Worship and Redemption

(Leviticus 16:29-34; Hebrews 9:1-15)

When the Protestant Reformation finally broke loose after several false starts and began rolling across Europe, one of the things it brought with it was the practice of iconoclasm. Nowadays, the word “iconoclast” tends to be applied to anyone who merely snarks at the conventional wisdom, but back then, the word had a rather different meaning: iconoclasm was the deliberate destruction of statues, pictures, stained-glass windows, and other images in churches across Europe. Not all of the Reformers called for this or encouraged it; Martin Luther, for instance, eventually concluded that religious images and the use of the arts in worship were just fine as long as they were the servants of the gospel. Others, though, including John Calvin, considered that to be impossible, and argued that all images of any kind were violations of the Old Testament commands against the making of idols and must be destroyed. This is why the great historian Eamon Duffy titled his study of England through the Reformation period The Stripping of the Altars. The historical irony of this stained-glass window behind me, standing in a Presbyterian church, is truly nothing short of staggering.

Now, this might sound really bizarre to you—and in an absolute sense, I think Luther was right, not Calvin. However, remember what I said last week about reform movements—new structures by themselves mean very little; we’re used to the denominational structures that emerged from that period, but that’s not what the Reformers themselves were on about. Their focus was on cleaning away everything in the church that was obscuring the gospel so that people could come to understand that their salvation was in Christ alone through grace alone by faith alone—and so their primary target was the worship of the church. They understood that there is a connection between our worship and our redemption, but not the one that the church of Rome had been proclaiming; and if the statues and the windows and all that other stuff was drawing people’s attention away from worshiping Jesus Christ and hearing the gospel message, then however beautiful it might be, it absolutely had to go.

The problem the Reformers faced was that the people of Christendom were operating on something like a detached version of Old Testament worship: show up, watch the priest offer the sacrifice—not bulls and goats, but a re-enactment of the sacrifice of Christ—and simply from that, receive your allotment of grace to enable you to go out and be a Christian until the next time you showed up for Mass. They understood that our redemption comes through sacrifice and that that sacrifice is central to worship, but their understanding was passive in its essence. The Reformers sought to fix that by clearing the dead things out of the way and actually preaching the gospel, something which was not being done in most places at that time. This was a good thing; but with the human tendency to overcorrect, any good thing has its downsides, and so it was here. In this case, it was a swing to a more intellectualized religion—bloodless, if you will—that lacked that sense of the connection between worship and sacrifice, and thus worship and redemption; over time, that allowed for the development of the highly individualistic and self-oriented view of worship to which our culture is prone today.

In that respect, it’s instructive that the author of Hebrews continues to build his case for the supremacy of Christ by going on to talk about worship under the old covenant. In chapter eight, he’s pointed out that the priests of the law serve “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things”; in the first five verses of this chapter, he gives us a description of that copy—and specifically of its first version, the tabernacle which God told the Israelites to build in the wilderness to carry with them on their wanderings. It’s interesting that he uses the tabernacle here rather than the temple that was built later in Jerusalem; I suspect it’s because the tabernacle was clearly temporary, designed to be used only until something more permanent had been built to replace it. This underscores the author’s point that the whole system was temporary, merely preparing the way for its replacement when Messiah would come.

Of course, the tabernacle only had two rooms, while the temples in Jerusalem that followed it were much, much bigger—but at their heart were the same two rooms, the same small sanctuary. You had one curtain that kept out everyone but the priest of the day, who went in to the Holy Place to tend the lamps and the incense, and place twelve fresh loaves of bread on the table; and then after that, you had another curtain, and it kept out everybody. Only the high priest went through that curtain into the Holy of Holies, and only one day each year, and only under the strictest orders—once with a blood offering for the sins of himself and his family, and then again with a blood offering for the sins of the nation; and as I’ve told you before, somewhere along the line they started tying a rope around the high priest’s ankle, so that if he did something wrong and God struck him down, they could get his body out of there without having to go in themselves.

By this, Hebrews says, the Holy Spirit showed that the way into the presence of God had not been opened by the law. It was certainly better for the people of Israel to keep the law than not, but merely keeping the law—even true obedience to the law, not merely outward conformity—could not open the way to God; the veil remained outside the sanctuary, keeping out the people, and then again at the door to the Holy of Holies, excluding even the high priest from the presence of God. Why? Because the true barrier that divides us from God had not yet been removed—the barrier within ourselves, the barrier of our sin and idolatry. As we saw last week and as Hebrews emphasizes again here, the law could not remove that; and as long as that barrier remained, the curtain had to remain as well, for no one who has not been made holy can enter the presence of the most holy God and live. Under the law, even the holiest people could only worship God at a safe distance. For anything more than that, more was needed.

And then in verse 11, we get this: “But when Christ came.” When Christ came, he didn’t have to restrict himself to the earthly copy and shadow, he could go right into the real thing in the heavens, right into the presence of God; and he didn’t have to buy his way in with a sacrifice for himself, for he was already perfectly holy. Nor did he have to turn around and leave again, as all the priests before him had had to do; he could remain there to be the way for us, because he belongs there, because he is God. He entered the presence of God with his sacrifice, with the sacrifice he offered for us, and by virtue of that sacrifice—by the infinite virtue of his blood—he secured for us eternal redemption, purifying us eternally by his blood so that we might eternally come with him into the very presence of God. By his blood he removed the barrier in our hearts, washing away the stain of dead works from our consciences, cleansing us from all the things that defile us. By his blood we come before him; by his blood, we worship.

This is profoundly important: what Christ has become the way for us to do is something far greater than we usually think of when we think of worship. Worship isn’t just something we sit around together and do; it’s not just about the music we enjoy, or about hearing a sermon that makes us think, or about the time we spend together. It’s not something we can take lightly, as if it’s of no great importance whether we’re here or not. We are gathered in the presence of God; he is here with us, among us, within us, by his Spirit, hearing and receiving every word we say and every thought we think. The living God, creator of the universe, is alive and moving in this room; though the eyes of the flesh see painted walls and stained glass, in the Spirit, we stand in the company of angels, in the celestial Holy of Holies, before the seat of majesty of all being.

It’s a profound and costly gift, and we take it for granted. It’s interesting, I have many times heard people give thanks that we live in a nation where we are allowed to worship God without having to worry about dying for it, and that is indeed reason to be grateful; but how often do we stop to give thanks to Jesus that we can worship God without dying for it? The fundamental freedom to worship God in spirit and in truth doesn’t come from our Constitution, it comes from Christ. Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered, because it’s only through his blood, it’s only because he allowed himself to be butchered, that we can enter the presence of God.

We are always welcome to come to God, always, no matter what we’ve done, no matter whether we feel ourselves worthy or not—and I’ll tell you this much: it’s often those who think themselves most worthy who are least worthy, for exactly that reason, but they’re welcome anyway—we are always welcome, though we could never have paid for our invitation, because we didn’t have to; Jesus did, though he had to bear all the evil of Hell to do it. We are always welcome to worship God, no matter how unworthy, because of Jesus; we are only welcome to worship God because of Jesus, for we could never be worthy enough. Apart from him, the presence of God would be instant death for us, glory our unholy selves could never endure; because of him, to stand in the presence of God is life itself.