Hebrews 10:1-18.  Today’s reading ends a major section in the letter to the Hebrews.  The author has been comparing Jesus and his personal sacrifice to the Old Testament system of sacrifices practiced by the Jewish people.  Remember the author originally wrote this letter to Jewish believes who were being pressured to return to their original faith and practices by family and friends.  The situation was even more important to those family and friends in the face of a war with the Roman government.  Remember too, that many of these Jewish believes in Jesus had been priests in the old system.

Today’s reading divides into four paragraphs (vv. 1-4; vv. 5-9; vv. 10-14; vv. 15-18).  IN the first paragraph the author talks about the Law.  This is the system of honoring God that Moses set up at God’s command.  Although it came from God it was not the end of the story, according to the author of Hebrews it was only a shadow.  In yesterday’s post we talked about the problem between man and God; and the solution, Jesus.  Many Jews thought that obedience to the Law was the solution.  In this paragraph the author point out that if the Law solved the sin problem then it would not have to go on year in and year out.  The Law did have a point though, according to verse 3 it kept the people aware that they were offending God.

The second paragraph uses several quotes from Psalm 40 to point out that there was always a progression in God’s mind about dealing with the sin problem.  Although the Psalm was originally written by David the author of Hebrews puts the words into Jesus mouth.  This fact either points to the fact that ultimately Jesus was the force behind the words of God or that he fulfills the ultimate role of David as God’s forever king for the kingdom; in a sense Jesus is the ultimate David.  Of course the original readers may have understood both meanings mixed together.  The progression was that God never intended the sacrifices of animals to deal with sin that is why Jesus had to come and “do God’s will.” (vv. 7, 9) Verse 8-9 make the progression clear by using words like “after” and “then”.

The next paragraph explains what the “will of God” was that Jesus did.  He offered himself for our sins.  While the offerings that the priests under the old system made had to be day by day and year after year the sacrifice that Jesus made was just once.  After he made his sacrifice he sat down next to God.  Sitting down shows us his work was finished and the place he sat hints again at his royal position as the ultimate king in David’s line.  Verse 14 makes it clear what the effect of his sacrifice was, it made things right between us and God.  The end of verse 14 also has an interesting little side note, we may be forgiven but there is a process for our day to day lives, we are being sanctified or set apart.  Every day we have the opportunity to return God’s love for us by living a life which pleases him.

The final paragraph extends this though and shows us how the new way is better than the old.  Before, there were laws that each person failed to keep, we all sin, under the new system our forgiven lives make possible God actually living in us.  The Holy Spirit comes into us and motivates us to live lives that make God happy.  That is what it means when it says he will put his laws on our hearts and in our minds.  God will not hold us to blame for our “sins and lawless deeds”.  This is a shorter quote of Jeremiah 31 with the longer quote in Hebrews 8:7-12.  This ties this conclusion back to idea in Hebrews 8 of a new and old contract between us and God.

Some scholars see in these four paragraphs a reflective structure called a chiasmus (I talked about this in another post but you would have to search the posts to find which one).  In this case paragraphs 1 and 4 reflect each other but as a contrast and paragraphs 2 and 3 reflect each other but are parallel in their idea.  Paragraph 1 basically tells us we can tell the old system does not deal with sin because the sacrifices are repeated while paragraph 4 points out that Jesus’ sacrifice is better as seen in the fact that he only had to do it once.  Paragraph 2 tells us the repeated sacrifices have been replaced by the one sacrifice and paragraph 2 tells us that the one ultimate priest, Jesus, had replaced the old group of priests.

All together we see that the Jewish believers were not abandoning the faith of their fathers but were taking part in it’s ultimate fulfillment.  The author has shown them from the Old Testament that the Law was a shadow of the real thing and that Jesus is the real deal.  In verse 16 the author makes a subtle change when he quotes Jeremiah 31:33 he says “them” while in the Old Testament it says “the house of Israel”.  The change probably hinted to the readers that the fact that there were non-Jewish believers in Jesus was part of the plan all along too.  The conclusion in verses 17-18 are for all of us God will not remember our sins (in terms of making us pay for them) because Jesus once for all offering allows us to be forgiven.

God thank you for your once for all sacrifice for me and for others.  Thank you for doing what I could never do; pay the price for my sins that allows me to have a relationship with you.  Thank you for cleaning me up and making me a suitable place for the Holy Spirit.  Thank you for the Holy Spirit in my life showing me the way.  Help me listen to him and understand him.  Let my life be pleasing to you today.

Hebrews 9:15-28.  We have been learning that man has a problem and that God has a solution.  The problem is sin; disobedience and rebellion against God.  The consequence of that sin is separation from God; spiritual death.  The solution was Jesus paying that price for us.  The solution was hinted at right after the first sin by Adam when God informed Eve that her “seed” (descendant) would crush the Devil; the one who suggested the first act of disobedience to them (Genesis 3:1-15).  The solution was made a little more clear when God promised Abraham that his “seed” would bring a blessing on al the nations of the world (Genesis 12:3; 22:18).   Although the second verse seems to be talking about a group of descendants Galatians 3:16 indicates that God had a particular one in mind, Jesus.  The second passage in Genesis probably had a double meaning; as we are learning from Hebrews God also used the Israelites (a group of descendants of Abraham (see The Old Testament Connection)) and their way of honoring him (the Law of Moses; The Old Covenant) to inform the world about the sin problem.  What was hinted at in these snapshots of our history with God was made more clear by the writers of both Hebrews and Galatians.  So Jesus is the real deal; the true sacrifice offered in the real place of God, Heaven.

We learned yesterday that Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice and that his death alone can give us a clear conscience about our disobedience toward God.  Verses 15-28 explain in more detail Jesus sacrifice.  Remember that this letter (Hebrews, See Intro to Hebrews) was written to a group of Jewish people who had accepted that Jesus was the promised “seed” of Abraham; the Messiah or Christ.  Also remember that many of them had been priests; involved in the daily rituals of the Old Covenant at the temple in Jerusalem.  Making the connection between years or even decades of sacrifices on their part and Jesus as the ultimate and final sacrifice would have been important to them.

The fist part of today’s reading has always been kind of confusing to me.  We have been reading about old and new contracts or promises God has made with us and the sacrifice Jesus made and then verse 16 and 17 talk about how people need to die for a contract to be in force.  What?  I used to think I was missing something from the culture and time.  Some translations use the term “will” instead of “covenant”.  In that case the talk about the “death of the one who made it” makes more sense, but then it doesn’t seem to fit in.  The fact that people die before a will is enforced doesn’t really seem to fit with an argument about Jesus dying as a sacrifice, and the Greek word translated as covenant or will is not used anywhere else in the New Testament in that way.  In the King James translation of the Bible the translators used an English word “testament” instead of will or covenant and the word “testator” instead of the phrase “the one who made it”.   Also in the Old Testament the word for covenant is related to the word cut and the Greek word translated “testator” is used in a Greek version of the Old Testament fro the time of Christ in that same sense.  Some scholars have suggested that the “testator” in our reading is actually referring to the sacrifice that was part of most contracts in Old Testament times; in other words the “one who made the contract” was the sacrifice not the person behind it.  Confused yet?  More confused?  Don’t give up, there’s “light at the end of the tunnel”.

First this all point out two things; language translation is not a science it is an art and second, as part of that art, translators need to put themselves “in the shoes” of the original readers (imagine what translators would do with the last couple of sentences of this post in a couple of thousand years; Light?  Tunnels?  Shoes?).  The author may be using both sets of meanings for the words here (remember the possible double meaning in Genesis 22:18).  That sort of word play may be lost on us but it might have tied the whole idea of Jesus being both the promise maker (as God) and the one who proved the promise by his sacrifice (as the infinite God-Man) together for the original Jewish readers.  Just because we do not fully understand something does not make it invalid; a principle of reading documents from history is that we must give them the “benefit of the doubt”, assume they are trustworthy unless proven otherwise.

Another principal of reading old documents (and especially the Bible) is that we need to let what is clear help us understand (if possible) the things that are not clear.  That is part of the “light at the end of the tunnel” and in our case the rest of our reading is much more clear than verses 16-17.  Verses 18-22 remind us of the use of sacrifices to show the seriousness of the first covenant (talking about the religious system that Moses set up for the Jewish people).  When I think of a priest flicking blood all over the place I think of a mess not purity and cleanness, verse 22 helps me see the real meaning of what is going on.  Fist of all notice that the author says “we can almost say”; I don’t know what reservations he had in mind, there are sacrifices in the Old Testament Law that do not require blood, but maybe he realized that literal blood sprinkled around makes a mess too.  More importantly though is that the author explains what he means by making something pure of clean when he says “without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin”.  The purity is by forgiveness not by washing.  The word for pure can mean “fit for use”.  For us to be “fit” for a relationship with God the consequences of our sins need to be paid and that is what Jesus did for us.

Verse 26 tells us that Jesus “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”.  Why did this need to happen?  Because it is appointed for men to die once (a part of the consequence for sin was physical death (separation of body and soul) as well as spiritual death) and then be judged.  The fact that we die the first death promised as a consequence for our sin leaves us with little confidence about how the judgment will go.  According to Revelation 20:11-15 if your name is not in the book of life and you are relying on the things you have done in life you will be eternally banished from God’s presence.  The book of life is also called the “Lamb’s Book of Life”, the lamb being a reference to Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice similar to the annual sacrifice made for sins in the Jewish law.  Which brings us full circle back to verse 28 where we see the alternative to eternal banishment, “salvation with out reference to sins” but it is only for those who are eagerly looking for Jeus to return for them.

Lord help me trust in you.  Help me be watching at the door for you to come.  Help me be busy, too, with things that might make you happy.  Let my life be filled with God pleasing actions.  You paid a huge price for me just so I could spend eternity in a great place with you.  Help my life each day express an “are we there yet?” attitude.  Thank you Jesus for making me clean by your blood.