this point, you know, but it was David's heart that wanted to build, but it was for years just a tent and it spoke of something that was temporary and you folded it up and you moved along with it and it stood and David in his palace when they looked at the tent and went yuck, look around lit and look where the Lord's been put. I got to fix this, but you see that was the type that's why God could have cared less. It was the picture of something that was passing away and was portable, if you will. It was rudimentary and it was illustrative and it was temporary and it was earthly and it was to be used by the people to approach God until this higher work of God would be accomplished or until this spiritual, if you will, revelation of God was finished. So,

6:26you know, the temple was there to teach us and prepare us and direct us to hope yet to come, but it was never intended to be a permanent place, so he uses the word tabernacle or sanctuary as opposed to temple. I think we will learn that all of these Old Testament picture books, if you will, can now be completely set aside because their work is finished and all that God now is interested in as you begin, especially in the New Testament, is faith in his son and forgiveness by his blood and intimacy with you and approach that is open and availability to anyone who will come. So, it goes from very structured and restrictive to, you know, all's fair, you know, come on in, the Lord has opened the doors. One of the main obstacles for those who lived in here, in here, meaning you were raised Jewish and you practiced your faith and now Jesus comes and there's freedom and fulfillment and you go, man, how do I change? How do I let go of what I've, you know, so long trusted and I remember my father was raised Catholic and he was a pretty devout

7:31Catholic guy. I mean, he read Latin, he had arguments, he knew what the popes who the popes were and what they thought and he argued good, you know, but he wasn't filled with peace. And yet when he started considering coming to church or giving his life to Jesus, he once said it's so hard to let go of the things I've trusted in so long. Well, that's pretty much what you find amongst these young Christians here. There was a tremendous difficulty in making the change over, you know. I think sometimes when you grow up with nothing, it's easier because you've got nothing, you know, you have everything. But when you grow up in a religious way, no matter what it is, and then you go, oh, well, we used to, oh, no, that doesn't. Well, we, I thought, I didn't, and you got to change a lot of stuff. Well, that's certainly what these, you know, Hebrews in their faith had to do. And what they failed to see was that everything that was connected with the ceremonial law, that law which governed your approach to go. Whether it was the priest or the sacrifice or the tabernacle or the ritualistic washings or whatever, the incense, whatever it might have been, none of it was designed to be permanent. It was all designed as an object lesson for

8:38the Messiah's work and it was reinforced by the fact that this old covenant practice couldn't remove your sin, couldn't give you any further access to God than what you had, couldn't give peace to your conscience at all as well, was absolutely repetitive with no end in sight, was carried out by sinful people who always had to sacrifice for themselves first. And on and on and went, there was nothing about any of it that said, we've arrived. It all said, let's hang around till he arrives. And so now that the kingdom of God has been established, and now that the church has been born and the Holy Spirit has been poured out and whoever will can come and believe and find life. You will not find in the church sacred days or seasons, no special sanctuary or procedures that are written out, no system of spiritual hierarchy, all saints are the priests. Any attempt to make a holy place on earth is contrary to what God wants. And whether that

9:40holy place is Jerusalem or the Mormon tabernacle or Mecca or lords, it's out of step with God's plan to make Jesus the Lord of men's lives. And heaven in the place of God's dwelling place, the place that you long to go or seek to be. So you know, these folks were in that transition period. And we are told in no uncertain terms in a minute, in verse 8 and in verse 9, that those things were good for a while, but now that Jesus is here, they are finished. And so in our verses tonight, verses 1 through 14, Paul writes about the overview of the basic terms of the Old Testament tabernacle, things that a Jewish reader would easily understand, maybe the Gentiles, we, most of us, not so readily, so we'll look at them for a few minutes. And then in verse 8, 9, and 10, the connection between those old things and then in verses 11 through 14, the new things that Jesus has come to do. So we

10:43start in verse 1 with the words, or actually last week, remember we ended with words, in that he says there's a new covenant, he's made the first or the old covenant obsolete. And what is now becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. Then indeed, he says, even this first covenant had ordinances of divine service and it had an earthly sanctuary. So the first covenant, the Old Testament was not pointless, was not worthless. It was ordained by God to be a place of lessons for us about him and about us and about sin and about redemption and about holiness and the lack thereof and the work of the Messiah and our absolute need for him if we're ever going to enter into God's presence. But notice in verse 1, this, this Old covenant had a place of worship, a sanctuary, a tent. And it was governed by divine services. In other words, God ordained the ways in which men would approach him. It was earthly, verse 1, because it was located here.

11:48It was earthly because like everything else in the earth, it was wearing away. It was temporary. It doesn't last even to the tent in which everything was housed. It was earthly because God only intended it to be used here and only for a limited time. So he says the first covenant had rules and they were divine rules, even though the meeting place was upon earth and it was a temporary meeting place. He then speaks a bit about the tabernacle itself and the layout and the furnishings enough to make his point, but he doesn't want to do an in-depth study of these things now. In fact, he says at the end of verse 5 of these things we cannot now speak in detail. So I'm going to just mention them. He says, but I don't really want to go in and do them all, you know, one at a time. But he wrote and he says a tabernacle or a tent was prepared. The first part in which was the lamp stand and the table and the show bread, which is called the sanctuary. Behind the second veil, that part of the tabernacle, which is called the holiest of all, which had the golden sensor and

12:53the arc of the covenant, which had been overlaid on all sides with gold and in which were the golden pot that had the mana and Aaron's rod that butted and the tables of covenant and above it were the cherubim of glory over shadowing the mercy seat and of all these things we cannot now speak in detail. So he basically just says, remember what the tent was like, the place of meeting. You might wonder how important these shadows or pictures were to the Lord when it came to the ceremonial bond. Maybe this one thought will get you to thinking how important they must have been to the Lord. We only have two chapters in our entire Bible devoted to creation. I mean, everything you might want to know about how the world was made and don't you wish you had 100 chapters of the Lord to explain more stuff? You have two. And even then they're sketchy, aren't they? And then you get to the issue of the tabernacle and you have 50 chapters. And Exodus 25 through 40 in particular, take every piece in this tent in the most minute detail,

13:55the threads, the color, the placement, the usage, the approach, the manufacturing. And I know that you've read it and you went, oh, this is wearing me out. And then it's got this aggregate deal and then the stone and that's color and the turquoise and the tobes. I thought I was reading the Bible. I'm in a gem book. Why so much explanation? Because it becomes of greatest value when it is seen as a giant portrait of what God was going to do through his son. It was a road sign. It was an illustration board. It was the picture that God wanted to see and what you will find in the scripture so often that can be frustrating to us is that God doesn't spend time with things that you don't need to know anymore about. So if it puts you in line with what Jesus has come to do, boys, there's all kinds of information. Creation, well, we just need to know God to create. Okay, good. Let's move on. I want to get you to your savior and that's the key. So the Lord doesn't dwell much on these sidelines and these other things that you would want to see and want

15:00to hear. They aren't there, but this portrait is. So Paul and writing to these Hebrew Christians says, you remember what the tent looked like? You remember how this setup was? 50 chapters. We should have them as well. The courtyard of this tent was 150 feet long. So half a football field, 75 feet wide, and it only had one entrance on the eastern side. The entrance was seven and a half feet high as far as coming in. And it was 30 feet wide. So a lot of people could come in together. And though Jesus is the only way because there's only one door anyone wanting to come can come. But if you walked in from the east, the first thing that you would run into in the courtyard before you ever got to the tent was a bronze altar. If you're moving west from the east, the bronze altar was made of a cashew wood. It was covered in bronze. It was seven and a half feet square and four and a half feet off the ground. It was just a big brazen altar. And everything that had to do with sacrifice and sin was always with brass.

16:04And so it was brazen or made of brass. And it was a place where, you know, with coals underneath the great, the offerings were made before God for the sins of the people. There were four horns that came off the corners. The horns had the most significant part of the horns was you could tie the animal up while you were waiting to slaughter it and for the next one to be killed. So it spoke of Jesus outside the camp being our sin offering and that your sin you had to go outside the camp. But it was outside the tent out into the courtyard. If you passed the altar, you then came to a laborer. Basin was also of bronze was a place that the priests would wash their hands before they sacrificed the animals where they would wash themselves afterwards that the blood would be washed. It spoke of, you know, once you had an offering or you could approach God, you now need to daily be washed and cleansed. Same thing, Jesus spoke about to Peter there at the last supper of the boys washing their feet. But then if you walked past the laborer still west, you came to this tent. And the tent wasn't so big. It was 45 feet long and it was divided into

17:07two sections. One of them was 15 by 15. The other was 30 by 15, two compartments. But the bigger of the two, the 30 by the 15 was what was called the holy place. And it took up two-thirds of the space and it is mentioned here in verse two and verse three. And then there was a big sick 18-inch sick curtain that separated it from that 15-foot square holy of holies. But out here in the holy place, three furnishings, lampstand, table of showbred with 12 loaves of bread on it replaced every week. And a golden incense altar that stood right in front of the curtain leading into God's presence. And it was designed to bring the worship of the people, the prayers of the saints. And it would kind of waft over and kind of go under and eventually permeate this very sick curtain. But it was always lit and it was always there to represent the people crying out to God and seeking to be in His presence. The lampstand had seven branches on it. It was in constant need of

18:14daily tending to put oil in it and to put the wicks in it. It spoke of Jesus being the only light of the world. It was the only light in the entire holy place. So when you went into to do your work in the morning or in the evening, it was dark. That was your light. That was the light that you had to serve God was came from this lampstand. The 12 loaves that stood upon this table of showbred represented the 12 tribes that were eating every week. It represented the bread of life that God would bring and the priests alone could eat of it. So nobody even outside, you and I, if we're not priests, could even get to that place. But that was the first entry place, if you will. And then there was this, like I said, golden altar of incense that it represented not only the prayers of the saints, but the representation of the Lord interceding for us. So on the other side, the chicana, the glory of God's presence, you know, on the holy of Holy Side over the mercy seat where his glory wasn't. By the way, the only light inside there was the glory of God. There was no

19:20physical light. It was just his presence. This golden altar, by the way, is not mentioned by the rider here because he doesn't intend to be exhaustive. He's just trying to illustrate a point and he doesn't want to tarry over the spiritual significance of each one of those things because his lesson was, look, you're familiar with these things and I want to move on to the point. He does, in verse four, however, mention the golden sensor, which is interesting because the golden sensor was not used in the daily worship of God. It was only used once a year by the high priest. And on Yom Kippur, when he would go in and offer sins for the, or offerings for the sins of the people, he would take the coals from the outside altar and he would bring them right past that incense place there in the holy place and he would go directly in before the Lord with this incense in this golden sensor so that as he entered, so would the smoke and the incense still the place. So

20:21he would enter in and he would get the sense that, you know, he was in kind of a surreal place, but he was covered by this incense. It was only used the once a year and he mentions it here, the golden sensor. It came in with him and it went out with him and then he went before this arc of the covenant, this little box wherein was kept one of the pots of mana that the Lord told him to keep and Aaron's rod that had budded and then the second edition of the Ten Commandments because you remember Moses had broken the first group. Over the box or the, or the arc was this golden lid, it was called the mercy seat. There were these golden figures of angels with wings who were out and looked down on the throne of God's presence and then right there was where the blood of the sacrifice once a year would be put. It was this place of mercy and when the blood was placed there, notice it fell upon a box under which was the commandments that man had broken. Though God had provided bread for him, though God had given him his power, though he had given him his law, they were unable to keep

21:24it on their own. So the blood would be poured out and it would cover this, you know, lid that would cover the Ten Commandments, the moral love of God and there we would find God's forgiveness or God's covering. So the blood would cover and it would have to be taken in there to be offered. It was only good when it was poured out upon the mercy seat where God dwells or in God's presence. So by the time you get to the New Testament, Jesus now becomes the mercy seat. He's the one who offers himself so that we can have access to God and his body torn becomes the veil that we will have described in a few weeks. His body torn, now we enter into God's presence or have access to God based on the broken body of Jesus. John uses the word propitiation. It's a big word in first John 2, but in the Old Testament Greek version, the Septuagint, it's the exact same word for mercy seat where God justifies

22:27his demands against lawlessness. So in this mercy seat was where God and man could meet. It was where man's sin and God's holiness were able to resolve the conflict through the blood that was shed. And it was only there that God could really meet with man, but look how limited that was. One guy once a year, the whole practice was very limiting. The people outside, the priests in their courses, maybe they got to serve one week in their life in the holy place. And then there was that holy of holies where only the high priest got to go and he went in for a few minutes and he didn't go in whistling dixie. He went in terrified. Oh no. Because in their bad things could happen to you, you know? You're sinful. God is holy. And I'm sure that just, you know, you could hear your shoes squeaking and you're terrified and you're loaded down with stuff, you know, and you've been offering stuff all day and you tremble. So for everyone, it's from the outside and coming in,

23:32get all spoke about Jesus and his salvation and his blood shed and his body broken and the washing of the word and the access that we could get and the congregation. Now you're a part of the millions who for years seek thought to walk with God as a Jew, you could come into the courtyard. And that was it.