…by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us (Hebrews 9:12).
To better understand chapter nine from the Book of Hebrews, we must begin in the book of Exodus; we must begin with blood. Specifically, the blood that was used to purify God’s people after their liberation from Egypt. We read in Moses’ second book, “And [Moses] sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words” (Exodus 24:5-8). Imagine for a moment how gruesome this scene must have been: the people of God standing before Mt. Sinai covered in blood, worshipping before an altar covered in blood. The chosen people—the promised hope for the world’s salvation—covered in death before their heavenly liberator and judge. It must have been truly horrible and that, of course, was the point. These buckets of blood were an unignorable symbol of what it would mean if the chosen people broke their solemn covenant with the Almighty Lord. The horrible screams of the unblemished sacrifices, the terrible smell of burning animals, the disgusting personal contact with what was left of the poor, dead creatures was all designed to vividly portray the horrible effects of human rebellion against our Creator. The wage of sin is death; sin is death, and death is hard to ignore when it is sprinkled on you and your family’s face and clothes and hands.
Our church’s fifteen hundred year old collection of Sunday readings from the Bible forces us to think about this event every year, but we would probably prefer to avoid pondering what appears, to our modern sensibilities, to be the gruesome and cruel rituals of a long dead past. That visceral reaction is born of centuries of work by Christians attempting to convince everyone from the Romans to the Vikings to the local witch-doctor to stop sacrificing animals—or men—to the gods. The modern secular vegetarian and vegan movements would have been impossible without this work, and if you really want to make a secular vegan crazy, mention this fact. Nevertheless, what happened at the foot of Mt. Sinai or at the first Passover or at the yearly slaughter of a lamb and a goat on the Day of Atonement was indeed awful and horrible, but our judgment of these rituals and the people involved stems from the false idea that we moderns are any different or better, for all secular ideologies—or ways of thinking and living—ask us to cover ourselves in blood to be redeemed. I don’t have time to list every political or tribal commitment we can make which distracts us from the will of God, but they all require us to cover ourselves in someone’s blood and say, “This sacrifice will save me.”
The great difference between our secular blood-soaked covenants and the Sinai covenant is that the Sinai covenant was brutally and pitilessly honest about what establishing heaven on earth costs. Ask a secular political progressive how the world will be saved, and they will tell you that through technology and education all people will be made equal, but they don’t tell you that sexual equality alone will necessitate the blood of millions of unborn children. Ask a neo-conservative how the world will be saved and they will tell you something about exporting Western ideals to every corner of the world, but they don’t mention that you are going to have to kill a whole lot of people who look at Western decadence and suicide and the sexual slavery which drives pornography and say, “No, thank you.” We may look at the cult of the Old Testament tabernacle and temple and think, “Well, this barbarity has nothing to do with me,” but in reality, our modern world has simply found ways to distract and insulate us from the pulsing realities of sin and blood. We too easily fall into the very trap which makes Paul’s words supremely relevant and important for our lives.
Remember, the original context of this letter to the Hebrews was a comprehensive warning to all the second-generation Christians tempted to fall back into the old worship of the temple—to embrace the shadows of things to come, rather than the light which now shines into the world. Is that us too? The short answer is, “Yes.” I know I constantly want to return to the false religion of the world and its comforts, to turn and follow the high priests of our culture, rather than trusting in the actual victory over evil and pain and suffering that was accomplished by the great High Priest described in by the apostle. The text does not particularly care how you vote or which cable news network you watch. What matters far more is what we think will actually save the world? For it is that enterprise into which we will pour our heart and soul and mind. The Republicans or Democrats can have our vote; Christ wants our everything, and He has actually earned it by being the everything the sacrificial system of the Old Testament was us pointing towards—by being what every religious impulse in man has been pointing us towards. The greatest tragedy that could befall us is to give our full allegiance to anyone other than our Prophet, our King, our Priest. That warning was relevant 1,950 years ago, and it is supremely relevant today. The great question is: Do we cover ourselves in blood, or do we trust in the blood of the one who covers us in His righteousness?
“But, we may ask, “why do I need a High Priest?” Well, again, however you live your life, you are already following some priest—the only question is “What high priest are you following?” You could follow the example and teachings of your favorite movie star or politician or guru or philosopher or preacher, we could live for ourselves and try to grab as much happiness as we can before we die, or we can be saved by the God who created us and loves us and offers Himself for our sins and dead works. Christ, as the true high priest—truly worthy of our love and worship—climbed onto the cross shaped altar at Calvary, and as the ceremonial lambs and goats and heifers that came before Him foreshadowed, He offered His sinless life for the sinful men and women who have filled the generations of His church. That once for all sacrifice has forever changed the relationship between sin and death because it is not us who are covered in blood and making promises we know we can’t keep; it isn’t us trying to save the world with our corrupt schemes and self-serving plans; no, it is Christ covered in His own blood keeping the promise the Son made to His Father. That loving promise, within the Trinity, ensures the creation of a new, resurrected world whose first victorious member walked out of His powerless tomb on the first Easter Day.
Our vindicated messiah has now ascended into the heavenly tent “not made with hands” to fulfill three important functions intimately linked to His status as the last and greatest high priest. First, Christ represents us before the Father within the heavenly royal court. Our status as co-heirs in the new forever, already being established in our remade hearts, has real significance because as we grow in holiness we are more and more united to our human representative in heaven. This reality breaks down time and space in such a way that St. Paul can say, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-7). The true Christian is so intimately united with Christ that His resurrection and triumphant entry into heaven are our victory too. For those who are the children of God, our inheritance is already secured by the Savior who died for us: the Savior who has already sacrificed Himself on the cross and now makes that sacrifice a permanent reality in Heaven: the very nerve center of existence. Blessedly, in our times of weakness and failing, we simply need to close our eyes and remember our certain future already being lived out by the firstborn son of the new creation, and within that assured victory, no man or devil can touch us.
Secondly, our great high priest perfectly fulfills the role of providing the divine blessing upon the people of God. We see both Aaron and Melchizedek, and even God’s humble servant speaking to you today, bless the people of God, but my announcement of God’s blessing upon you only has any power because Christ has poured down the supreme blessing of the Holy Spirit onto the church. As St. Peter tells us during his stunning Pentecost sermon, “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing” (Acts 2:33). This Spirit of true freedom from sin and death writes the peace treaty between God and man on our hearts and makes the reconciliation between rebellious creature and perfect Creator more real than the lies and deceptions of a dying evil world. But, as we learn again and again, we lust after the lies. I am not surprised when people choose the world and its comforts over Christ and His cross, but when I see the opposite, when I see a busy woman come to her church to pray on a Sunday, or see a man give up some of his Saturday to help another saint, or look out into the congregation and see a human soul wrestling with the piercing dagger of God’s truth, I know the Holy Spirit is at work, and I rejoice to see men and women blessed by the Living God. If you are Christ’s, God the Holy Spirit will not lose the battle for good and evil being waged in the earthly temple of your heart.
Lastly, our great high priest is our heavenly intercessor: our mediator who dwells in the heavenly holy of holies constantly advocating for His people. He who died for us does not ever forget us or abandon us: by His stripes we are healed, and each of those stripes matter just as each of us we who make up His Body matter. The most beautiful analogy for this heavenly act of continuous love and care are the stones, engraved with the names of the 12 tribes, the Israelite high priest would wear on his shoulders while entering the earthly holy of holies, the earthly meeting place between God and man. The high priest also wore these names on a breastplate so that the people for whom he was advocating were always on his shoulders and on his heart. In the new covenant, our great high priest wears our names on His shoulders and on His heart; He bears the weight of our lives of pain and woe and makes real Christian sacrificial love possible. As Christ prayed to His Father before His crucifixion and death: “I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them” (John 17:9-10). Christ cherishes His people, and through His true disciples, our great high priest is glorified in the world. Amazingly, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, prays for our daily victory over sin and complacency and the numbing slow death of this evil world, and His prayers, just like His blood, will not be poured out in vain. May His daily prayers be our anthem; may the words of our great high priest fill our souls with strength, and may the prayers of God’s people—in pain and joy, in sadness and in victory— may those prayers fill every corner of heaven.