Tabernacle – A Picture of Heaven - Hebrews 9

            

Last week we reflected on Jesus as our high priest, the greatest high priest. Priests worked in the area of sin; doing the rituals and sacrifices that pointed to how our sin is paid for and we’re cleansed. This week we’re looking at what Jesus does as our high priest. Talking to neighbours and friends about Jesus, I’ve learned that most of them are already aware of their sin and brokenness, what they’re looking for is forgiveness and healing.

The Jews see sin as being like walking down a road, looking at ahead to where God is, but then stumbling so that our eyes come off God and we fall. Or we might slip and fall and our eyes again come off God. Sometimes we slowly drift off the road; our eyes see something just off the path and we go investigate it. As we come closer, we look at what caught our eye and take our eyes off God. The role of the priest is to guide us back to the road; unfortunately, not until after we’ve stumbled around in the ditches. Think of the parable of the king throwing a banquet and sending his servants to gather in those who’re in the streets and alleys and ditches because the invited guests had rejected the invitations.

When we fall or slip or drift of the road, we get dirty. Now sin isn’t something physical, though it often gets acted out physically. Sin is about our souls getting broken and dirty. I come from North-western Ontario where there are hundreds of beautiful lakes and streams. Once they were all filled with fish, but about 40 years ago, the lakes began to die. You look into the water of these lakes and you can see clear to the bottom of many of them. They look pure, but they’re filled with pollution, pollution unseen, but deadly. That’s sin and our souls. Our outsides may look good, but our hearts and minds get dirty; our souls get polluted through allowing other things take the place of God in our hearts.

God wants to have a close intimate relationship with us, a relationship where we can be in his presence. This means that our hearts and souls must be made clean and pure. This is where the image of the tabernacle, and later the temple, becomes important. The Hebrews use word pictures to help us understand who we are, who God is, and what God does to save us. The tabernacle is a picture of coming close to God. You start off in the outer courts where the blood sacrifices were made to remind us that the penalty for sin is death. Their blood would be scattered over the altar and sometimes even over the people as a symbol of the cleansing nature of the life blood. These sin sacrifices were burnt offerings in fire; blood and fire are both symbols of cleansing. The animal’s blood was symbolically shed in place of our own, “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” The cost of the dirt and pollution we’ve allowed into our hearts is how far that’s taken us away from God; the sacrifices give us a glimpse of the path back to God.

Everyone’s allowed in the outer courts. Then we move into the first room of the tabernacle where other sacrifices are offered and the altar of incense was found. Here we find the table of show-bread meant for the priests. The 12 loaves represent the tribes of Israel. This is the bread David eats when he’s running from Saul. Normally only priests are allowed in this room. Then comes the Holy of Holies with the ark of the covenant. Only the High Priest is allowed inside and then only once a year. The ark contains items from Israel’s time in the wilderness: a jar of manna to show God provides, Aaron’s budded staff to show God chose him as his priest, and the stone tablets with the 10 Commandments on them to remind Israel of God’s covenant with them.

Even with all the sacrifices the priests offered, we still end up feeling that they’re still not enough, so how do we become clean again? It begins by confessing that there’s nothing we can do; it’s all God. The writer of Hebrews points to the Jewish sacrifices as only symbols of what needs to be done, and then to Jesus as the only one who could do, and be, the sacrifice needed to make us clean again. In church words, Jesus atones for our sins. To atone for something means that you do something to make up for a past wrong you’ve done, you work to make things right again between you and the person you’ve wronged or hurt. The problem is that when we wrong God, there’s not really anything we can do to take away the hurt, there’s no way to make up for what we’ve done because we’re just going to do something else to hurt God again, or even the same thing again.

The sacrifices and the blood sprinkled on the people made them ceremonially clean on the outside, but it did nothing for their hearts and souls. This is why Jesus comes, why the writer to the Hebrews stresses at the beginning of this letter that Jesus is completely divine and completely human and able to take our sin on himself and wash us clean. Jesus comes and offers himself to God as a blameless sacrifice on our behalf to wash our souls from the things that lead to death. Jesus never sins, though Satan tries his best in the desert after Jesus’ baptism to tempt him to sin. Jesus comes “to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people.” Jesus’ purity washes away our sin because we have accepted him as our Lord and Saviour. Jesus dies because the penalty for sin is death because something unclean is not allowed into the presence of God.

This is why there were barriers placed between the people of God and God himself in the tabernacle, even though the tabernacle is the sign of God’s presence among his people. This is also why at Jesus’ death the curtain in the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn in two so that the Holy of Holies becomes open to the world and the Holy Spirit pours out into the world. We see this in Matthew, “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” God no longer keeps himself separate from us because Jesus’ blood makes our souls and spirits clean in God’s eyes.

An important part of atonement is why Jesus comes and dies for our sin. It’s found at the end of verse 14, “so that we may serve the living God.” We aren’t saved so that we can sit back and pat ourselves on the back. We’re saved so that we can be Christ’s body here on earth showing and sharing with the world the gospel news of Jesus’ great love for all people. We’re Jesus’ bride, preparing herself for Jesus’ return. Atonement is a meaningless doctrine unless it’s applied to our daily lives. Having our consciences washed white as snow is only a pretty saying unless it changes our lives. Atonement is all about love, it’s about a father who loves his filthy children so much that he sends his pure clean son to come down here and take our filth on himself; offering his own blood in place of our own. Jesus does this so that we can experience this cleansing of the heart and healing of the soul. A teen in Allendale said in a Bible study, “When I shower after work, I feel clean, so that means I can feel the forgiveness in atonement.” What a great insight!

Francis Chan challenges us, “God wants to change us; he died so that we could change. The answer lies in letting him change you. Remember his counsel to the lukewarm church in Laodicea? “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” His counsel wasn’t to try harder, but rather to let him in. As James wrote, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” Jesus Christ didn’t die only to save us from hell; he also died to save us from our bondage to sin. In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Sin’s a spiritual problem. It’s not things outside us that make us sin; it’s our hearts that make us dirty. We can never blame sin because of the world around us; we look inside ourselves. The Holy Spirit slowly transforms us to be more like Christ when we follow the Spirit’s leading and guiding. The tabernacle points us to the promise of new life; our past doesn’t have to shape our present or future; Jesus and the Holy Spirit shape our present and future, washing away the dirt of our past through Jesus’ love for us. We come to Jesus instead of the tabernacle to be made clean from the dirt on our souls. Atonement frees us from living with guilt, allowing us to live forward instead of looking backwards. Atonement gives us the ability to live out grace with each other due to God’s grace expressed to us. Atonement also gives us the power to forgive others as the Holy Spirit shapes us into the image of Jesus.

Marvel at God’s love for us and let it flow over into the lives of those around us. When we come close to God, his love for us shapes us so that we can love our neighbours. It doesn’t happen all at once; we need to allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and attitudes so our neighbours and friends become so important to us that our hearts and souls won’t rest until they know Jesus and the new life they can have in him.