I'm excited to be continuing this series through the Book of
Hebrews. As we've been looking at our
series, Jesus is Greater. Over the past few weeks we've
been tracing the argument of the Book of Hebrews.
Jesus is greater than the angels, and because he's the
perfect representation of God, we we know what God is like and
we can have hope. Jesus is greater than Moses and
so we can persevere and enter the rest, not get stuck in the
wilderness. Jesus is greater than the
Levitical priests we Caleb talked about last week, and so
we can boldly enter into God's own presence.
But all of this raises an important question for us, a
question that we finally get to this week, which is how does
Jesus actually make access to God's presence possible?
How does Jesus make access to God's presence possible?
And in Hebrews Chapter 9, we find the answer to this
question. Our text this morning explains
why Jesus sacrifice matters, what it accomplishes for you and
for me today. We read here in Hebrews Chapter
9 and verse 12 that Jesus did not enter by means of the blood
of goats and calves, but he entered the most holy place once
for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
All right, well, I want to offer a bit of a content warning this
morning before we dive in guys. We are talking about sacrifice
today, we're going to talk about blood.
And I think that your internal disgust sensors may get
triggered a few times. So if you're a little squeamish,
I don't know what to do. I'm sorry.
But I just wanted to prepare us because one of the challenges
that we face here in Hebrews Chapter 9 is, is honestly a
challenge that we face throughout this series, which is
navigating the, the enormous gap culturally between the text of
Hebrews, the assumptions, the problems, the solutions that are
offered in our life and world today.
There are some very big differences between how they
imagined the world and how they navigated things and what's also
true for us. But I believe that bridging this
gap is going to be so helpful if we can understand it.
All right, to dive in and get us started.
Like I said, we're talking about, we're talking about dead
animals today. All right, by show of hands, how
many of you, this is not a there's it's not a gotcha
question. How many of you have consumed
meat products in your lifetime? OK, the vast majority of us,
some people have not, no problem.
All right, how many of you have not only consumed meat products,
but whether you have or not have actually witnessed physically
impersonate animal being slaughtered?
OK, we have a few hands. Some people grew up on farms.
I knew this to be true. But it's a there's a big gap
between those two numbers. And the first one, it's the vast
majority of the auditorium. And the second one, it's only a
few people. And this speaks to the distance
that we have today between kind of the food that we eat, the
animals that we interact with as food and what actually happens
to get them to our plates. I think my daughter understands
chicken to come from the grocery store, right?
It's like it's not very clear how how that delivery mechanism
happens for us. And, and to think of an animal
being killed for many of us, for me, in my fragile little
stomach, it kicks out. I'm like, oh, that's, that's
terrible. That's awful.
There's a lack of familiarity. But this lack of familiarity
would not be true for the 1st century recipients of the letter
to the Hebrews. These people grew up in an
agricultural setting. Food preparation and delivery
was part of their life. If they had been asked for a
show of hands, every hand would have gone up.
They were all familiar with animal slaughter, not just as
part of the sacrificial system. But even beyond the the lack of
familiarity with the death of animals, there's another thing
that makes this text this morning especially foreign,
especially difficult for us to inhabit.
Like what is going on? Why sacrifice?
Sacrifice is such a weird concept to us.
And I think it's not just that blood is gross, although most of
us probably feel that way. Unless you, like, work in an
operating room or something. It's also the idea, which is
latent in this text, that blood could actually be an agent of
cleansing. That blood could the application
of blood could make things cleaner rather than more dirty
and even under that the fact that there is a pollution that
is moral in nature and needs to be solved for the the the Hebrew
audience of this letter had an entirely different mental map of
the world. We see this here, though,
clearly in Hebrews Chapter 9 and verse 13.
Looking back, the writer here says the blood of goats and
bulls, the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are
ceremonially unclean, sanctify them so that they are outwardly
clean. All right, I'm not going to do
this, but if I were to take a bowl of blood and sprinkle it on
everybody this morning, right, I don't think that would go over
well. You guys would be super freaked
out. Most of you would leave and
never ever come back, right? We would not intuit or
experience that as an act of cleansing in any way.
But for the 1st century audience, that made perfect
sense. And, and it was not only because
of a different intuition around blood, it was actually also a
moral imagination that differed from ours around sanctity.
See, the original audience of this letter thought about
morality very significantly in terms of purity and pollution.
In terms of purity and pollution categories that do not function
for us in the West, at least largely.
Although we do have some trace intuitions of these things, even
if we often don't have the lens or the language to help make
sense of our intuition. More content warning, we're
going to be gross for a second. All right, How do you feel about
the following ideas? I want you to name what comes up
for you. The idea of going out in the
lobby and just snacking on the communion elements.
What kind of idea comes up? What kind of feeling is
generated? Not cool, not cool.
Anybody else? All right, we have a little bit,
we have a little sanctity imagination around communion
elements. How about how about having sex
on somebody's grave? Not cool.
No, no, no. Not cool.
As as a judgement. I agree.
Not cool. But what's the feeling that
comes up for us? Gross.
Disrespectful. Yeah, like Dick, Right.
How about how about sorry, guys? How about eating a pet that has
died from natural causes? Yeah, You feel it right here.
That's awful, right? It's it's gross, it's
disgusting. It generates in us this, this
like, but often we struggle to explain where that is coming
from. See, for us in the West, we are
what Jonathan Height called weird.
We are weird, which means we are western, we are educated, we are
industrialized, we are rich and we are democratic.
And, and within the moral framework that we live, we think
mostly about like care and harm and fairness.
We like, well, did it hurt someone else?
Nope, no one was hurt. Was it unjust or unfair?
Did it like distribute things unequally between people?
Nope, I guess not. These are the categories that
our our moral intuitions have been trained to think of.
And these are good categories. But what height in an
anthropological study of different kinds of moral
intuitions determined is there's actually 6 moral foundation, 6
different almost like taste receptors for morality and and
weird folk. Western industrialized,
educated, rich democratic people tend to focus very heavily on a
couple of them and almost not have the others at all.
So although we do have traces of this, like disgust that comes up
when we think about something, often times we lack the language
to make sense of what's happening.
We don't understand it. And that's a real limitation.
We're going to get to why it's a limitation that the text
addresses in a minute, but this, this foundation is what height
would describe as the Sanctity Foundation.
The Sanctity Foundation imagines the world it imagines, spaces it
around, imagines things on a scale from pollution to purity.
The higher something is, the more the more righteous it is,
the more spiritual it is, the more beautiful it is, the more
good and holy it is. The lower on the scale something
is, the more corrupt, the more base, the more carnal, the more
defiled. And when you pollute sacred
things, when there's something that should be up here and you
defile it, you contaminate it, right?
We get this Ugg feeling, this disgust feeling This is that's
not, that's not how you're not supposed to do that.
We only have a few traces of this moral intuition for most of
us here in the West of this, the Sanctity Foundation that are
really operative examples like I just named, which I will not
belabor because they're gross. But for the 1st century people
reading this letter, this was a primary way in which they
thought about the world. As we look at and approach the
Hebrew Bible, we see everywhere they wouldn't have had the the
the sociological language for this, but we see this intuition
about the sacred, the pure and the impure, about keeping things
separate and segregated, about avoiding contact with things
that are impure. This was a central logic for how
they made sense of the world. This is how the Scripture talks
about the world very often. One of the ways throughout the
Old Testament, it wasn't simply that sin was unfair.
It wasn't simply that it harmed other people.
It was also perceived as a moral pollution, a kind of stain that
could be generated and it could contaminate people and places
and things, right, even things that weren't morally culpable.
And this pollution meant that purity or holiness could not be
present. So, so God, who is the ultimate
pure, could not be contaminated, could not be defiled by the
impurity generated by sin and generated by, in sin, by sinful
polluted people in the logic of Scripture.
There was, however, a way to decontaminate things that had
become polluted, and this way of decontaminating things, which we
see here in the text this morning was by way of blood, was
by way of blood. In my research for the sermon
this morning, I learned something new, something I did
not know, which was I don't know why there's so many things that
are distressing. In the sermon today I learned
that that that we are within one mile of Ebola right now.
Did you know that? I did not know that a Boston
University here in the South End operates what's called a BSL 4
laboratory. OK, Now, I didn't know anything
about laboratories before I did a deep, deep dive on this.
But, but a BSL 4 laboratory, if you work in scientific space,
you know, is like a big deal. There's like 15 of them in the
whole country. And we have one right here in
the South End, like a mile from here.
And so if the scale goes from 1:00 to 4:00, OK.
And if one is like your high school biology classroom where
you're supposed to like wash your hands and wear gloves,
right? A4 means Ebola.
It means like if contamination gets out, it is catastrophic,
right? Things are very seriously
contained. So.
So if you go to the national emerging infectious disease
laboratories here in the South End, but what you're not allowed
to do, right? Because obvious.
But what you would be met with is a very stringent set of
security. There are barriers upon barriers
upon barriers. Like the first thing you go when
you go on the website is a video describing all of the security
protocols. There are a lot and even beyond
the security protocols to make sure that like you are the
clearance trained, vetted, verified iris scan person who is
allowed into this space. There are also all kinds of
purification measures, right, to make sure that that that things
don't become contaminated that aren't supposed to, right?
You have to go through airlocks. You put on this this suit that I
didn't understand the name of, but it's basically like a space
suit that attaches you to like air from the building instead of
your own breath or the oxygen around you.
You have to shower like there's a chemical shower on the way
out. There's like all of these
different processes and procedures to make sure that
that which is pure cannot be contaminated by that which is
unpure, right? That there can't be cross
contamination across these things.
And I think that's actually a really good image of what we see
here in Hebrews Chapter 9 in the Tabernacle.
The Tabernacle was basically a B SL4 lab.
It was a place with many barriers and restrictions to
make sure that that was, which was impure did not come in
contact with that which was pure, because there would be
devastating consequences if it did.
If you were an Israelite man or woman in the back when the
Tabernacle was around, I don't remember which century, right,
and you sinned, you would come to the Tabernacle at the center
of the camp for purification. You might bring with you a goat
or a lamb as an offering. And and as you came to the
center of the camp, you'd find this, this structural wall,
something unusual in a tent encampment, right?
A wall with gates guarded by priests.
You know, you'd report what your business was and enter in and,
and probably even before you passed through the gates, man,
you would be like hit in the face with the smell, blood and
smoke. It would smell like a cookout.
That best, probably worse than that.
Rotting flesh, burning coals, smoke going up.
See, because many times every day as soon as you got through
this gate, you would encounter this massive 7 1/2 foot square,
chest high bronze altar had a coal fire that was burning
continuously. And day after day, lamb after
lamb, goat after goat, cow after cow would be sacrificed on this
altar, burned up and consumed. And if you had brought an
offering on that day, you would bring it in.
You would come up, you'd approach a priest.
When it was your turn, they would ask you to, to place your
hands on the head of the animal. This was a sign or a symbol that
the contamination, the pollution which was now present in your
body, was being passed into, was being delegated to this animal.
And then the priest in a, in a, in a swift motion with a sharp
knife, would slit the animal's throat.
Blood would gush out and be caught in a bucket just
underneath the animal's jugular vein.
The blood would be taken. The priest would take that
blood, would stick his fingers in it and wipe it on one of the
horns protruding from each corner of the altar.
The rest of the blood would be spilled out at the base.
This happened every time you committed some kind of a
transgression. Like regularly all the time,
every day. This was happening at the center
of the camp. Like you maybe have seen that
model of a Tabernacle somewhere in like your old study Bible
that has the pictures of the back.
But this was not like some pristine place.
It was more like a slaughterhouse.
Every day, animal after animal was killed and burned and burned
on the altar. And sometimes if it wasn't an
individual, the the, the purification right went even
further right. If a leader in the community
send a priest or, or the, the, the community as a whole, the
purification, the sprinkling of blood would extend not just to
the altar surface there, but inside the actual tent of
meeting the, the, the central space where the presence of God
dwelt. Within that tent there were two
chambers, an outer chamber which hosted the menorah, the altar of
incense, the table of showbread. And then there was an inner
chamber with the ark of the covenant, the place where the
manifest presence of God would dwell for a big sin, essentially
for a big contamination, a big pollution, they would go and
actually sprinkle inside the outer chamber.
And then once a year, only once a year, there would be a special
ceremony on the Day of Atonement when the high priest himself,
having bathed and cleaned, offered a sacrifice for himself
wearing these these white robes denoting purity, would take that
blood and enter into, push back the heavy curtain and pass
through into the holiest place where the priest would would
sprinkle that blood on the mercy seat, the place where God's
manifest presence dwelt. Why do you go to all these
lengths to explain everything that's happening in the
Tabernacle, Josh? Well, here's the deal.
I think this is what this passage is trying to point us
towards, that the weight that was felt by the original
audience of Hebrews that would not be felt by most of us today.
See, what they got on an intuitive level was that sin was
a big deal, Like that pollution, that offense against God.
Was it a serious thing? It wasn't to be trifled with.
It wasn't trivial. It was costly.
It was economically painful, it was morally painful, and there
was a heavy high cost to creating purification for
allowing the presence of God to stay with his people.
It took a lot, dozens of animals a day on on the the high holy
days, Josephus records thousands of animals in multiple rotations
being slaughtered in the Tabernacle or in the temple, all
so that God could be with his people.
And this wasn't just about cleansing the people are
forgiving sin. It was about purifying the space
that allowed for this external contact between God and humans.
And then we get to Jesus. Then we get to Jesus because
despite all of the cost, the gravity of this situation, it
was, according to Hebrews Chapter 9, not all that
effective. It didn't do everything that was
really wanted and needed. This was demonstrated by the
fact that the the the purification achieved was always
tenuous, like the fire of God's presence, just like Ebola was.
Like if you accidentally missed a step, you could get wiped out.
Aaron's sons. We see Nadab and ABBA who bring
unauthorized incense to the altar at one point and are
consumed by fire from the altar. Right.
Aza reaches out to steady the Ark of the Covenant and touch
that place that represents the Holy Manifest Presence of God,
and is struck dead on the spot. This gap was so severe that any
breach, just like at the lab here in the South end, like any
breach, incidental or not, was treated with deathly
seriousness. It had to be perfectly
maintained, and it had to be constantly maintained because
the people were always adding more pollution.
There was always more sin. The purification was always
incomplete. The daily sacrifices were
actually a confession of the system's limits.
This is what Hebrews 1011 says. It says that all these
sacrifices can never take away sin.
Hebrews 10/3 says the sacrifices actually became an annual
reminder of sin. They didn't permanently fix the
problem. They just made us all really,
really aware of the problem. They were a Band-Aid.
They were a stopgap at best. This whole continuously running,
elaborate, expensive system still didn't do what was wanted
and needed. Enter Jesus.
We read here in Hebrews Chapter 9 and verse 11 that Jesus comes
as high priest to offer a sacrifice.
And the writer compares what Jesus does to the work of the
ancient Tabernacle. Point by point and in every
step, he shows us that what Jesus accomplishes is an
upgrade. Jesus is better.
Jesus is greater. First off, Jesus enters a better
Tabernacle. In verse 11, we read that the
Tabernacle that Jesus enters at his death is not the physical
Tabernacle or temple in Palestine.
Instead, it is a Tabernacle not made with human hands.
Basically, what the writer of Hebrews is explaining to us is
that the Tabernacle and temple that his audience would be
familiar with was not the real one.
It was a replica. It was a model.
The real Tabernacle, the real temple, exists in the heavenlies
in a space in God's presence with his throne.
That is the real place of God's manifest presence, and it is to
that place the Jesus ascends. Not only that, but Jesus not
only ascends into a better Tabernacle, but he offers a
better sacrifice. In verse 14, the text explains
that the Jesus sacrifice isn't the blood of bulls and goats.
He's not just sacrificing animals.
Rather, he sacrifices himself, his own blood.
This was something that the Levitical priest could never
accomplished, like he couldn't offer himself.
Then sacrifices would be done. But Jesus offers Himself, and we
read it here in Hebrews 9 that it was once for all that He
could do it permanently and eternally.
It went further than the Old Covenant sacrifices were able to
do because it was forever. Not only that, we see here in
Hebrews Chapter 9 that this sacrifice in the Old Covenant
was just an external cleansing, like it allowed for general
proximity, but there were still all of these airlocks.
There were still all of these barriers.
If you were a commoner, like the outer court was as close as you
were going to get. But Jesus comes and we read here
that He in verse 13 cleanses us inwardly in our conscience.
Hebrews 10/14 says by 1 sacrifice he is made perfect
forever. Those who are being made holy.
1010 says we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the
body of Jesus Christ. Once for all.
Jesus sacrifice accomplishes that which this elaborate
intensive system never could. The purity goes further and
lasts longer. I love this image that the
Gospels all give us through all the synoptics.
This image of the curtain tearing.
In Matthew 27, we see that as Jesus died, the curtain in the
temple, right? This place that separated the
holy place from the holy of holies, the place of God's
manifest presence. What happens?
It tears, and it tears from the top down.
It's ripped in two. What is God doing and saying?
He's saying that for the first time now and forever.
The airlock is done right. The distance is obliterated.
You don't have to go through a priest.
You don't have to go through a sacrifice that the cost has been
paid once for all. You have unfettered, direct
access to God. It's ripped in half.
Never to be re sewn, never to be
put back together. Not just for the priests, but
for all. God says I welcome you.
I invite you into my presence. Why?
Because the purification that always needed to happen over and
over and over again now is finished.
It's done once for all. We, through the blood of Jesus
are made pure. This is so powerful.
If you've done any gardening in the city of Boston, you know
that usually we plant in these raised beds, right?
Anybody familiar with that? We have these beds that protrude
out of the ground that, that we, you know, put a base on them and
pour some soil in them. And then we grow our tomato
plants or our basil or our cumin or whatever in these, in these
raised beds, right? And probably, you know, but
maybe you don't. Why do we do that?
The reason is lead poisoning, right?
If you take your tomato plant and you just put it in the
ground, you're likely to be eating a good bit of poison with
those tomatoes, which you probably don't want to do,
right? And the reason for that is like,
of course, everybody's houses were painted in lead paint.
And then that paint got scraped off over time, like chips came
off. I'm sorry if I'm triggering
somebody right now who's just realizing this for the first
time. This was not supposed to be a
public safety announcement. But the lead over time through
the paint, like leeches into the ground, right, becomes part of
the soil. You don't see it.
You don't know it's there unless you take a test.
But if you go plant your plant in the ground and it grows that
the plant pulls and and those fruit are rotten, right?
They look good on the outside, but they're poisoned on the
inside. But there's something you can do
about this, right? You can do soil remediation and
soil remediation is, is planting a certain certain kinds of
plants. You know, sunflowers are in this
crop. Like, there's some others as
well. I'm not really a gardener, so
you should ask Google or somebody else about which crops
are best if you're trying to do this.
This is not a how to wiki. But the point is, is that those
those plants will actually suck up the lead poison from the
ground, right? They'll bring it in through
their root systems. They'll ingest it into
themselves and then the space will be made pure.
The pollution will be done away with.
Friends, this is what Jesus does for us.
He takes the pollution which has contaminated our lives and our
homes and our families and our relationships.
Not just the the moral injuries and the infractions that that
the actual direct sin, but but even the things that have been
done to us, Jesus brings them into himself and heals them.
And friends, this is, I think, so important for us because
we've been talking a lot of theology this morning, Old
Testament historical stuff. But here's what I know because
I'm a pastor and I have lots of conversations with you and a lot
of other people. I know shame is a problem for
us. I know that a lot of us walk
around in life feeling like we have a giant stain on our shirt
and everybody can see it. You ever been there?
I remember going to a wedding, having a great time, took my
jacket off and somebody's like, did you realize you have a
massive stain on your sleeve? I was like, I had no idea that
was there this whole time. I feel so embarrassed.
But some of us are walking through life this way, right?
We, you know, we, we've asked Jesus for forgiveness.
We've repaired some things in our relationships.
Maybe we're doing OK on the outside, but no matter what we
kind of tell ourselves, our self talk, we just feel like
something is rotten in us. There's a part of us that we
hate and are disgusted by. And I'm not trying to to layer
on this for anybody here. This is not about putting this
on you. It's more about helping you to
notice if actually this is your experience right now.
Like, are you carrying something that you walk with as a stain,
right? Something that makes you
unworthy, that makes you undeserving of belonging, of
love? Maybe it's something you did
this time in your life where you really hurt somebody that you
loved. Maybe you had an abortion.
Maybe this morning you are a victim of sexual assault.
Maybe you have a hidden addiction in your life that's
eating at you, gnawing at you. Maybe you just grew up with
expectations from your parents, maybe from yourself that you
haven't lived up to, you haven't met and you know it inside.
And you carry around this deep sense of like, I am a disaster.
I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy.
There's something wrong with me. And, and you know, it's this is
not about making all of these things that I named the same.
They're not, it's not about like you doing something bad.
Maybe you did something bad. Maybe you did absolutely nothing
bad and you know that you did something nothing bad.
Like, you know, it wasn't your fault, but you still feel it,
like you still carry around that this feeling of stain, this
feeling of shame, this feeling of impurity.
There's a sense that lives in your body, that something that
was sacred, something that was beautiful, something that was
good, something that deserves to be held in this way was was was
defiled, was corrupted, was polluted.
And you haven't even had the language for it because you keep
telling yourself, I didn't do anything bad.
I didn't hurt anybody. I wasn't unfair.
But you still feel off. You haven't been able to get
past it, friends. My point today is that Jesus
cleanses us, right? My point is not even whether
like, you should feel that way or should not feel that way,
right? Whether there was a moral
injury, was it was your fault? None of that.
My point is that even in the polluted spaces, even in the
spaces where we carry around that shame, that pain, that
hurt, that self judgment, that self hatred, that Jesus died to
purify those spaces. Exactly.
His blood is a cleansing agent that, if you will let it, will
heal the wounds that can free you and touch you and not just
reconcile you relationally, but actually make you holy, make you
pure. I love how the text here puts it
in this one verse that I'm not going to be able to find now.
It says that Jesus makes us holy and then we are becoming holy,
right? There's a tension there, like it
hasn't all the way manifest. Sometimes we look at ourselves
and we're like, yeah, I don't have it all cleaned up yet.
I'm still doing the polluting things.
I know that I am. I'm still hanging under the
cloud. But what this text guarantees us
is that the blood of Jesus is big enough, that the curtain has
been torn, that we are welcomed in, that we have access to the
very presence and love of the Father because of Jesus.
Friends, this is my invitation to you this morning as we move
into a time of reflection and response.
What would it look like for you to allow the sacrifice of Jesus,
to allow the blood of Jesus to meet you, to heal you, to purify
you exactly in those places that you have deemed unforgivable,
polluted, defiled, untouchable? You don't need to continue to
perform a bunch of sacrifices like you don't need to keep
trying to get it right, trying to figure it out, trying to
hustle your way or righteous your way or work your way into
the presence of God. Like you were never going to get
through OK? Like we were never going to be
good enough that we could access His presence.
All we have to do this morning is to receive the gift of His
sacrifice and look for you. Maybe this morning you're at a
point in your your faith walk where you've never really done
that, or at least never done it on that level, or you've had
awareness of Jesus. You know the gospel story, but
you haven't really ever said like, I want this for me
friends, the invitation stands before you.
The curtain stands rent, the pathway is open.
All you have to do is enter in.