From Leviticus to the Cross | Losing My Religion (Part 9) | Stephen Feith

Now we've been in this super long series, called losing my religion. This is actually part nine. So when I mean super long, this is one of the longest series that we have ever done. And what makes it even a little bit longer is that this is the second part of the series, we had the first part of the series, we're just seven weeks. Now we're in the second part, we're in week nine, we're going through the New Testament book of the Hebrews tonight, we're gonna go into chapter nine. So if you want to follow along, in your own Bibles, the Bible app on your phone, go ahead and go to chapter nine, Hebrews is toward the back of your Bible. Now if it is your first time with us, or first time in a long time, you're like, well, is the series going to make sense? Since this is week nine? Yes, and I will still make sense. And if you're interested in previous talks, you can find those on our podcast. Now, if it's not your first time with us, and let's say you were here last week, I want to acknowledge that last week, but it felt a little discombobulated because we're going verse by verse through Hebrews. And last week, we did an entire chapter in one week.

So when you're going verse by verse, and word by word, we can make a long message out of very little text. But last week, because of the ebb and flow of the series, we did the entire eighth chapter. And the entire eighth chapter of Hebrews was really a summary of everything up until chapter eight. So if you and I were just reading Hebrews one page at a time without taking a break, chapter eight is really helpful for us, because it summarizes all the information that we've had so far. But for us, we've been going through this verse by verse series, two series, and and we've been talking on going back where like, this is where we've been, this is where we are, this is where we're going, it might have seemed a little redundant, as well. But again, the original audience, most of them would not have been able to read. So when they got this letter to the Hebrews, they would have been like us gathered, more likely than not in someone's home, but about probably a group our size that would have gathered in someone's home and someone who could read would stand up and read the entire letter to the Hebrews, to them out loud. So this entire eighth chapter that we started last week, was a good point for them as they're thinking about all of the things that are going on. To re summarize it all. Now tonight, we are going into chapter nine and chapter nine does begin to introduce us to a few new ideas before our series ends. In two weeks, you can see that we're going through chapter 10, verse 18. And so tonight, we're going to kick off some new ideas. And these ideas have everything to do with sacrifices, and sacrifices offered by Jesus, who is, as we've discussed our new high priest, under our as we've discussed, New Covenant. And these are going to be better sacrifices than what the earthly priests were giving. Under the Old Covenant. You guys can see a theme here, correct of old priests, new priests, old covenants, new covenants, and now we're talking about old sacrifices versus new sacrifices. And over the next couple of weeks, we're in talking about why Jesus's sacrifice on the cross is better than the old sacrifices made in Leviticus for three primary reasons. One, just sacrifice was the sacrifice in heaven for heaven, rather than here on Earth. The old priests would sacrifice some sort of animal here on Earth. Fourthly, says what what Jesus did wasn't just physical, as we talked about last week, it was also profoundly spiritual. The offering, the blood that was offered was Jesus's. And it was not an animal. This was the blood of the Divine, fully God fully man. And it was his blood, his sacrifice. And the other thing was, the final part of the sacrifice is that Jesus's sacrifice was good once and for all, we don't need you to come back once a year to dine across for us, we don't need just come back once a year to make a sacrifice for what he did. 2000 years ago was good once and for all. Whereas under the old covenant with old priests here on Earth, yeah, we did make a sacrifice every year. And we knew that we'd have to make another one next year. And we knew that if we were alive, we'd have to make one in 20 years.

Because that's just how when so these are several reasons why Jesus's sacrifice is better than the old sacrifice. Now I know what you're already thinking.

We're like three minutes into this. And we're talking about priests. We're talking about covenants. We're talking about sacrifices, and you're wondering how in the world is this relevant to you at all? That's a fair question to ask. That's one of the questions that I always ask when I'm reading the Bible, is how is this very relevant or relevant at all to me, and in my life, but remember, first, we have to go back and talk about why it was relevant to the original idea. We all want to start at the end. How is this relevant to me, but for you and I to understand how it's relevant to us, we have to understand how it was relevant to the original audience. And this original audience 2000 years ago was primarily Jewish Christians there are ethnically Jewish, but they're also religiously Jewish. And they started to convert to Christianity. Now they didn't have the New Testament at the time they had the Old Testament.

But what they had been hearing from France family, this message of apostles going around the known world at the time, Peter and Paul, and they were hearing these things about this Jesus, who live this life did these miracle signs, wonders died on across rose from the dead. Three days later, hundreds of people saw that, and they're starting to believe in this Jesus, and they're experiencing these things. But as we know, historically speaking, persecution happens. Because the Christians won't worship Caesar, the Christians won't worship the Roman Empire, the word Christians don't worship all these other gods, there's persecution, this kind of causes a problem in society, when you have this group that says we won't worship the government, we're only going to worship Jesus. And so these people were in prisons, and if they didn't renounce their faith and say, Okay, fine, Caesars God, they'd be tortured. And if they didn't renounce their faith after being tortured, they'd be put to death. And I know what some of you are thinking right now, you're like, This feels like I'm being imprisoned, this feels like I'm being tortured. Maybe death would be better. It's not I promise, okay. The reason that this is relevant to us is because while you may not be ethnic, ethnically, or religiously, Jewish, okay, the reason that this might be relevant it is relevant to you, is because if you grew up in the United States, you grew up in this weird culture that has a lot of Christian thumb prints all over it. Now, some of this is biblical. But a lot of it's not a lot of it's extra biblical, a lot of it's just, like, for example, praying before you eat good. There's no necessarily in the Bible that says you need to pray before you eat. But yeah, we probably grew up in a society where a lot of you did where maybe you went to a friend's house, and they prayed before they eat, or maybe that was in your house, you guys never prayed for anything else in your lives, but you prayed before you eat, or you went to church on Christmas and Easter.

And that was it. And so we grow up in a society where there's kind of Christianity all over the place. And what happens is, we begin to find Jesus. And we begin to walk in our faith.

Assuming you're a believer here today, assuming you've had a walk of faith, when life starts to get hard, tough, when things start to get challenging.

Biologically, when we go back, we will backwards to what we know we go back into our habits for a long time, that would have kept us alive. If this was 1000s or 10s, of 1000s of years ago, this would have kept us alive.

Having these kinds of habits go back when we're in a new environment, when things get tough, I gotta go back to what I know, because I know how to survive if I go back. This is not helpful at all, when it comes to faith. Because a lot of what we grew up with and around like these first, here's what have had. It's not biblical, it's not correct. And so we need to continue to work to lose our religion so we can find the real life that Jesus offers us. And so that's why this whole series through Hebrews is relevant to you. And I even though we may not be Jewish, we know what it's like to have religion creep in all around us. And that we can get distracted on that and to begin to go through legalistic type of stuff. And so, again, today, we're gonna talk about sacrifice a little bit, we're getting into this, we're gonna talk about earthly sanctuaries, and guidelines or rules for worship. And that's all of this sets the stage for the final two weeks of this series. So beginning in verse one of Hebrews chapter nine, we read, The first covenant between God and Israel had regulations for worship, and a place of worship here on Earth. There were two rooms and that tabernacle, and in the first room were a lampstand, a table, and sacred loaves of bread on the table.

This room was called the holy place. Then there was a curtain and behind the curtain with a second room, and the second room was called the most holy place.

They were very creative with their names. Back then we had the holy place and we got the most holy place. And in that room, there was a gold incense altar and a wooden chest called the Ark of the Covenant, which was covered in gold on all sides inside the ark, where gold jar containing manna, Aaron staff that sprouted leaves in the stone, and the stone tablets of the covenant. And above the ark, were the chair of him. Design of divine glory whose wings stretch out over the arcs Cover the place of the Atonement, but we cannot explain all of these things in detail now. That's in there.

Okay. So in chapter eight, we read last week that we have this new covenant and now we're talking about how under the Old Covenant, how worship was carried out, and it's a reminder because the author says here on Earth, remember that the worship was here on Earth, remember that the tabernacle was here on earth. All of this stuff was here on Earth, it was all physical. And what the author is trying to do is contrast and we're mind us, what Jesus did wasn't just physical. It's also profoundly spiritual. We don't just worship here on earth anymore. We can worship in heaven. We don't just have, you know, have come into the church, and this is the place of worship, but we can worship God outside of the church outside of this place. Now, to be clear, we should see that, in this multiple curtains, right, it kind of goes back to this idea we were talking about a few weeks ago, which is like we had one priest who could go see God, and they represented the community, right. And when we read about the holy place, and the most holy place, and we read about curtains, the author of Hebrews kind of just reminding us remember that you didn't have access to God. Remember, into the old system, there were curtains, and there were rooms, you weren't even allowed in the holy place, you and I, unless we were a priest. And then there were only certain types of priests that could go into the most holy place. And so the author is reminding us under this Old Covenant, remember, we couldn't get anywhere near God.

But under this new covenant, because of Jesus's sacrifice, there's not a place that you and I can't go to experience God, we're allowed in the tents, now we're allowed behind the curtain, we're allowed into the most holy place, and at the same time, okay, so at the same time, there are boundaries and the Old Covenant. And at the same time, let's not overlook though, that even before Jesus, God is instructing people how to connect with him. So yes, even though under the old code, we're under a new, better covenant.

But even under the old covenant, which isn't as good, God was still directing people how to connect with Him. God's still 1000s of years before Jesus wasn't like, out there somewhere else doing something else. But God is saying, here's how you can connect with me, here's how we can experience each other, I'll be it with different rooms, I'll be with different rules, I'll be a priest who represents you, to me. I'm not saying it was a great system. God's not saying it's a great system, the author of Hebrews isn't saying it was a great system. But they're saying that even before this new system, God was still trying to connect with people, and telling them how to, and that certainly beats a lot of say, all there other religions of the world, other faiths. And what I mean by beat is I mean, it beats it in the fact of maybe you don't know 1000s of years ago, what makes your God angry?

I mean, think about a 1000s of years ago, there is not science, really. You don't understand why it rains, why it doesn't, you don't understand why some years you have a great crop, why some years, you have a famine, why some years, you guys thrive on other years, you guys are almost starving to death. And so these kind of primitive people, they would say, Okay, well, it rained this year. So we need to offer thanks, an offering to some entity out there that's sending the rain because we want more rain next year, so we don't die.

So then they would do this. We see what the Sun we would see.

And that's kind of how all of these gods get developed.

They're the people kind of guessing. And then they would offer the sacrifices. And then like, let's say, hypothetically, it didn't rain at all the next year, and you had a famine, you'd say the gods are angry, we must have done something wrong.

What did we do wrong? Well, I don't know. Figure it out.

Because the God's not talking to us. God's not telling us what we what he wants, or she wants or it wants. We just know it didn't rain, so they must be angry, people are dying. So then they would step up the game. And we get to the point where we know that there are cultures that that are offering human sacrifices to their gods, because to them, that's the highest price that you can pay.

I'll sacrifice my firstborn son, I'll sacrifice a kid a child.

Because if I don't, my other 10 Kids are gonna die if there's not rain, and I want this God, whoever sending rain, to send rain and to know that I'm grateful for it. And then in Christianity, I'll be it in the book of Leviticus a lot of rules. But the silver lining in that is there was no guessing what it would take to make God happy. There was no guessing on what made God angry. God told you, he doesn't want you to sacrifice your kids. Were another human.

God. So this is the way to connect with me. And in that, in that sense, even under the old system, which isn't as good as you and I have it. It was very liberating for people to be able to say, This is what makes God happy. This is what makes him mad. I don't have to worry about this. I don't have to sacrifice a kid. Here's what we need to do. Let's keep reading verse six. When these things were all in place, the priests regularly entered the first room as they perform their religious duties, but only the high priests never entered the Most Holy Place and only once a year, and he always offered blood for his own sins and then for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. By these regulations, the Holy Spirit revealed that the entrance of the Most Holy Place was not freely open, as long as the tabernacle on the system at represented worse still in use.

This is an illustration pointing toward the present time for the gifts and sacrifices that the priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciousnesses of the people who bring them. For that old system deals with only food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies. Physical regulations that were in effect only were in effect only until a better system could be established. So a few things here were again, clarifying multiple rooms in the tabernacle, and only some preschool into one room, and only the high priests could go into the most holy place. And you probably weren't going to be invited to either unless your dad, your grandpa, or you were in the line of Levi. And so that was it. And they would offer sacrifices. And notice there was even a sacrifice for the sins committed ignorance. So again, going back to this idea of are the gods angry, God says, I can give you a little bit more peace of mind, we'll even have a sacrifice for the sins that you didn't know you committed.

Something we talked about all the time here at our churches that we've all hurt people, whether we know it, or not, whether we meant it or not, we've all contributed to the brokenness of the world, or the things we've said or the things we've done. And I think that that's a little like horrifying sometimes that maybe I did say something that hurt someone, and I didn't realize it, or I did something that hurt someone, and I didn't realize it. What do I do with that guilt? Well, even under the old covenant, God who said, there is a sacrifice that we will make for all of those things that you don't even know to make you write again. Now, it's interesting that the Holy Spirit is mentioned here in this, the author of Hebrews says that the Holy Spirit use the tabernacle in the system of worship, to show us how much better our covenant is. Today.

Another idea we've been talking about a lot was okay, we're not under the Levitical law anymore.

Does that mean we just throw the entire Old Testament out? Can we rip out two thirds of our Bible and third awakes? We only need the New Testament. And even right now, the author saying no, don't do that. No, you're not under Levitical law, there is no going to be animal sacrifices, you can all experience God, but the Holy Spirit, use this old system to show you how much better the system you have today is. So while you and I are not under the weight of Levitical law of this Old Covenant of bringing in sacrifices of memorizing 600 rules. God says the Holy Spirit uses that to show us just how good we have it today. And that's awesome news.

That is good news. So we don't throw it out. We read it and we say look at God moving throughout history to the point of where we are today. Now that word for conscious, is a Greek word. That means so much more than our word for conscious means. Like, right now you're semi conscious, right? It's late getting dark earlier, it might be a little warm in the room you're at and kind of cozy. The pews are a little rough, but that's okay. So you're semi conscious here, but And so in our language is like you're conscious, you're awake, you're unconscious, you're not awake.

But in this word, consciousness meant a whole lot more. It did go into this idea of feeling shame, and feeling guilt that had a lot to do with who we are as people. And so what the author is saying is under the Old Covenant, we could make sacrifices, but those sacrifices wouldn't cleanse our consciousness. It wouldn't cleanse how we feel about guilt and shame. So you did do something wrong. 10,000 years ago, you got angry and you killed someone, you got angry and you stole something, you got hurt and you did something?

Well, yes, you could go and make a sacrifice. And God would forgive you. We read that in the Levitical law.

But it didn't take away the guilt that you felt for that.

You still feel guilty or ashamed, still feel bothered. In our modern society, we would say you probably still feel the trauma of it. You will recover from the crisis, the rest of your life, PTSD, we use, we use terms like that in our society today. But those were just things that you would have had to have just carried with you.

Because there were not going to be sacrifices that could say that. It's fine, you're forgiven, and let that weight come off your shoulders. But under the new covenant, and under the new sacrifice, every part of us is cleansed every part. So yes, even like in the Old Testament, we wouldn't have the forgiveness of sins, no matter how bad of a thing that you did, or you think you did.

But under the New Covenant, we're told God says, You're forgiven of that. This also cleanses your conscious. So when we feel ashamed, when we feel guilty, that might be your voice in your head. That might even be principalities and powers of darkness. Demons. Speaking to you might be the voice of your parents, the voice of your children, the voice of your friends who keep holding it over your head, Ma. There was at one time, do you remember? Of course, I remember you all let me forget. But God says under this new system, that with him, it's fine with him, you're covered. And so in these moments, when we're feeling ashamed or guilty about that thing we said about the thing we did, or the thing we didn't do, or the thing that we didn't say, because sometimes regret can be in the things that we didn't do.

And sometimes we're gonna be done the things done to us. God says, under this new system, this new sacrifice because of what Jesus did. We don't have to feel ashamed or guilty. Our consciousness is clients. And so if you feel ashamed, guilty, something done something not done. That might be you. But it's not God. God's offering you complete forgiveness and cleansing. So the challenge for us tonight, as we're thinking about what do we do with all of this, we have this new system, this New Covenant, everything better sacrifices, what do we need to do? We need to orient our lives around worship. We need to orient our lives. Around worship, Paul writes enrollment.

So here's what I want you to do God helping you. Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking around life, and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well adjusted to your culture, that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead of fix your attention on God, you'll be changed from the inside out, readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity. God brings the best out of you, develops well formed maturity in you. To lose our religion means to orient my life around worship. Now, oftentimes, in our society, talking about religious traditions of the past, when you hear the word worship, you might think of a type of music that's played on a station like hey, love, the type of music we played, before we started our gathering here today are part of our gathering with PI worship music. You might think of the person who is singing as the worship leader. That's cultural.

And that's not a biblical understanding of worship. So at our church, we've tried to call Marvy who she's not here with us tonight, but we've tried to call Marvy, our band leader. Marvy leads our band, we call our band, the band, and not a worship team. Why? Because we don't want to contribute and perpetuate to a poor and shallow understanding of what worship is. Worship is not a genre of music, and worship isn't just what happens in here. Worship certainly includes the band and includes the music, but it also worship includes this message, and the talk. It includes prayer, it includes communion, it includes buying Christmas presents for kids, it includes volunteering, it includes being baptized, a biblical understanding of worship, as Paul writes, it is every single part of you every waking minute, every breath you take, offer that in the language that we're using in Hebrews as a sacrifice to God. Have you ever thought that the clothes you put on when you wake up in the morning is an act of worship?

It doesn't have to be an act of worship, I guess. But Paul is saying, think about every act of your life as an act of worship, ever thought about the food you eat, being an act of worship, or not being an act of worship, how you take care of yourself physically, an act of worship, or how you take care of yourself emotionally and mentally is an act of worship, or it's not.

According to the biblical text.

Worship can be and is everything either we're offering every part of our life to God as a sacrifice of worship, or withholding some. Now we've talked at great lengths this week and last week about both our physical and spiritual health and this ties into what we do physically impacts us spiritually. And what we do spiritually impacts us physically. So what are we talking about? Well, when I first encountered Jesus and I made a decision to follow him, I didn't do so well, at the beginning. I don't know if any of you were, you know, at some point, you're probably a new believer. And so I remember certainly having a moment where I felt like God had moved in my life and did something inside of me. And I remember responding to God. And certainly I was changed. I'm not trying to say it wasn't changed. There were some certain things I had left behind right there in that moment when I responded and decided that I was going to follow Jesus, but did not come back from a weekend retreat a saint, far from it, far from it.

And I wish I had, and I think that a lot of us wish we did we have this moment, our emotions are so intense when you first find and follow Jesus, and you get baptized, and you're just like, I want to do this, right.

And then there's the shame, the guilt when you're not perfect, which is silly, because none of us are perfect. So then, a couple years after this, I went to community college, and I was getting blackout drunk three or four times a week, three or four, at least three or four times a week, I was always drinking. And I was drinking to the point where I was I binge drinking, and I'll be waking up places, we didn't live in a big city lady waking up in places, I didn't know where I was at. I would walk out the front door of wherever I woke up, and I'd look up to trying to find there's one tall building in our town. And I can at least get the bearings of where I sort of was this was before everyone had an iPhone.

So there was no Google Map My Location, okay. I began to feel guilty about that, though, I said, Well, I can still go to church on Sunday, because that part of my life had already been figured out. One of the things I was going to do is I was always going to be part of Christian community. But then there was another part of my life that wasn't offering to God, as an act of worship. I wasn't sacrificing that to him. It was like God, you're my Sunday morning thing, from 1030 to 12.

Unless the preacher is long winded than 1230. And then God at that point, we're on thin ice. But on Wednesday night, on Friday night, Sunday night, Saturday night, really, whenever there was a party, like God, just, you know, I'll be right back, you stay out here. And I mentioned, I felt convicted about that. And I knew that part of what I needed to do was to stop doing that. It was something physical, that I stopped doing, I stopped getting blackout drunk and binge drinking at community college.

And that had a profound effect on me spiritually. And so as we think about the application for our own lives, as you begin to think, How can I orient my life around worship? I want you to think about your schedule. How can you orient your schedule, all around? God? We've talked about this before, talking about not just orienting one hour a week on a Sunday to God go into church, but what would it look like to orient your entire schedule? And maybe that's too big to start with? What would it look like to orient more of your schedule toward God? What would it look like to add in regular prayer every day as a part of your schedule a regular Bible reading as part of your schedule? In my case, if you're always talking to me and community college, I would say steel, we're going to look like to take all of those parties off your schedule, it may not be something that you need to add this week to your schedule, it might be something that you need to take off your schedule. We worship with our time, we can also worship with our budgets, we need to orient our budgets around God. Again, something we talked about a lot, not just talking about what you give back to the local church, but all of your budget. And again, it doesn't have to necessarily mean I'm going to sponsor all 18 kids for Christmas this week. So Steven told me, You're gonna take another 18.

But maybe there's something in your budget that you need to quit spending money on, maybe there's something in your budget, that's a pretty big waste. If you have 12 different streaming subscriptions, you could probably quit one this week. That would be a good choice to worship God. I don't think God is saying like, well, if you you know if you quit Hulu I don't know if we're gonna be as connected as we were before.

No, God's probably like if you have 12 streaming services, God's probably like, Yeah, we're gonna have a little bit more time together. And so what do we need to quit with our budgets?

What do we need to quit with our schedules? Are there things that I'm doing that I'm withholding from God, if I'm supposed to offer my entire life to God, as a sacrifice? Certainly, some of its going to be easier than others. When I was drinking all of the time, I got tired of getting sick. Like I was tired of being hungover all the time and like drinking, being hungover Over than drinking some more than being hung over the drinking more and being hungover. So that was kind of easy. For me, it was easier to quit that than it was to say, humble myself, or to have my heart broken. But I'm certainly willing to give that to God. So I think in your own life, you're probably thinking, oh, yeah, there's something I can give to God right now. And that's great.

Do that. But I bet there's something else that you keep thinking of that's in your heart that's rattling around in your head right now. Maybe it makes you scared. Maybe it makes you anxious. Maybe it makes you concern your god, I can't give that to you. Oh, maybe that's where we need to start working.

And maybe it's not going to happen this week. But maybe you need to go home and write that down. And say, This is what I need. This is what I need to give up. This is what I need to start doing so that my life can continue to be oriented around worshipping. As we think about Jesus, our High Priest today has given us a better covenant.

Because of his better sacrifice.

I want you to consider that Jesus is meeting you where you are today. And as we examine our lives, our only proper response is to give him everything that we have, because he gave us everything he had.