Hebrews: Power in the Blood

Pastor Fletcher preaches from Hebrews 9:1-14 about the importance of the blood of Christ. Discussion points: The ancient tabernacle had three different places where blood was offered as a sacrifice, we have to acknowledge that whatever is wrong with the world is also wrong within us, Christ’s blood was the perfect sacrifice that all previous animal sacrifices pointed toward.

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  Preacher: [Hebrews 9:1-14] Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship in an earthly place of holiness, for a tent was prepared, the, the first section in which the lamps stand and the table and the bread of presence, it is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was the second section called the Most Holy Place, having the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's staff that was that budded and the tables, tablets of the covenant.

  Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat of these things we cannot now speak in detail. These preparations, having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties. But into the section, second section, the high priest goes only, and he, and he, but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet open as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age.

  According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

  For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons, and with the with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, pure will that purify our consciences from dead works to serve the living God.

  This is the word of the Lord.

  All right, we're continuing our series through Hebrews, and let me pray for us as we do that. God, as we come to your word this morning. Would you bring our hearts to a place of joy and contentment in you? Help us to approach you, to not stay in the outer places, but to go into the inner places to be near to you, and God help us to see what we need to get that elusive presence of God, that feels so elusive often. Father, I pray that you'd be with me, help my words to magnify you, and help our hearts to be encouraged this morning. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

  Over the years we've received hundreds of connection cards and I have been the pastor here. We've been here for about 8 years now and before that I was the executive pastor at City on a Hill in Brookline from basically when it started until we started out here in Somerville and. So hundreds of connection cards and you know, most of the connection cards are pretty simple. You write your name on it, maybe your phone number or your email, and that's it. Sometimes people write write prayer requests on there, but there is one connection card that stands out above all the rest.

  Because many years ago, back when I was in Brookline, there was a, a woman that visited our church, and she decided that the connection card was more like a suggestion box. It's not, just in case anybody's wondering, if you wanna use it that way, sure, but this one kept me up at night, so maybe not like this,. The, the connection card that she filled out had so much feedback on it, so much feedback on it. she had all kinds of things written on there, most of which I've blocked out, for one reason or another, but there's one thing that haunted me that was on her connection card. She said that if you want to reach modern people, you need to sing less about blood.

  And I was like, well, that's weird. I've never thought that before. But you know, when I take a step back and if I'm going into a church for the first time and I've never been into a church and I have no background with Christianity, I have no background with Judaism, and then I walk into a church, it does seem like we're oddly obsessed with blood. Like there's just, this is a bloody religion, it's all over the place, and some of the songs we sing, there is a fountain filled with blood. Drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and when sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty shame, stain. What can wash away my sin? Alright, you're gonna have to do better than that. What can make me whole again? Last time I was singing so. Oh pre- oh, I'm not gonna do it, Jared. I'm gonna make a, make a phone a friend here. I have to get you up here, but yeah, oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fountain, I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. There's a power, power, wonder working power. In the blood of the lamb, right?

  Do you guys know this? If you didn't grow up singing these. They're weird. These are weird songs. This is like, you know, Halloween-themed religion that we have here. What is with the obsession with blood? As modern people, shouldn't we have progressed beyond all this blood talk? Surely, what we need today isn't more violence, isn't more blood, but surely we need a religion that's more uplifting and more positive. What is with this obsession with blood? And that's what we're diving into today. First, we'll be talking about bloody backgrounds. Second, we're gonna be talking about bloody brokenness. And third, we'll be talking about bloody redemption. So it's a blood blood-themed sermon today.

  Point number one, bloody backgrounds. To understand why blood is so central to the faith of Christianity, you have to kinda go all the way to the background of it, to the 1st century context that Jesus was born into, and even thousands of years before that, as God's people were being formed and the way that they came into God's presence and the way that it all worked in that time. That's what Hebrews does for us. Hebrews chapter 9 goes all the way back to the temple and goes into detail about the temple. It feels like you're preaching through Leviticus or the second half of the Exodus as you preach through Hebrews, because there's a lot of details. And look, friends, I, I get it, like some of this stuff might not be the most thrilling, but I'm gonna try to make it interesting for you.

  The people of God at one point, worshiped God, but they did not come into his presence. Instead, only one person once a year went into the presence of God and made sacrifices on their behalf. And the whole system was meant to show you that you are separated from God because of your brokenness and sin. And so the way that they set this thing up is they had a tabernacle. Now later when Solomon built the temple, he built the temple modeled after the tabernacle. So the instructions that we get about the tabernacle are the same thing that we understand about the temple. They're basically the same thing.

  But the tabernacle, I have a picture of it right here. And what you see here is they set up kind of a fenced off area and then inside, if you've never, you know, you've probably read about this or heard about it, but maybe you've never seen a picture. And so maybe this is helpful for you. Inside of the fenced off area, there's a courtyard, and almost everywhere, lots of Jewish people were allowed into the courtyard. And as you go into the courtyard, you see there's actually a tent inside of the courtyard. Now, this tent. It's rather small, smaller than you imagine. The tent is 45 ft by 15 ft by 15 ft high, done to exact measurements, very particular about the size of the tent. I would suspect that maybe like one section of chairs is the size of the entire tent of the tabernacle. So maybe this like, you know, this side right here would be the size, not even all the way to the back wall. It's. It's the size of a small apartment in Somerville. It's 675 square feet. It's pretty, pretty small space. When you think about the, it, it dominates so much larger in our minds than what it actually was.

  The first room of the Tabernacle was twice the size of the second. So in the tabernacle, there's two rooms. First, you have the holy place, and inside that room, it is 30 ft by 15 ft. So think living room, dining room area. And then behind that is the most holy place, which is 15 ft by 15 ft by 15 ft. It's a perfect cube. That comes, that comes up throughout the scriptures. I'm not gonna go into it all right now, but even go into Revelation, there's pretty exciting stuff that deals with the holy of the holies being the cube,. And so this is kind of like the size of a bedroom or a large bedroom in the back of the tabernacle. And so, if you were to go into the tabernacle, go to the next slide here. So if you were to go into the tabernacle, what you would actually do is you'd walk in the front gate, and you'd actually have to pass, this is like an overhead shot, it's not realistic, obviously. But you would actually have to pass 3 different altars where blood sacrifices were made. To get to the very, to if you walked to the holy of the holies from the front gate.

  So first you would pass the altar of burnt offerings right there in the front. Do you see the square at the right side of the picture there? Yeah, that is the altar of the burnt. Offerings, and then second, we have the altar of incense. There's the altar of incense, that's the second one. That's inside the holy place. And then as you keep going to the holy of the holies, you actually have the Ark of the Covenant, and what the Ark of the Covenant, you might not think about like this, but it had what you. Called the mercy seat sitting on top of the Ark of the Covenant where that once a year sacrifice was made on top of the ark. And so all this, it shows us that the tabernacle was a very bloody place. Now we can go back to that scripture. I'm gonna read this and, and maybe it comes alive to you a little bit more.

  Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship in an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared. The first section in which the lamp stand and the table and the bread of presents, it is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was the second section called the most holy place, having the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides of the with gold. In which a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron's staff that butted, and the tablets of the covenant. Above it were cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat, of which things we cannot speak in detail. I love how the author ends that cause he's kinda like, OK, we gotta move on. like, I could keep going on, but we're gonna move on just as I am right now. Verse 6, these preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties. But into the second section, the high priest goes only. But and he, but once a year, and not without taking the blood for which he offers for himself for the unintentional sins of his people. And so you see, the, the work of the priest was continual, going into the holy place, making the offerings. Once a year, the high priest going into the most holy place, making the offerings.

  And this whole thing was designed to show you that there is something deeply wrong with our relationship with God. That God's presence, that God desires to be with his people. He desires to give us his presence, but our brokenness has kept us separate.

  Second point, bloody brokenness, bloody brokenness. Why were they doing all these animal sacrifices all the time? Because you cannot approach God. Without having atonement for your sin. It was God's way of showing that something was deeply wrong with us. Now we all innately know that blood means that something is broken. Children especially understand this. If my kids are going 30 MPH on a bicycle and fall over, they'll pop right back up unless there's one microscopic spot of blood. If there's one little bit of blood, it's all over. It's the only cure for that is a band-aid. You, you have to have something to cover over it. Because blood means that something is desperately wrong. Blood means that it's broken, and that's the same as it was in this time, that blood meant that it was broken, that our relationship was broken.

  The point of all the sacrifices is this, that there is really something deeply wrong with the world. And you might step back and be like, OK, maybe the whole world. OK, 5 minutes on the news is all you need to know that there's something deeply wrong with the world. There's greed. There's, there's, selfishness. There's corruption There's division Inequity, all kinds of things. And look, we might disagree about what's wrong with the world at times, but I think most of the issues of the world come back to the same thing. People are selfish. And when that selfishness goes unchecked, you see that the world is broken. And look, friends, you cannot say that there's something deeply wrong with the world without also acknowledging that as a part of the world, you are a part of the problem.

  We're all complicit in this. We've all contributed the same things that the corporate CEOs do that we point and say are greedy. Those things live within our hearts. They do. It's just human nature being magnified is what we see on the news. There's a great song that illustrates this, and I debated cheering it because it's a little graphic at times. But there's a song by, Sufjan Stevens. Do you guys know Sufjan Stevens? Who else was cool in the 2000s, all right?. Sufjan Stevens, if you don't know who he is, it's OK. I'm getting old. But he was an artist, released an album, that I think it was like Pace magazine's Album of the Year 2005. Come On Feel Illinois was what it was called. And, well, yeah, that she said, I, it's come on Feel Illinois, and, you know, it's debatable.

  On the, on the song, there's a, on the album, there's a song called John Wayne Gacy Junior. Now, if you don't know who John Wayne Gacy Junior is, that's OK. In the seventies, he was a serial killer. And there's a, a documentary on one of the streaming platforms these days that I will not be watching about that. The song told me enough because it, it details the song just goes through all of his exploits. And this guy, he killed like 27 people and the. The way he did it was really, really gruesome and involved, like dressing up like a clown, and he would hide the, the bodies under his floor. And it was quite graphic, the way that goes.

  And the song is just this beautiful, haunting song. And at the end of it. Sufjan Stevens says, and in my best behavior. I'm really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets that I've hid. And what he's saying, and he's not saying that you're as bad as a serial killer and that you actually have done as much as that, and I'm not implying that. But what he's saying is, the thing that was wrong with John Wayne Casey Junior is wrong with me too. I just do a better job of hiding it and keeping it under control. The root thing. It's still there. I'm complicit in the wrong of the world. Me too, I am also broken. You can't say there's something majorly wrong with the world without saying there's something majorly wrong with me.

  All the blood in the temple represents that your sin deserves punishment. Romans 6 says, for the wages of sin is death. It's what sin deserves is death. The blood represents the death, but the free gift of God is eternal life, and Jesus Christ our Lord.

  Point number three, bloody redemption. Verse 12, he entered once for all into the holy places, speaking of Jesus, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by the means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. Through his death on the cross, what Jesus did is went into the most holy of the most holy places. And he didn't bring animal sacrifices. What millions of blood of bulls was not capable of to do. Jesus went into the most holy of most holy places and offered his own blood as the priest, as the sacrifice, as the Son of God. He did not have to repeat it, because his sacrifice is what all the other sacrifices pointed toward. They were all leading up to the fact and reminding, calling out, a sacrifice is coming, one who can atone for your sin.

  You see the blood of the goats and the calves and the bulls. It was not actually covering any sin. It was pointing toward the blood of God himself who would die for his people. Romans points out that some of us, we might be willing to die for someone who is a friend, but he, while we were still enemies, died for us. He laid his life down. To give us eternal redemption.

  Redemption is not a word that we use often in English, but it was used all the time back in the day. And what the way it was used is, if you were on financial hard times, what they didn't have bankruptcy laws, they didn't have welfare, and so what you would have to do is if you ran out of money and you had no way to provide for yourself, you would have to go sell yourself into indentured servitude or slavery. It was much different than the slavery that we had in, in these days. There were rights and, and not in these days, but in the United States history. but there were rights and regulations for slavery. And you would sell yourself into slavery so that you could continue to live and provide for yourself. Now, if you had a wealthy cousin or something down the road, 20 miles in the next town over, that cousin could come over and could purchase you out of slavery. And that was to be called redemption. You were being redeemed, bought out of it.

  And so what Jesus does for us is he gives us an eternal redemption of our soul, buying us out of our slavery to self and our slavery to sin. It's very similar to this, John Oliver bit that I saw a few years ago, on Last Week Tonight where he bought, $60,000 worth of medical debt, which was the equivalent of $15 million worth of actual debt that people have accumulated over the years, and he said, you're free. He redeemed them of their medical debt, and this is what Christ does for us. He takes the punishment for us. And applies it to us. Jesus gives us eternal redemption. Our guilt was placed on him through his blood, we're set free.

  Tim Keller tells the story of Ernest Gordon, who was a real-life prisoner of war during World War II. And this is written about in his book, The Through the Valley of Kwai. So he's, Ernest Goodwin is in this POW camp in Thailand. And he's a prisoner of war. They're set to do manual labor every single day, and at the end of one day, all the prisoners who are soldiers, they are gathered together and all the tools are counted. And so the guards are counting all of the tools and it's going through them all, and they realize that a shovel is missing at the end of the day. Now this is a big deal because if if a shovel is missing, then not only could one prisoner escape, but all of them could escape. They just dig a hole underneath the fence. And then they could get out. And so the guard is very upset about the fact that this shovel is missing. So what he does is he lines up all of the prisoners, and he's screaming in broken English, saying, striding up and down.

  This is how it says in the book, striding up and down before the men, the guard ranted and raved, working himself into a fury, screaming in broken English. He demanded that the guilty one step forward to take his punishment. No one moved. The guard's rage reached new heights of violence, then all die, all die, he shrieked. And to show that he meant business, he lifted his rifle to his shoulder and cocked it. Prepared to shoot the very first person in the line and to work his way down the entire line. And at that moment, a heroic man stepped forward and he said, it was me. And the guard approached the man. And beat him Punched him, and though it was apparent that after he didn't shoot him, but after he beat him to death, he continued to kick him, just as a symbol to all of the other prisoners in this camp.

  The thing with this is that later on that evening when they were counting through the tools again, there actually wasn't a shovel missing at all. And instead we see an innocent man step forward in the place of all the men. To shed his blood for their freedom, to shed their blood so that they, he shed his blood so that they might be released from. Death We see this illustration of what Christ has done, that an innocent man has gone before us. He has taken the punishment that we deserve. So that we can be set free. And you know, the, the men who saw that, their lives were changed forever. How can you see such heroism and not have more courage. And not feel this need to stand up for what's right.

  It's what Christ does for us, and as Christians, as we follow him, as we look to what he has done for us. We're emboldened to do what is right, to follow him with all of our heart, because there is power in the blood. This is what Christ does for us. He paid our debt. By his wounds, we are healed. Let me ask you guys this as we finish up. When was the last time you felt the depth of that separation? I think for most modern people, guilt is not a feeling that we're super prepared to handle. And when we feel guilt, we immediately try to numb ourselves from that guilt. And some of us, we don't feel guilt very well, very easily at all. Our consciences have been seared after years of guilt and then like dealing with it by numbing the pain in one way or another. But for some of us, we might have sensitive consciences, and praise God. It's probably a good thing.

  A couple of years ago, I felt so guilty. I had this situation where my youngest son, he was like in kindergarten my middle son, he was in kindergarten. I was dropping him off at school. I pulled, I pulled up, let him out, and then immediately realized that he had left his backpack in the car. And so he had already walked around the school, but I needed to get him his backpack, so I just parked the car. It was kind of illegal where I had the car parked. It was like halfway blocking the crosswalk, and our, our schools don't have parking lots. You're just like on the street. so I, I hop out, I run over there, I give him his backpack. I'm gone all of maybe 90 seconds. I get back and there is a traffic cop waiting there by my car. And instead of writing me a ticket, which I would have preferred, he instead decides to just yell at me for the next like 3 minutes.

  And I'm just like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my kid needed his backpack. I don't know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But he's just yelling at me and continuing to just berate me. Now, if anybody's dealt with some of these, this is the way it is, OK? It, it happens like this. I felt so bad. That I got in my car, drove straight to Dunkin' Donuts, and bought a gift card to bring back to the man to say, I'm sorry. I wish he would have just written me a ticket, so that I could have just had something to pay, but I had no way to atone for my sins in this situation. I, all I wanted was to do a good deed, to do something right, to, to paying the ticket would have even been better, that I can pay my own, I get the punishment that I deserve. That would have felt better. Instead, I just feel guilty.

  And for many of us, we have a similar. Way to deal with sin. Do you feel like you have to pay for your own sin? Or do you know that you have a savior who has paid for your sins on your behalf? Who's gone before you. No matter how long you've been a Christian. We can never mature beyond the blood of Christ. You know, the woman who wrote the connection card, she's right. Blood is offensive. It is, but it's the exact right kind of offense, because the blood of Christ means that you are bad enough. That God had to send his own son to die in your place.

  And in church, I want our church to be the most welcoming church that we can make it. So that that offense is clear. I don't want you to be offended by 100 other things that I have to say. I just want you to be offended by that. I'm not gonna display my political beliefs week after week. I'm not gonna try to insult you week after week. I'm just gonna try to tell you about the blood of Christ and how you are not a good person. You are complicit in that what's wrong in the world, and you need the blood of Christ. And if that's clear, if we make everything else warm and squishy, and that's clear, that's great. That's what when we know what we're getting what we want.

  Romans 5 says, for while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. One scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

  On the night that he was betrayed, Christ took a loaf of bread and he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. See, it keeps getting weirder. Now we're like drinking his blood, right? There's a a blood obsession here. We can't get past the fact that his blood was spilled for us, that we desperately need him to cover our guilt. And so each week we participate in the sacred meal, being reminded that his body was broken, his blood was shed. And so if you're a believer here, we encourage you to come and receive this. So would you stand as we prepare to receive this meal and pray with me?

  Heavenly Father, we admit that we often prefer a religion of moral uplift. A version of faith that feels clean and manageable. But today we thank you for the blood. We thank you that you didn't just give us advice, you gave us your son. We thank you Jesus, for being the great high priest who didn't enter with the goat with the blood of a goat. But with your own life to buy us back. For those here today carrying a heavy conscience, would you apply the wonder working power of your blood to their hearts? Quiet the voice of the accuser with the louder voice of the redeemer. Let us walk out of this room not feeling guilty and broken, but clean and forgiven, and free to love. God, thank you for making a way for us. Amen.