Hebrews - Part 24 Where Roman Catholicism Fails (Hebrews 9:6-11)

When we come to Hebrews 9, we were introduced in Hebrews 8 to the idea of this new covenant predicted by Jeremiah. And the new covenant was going to be better than the old covenant. So remember the theme of this book, faith is greater than works. Jesus is better than angels. Jesus is better than Moses. Basically, Jesus is better than everything, and Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant than the covenant that the Jews had in the Old Testament.

When you remember this book was written to a set of New Testament Jews, descendants of Abraham physically, who were still practicing the traditions of the Hebrew law, the Hebrew Torah, and yet they had believed upon Christ. And so this book is written to help them to see that the religion that was the correct and valid true religion for quite some time to that point, that we're even following things the way God had told them to do them, which most of us would say, well, that's a good thing. We want to do things the way God has told us. that even doing that was now obsolete, not because there was anything bad about it or immoral, not because it was a false religion, but because now that Christ had come, the entire system had been made obsolete because the system had fulfilled its purpose. the purpose of the things that the jews did the sacrifices the different ways that they moved things around the temple even the setup of the temple and where the veil was and the cherubim over the ark of the testament everything about it was designed not to be the religious system that was God's end all.

It was designed to make people want the end all. It was designed to paint a picture for people of what the end all would look like. And it was designed to point them to Jesus Christ so that when Christ had come, people who believed the Bible would then recognize him as the fulfillment of these things. And what God wants us to understand is that although that Old Testament religion was a good one at the time, it was not meant to persist.

And so he has already told us that when there's a new covenant, it makes the old one obsolete. We went over last week the importance of some of the setups in the temple and how God's law was represented as maybe being in our hearts by the tablets, especially being in the ark. So now we're in verse 6. And I'll read down to verse 11. Now when these things had been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the first part of the tabernacle, performing the divine worship.

But into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit is indicating this, that the way into the holy places has not yet been manifested while that first part of the tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly, both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience. since they relate only to food and drink and various washings requirements for the body imposed until a time of reformation but when christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands that is to say not of this creation and so what we have in the last verse there is just a reminder that he entered through a greater and more perfect tabernacle this was not something that was meant to stand forever the earthly one the one made with hands was not the one that christ was to enter in fact it even says that is to say not of this creation One of our challenges when interpreting the Bible is we have to figure out that there are times when God says something and it is true, and yet it is not to be taken literally. literally.

For example, when Jesus says, this is my body, and this blood is the, or this cup is the blood of a new covenant. When Jesus says to his disciples and to the other people at the time, you know anyone who does not eat my flesh and drink my blood has no part in me We have to read that and we have to make a hermeneutical decision which is do I force a strict literal interpretation upon this that requires me to believe that I have to carnally physically actually eat my flesh eat Jesus's blood and his body. This is the error the Pharisees made when they heard him say this, and he mocked them for it.

But we have to ask that question in a lot of different texts. Is God's purpose in providing an example or a law or a ceremony? Is the purpose for the purpose of The physical, literal aspect of it. And, you know, another good example, I think it's in. First Corinthians, second Corinthians, I think maybe is where Paul talks about paying ministers of the gospel.

And he says, for the scripture says, do not muzzle an ox while he treadeth out the grain. And then Paul says, is God talking about oxen here? Like, the whole point is that God meant something greater than the example he gave. And he used what every great author has done, as long as we've enjoyed books as Christians and even just as humanity, used word pictures to represent something greater and oftentimes something that's, we'll say conceptual or supernatural.

God's tabernacle is not conceptual it's real but it's in the heavenly places and so the earthly tabernacle is just a picture of it it is not the real thing so in verse six when these things have been so prepared the priests are continually entering the first part of the tabernacle performing the divine worship but into the second only the high priest enters once a year and so the author makes a distinction that the readers would have known about and that we can certainly read about and understand that to enter the tabernacle or the outside of the the thing that's beyond the veil where the holy of holies would be people did worship on a regular basis so there was there was always a sacrifice being made there was always people bringing their their offerings and there was a lot of priests and there was a lot of work to do and but he's making a distinction here that into the second part of the tabernacle the high priest only enters once a year. Now, I think Leviticus 16 is where we could go read more details of what was going on. And we have a holiday that's still on our calendar today called Yom Kippur, which most people know what Yom is because of the debate about the age of the earth and the word yom in the book of Genesis chapter one.

So yom kippur, day of atonement. And the idea was that once a year, the high priest would be able to go into the holy of holies. And so now even it says here, the high priest enters once a year. Well, he would go in and out of it two or three times that day, bringing the censer with the coals in it, which were supposed to represent the prayers of Jesus interceding for us.

And so he would have to bring in the sacrifice. So it wasn't like he just went in once, but it was just one time a year that he performed the duties that went in there. And this was the area we called the Holy of Holies. And he is just drawing a picture. His point here isn't to get you to understand the details of all of it. We can look up the details.

His point is to show us how it pictured Christ. So he says into the second part, only the high priest centers once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. So this priest, high priest, had to go into the Holy of Holies. He couldn't go in there without bringing the blood of the sacrifice.

He had to bring the blood of the sacrifice for his own sins and his family. And then he also was doing it for the sins of the people. In verse 8, the Holy Spirit is indicating this. so now we've got a pretty clear statement that this old testament work that was done that people were still performing let me say outwardly people will still we're still doing these things but they were doing them not with the heart of faith they were performing these rituals because their description of them was clear enough you could perform it outwardly it was possible to do the religious work without understanding what you were doing we can slip into this ourselves you know millions of people take communion on sunday is everybody who taking communion participating in the spiritual worship of god by faith doing it in the way that God has intended Of course not.

Some of them are just straight up pagan, but even Christians, we fail to actually take seriously what we're really picturing when we take communion, and it just becomes eating the bread and drinking the cup. And so hopefully we are warned by this, that it's possible to have the outward forms of religion without the inward heart that is required, that we might actually enjoy our religion as a means of grace, that we might actually grow in our sanctification as a result of doing the things we're told to do. But so let's read, what's the Holy Spirit indicating?

The Holy Spirit is indicating this. What's he indicating? That the way into the holy places has not yet been manifested while that first part of the tabernacle is still standing. He says, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly, both gifts and sacrifices were offered, which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience since they relate only to food and drink and various washings or baptisms, requirements for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

So what is the Holy Spirit indicating? The Holy Spirit's indicating that as long as there was the temple worship, I'm not sure that, again, we're supposed to take it quite so literally, and I have a little bit of support from commentators here. It's not that the tabernacle is standing that's the problem. like the building exists or the tent exists, although that's part of it, and God would destroy the temple just a few years after he wrote this letter, it's if the system itself is functioning.

So the point is that as long as this system was functioning the way it was supposed to function, the people bringing the sacrifice, the priest killing the bull and taking the blood and putting it on the altar and on the horns of the altar, and then the two goats. And you had the one goat that would be sacrificed, and then you had the other goat selected by Lot's cast, where we would call him the scapegoat. And the priest would put his hands on this goat's head, and he would confess the sins of the people, and then they would send that goat away into the wilderness.

And these things represented expiation of sins, The sins being put on another and then taken far away where you'd never see them again. That's what the scapegoat would represent. Then you have propitiation, the animal that would take the penalty that was deserved by the sinners. There wasn't an animal in all of creation that had sinned against God. And yet animals died repeatedly.

Animals represented. The sacrifice that eventually come. And in the sacrifice for sin would be made. That was a substitute because that. Sacrifice didn't sin himself. And so you had this constant picture of.

Somebody else is suffering because of my sin. Somebody else is paying the penalty. I should be paying. Somebody else's blood is being shed because I've sinned against God. Somebody else had sins confessed over his head and then was sent away into the wilderness, never to be seen again. There was this nonstop picture of these things.

And to the faithful, I'll say conscientious Jew of the Old Testament, there would have been a constant longing for when's the real thing coming? Because they had to know this is not able to cleanse me. and we're told that in verse 9 when he says these things cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience because the the sinner who knew in his conscience the things that he was doing and had done to violate God that sinner would have no doubt that the blood of that bull or goat was insufficient for what he had done against God. That sinner would know that that priest who confessed sins over the scapegoat and those sins were cast far away, that sinner would know that the sins they committed, the ones that were on their conscience, that the priest didn't even know about those and couldn't confess those.

There would have been a nonstop longing to be cleansed in your conscience because these outward things performed, people would have known can't do that. This is one of the things that keeps people coming back to false religion So let's take the Roman Catholic false religion. Why do people keep going, you'd say? Right. Like like everything seems irrational once you're born again.

Right. But why would people go? What was the point? Well, they have a guilty conscience. These are people who God has gifted with a certain level of we say practical righteousness whereby they at least understand what right and wrong in such a way that when they do wrong they feel the guilt Their conscience has not been seared to the point where they just engage in rampant debauchery without feeling They haven anesthetized themselves with drugs, alcohol, sex, or whatever other intoxicant is available to us today that will allow them to just continue in their sin and evil.

They haven't done enough psychology to make themselves feel better about who they are. And so these are people, many of them, dear people who have tender consciences. They recognize that they have sinned. there is a understanding on their part that a holy God ought to be angry with them, which good Catholic teaching will teach. And so they come to the religious place of worship that they're told.

They perform the ritual that they are promised is the ritual that they are to perform. And they do it religiously. and something in them knows. That couldn't have cleansed me from the stuff I know I've done. There's no way that me saying a few prayers, there's no way that me eating that bread that somebody said turned into the body of our Lord. There's no way that cleanses me because I keep doing the same things.

And my conscience isn't clear. And so I have to go back. Because I don't think people think it through. They just feel it through. And so if you go to the church on Sunday, the Roman Catholic Church, and you take communion, and you say your penance prayers and you do your confession, you can leave on Sunday from the Roman Catholic Church feeling pretty good about yourself.

I've made my sacrifice. My sins are cleansed up to this point in my life. And you know what? Maybe I'll have a better week, you know? and you leave there and you spend your time doing whatever you're doing and then eventually you're into the same garbage again and so you say to yourself i need to go back i need to go back i need to go back what jesus wants us to see is this whole needing to go back thing that is done away with when the perfect sacrifice is made once and for all so as long as that system verse 8 as long as that system the first part of the tabernacle is still standing as long as this whole idea of this religious worship through the sacrifices of bulls and goats as long as that idea is persistent the way into the actual holy place is is not manifested it's not displayed it's it's not made obvious and so jesus christ has come he made that way he has passed through the heavens he is the high priest who is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to him or draw near to god through him since he always lives to make intercession for them right 726 it was fitting for us to have such a high priest holy innocent undefiled separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens who does not need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, because he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

And so Jesus Christ comes and he doesn't say old law, bad, new law, good, old law, immoral, new law, immoral. He comes and says, I'm the fulfillment of what all these laws always pointed to. I am what has always been intended. And these old laws were imperfect because ultimately they weren't meant to perfect you. They weren't meant to save you. They weren't meant to be the mechanism by which you would have peace with God.

They were meant to make you long for the real thing and to give you a picture and a taste of what the real thing would look like. So that when it came, you would recognize him. so the Holy Spirit indicates for us through so now you have a lens let me just back up you have a lens by which to read the Old Testament because what I'm going to share with you is that when he says the Holy Spirit's indicating that the way into the holy place was not manifested while the Old Testament system was in place I'm going to argue that the Holy Spirit is indicating a lot more things in the Old Testament than are explicitly stated in the New. That you can read the Old Testament and you can think to yourself, how does this passage, I'm not saying go verse by verse, you know, that can get creepy sometimes.

But how does this passage that I'm reading point me to the prophet, the priest, and the king who is to come? So if you're reading a narrative about kings, well, Maybe it's teaching you something about kings. And it's teaching you something about King Jesus. Oh, well, what about a bad king? Well, a bad king teaches us how men fail and how Jesus would never fail in that way.

Prophets, priests, everything was meant to make us see Jesus. The sacrifices in the temple make us see Jesus. The ark that Noah and his family were in make us see Jesus and his accomplishment of setting aside a people to avoid the divine judgment of God. The ark of the covenant with the cherubim over the mercy seat. everything is designed that we might see Jesus.

And in our case, having already seen Jesus, we can go back and we can see these pictures and our faith be strengthened through the realization that this, this old time religion, these old paths are the good ones. These are the true ones. So your conscience cannot be perfected by outward religion. In verse 10, reinforced, it says, these things relate only to food and drink and various washings.

It actually says baptisms, which is a neat word, right? Requirements for the body imposed until a time of reformation. In order to give people something to cling to, they had these requirements certain ways to eat certain ways to drink certain ways to wash baptisms picturing the baptism that would one day come all these old testament things pointed to a new testament thing that's better and just as jesus said food goes into the body and then comes out and goes in the sewer But out of the heart of man comes murder, sexual immoralities, slander, hatred, stealing, hatred of parents.

The food you eat is not what defiles you. You're defiled from within. So changing the food that you eat, changing the drinks you drink, dunking yourself in water, washing yourself thoroughly on the outside, none of that is going to cleanse your conscience. Some of it may make you feel better temporarily. Certain foods may make you less susceptible to your sins. there's there's certainly foods that have properties and qualities like alcohol where maybe you lose a little control when you eat certain things some some people have to avoid sugar and maybe they should because it has a similar effect on their brain as maybe getting drunk would and you wouldn't you wouldn't excuse somebody for being rude or angry because they were drunk just so so we shouldn't excuse people if they ate too much sugar they should learn to control that but the point still is that the problem is inside you the defilement comes from within and so the old covenant the old testament tabernacle way of doing things the old testament priesthood.

It's all obsolete by Jesus Christ. There's not only, in a sense, no need for it. It's useless now. So if you think about trying to think of something that's truly obsolete at this point, maybe like Windows ME, it never really was not obsolete, right? but if you think about you know an old operating system it was very useful at the time we had it in fact it may have been the latest technology we had it was the best we had but nobody in their right mind would attempt to build a pc today with you know Windows XP Windows ME all these old things Why Because it not only unnecessary today but we have the better and the old one won even really work anymore it won't function with things um you know you're not gonna you're not gonna write a letter and give it to the pony express you know it's just it's hard to think of a really good example off the top of my head actually but there's certain things that they're just so obsolete that to use it today is, well, here's a good example.

You ever hear people say their phone has become a brick? Okay. So when your phone is so completely broken that it can't make phone calls, you can't go on the internet, you can't do your TikToks, whatever it is that the phone's features really are supposed to provide, it stops doing them. So here's the phone. It's broke. It won't turn on.

There's no good that can come from it. To continue to use it is now worthless to you. In fact, it's counterproductive. And that's what God wants to communicate. When you continue in the Old Testament way of doing sacrifices and worship, you're missing out on what's better but but at the same time it's not like you're just getting a little bit of what's good you're just not getting all the good it's not like that so it's not like they're on 28 8 and now you're on 500 meg right this is worthless.

What they're doing in the temple in 50 or 60 AD here is accomplishing nothing at all for them. And so the food and drink and various baptisms, washings were imposed until the time of reformation when Jesus would come. And so he tells us in verse 11, when Christ appeared as a high priest, as a good things to come. He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands.

That is to say, not of this creation, not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood. He entered the holy places once and for all or once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. so what we're looking forward to as our conscience cannot be cleared by any religious work is the ultimate high priest coming and cleansing our conscience from within by his perfect sacrifice and the application of that loving atonement to our souls by the Holy Spirit himself and the knowledge that the perfect son of God was brutally crucified on our behalf and that he conquered death by raising from the grave three days later is enough to cleanse our conscience, to motivate us to do the good works that we ought to do and to give us the peace and assurance that there is no more sacrifice needed because if his sacrifice wasn't enough, it wouldn't matter. We'd be in the old system where we just keep needing more.

But knowing that his sacrifice was once for all gives you the peace of conscience to know that you are, you're on your way to heaven. And that is a joyful thing. So I will stop there and open up the room for comments, questions. You touched on a lot of stuff. Yeah, but, you know, you don't have you have not gone to jesus faith and repentance it's just you feel this need to do something you know but then you also realize yeah like is lighting some incense and waving around going to do anything.

You know I saw that like dramatized recently with the YouTube do it channel this this woman made an altar to her aborted child and she was just waving this incense around and saying it was cleansing and all this stuff and it's like these guys who are watching it were just like this is ridiculous you're doing this because you reject god you know and it's like i i don't i don't even think the guys who are watching are christian i just think that they realize that this fruitlessness of it you know and at some level but yeah no you touch on a lot of stuff um so true the hermeneutical um points as well i think are good um where the old testament isn't just a disjointed collection of random stories no the whole thing points to jesus and you know you can take you can take a chapter that's a little bit hard to relate like say like in Samuel 10 where it seems to mostly be about like war you know international relations but at some level too there is there is the sense of this is what it means to be a follower of God, a man of God, in Joab, who says, this is God's victory. So even there, there's a little bit of, you get a glimpse of the character of God, you know. Oh, good stuff, Michael.

Well, thank you, brother. Not sure if Jeremy wanted to share. He's muted. You're the only other guy here, Jeremy, in case you didn't know. Well, good. Oh, there he is.

Okay. I didn't know I was muted. I'm just saying that's good teaching Hebrews and it just really helps explain like the world and why people do the things that they do clinging to the various religions and for that guilty conscience. And I guess to gain their own sense of righteousness by their works, being ultimately fruitless. and also kind of sad that the Jews had all this and missed the point I remember struggling with that when I was younger not understanding how all Jews weren't Christian not understanding as a child But yeah, I'm thankful we're under that better covenant.

I also remember thinking as a child, like, I would have to, like, sacrifice animals left and right if I was under that system. And just, yeah, like, how that even worked. But understanding now that Christ, in the moment of his death, that that was for all, before and after being infinite. Amen. Amen. it's like you know I hesitate to use too many sports analogies when not everybody into sports but if you watch football on TV in the 1950s and 60s we say you know even back in the black and white era you would see a football play and it might be 10 seconds.

You'd see something happen real quick. You'd think, oh, that was great. And then you go on to the next play. I don't know when replay started. I'm not going to pretend they didn't have replay. I'm not sure when it started, though.

But then if you fast forward over the years, we've seen the gradual change. But if you just look at a football game today, in full HD, right? So you've got details that you never saw before. You know, marks on a guy's jersey, you know, just details you never saw, making out the faces in the crowd. There's aspects that we can see now. And then we have replay, we have slow motion, we have you know what six camera angles that they can show every play at instead of just the one and so people can watch the same thing they watched 70 years ago but today because we've been put into hd and and the just the advancements you can see more than they saw then The same thing is being pictured.

But now we can see the details we couldn't see before. And there's somebody even maybe explaining like, oh, look at what the left guard is doing. No one hardly would have noticed those things. They would have just seen where the ball was. and now we're given more detail more teaching more enlightenment about what's going on and so you just you just have more knowledge so do people know more about football now than in the 50s well in a sense they do is it because we're better people no because we we've been put into the situation where we now have the teaching about the details, and we have the vision of it that wasn't available before.

And that's what it's like being in the New Testament time. We just have all of it like already spelled out for us. Whereas in the Old Testament, it wasn't spelled out yet. It was mysterious. It was a little hidden. It was behind a veil.

And Jesus has torn that veil. And now we can see it in full HD with all of the teaching of the Holy Spirit that has come now to explain the things that previously weren't clear yet. So I think that's a pretty good place to end. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, I ask you to bless these men today and anyone else who will hear this teaching that you would cause us to walk in your statutes and walk in your ways.

We ask you to give us that clear conscience that knows that we have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ and that his righteousness alone is our righteousness, that we might not return week after week just to appease our guilty conscience, but that we would walk worthy of our calling in the gospel and that we would walk in the good works that you have before ordained that we should walk in as the result of our great salvation wrought by the perfect high priest. We pray that we would know the power of Jesus Christ's resurrection in our lives, that the new birth would be evident by new affections, new desires, and ultimately a peaceful restfulness in the finished work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.