(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.

(Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 7:23-8:13)

The problem with reform movements and revolutions is that they don’t change people, just structures. Which makes sense, because structures can actually be changed relatively quickly without direct divine intervention—but structural change by itself really doesn’t mean much. I forget who it was who observed that there has never been a constitution that could withstand the people responsible for implementing it, but it’s true; words on a page are meaningless unless everyone is committed to abiding by them. Indeed, more than that, everyone needs to be committed to the principles underlying those words, not simply to twisting the words themselves however they need to in order to get what they want. If you change the system but people’s hearts are the same—even if it happens to be different people in charge—well, what you’ll get will be, as the old camp song says, “second verse same as the first, English version and a whole lot worse.”

Which is why it’s not enough for Hebrews to argue, as we saw in last week’s passage, that the priesthood of Christ is better because it has a better foundation; a better structure doesn’t mean much without a better leader. The author also has to show that Jesus himself is a better priest, and better suited to be a priest, than those whom he is replacing. He made a comment in that direction in the first part of this chapter, but here’s where he really dives in to make his case, and he says two things about that.

First, Jesus is a better high priest because he’s permanent. Human priests, like human pastors, come and go; some are better, some are worse, and whatever else may happen, all of them eventually die. This necessarily limits the work they can do; any minister who is merely human is temporary, and thus cannot offer permanent salvation. Jesus, by contrast, is eternal and immortal, and so he truly stands as our great high priest forever; he can offer us permanent salvation because no matter what, he is always there, interceding for us and drawing us to God.

Second, and most important, Jesus is superior in character to any merely human priest, because he alone is free of sin. It’s not just that he never did anything wrong, he never yielded to temptation in any way, even in his innermost thoughts; he never did the right thing for the wrong reasons, and never put his own desires ahead of the will of his Father in heaven. He faced every temptation, and never once chose to do anything except what the Father called him to do, and so he is perfect and perfectly good beyond even the imagined possibility of imperfection—he is perfect life incarnate, in whom all is perfectly right and as it should be. As such, he did not need and does not need to offer sacrifices for himself, because there was nothing of which he was even the least bit guilty; he could do everything for us. Equally, there is nothing in him that mars his work, nothing that could interfere, and nothing that could cause him to do less or worse for us than he has promised; because he is perfect, he is perfectly faithful.

Because of all this, Hebrews is able to declare without reservation that Jesus has brought us into a better covenant, one which is superior to the covenant made through Moses because it is the fulfillment and completion of that covenant. The Old Testament law set up a copy and shadow of the heavenly reality, preparing the way for Jesus to come and replace it with the reality; now that the reality has come, the copy is no longer needed. It has served its purpose—we must learn from it, but we no longer live under it. And if we can say that of the law of Moses, which was given directly by God to his people, how much more must we say that of all other human ideas, and especially religious ones? This isn’t to say that behavior doesn’t matter, but it is to say that we aren’t saved by behavior; it isn’t to say that there aren’t wiser and more foolish ways to live, but it is to say that we aren’t saved by human wisdom. It isn’t to say that human leaders don’t matter, but it is certainly to say that there is no salvation to be found in any of them, and that the best any of them can do is make things a little easier on the journey. Our salvation is in Christ alone, and we do not live by laws, principles, precepts, or rules; though we make use of all of them along the way, we live by grace, and grace alone.

The reason for this is made clear as the author of Hebrews quotes this passage from Jeremiah: outward law cannot change us, it can only change the ways that our sinful attitudes and desires express themselves. We might look better to the world around us—as long as they don’t look too closely, anyway—but we won’t really be any better. In truth, we might be worse. Law might only make us better liars, to cover up our sins, or better manipulators, to find other ways of getting what we want; or if we choose, as some do, to use the law to find our validation—if we choose to find satisfaction in keeping the law better than others so that we can feel superior to them—then the law can nurture spiritual pride, which is a subtle, deadly sin. The root problem is our tendency to idolatry, to direct our love, trust, and worship to people or things other than God, and the law can’t do anything about that, because the law is outside us and our idols are beyond its reach. Something else is needed if we are to become the people God made us to be.

This is why, back in the Old Testament, God repeatedly told his people that something new was coming. It’s why he promised through Jeremiah that he would make a new covenant with his people which would give them more than just external laws to follow—it would be a covenant that would change them from the inside out, as God would write his law on their hearts and fill their minds with his truth, and enable all of them to know him, rather than having to approach him through the priests. It would be a covenant that would enable God to declare, “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will remember their sins no more.” It would be a permanent solution to human sin, and it would be a real solution, not just treating the symptoms by forbidding some things and demanding others, but healing the root disease in the human heart, replacing the rebellion and idolatry in our hearts with the truth and love of God.

This is the promise Jesus came to fulfill. He was the final prophet who proclaimed the deliverance God had promised from sin and death; he is the final high priest who offered the final, perfect sacrifice of his own life to pay the price for that deliverance, and who brings us into the presence of God to speak with him at the throne of grace; and he is the final king who has authority over all things because of the victory he has won. He has satisfied every requirement, and so he eternally guarantees God’s eternal covenant of grace with us; and because his sacrifice was of infinite value and the victory of his resurrection was of infinite scope, so the covenant he makes with us is infinite in its power and reach. There is no sin too big or too unimaginable, no sinner too great or too far from God, to be included and redeemed within this new covenant. This is the scandal of grace: it is truly free, and it is truly for everybody, no matter how unworthy. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, and all are welcome, if they will only come.

(Genesis 14:17-20, Psalm 110:1-4; Hebrews 7:1-22)

My grampa was a preacher with a really corny sense of humor. So is his second son, my uncle. I am the third generation, on at least one of those. With Grampa, one of the ways that showed itself was a real affection for bad Bible puns. Where is baseball mentioned in the Bible? Genesis 1, “In the big inning . . .” What did Jesus drive? A Honda—“The disciples were all in one Accord.” Who were the shortest people in the Bible? Knee-high-miah and Bildad the Shoe-height.

And then there was the one I never thought quite kosher: who’s the only person in the Bible without parents? “Joshua, son of None.” Because to that one, the author of Hebrews would rise up and say, “Wrong—it’s Melchizedek!” And while he’s sort of punning on this as well, he’s also trying to make a serious point. The high priests in Jerusalem received their position because they were part of the priestly tribe, descendants of Levi and of Aaron, according to the law God gave through Moses. Jesus wasn’t, so how could he be a high priest? And in truth, to be a greater high priest than those in Jerusalem, to be the high priest of a greater covenant than that given in the Old Testament law, wouldn’t he need a better claim than theirs? This isn’t the sort of thing we tend to think about, but to those steeped in the Old Testament, it was an important set of questions. Hebrews answers them by appealing to Psalm 110 and the story of Melchizedek.

It’s rather a strange one; in fact, the whole chapter is rather strange. If you go back and look at the first part of Genesis 14—this is after God has called Abram into the promised land, but before God has made his covenant with him and renamed him Abraham—war breaks out in the land. It’s rather confusing, because there are so many names, but some of the cities are serving the king of another city, and they rebel, and they lose. Among the losers are the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is a problem for Abram, because when he followed God to Canaan, he took his nephew Lot with him, and Lot’s been living in Sodom; when Sodom loses, the winners take Lot, his family, and all his stuff, as part of the spoils of their victory. Abram hears about this, takes all his servants, and sets off after those kings; he launches a night attack on them—quite a tricky one by the sounds of it; he would have made a good general—and he beats them and drives them off a long way north. It’s a remarkable victory.

On his way back home, he meets up with the king of Sodom, who’s understandably grateful, since Abram’s just gone out and won his battle for him; in fact, he’s so grateful, he heads north to meet Abram partway, in the King’s Valley, just south of Jerusalem. As Abram pauses there, something equally remarkable happens. The local king comes out from the city to the valley to play host, bringing bread and wine. He’s not worried about the presence of these armies; instead, he comes down among them to serve them, and to bless Abram.

This king is identified here in three ways, and we’ll look at these slightly out of order. One, he’s identified by his city, but by a shortened form of its name: he’s named as “king of Salem.” “Salem” is the Hebrew shalem, which is a form of shalom, which is the word for “peace”—and specifically used for the peace of God. “Jerusalem” means “city of peace,” but here the king is identified simply as the king of peace. Two, we’re given his name, Melchizedek, which means something like “my king is righteous” or “righteous king”—or, as Hebrews takes it, “king of righteousness.” And three, Melchizedek is named as a priest of God Most High. How that happened, we have no idea; indeed, we have no explanation for him at all—he just is. He blesses Abram in the name of God, and from the context, it’s clear that he also has Abram swear to take nothing from the king of Sodom except the necessary provisions for his expedition. Abram responds by tithing to Melchizedek, giving him a tenth of the spoils of his victory.

We have here, then, a completely unexplained person—we are told nothing of his lineage, or how he came to be here; he’s never appeared in the story before, and never will again—who is identified as a priest of the one true God, king of righteousness by his name and king of peace by his city, which will in the end be the city of God, who blesses Abram and to whom Abram bows and pays tribute. The founder of the nation of Israel acknowledges and honors him as priest—and in doing so, Hebrews argues, commits all his descendants to do the same. Thus Melchizedek stands as a higher authority and a superior priest to all the priests established under the law of Moses, which is yet to come; and this is confirmed in the declaration of Psalm 110, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

In the application of Psalm 110 to Jesus, the author of Hebrews finds his justification for declaring Jesus the greatest high priest and the guarantor of a better covenant than the old priests could offer. Like Melchizedek, Jesus received his priesthood not by inheritance under the law of Moses, but direct from the hand of God; he received a priesthood which existed before the law, which Abraham himself had acknowledged as superior, and he received it because of his perfect life and the perfect sacrifice which he offered, to do what the law could never do. The story of Melchizedek, coming at the very beginning of the story of Israel, even before God has made his covenant with Abram, is a sign that the law and the priesthood which are to come are not God’s final plan, but merely steps along the way; however great Abram is, there is someone greater. In Jesus, that sign is fulfilled, as God’s final plan is revealed.

And look at verses 18 and 19 of Hebrews 7: “The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.” Now, that “useless” might seem rather strong—we may argue with individual laws, but typically we think of law as useful; and I think our standard assumption is that the people of the Old Testament were saved by the law, and now we’re saved by Jesus, and so the law was at least useful for a while. But consider that parenthesis: “the law made nothing perfect.” Perfection is what the holiness of God requires; only Jesus is enough for salvation because only Jesus can make us perfect before God, through his sacrifice on the cross. The law couldn’t do that, so ultimately, yes, it was useless. Its usefulness wasn’t real, only apparent.

The key here is a question Hebrews doesn’t elaborate on, probably because Paul had already done so in detail: if salvation came through the law, then what about Abraham, who lived hundreds of years before the law was given? The answer, Paul says, comes in Genesis 15, which declares that Abraham believed God, and God counted him righteous because of his faith; and we see it reflected here, as Abraham accepts the blessing and direction of the priest of God. The law did not, could not, save; its sacrifices were not sufficient for that purpose. The law simply provided a mechanism for the people of God to worship him, to bow to his authority and accept his will.

Just as the priests served under the law to mediate between God and his people, so the law in a broader sense served as a mediator: in the time before Christ had come to die for his people, the law and its structures mediated his sacrifice to them, offering them a way to express their faith in God, and their gratitude to him. It wasn’t the law that saved them; they too were saved by the sacrifice of Christ, they just didn’t know it yet.

In other words, even in the Old Testament, though the people of God were under law, they were still saved by grace, and were called to live by faith; you can see this all over the place, and especially in the prophets. Again and again, the prophets of God denounce the people, not because they aren’t performing the sacrifices and keeping the outward rituals of the law—they are—but because they’re doing so in the wrong spirit, for the wrong reasons. They think that simply doing the rituals is enough, and that if they just do them well enough, God will have to bless them—and that’s not the idea at all. In fact, that whole idea is paganism in a nutshell. God wants more; he wants their full devotion. He wants them to obey, not in expectation of earning a reward, but because they love him and trust him and are grateful to him for all he has done.

The supremacy of Christ, the supremacy of his high priesthood over all pretenders, is the supremacy of grace. We cannot please God merely by keeping laws, and we cannot live a good life merely by keeping laws. Looking good on the outside, keeping up appearances, measuring up, having success in the world’s eyes—none of that matters, none of that is what God is on about with us. The world is happy to play church dress-up and tell you that Jesus came to give you your “best life now,” that if you just follow the right rules you’ll be good enough to get everything you want—but that’s not the gospel, and that’s not Jesus.

We can’t be good enough, and God didn’t send Jesus so we can be; he’s about something far deeper than that. He’s about changing us from the inside out, making his love in us the deepest, most fundamental reality of our hearts and lives; he’s about teaching us to live by grace, to live in his love, both accepting it when we sin and when we fall short, and giving it to others when they sin and fall short. He’s about making us true Christians—not “nice people,” but little Christs.

In case anyone is interested, this is the structural analysis of Hebrews from which I’m working in this series; it’s not one I’ve seen anywhere else, it’s my own reading. I think the warnings are the key to understanding the structure of this book, which is mostly composed of triadic subsections, each of which makes an argument, applies it, and then warns the reader of the consequences of ignoring the message.

• 1:1-14: Argument: Christ is superior to the angels

• 2:1: Application: Take the gospel message seriously

• 2:2-4: Warning

• 2:5-18: Argument: Christ has been given authority over everything as high priest

• 3:1-6: Application: Christ is superior to Moses and the Law

• 3:7-19: Warning

• 4:1-10: Argument: Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promise of rest

• 4:11: Application: Press forward to enter his rest

• 4:12-13: Warning

• 4:14-15: Argument: Christ is a unique high priest

• 4:16-5:10: Application: We can approach God with confidence

• 5:11-6:8: Warning

• 6:9-20: Reassurance: God is faithful

• 7:1-10:18: Argument: Christ is a better high priest of a better covenant

• 10:19-25: Application: Live the faith fearlessly

• 10:26-31: Warning

• 10:32-11:40: Argument: Faith in Christ is worth keeping

• 12:1-24: Application: The fruit of endurance is worth the trial

• 12:25-29: Warning

• 13:1-19: Closing applications: Life in the people of God

• 13:20-25: Blessing and farewell