Jesus Is Greater | The Perfect Sacrifice

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

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

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.

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.