"Approaching A Holy God" - Hebrews 9:1-14

All right, if you got a Bible, you turn to Hebrews chapter 9.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

So I was getting ready for the sermon this week. As I'm reading the beginning

of Hebrews chapter 9, I realized how foreign this world is to me.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

So let me start by just reading the first six verses.

It says, now, even the first covenant had regulation. So remember at the end

of chapter eight, where we finished last week, he talked about Jesus ushering

in a new covenant because the first one was obsolete.

And so he's gonna kind of flesh that out right here. He says,

now even the first covenant had regulations for worship at an earthly place of holiness.

For a tent or a tabernacle was prepared. The first section in which were the

lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence, it is called the holy place.

Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place.

Having the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all

sides with gold, it was a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron's staff that

budded in the tablets of the covenant.

Above it were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat of all these things.

We cannot now speak in detail.

So I'm reading that and I'm going, that is the most foreign thing to me.

I've never walked into a room and really seen any of those things.

Now, if you grew up maybe Roman Catholic or in that world, maybe some of these

words make sense to you and you've seen someone burn incense or you've seen some of that stuff.

But man, I grew up in a Baptist church in East Texas, like a lot of people did.

And we didn't have relics.

The relics were the pews that someone donated and you weren't allowed to take them out.

You know, like the relics, the relics were those kinds of things,

the pulpit that some guy hand built in the fifties and that it was not untouchable.

Like the kids couldn't go within five feet of it or they would die.

Right. That was our relics.

Those were the things that we revered. And so I'm reading this and I'm going,

I understand what he's saying.

I understand what these things are just because if you've read your Old Testament,

you kind of know what this is. But in my own life, these are very foreign ideas.

Now to the Hebrews, they would have known exactly what these things were.

Their whole life was based around them. But for us, I think it's tempting to

read something like that and go, all right, come on, like, what's in it for me?

You know, golden urns, cherubim, bread, the covenant.

Like, yeah, that's all cool. And I'm glad that that happened.

But I need something for myself.

And I think that's the mistake a lot of us make, myself included at times,

is trying to get through things like that and not understand why he's saying

what he's saying, not understand what the purpose of those things were.

And part of that is we live in

a time where, of course, technology affects every single one of us always.

All right. If I want to talk to someone, I just pull out this device and it

connects to a satellite in space and then that satellite connects them to somebody

else. And somehow we talk, I don't know how that works.

You can tell by the way I'm doing this, right? Like I'm not,

I don't, I don't understand the science of it, but I know that that's what happens when I do that.

Right. If I have a question, I can just Google it or you can ask Alexa,

whatever, whatever your government spy choice is, you know, like whatever you

want them to know about you, wherever, you know, you, you, you do that.

Right. If I want food, I just go to a place. And as long as I have money,

they can give me as much food as I want. or I can even sit at home and open

my phone and order the food exactly how I want.

Someone will bring it to my front porch and drop it off. I don't even have to talk to them.

Incredible invention, right? They just drop it off and I just eat it.

And so much of our lives have been made easy, but at times we read things like

this and we're so far removed from them in our daily lives that it's hard for

us to focus in and say, okay, I really need to understand this.

I really need to understand what God's doing here, right? Because it feels like

someone's trying to teach us how to crank start a car.

And yet most of us have keys that open the door before we get there.

And we don't even have to take the key out of our pocket. We punch a button and the car starts.

And as if somebody was trying to give you a tutorial on, you know,

when you crank start a car, you've got the crank and you want to turn it this

way and you got to prime it.

And we would go, that doesn't matter to me.

I don't have that. I don't need that.

And so again, it's like reading of a lost time in a foreign place in history

that we have no experience with, and that it's really hard for us to understand why this matters.

And I think that's this morning. We want to understand why is the writer of Hebrews doing this?

And why is it important for us? Obviously the Hebrews need to hear it,

but why do we need to hear it? Why did God preserve it in his word?

Why are these relics and these things so important.

So verse eight kind of helps us understand why he puts it in there,

why he's going to do this.

He says in verse eight, by this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way to the

holy places is not yet opened.

So he goes through all of those things and he explains all these things.

And then he says, God, the Holy Spirit is indicating something to you.

He's trying to show something to you. He's trying to represent something to you.

That's why he's doing this.

Understanding what is going on here will help me understand what's happening,

what Christ is accomplishing, why Christ being the high priest matters,

why Christ going into the holy place matters. If I understand this better,

I'll understand that better.

And I would just say, as we get started, if you have a hard time trying to understand

the magnitude or how important or how much gravity there is for someone to say,

well, I talked to God this morning.

Well, I prayed. I went to church and I communed with the Lord.

That's what he's trying to help you understand, is why you can even say that.

Why you can even speak those words. why that's even possible.

And it's again, important to remember that this is God's history,

that when we look at history, especially the people of Israel and what God's

doing, that God governs history and is revealing himself to the world throughout history.

And he guides history from one period to the next.

And yeah, when we read about what was and what was happening,

it seems strange and foreign to us.

And there may be even a temptation to go, I just do not care about that at all.

I don't even want to know what that is. I don't want to understand that.

And when I look at that, it seems like God's really hard to get to.

And it seems like God's kind of mean and kind of distant, but it helps to understand

that each period of time that we see in the Bible helps to interpret the next.

If you understand these in sequence,

you understand that all of them are trying to get to where Jesus is.

But if you skip all of them, you'll just go to Jesus and go,

oh, that was really easy.

It's really easy for me to know who God is. It's really easy for me to pray.

It's really easy for me to come into God's presence. This isn't a big deal at all.

I went to church. The guy yelled at me for a little bit.

They sang just as I am 19 times. I cried, went down front. Now we're good,

right? That's how we get to God.

And I think that's where we miss it. I think that's why we see so many times

that people can say they know God and not seem to take him seriously at all,

because there's not an understanding of what has taken place for them to know him.

So what is this period communicating? What is the Holy Spirit trying to do?

Let me read the verses we skipped and then we'll jump into that.

We'll just go ahead and read 6 through 10.

These preparations, having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the

first section performing their ritual duties.

Again, I've been a pastor for a while now. If somebody said, what do you do?

I would not go, I go into the temple and I perform my ritual duties.

Like, that's just not how I wouldn't put that on a job description.

I've never read a job description that includes those things.

He says, but into the second, only the high priest goes,

and he only once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself,

for the unintentional, listen to this, and for the unintentional sins of the

people. Did you not mean to sin?

Well, if I didn't mean to do it, it's not really my fault. No, no, it is still your sin.

By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way to the holy places is not yet

opened as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for

the present age. Okay, that's for us.

Okay, present age, the time after Christ, that's the age we live in.

Christ has come, this is our age. So he's going to shift here and he's going

to start to go into why this matters.

According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot

perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink,

various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

So what does that all mean? In other words, the way to God was very limited,

right? His presence was sealed off behind the outer tent.

He could only be approached in atonement by the high priest once a year,

and only the high priest could go.

And he had to go with blood, including blood for his own sins,

even his unintentional sins.

Again, we would do well to realize that before we could enjoy the incredible

gift of the new covenant and God's presence in our lives, we should understand

how incredibly scandalous this would have sounded to the Hebrew hearers.

These are people that when they thought about coming in contact with God,

they had some stories that would have popped in their minds,

and they were not going to church camp and singing Kumbaya and everybody holding

hands. That's not how they thought of communing with God.

Just a few examples, Exodus 19, God is convening with Moses and he's getting

ready to come down the mountain and the Lord's gonna say to Moses,

go down and come up bringing Aaron with you.

So Moses and Aaron can go up there, but do not let the priest and the people

break through to come up to the Lord, lest he break out against them.

That's their thought. That's what comes to their mind. 2 Samuel 6,

7 through 8, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah.

If you remember, they were carrying the ark from one place to the other,

and they were carrying it in a way not prescribed by the Lord,

and the ark begins to fall.

And Uzzah, thinking he's doing the right thing, reaches out and touches the

ark, the representation of God's presence on earth. He touches the ark, and what happens?

And God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God.

Leviticus 10, 1 and 2. Now, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron.

So these are the sons of the high priests.

They're in the family line. They meet their criteria.

Each took his own censer. That's just kind of a thing that burns incense and

put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord.

In other words, they come to the Lord in a way that he had not prescribed.

And the fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them.

And they died before the Lord. These are the stories that the Hebrews have in their brains.

This is how they think about coming in contact with God.

And now all of a sudden this guy's writing to them and he's saying,

no, you've been given access to the holy place.

You've been given access to God. And they're going, we're not talking about the same guy.

We are not talking about the same guy. You don't understand, right?

They're talking to this guy, whoever the guy is that's writing Hebrews and going,

this guy must not get it. Doesn't he know that God is holy?

Doesn't he know that God can't be around sin? Doesn't he know that the whole

reason that we have a high priest is for him to offer atonement for our sins,

even the unintentional ones? Doesn't he get that?

I think our, again, inclination is to look at them and go, well,

they just don't understand.

I think, obviously, that's partly true. That's why the book is written.

But I think we would also be wise to understand we don't get it either.

Their view of God was not wrong.

Those stories that I just read to you in the Old Testament, that's the exact

same God that exists today. He hasn't changed.

He's not any different. He still does not tolerate sin.

He still does not deal with sinners nicely.

He is the exact same God that told Moses, don't have them come up here.

That will not end well for them.

He's the exact same God that struck Uzzah down for touching the ark when he

was told not to, and for consuming Nadav and Abihu with fire when they did what he asked them not to do.

And we know this is true. I mean, just think of the people that you come in

contact with where things kind of change. I can remember when I worked for the

Mavericks in college, which if you want to hear that story, it's crazy.

Craigslist job. I thought we were going to get murdered. Ended up being the

best thing in the world. Okay.

But I worked for the Mavericks and we did kind of this press stuff.

And we would be in the press dining hall before the games.

And usually it was really relaxed. Everybody's hanging out. No problem.

You know, we're eating the food and just kind of shooting the breeze before the game.

And everybody's trying to figure out how these two chubby 19 year olds.

I kind of struck it in here. I worked my whole life to get this press pass.

And we're like, yeah, dude, it's on Craigslist. And we're just here now.

But every now and again, Mark Cuban would come in, the owner of the Mavericks.

He would be in the press room.

And the room was completely different.

It was a lot quieter. Everyone was looking at him.

They're trying to figure out what's going on. They know that this guy has power

over them, that he makes all the decisions, that if he decides he doesn't want

you in there, he can kick you out of there.

We understand that when certain people walk in a room That there is a certain

level of respect That they command How much more so is this true of God?

The God who Every single day Angels sing around his throne That he is holy,

holy, holy In other words, he is different He is set apart He is so much different

He says he is the Alpha and the Omega,

That his son is the judge of the living and the dead,

The God who when he looks at the world, it seems so insignificant that he compares it to his footstool.

The God who created every single thing owns every single thing and holds life itself in his hands.

That's a good picture of God.

And these Hebrews are not wrong in questioning, how can I be near him? How can I approach him?

Moses couldn't do it. He had to turn his face.

Abraham couldn't do it, right? The only person that ever did it was Adam.

And the second that he sinned, he was sent away.

David didn't do it. Jeremiah didn't do it. No one got close to him.

And now you're trying to tell us that because of Jesus, we can draw near,

as he says in Hebrews 7, we can draw near to the throne of God with confidence.

You're going to need to explain that. And if you've wondered why he's taken

literally five chapters to flesh this out, that's why.

And so, yes, the Hebrews are trying to understand why that's going on.

But again, I want to be clear, they're not wrong in how they think about God.

We are often wrong about how we think about God.

We are often wrong about how casual and how senseless we can be to come before

God's throne and go, yeah, I mean, why wouldn't I be here?

My grandma says I'm awesome, right?

Why wouldn't I be here? I prayed a prayer. Why wouldn't I be here? I got baptized.

Of course, of course I should be here. And the whole point that he's trying

to make is not, you know, God's changed and he's just a cool guy now.

And he's just not really concerned with that. You know, he actually apologized

for being mean to Adab and Abihu.

I talked to him the other day. He said he shouldn't have done that when he did

the ark thing. He should have let the people come up. No, God hasn't changed.

What has changed is Christ has come. That's what's changed.

But to fully appreciate and understand and enjoy the goodness of the new covenant.

And the fact that you can come boldly before God because Christ has come,

you must first have a right view of who God is and who you're approaching.

And if we don't have that, then we will always treat God with less respect and

less reverence than he deserves.

He says it clearly that all of these things, all these things that were going

on in the temple, the sacrifices, the blood, the incense, that all these things

were to purify your flesh.

They were to purify what was outside of you. And he says that the real issue

is this conscience, that your conscience is the issue.

He says at the end of verse nine, the gifts and sacrifices are offered that

cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper.

When you think of the conscience in the biblical sense, the easiest thing to

think about is what's inside of you, what's going on inside of you.

That intuition inside of you that you know at the deepest parts of who you are, I'm not perfect.

I am a sinner. I have failed. And no matter how many people I can put in my

life, they can tell me how awesome I am.

No matter how much success in my life I can have, no matter how much money I

make or how much cool stuff I have or how comfortable I can make my life,

there is something inside of every person that says to them,

I know that I'm not perfect.

I know that I'm not.

What the writer of Hebrews wants them to know that, hey, listen,

all these things were there to clear your outside flesh, but it's what's inside

of you that's the problem.

It's what's inside of you that kills Adab and Nebaihu.

Yes, they offer the wrong thing and they do the wrong thing,

but what kills them is what's inside of them that makes them think we can come to God however we want.

What gets Uzzah killed is not simply that he touches the ark,

it's that he thinks, I'm worthy to touch this thing.

I should be allowed to do this.

And no matter how much progress we make technologically or how many things we

can put in our lives that make life easier, no matter what tools we have or

information we have access to, this is true of us as well.

There is no worldly cure for what's inside of you.

There's nothing you can do. Now, there are plenty worldly cures for making you

feel better about what's inside of you.

Man, there's a million things you can do to make yourself feel better about

what you've done, right? You can go to church. You can give money to the poor.

You can help out at a soup kitchen, right? Or maybe those aren't your thing.

Maybe you can have all the things the world has to offer.

You can make your life as comfortable as it can possibly be.

You can go home and get on your phone or your computer and just space out for

the next six hours and not even think about what's going on inside of you.

There are so many options to us.

There are so many ways for us to deny what's simply true about every single person.

But the problem is none of it will satisfy your guilt.

None of it will satisfy your guilt. None of it will clear your conscience.

And it's why we see so many wandering from thing to thing, trying to find a

way for themselves to feel pure and holy and righteous.

And they spend their life's pursuits trying to make themselves what only God can make them.

They never have any peace. They never have any hope. They never have any joy.

So what is the point of all that? Well, he says in verse 11,

but when Christ, all right, this is a real Ephesians 2 moment.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come,

then through the greater and more perfect tent,

not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into

the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves,

but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with

the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh,

how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered

himself without blemish to God,

purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

What changed? Christ appeared.

Christ appeared. It says the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords comes onto the scene.

The one that when John sees him, he says, this is the lamb that comes to take

away the sins of the world.

And what does that person do? What does the King and the lamb do?

Well, he enters a greater and more perfect tabernacle that verse 11 states,

not some human version, but the true version, the one where God dwells permanently.

What does he do? He enters it once. He's not going back over and over and over

again like worldly high priest.

What does he bring? He doesn't bring goats and calves and things of that nature.

No, he brings himself. He is the lamb.

He brings his own blood to the sacrificial table.

What does that do? It says he secures an eternal redemption, an eternal salvation.

He doesn't go in once a year for you and pay for some of your sins and then

wait for you to mess up again and then go pay for them again and then wait for you to mess up again.

And then I just got to go back in there. And then once he does that,

the thousandth time, look at you and go, can you stop?

I'm tired of going in there. I'm tired of doing this.

He says, no, when I go in, I make and I pay for, I buy your sins off of you

and I pay for them once and for all that if you trust in him,

there is no sins held against you.

Again, remember the writer of Hebrews does not say in any point in this that God has changed.

Go over that first section of verse 9 and then get to verse 11 and go,

but God's different now.

God's like the cool uncle now. He was the mean one, now he's the cool.

God's your grandpa now. I mean, you can just come and anything you need to do,

he'll take care for you. That's not what it says.

But this is all too tempting for us to do, to look at the God of the Old Testament

and go, So, man, I'm glad that's not the God that I worship.

Listen, if you don't worship the God of the Old Testament, you don't know the

God of the New Testament.

If you don't worship the God of the Old Testament, you don't worship God at all. He's the same God.

What has changed is that instead of God asking people to do what they could

never do, he has sent his son to do what they could never do.

What has changed is not God. What has changed is how you have access to him.

It's no longer about your sacrifices or high priest sacrifices or the blood

of bulls and goats or what you can ever bring to the table that would never be enough.

In fact, that verse 14 is a great verse to look at the doctrine of the Trinity

where he says, this is how this works.

It says, Christ entered through the eternal spirit, the son of God,

through the spirit of God to who?

Who does he make the sacrifice to? who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God.

The God who cannot be around sinners, who cannot be around sin,

sends his son to become sin so that sinners could be treated like his son.

And when you come before God this morning, that is no small thing.

He has every right to do the exact same thing that he did to Adab and Abihu

or to Uzzah. He has every right to do that.

You haven't earned anything. I haven't earned anything.

But because Christ has come, because Christ has become sin, I can come boldly

before that God's throne.

And I can say like David says, God, I have no good apart from you.

All the goodness I have is because of your son.

All the goodness I have has been given to me. David says, would you preserve me?

Right? David's not saying, God, give me the strength to preserve myself.

He's saying, God, I don't have enough strength to preserve myself.

I need you to do that for me. I need you to preserve me to the end.

Do we do with this? What do we do with all of these things that seem so foreign

to us? Well, a couple of questions.

First question, are you denying him? Are you denying him? Look,

the simplest thing you see people do is they deny Christ.

They just don't want anything to do with him. Now, I'll be honest with you,

I don't really think that's anyone in the room.

I know everyone in the room well enough to know that that's probably not the

situation you find yourself in, but that's certainly an option.

I think what's much more common is, are you bargaining with him?

Are you bargaining with God?

Have you tried to meet God at the negotiating table to say, okay,

I know what your word says. I know what you've asked of me, but what if, what if we go 80-20?

I'll give you 80, but I just have some problems with a few few things here.

Let me rework the contract.

Let me have my lawyers look at it. We'll come to an agreement.

This is not an offer from God to bargain. This is an offer of God of a pardon.

And when you are offered a pardon, you don't set the terms. The one offering

the pardon sets the terms.

Everyone knows John 3.16. If you go down two more verses, John 3.18 says,

whoever believes in him, that is, whoever believes in Christ is not condemned,

but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed

in the name of the only Son of God.

Believe or don't believe. Not whoever's giving him a little,

whoever trusts him a little.

No, you either believe or you don't believe. And if you believe,

there is no condemnation for you. Your sins have been forgiven.

Christ has paid for every sin. You can come boldly before the throne on your

worst day or your best day. If you believe in Christ, you are not condemned.

But if you do not believe in him, or I would say if you are bargaining with

him, the scripture says that person is condemned already, right?

Maybe you're not bargaining, but you're just running, right?

You tried to bargain for a while.

You tried to sit down with God and figure out what the split could be,

and you realize he wasn't going to do that, and so you just took off. You just took off.

Sure, you show up to church, and you say that you believe in Jesus.

You wear a cross necklace, but man, you're running headlong into the world just

hoping that one day you'll find some peace or some hope or some joy.

And every day you get up, you start running and you start working, searching to find it.

Sure, that that God of the Bible just isn't the one that you should be after,

that he would never require that of you, that he would never ask that of you,

that he would never do those things.

Man, you have the exact same problem every single person who has ever existed outside of Christ has.

There is no true hope, no true peace, no true love to be found. outside of Christ.

You will spend your life running. You will spend your life searching and you will never find it.

He closes again like this in verse 14.

How much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered

himself without blemish to God, listen, purify our conscience from dead works.

In other words, for those who trust in Christ, your conscience will be purified

from pursuing a pure conscience from dead works.

You won't wake up in the morning and try to figure out what you can do to make

God happy, what you can do to satisfy him.

If you put your faith in Christ, you will wake up in the morning and go,

man, I'm so glad, I'm so thankful that Christ has purified me.

And the second half of that sentence is, that he will purify our conscience from dead works to what?

To serve the living God.

So we always remind in here, we say this a lot, the order there is so important.

The order there is so important.

He doesn't say, serve the living God and your conscience will be purified from

dead works. He says, trust in Christ.

Your conscience will be purified from dead works and you will be free to serve the living God.

For so many, they've decided that they're going to serve the living God to try

and make him happy enough that he'll purify them from their dead works,

and that will never work.

Done sacrifices through the Spirit to the Father on your behalf.

I pray that you would trust Him.

If you've never trusted Him before, I pray that you would trust Him for the first time.

And if you know the Lord, if you're a Christian, if you would say that you already

trusted Him, my prayer for us is that we would be reminded this morning that

we didn't do anything to earn that, that we don't have any business being near God.

We don't have any business being near His throne. We don't have any business

coming into his presence And yet because of christ Because of his perfect life

death burial and resurrection We can go to the throne boldly,

We can know that christ is interceding for us.

We can know that god hears our prayers Because he is good gracious and kind

to his people Let's pray Father again as always thank you for this morning.

Thank you for the chance to being here with these people, to sing songs of praise to you.

God, I pray more than anything that you were glorified this morning,

that your holiness was put on display.

God, there's an understanding from every single person in this room,

including myself, that you haven't changed, that you still hate sin,

that you still hate what sin has done to your perfect world and to your people.

That God, more than anything, that we would be praising you as we walk out these

doors because of what you've accomplished for us,

because of what your son has done, that we can come boldly before you this morning,

even as I pray right now, and know that Christ is interceding on my behalf,

that he is praying for me, he has loved me, and he cares for me,

that as we live our lives that can seem so hectic and busy,

that we can find true hope and

peace and a pure conscience before you because of what Christ has done?

Would we trust that? And in trusting that, would we in turn,

once we are reminded of the joy of our salvation, serve you well?

We would be witnesses in the world to your Son. We would not be ashamed of what

you've called us to believe,

the way you've asked us to live, the way you've asked us to treat people,

God, will we be ambassadors for you? Let's pray. Amen.