Morning Prayer. Psalm 50, 1 Kings 10, Hebrews 9:15-28
Evening Prayer. Psalm 51, Haggai 1, Matthew 14
Hebrews 9:15-28
Jesus “is the mediator of a new covenant.” This sentence is whole point of the epistle to the Hebrews. And that’s exactly what he goes on to explain in the rest of this passage. Think of it this way: The story of the Bible is God’s revealing himself to humankind. In Genesis, we meet God as creator and savior. He’s the one who makes the world and chooses people from the world to be his own. In Exodus, and on through the rest of the Old Testament, we see God save Israel from slavery in Egypt, we meet Moses, and we see God’s people ask for God’s word through a representative or mediator. Then through the rest of the Bible we see people try to live up to God’s revelation and fall short again and again and again, until finally at the end of the age, we meet a person named Jesus. Jesus is radical, in that he teaches, but with his own authority. He is a rabbi who appears more learned than all the most elite teachers in Jerusalem, and yet he both subverts the common (mis)understandings of God’s law and calls us all to a very much higher standard: love.
All along the way, the people of God tried to follow God’s word, as it had been given to Moses. They tried to obey the laws. They even made new rules to keep them from even approaching the boundaries. They studied the words of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings to make sure they had all the details exactly correct. But there was something missing. Not in God’s revelation, of course—God gives us exactly what we need at just the right time.
What was missing was the right time. In the prior days, God gave us a law to instruct us, and a temple to point us to a deeper reality. The law instructs us in the way of righteousness. The temple reminds us we are not righteous. The law shows us a path to holiness, the temple reminds us we have broken the law already, both in what we have done and what we have left undone.
Hebrews teaches us that in Jesus we have the true and greater revelation of God. As Paul writes in Colossians, he is the exact image of the invisible God. And here in Hebrews, he is “the mediator of a new covenant.”
How is it new? Well in the old covenant, we have images and pictures. Verse 23 calls the temple and its system—taught to us by Moses—a copy or a picture of heavenly things. And because it was a copy or a picture, it had to be constantly sanctified and set apart. The writer says that blood had to continually be shed, not only for forgiveness in the old system, but also to cleanse and sanctify the temple itself.
The blood was a lesson. The blood in the temple showed us that sin is costly. A lot of sacrifices were made in the temple daily—for the temple, for the kings and governors, and for the people—each reminding them that as hard as they tried, as many rules as they followed, they still sinned. They still failed to love God as they should and still failed to love their neighbors as they loved themselves. So, the sacrifices in the temple continued day after day.
The blood was also a promise. It was a promise that God desires to forgive sins. That God does not ultimately desire sacrifice, but repentance. The blood in the temple was a promise that God was writing a story—a history in which the rituals in the temple would be finally fulfilled. Sins would finally be cast as far as the east is from the west. That God would not simply overlook sin but cast it away entirely and forever.
The blood was a lesson that our best efforts will never bridge the gap between us and God; and it was a promise that God would soon bridge the gap between us by himself. And this is where Jesus comes in. The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus did not enter a copy of the heavenly things—Jesus walked into heaven itself. He did not bring the blood of bulls and goats—he brough his own blood, his own life. Jesus “appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
The writer goes on, “people are destined to die once, and then face judgment.” Perhaps you’re afraid of judgment in one way or another. Perhaps the idea you will face the Lord one day terrifies you. On the other hand, perhaps you feel particularly judged right here and now when people talk about law, obedience, sin, and repentance. Maybe you think of self-righteous religious people who tell you if you were only more like them, then you’d be okay with God.
Or more likely than all of it, you just feel judgment in much more ordinary ways. You feel shame that you’ve not achieved what you wanted to when you were younger. You feel shame because there is distance in many of your relationships that you barely understand. You feel guilt that you cannot spend more of your time with your family. You feel afraid that you’re just not enough.
But, and here’s what’s new, Jesus Christ died once—he was judged and found to be enough; he was sacrificed—so that the sins of many would be forgiven and done away with—your sins and mine. Here’s what’s new: The promise of the Old Covenant was that sins could be forgiven once-for-all. And this promise is kept in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Are you tired and burdened? Look to who keeps his promise to give you rest. Do you feel guilty or ashamed? Look to the one who lifts your head. Do you want to know how to live with new life? Then look to the one who is gentle and humble in heart. Learn from him, and you will find rest for your soul.
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Photo by Kripesh Adwani at Pexels.
Chuck Anderson 