The Heavenly Sanctuary| Hebrews 9
Brian Hedges | September 8, 2024
Turn in God’s word this morning to Hebrews chapter 9. And while you’re turning there, let me ask you a question that I really want you to reflect on as we begin our time in God's word this morning. Here’s the question: How is your conscience?
What is the conscience? The conscience has been defined as that psychological faculty that distinguishes between right and wrong, and either afflicts or comforts the person depending on their actions. It’s that voice inside your head that’s telling you whether you are okay or not, whether you are in the right or not, whether you’ve done something wrong or not.
Most of us, if we grew up on Walt Disney, first were exposed to the idea of conscience with Jiminy Cricket and Pinnochio, that little cricket who is kind of a guide for Pinnocio. He says, “Let your conscience always be your guide.” That’s not quite biblical language, but in a world today where the conscience seems to be vanishing and oftentimes people have no moral compass whatsoever, it’s important for us to pay attention to the conscience.
There are those of us who know what it is to have an afflicted conscience or a wounded conscience. It was Shakespeare who said, “Conscience is a thousand swords.” Maybe if you grew up in the church and you grew up in a family that had high moral standards and you had this very clear perception of right and wrong, it didn’t take long for your conscience to begin to bother you.
I can remember as a child where if I even thought a bad word, I felt like I had to go confess that to my parents. I remember having dreams about the judgment of God. I think I was like a little Martin Luther—I felt like I needed to be punished in order to be forgiven. I had a very sensitive conscience as a child. Some of you, maybe, know what that’s like.
There’s some of you, perhaps, who feel like there’s nothing on your conscience and never has been. To you this kind of clever quote from Mark Twain might better apply when he said, “A clear conscience is a sure sign of a bad memory.” If your conscience never bothers you then you’ve forgotten the ways in which you have fallen.
But I start here with this idea of conscience because it is a key concept in the passage we are going to study this morning. The whole idea of a conscience, this inner voice inside us which needs to be cleansed in order for us to be in a right relationship with God.
We’re continuing, of course, in our study in Hebrews. The theme of this letter is Jesus is better, and over and over again the author to the Hebrews is driving home this one point, that Jesus is better—the supremacy of Jesus Christ and his ministry in the New Covenant to everything that went before in the Old Testament.
Some of you may remember if you were here a couple of weeks ago how I mentioned that in Hebrews chapters 8 through 10, the section that we are now in, these chapters really develop the supremacy of Jesus Christ—the theme that Jesus is better—in terms of three things: his covenant, the sanctuary, and the sacrifice. He shows that the New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant—that's Hebrews chapter 8 which we saw last week; that Jesus’s final sacrifice is superior to all of the repeated sacrifices of the Old Testament—we’ll focus on that especially next week; and that Jesus offered his sacrifice in a greater and a better sanctuary—the heavenly sanctuary as opposed to the earthly sanctuary in Old Covenant worship. And that’s really the theme of Hebrews chapter 9 verses 1-14 where I want to read this morning.
So we’ve seen the New Covenant. We will be looking at the final sacrifice today. It’s all about the heavenly sanctuary and what Jesus does in it and the practical part is how that is going to affect the conscience.
Hebrews chapter 9—I’m going to read verses 1-14 and just for clarification I want to read verses 23-24. Now before I read it, I want to just acknowledge that I’m not entirely happy with the translation of the English Standard Version which I’ve been using throughout this Hebrew series, so I’m going to also use some wording from the NIV and you’ll see that in brackets on the screen. I think it clarifies where the ESV in some places may be obscure.
Hebrews 9:1-14: “Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness [or an earthly sanctuary, NIV]. For a tent [or tabernacle] was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence. It is called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a 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 budded, and the 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 second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people [or the sins of ignorance]. By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened 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 [or the new order, NIV].
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent [or tabernacle] (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places [or the most holy place], 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 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, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”
Drop down to Hebrews 9:23-24. “Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places [or sanctuary] made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”
This is God’s word and it is one of the more difficult passages in God’s word, especially if you’re, say, new to Christianity or you’re not very familiar with the Bible. And I tell you, this passage is difficult to wrestle with. I had a time crafting a sermon out of this passage, and I think there’s really two dangers.
One is the danger of skipping passages like this altogether. And it is tempting because this passage doesn’t immediately feel as relevant as, say, many other passages that we might consider. Think about everything we did in the summer through the book of Proverbs. So practical. This passage doesn’t feel quite as practical to us, and so there’s the danger of just skipping it altogether, not paying attention to passages like this at all.
We’re committed in our church to exposition through passages of scripture. We believe that all of God’s word speaks to us. And passages like this, even though they are difficult, even though they are hard to understand, are meant to be food for our souls and that it’s good for us to wrestle with them.
But the other danger, the second danger, is to focus on the details of a passage like this and then miss the main point—and it would be easy to do that because there are a lot of details in this passage, lots of references to the Old Testament. The author here is evoking Exodus 25 and Leviticus 16 and Numbers 19 and other passages as well.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon actually preached two sermons on Hebrews 9:13-14. He preached one in 1879 and another one six years later in 1885. What’s interesting, is how in the second sermon, Spurgeon expressed regret for the first sermon because he felt like he spent too much time talking about the red heifer and the ceremony surrounding that from Numbers 19, and he said he didn’t spend enough time talking about Christ. And in the second sermon he said, “May we be helped by the Spirit of God to yield our earnest attention to the deeply important subject now before us. The red cow may roam out of notice and the Christ of God alone shall be seen.”
That’s pretty good advice from Spurgeon. Let the red cow roam out of notice—we don’t need to spend a lot of time talking about the red heifer per se, what we want to do is see Jesus in this passage. But there’s a connection between all the details and Jesus the Messiah and what he’s done. So I want us to see that. I want us to grasp the essential message of the passage.
So, here's basically the sermon. There’s two points this morning:
1. The Inadequacy of the Earthly Sanctuary
2. Christ’s Superior Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary
1. The Inadequacy of the Earthly Sanctuary
This is all of especially verses 1-10, where the inadequacy is seen when it is seen in contrast with the references to Jesus, verses 11-14 and so on. And essentially what you have in these ten verses is a description of this earthly sanctuary, the tabernacle of the Old Testament with the two divisions, the two compartments in this tabernacle and then the respective furniture in each one of those places. Those places were called the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. And so verses 1-5, really evoking Exodus 25, is detailing the furniture of the tabernacle.
Then you have a description of the liturgy, or what verse 1 calls the regulations for worship. And it’s really the service that took place in that earthly sanctuary, in that tent—that tabernacle—and especially the service that took place on the Day of Atonement. And that’s the focus in verse 7.
And then verses 8-10 are spelling out the inadequacy of this whole system of worship in the Old Testament. And that’s the point that the author is driving home is that this system of worship in the earthly sanctuary—the tabernacle in the Old Testament with all of its furniture and all of its ceremonies and all of its rituals and regulations—while it served a purpose, that purpose was temporary. It was provisional, and ultimately, it was inadequate. It was just a copy of a greater reality, the reality that Jesus brings.
And maybe it will help here to look at a chart to see how these two sanctuaries, the earthly sanctuary and the heavenly sanctuary, are seen in contrast. The earthly sanctuary was a part of the first covenant, or the old covenant, Hebrews 9:1, whereas the heavenly sanctuary belongs to Jesus’s ministry as the mediator of the new covenant. That was the theme of Hebrews 8—Jesus is called the mediator of the new covenant in Hebrews 8:15. The Old Testament tabernacle with its furniture, Hebrews 9:1-5, is seen in contrast to the greater and better tent—or the greater and better tabernacle—that the author said was made without hands—that is, it is not of this creation, Hebrews 9:11.
And there’s also a contrast between the respective systems of sacrifices. You had repeated sacrifices, continual sacrifices, day after day and year after year (Hebrews 9:6) in the old covenant. In contrast to that, you have the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Hebrews 9:12.
Now, here was the inadequacy of the earthly sanctuary—it only gave limited access to God. And that scene when the author talks about the Day of Atonement, how the High Priest, and only the High Priest, could actually go in to that inner sanctum, that second tent, the Most Holy Place, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, he could only go in there once a year. So get this, only the High Priest could go in, no one else. And the High Priest could only go in once a year, no other time, and he could only go in when he had first made a sacrifice for his own sins, and only then could he make a sacrifice for the sins of the people. He had to do this year after year after year. In other words, there was not open access to God, and that’s part of what the author is pointing out in Hebrews 9. In contrast to that, it’s implied that Jesus has opened the way to God, and that is explicitly stated in Hebrews 10:19-20.
The other way in which the Old Testament sanctuary, the earthly sanctuary, was inadequate, is that it could not perfect the conscience of the worshipers, okay? So the application point that I really want to drive out in the whole sermon is that if you are conscious of the fact that you’ve got a conscience that needs to be cleansed, you’ll never get it in the old system of worship. You can never get it that way. The only way to get the conscience cleansed and changed is through what Jesus did. Jesus purifies the conscience in contrast to the old sanctuary—the old sacrifices there—that could never perfect the conscience. So, this is showing us the provisional temporary nature and the inadequacy of the Old Testament system.
Now, I know this can be hard to grasp and some of you may be thinking, “Why did God even do that? Why did he even give them this system of worship that they would observe for well over a thousand years when it was inadequate? What was the whole point of this?”
Let me give you an illustration for why something can be necessary and provisional and helpful even if it is inadequate. Okay, so bear with me here. At our house, we are not on city water. We have a septic system. You know this isn’t going somewhere good, don’t you? We have a septic system, and every so often, the filter in the septic tank gets clogged and it has to be cleaned out. There’s only one way to do that without paying somebody to come do it, and that’s for me to open the septic tank, reach down in, and pull out that filter. I literally have to get in there to my shoulder. The whole arm has to go in in order to pull that filter out, and it is as gross as you think it is. And when I finish that, of course, the very first thing I’m doing is hosing off. I’m just hosing off my arm, to just get the grime and the filth removed.
Now, do you think that just by hosing off my arm and then coming back inside and going about my day, that that’s going to be sufficient for me to be clean? It’s absolutely not going to be sufficient! It gets a little of the grime off but it certainly doesn’t get the smell off and it’s not the deep kind of cleansing that is needed. Hosing off is necessary or Holly probably isn’t going to let me back in the house. But it’s provisional. It’s just necessary—it’s there long enough for me to get up to a very, very hot shower and to scrub deep down into my pores with soap that will actually cleanse my body. Some of you will never want to shake my hand again. I actually haven’t done that in a long time, so don’t worry.
I think that illustrates, kind of in a crude way, how the Old Testament system worked. It was a temporary and provisional measure to help them deal with the problem of sin, but it couldn’t do the deep kind of cleansing that was necessary. It was like a hosing off, but they were waiting for the deep, purifying cleansing work that only Jesus Christ can bring, which we’re going to talk about in just a minute.
Now, here’s the main application point for you on this whole thing about the earthly sanctuary, and it’s very simply this—maybe some of you probably need to hear this—don’t go back to the old covenant. Don’t go back to the old covenant.
I’ve said over and over again in this series that Hebrews teaches us how to read our Bibles. You need to learn this as a Christian, that there is a way to read and interpret and apply the Old Testament and there is a wrong way to do that, a way that will lead you into bondage. Don’t go back to the old covenant. Hebrews 8:13 which we read last week, says, “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. [It’s obsolete. You don’t go back to something that’s obsolete.] And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
And then in Hebrews 10 we actually read that he—that is Christ—does away with the first in order to establish the second; he does away with the first covenant in order to establish the second covenant; he does away with the old covenant in order to establish the new covenant. He does away with the earthly sanctuary in order to establish the reality of worship in the very presence of God—this heavenly sanctuary; and he does away with the whole order of regulations of worship in the Old Testament in order to establish the new and living way of worship in and through Jesus Christ.
Now listen, there are ways we can be tempted to go back to the Old Testament. For example, if you insisted for yourself and for others that you eat according to Old Testament food laws for religious reasons. Now you may want to follow some of those laws for health reasons, and that’s fine. But if you bind your conscience to that, you’re ignoring a lot of what the New Testament says about the food laws which Jesus did away with. Just read the Gospels. It’s clear. Read Acts 10. It’s very clear. The food laws are rescinded. That’s part of the old covenant. It’s part of the old system. It’s not part of today.
Or insisting on observing Old Testament feasts and festivals and holidays. That’s not the covenant we’re under. Those feasts pointed forward to Jesus. You don’t go back to the shadows once you have the reality. You don’t go back to the copies once you have the true thing.
Or observing a Jewish sabbath on Saturday. There’s a reason why, as believers in Christ, we don’t observe a Jewish sabbath. We’re not under that sabbath law. Colossians 2, I think, makes that clear. We worship together on Sunday, but Romans 14 says that every day belongs to the Lord.
Here’s another way we do it—becoming overly focused on the externals of worship rather than a focus on the heart.
Or thinking—and this would be an abuse and a misunderstanding of the old covenant itself—that you can somehow keep yourself right with God by keeping the ten commandments. Now should you live by the ten commandments? Well certainly, nine of the ten commandments are repeated in the New Testament as kind of the basic moral order by which Christians are to live, but we certainly don’t obey those rules in order to make ourselves right with God. We don’t live by the ten commandments in order to make ourselves right with God. To do that is to go back to Judaism.
We’ll talk about how we are to live in a few minutes, but the motivation is completely different. It’s not to make ourselves right with God, it’s rather a response to what Christ has done for us. And it’s not the old covenant per se. It’s not even the ten commandments per se. It’s, rather, the law of Christ. It’s the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that has set us free from the law of sin and death. That’s what I think this passage is talking about.
So, don’t go back to the old covenant. Don’t misapply the Old Testament. Read your Bible, and if you’re confused about how to apply the Old Testament, you need to master Hebrews or you’re going to find yourself in all kinds of spiritual and religious trouble and legalism and bondage. So, the earthly sanctuary and its inadequacy.
2. Christ’s Superior Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary
Now in contrast to that, Christ’s superior ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. And you really see this in Hebrews 9:11-14 and Hebrews 9:23-24. Let me point out three things Jesus did and then final application for us today.
(1) He entered God’s presence. What did Jesus do in his superior ministry in the heavenly sanctuary? He entered God’s presence. Look at verse 11. “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tabernacle (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered [verse 12] once for all into the most holy place.”
So you’re seeing here’s a contrast. Not an earthly sanctuary, but a greater and a more perfect tent. Jesus is better and this tabernacle, this tent, this sanctuary, is better.
So what is it? What is this greater and better tabernacle, or tent, or sanctuary? I think verse 24 answers. “For Christ has entered, not into holy places [or sanctuary] made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.” This heavenly sanctuary is the presence of God. That’s what it is.
Don’t think of a literal sanctuary in a physical place called heaven. That’s not the idea. All of this language is analogical. Some people have made the mistake of going so far as to say that when Jesus died on the cross, he then literally took his physical blood and offered it in a physical quasi-spiritual tabernacle temple before God. That’s not what this passage is teaching. That’s a misunderstanding of the passage.
What the passage is saying, rather, is that in the singular offering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, he had access into the very presence of God and he opened the way for us, and he did this when he died on the cross.
I think the thing for us to grasp here is that Christ has appeared as the high priest of the good things that have come—he’s come as the mediator of the new covenant—that Christ has entered into the very presence of God, and he’s done that for us. Jesus is your high priest. Jesus is the one who brings you before the Father. Jesus is the one who has offered a perfect sacrifice on your behalf.
You might think of these wonderful adventure movies that we like to see. There’s always this crisis. There’s a critical point in the movie where things are going wrong (right?) and the various protagonists are doing the best they can to keep evil at bay, but they’re really waiting for a heroic figure to arrive on the scene that will actually save the day.
Think about Aragorn and Gimli and Legolas at Helm’s Deep. They are fighting off the orcs, but it’s a losing battle until Gandalf the White on Shadowfax arrives on the scene. It’s almost like a second coming moment where this heroic, Jesus-like figure arrives on the scene to drive away the evil.
This is what Jesus has done. He arrived, he appeared, and he entered into the presence of God for us. Everything up until that point was preparatory. There was just waiting. There was just pointing to this future reality, that Jesus was coming. He has entered God’s presence.
(2) He offered himself through death. Hebrews 9:12, “He entered once for all into the most holy place, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood [or by the virtue of his own blood].” If you have a translation that indicates that it is saying that he took his blood into heaven, that’s a mistranslation and a misunderstanding. The idea is, instead, that by virtue of his blood—that is, his sacrificial death—he has entered into the presence of God for us.
In Hebrews 9:14, “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God.” He offered himself, and he offered himself through death. This, brothers and sisters, is pointing us to the single, all-sufficient sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the substitute and savior of sinners. That Jesus, one time, made this singular offering to deal with our sins, once and for all. We’ll talk more about that final sacrifice next week.
(3) So he entered into God’s presence, he offered up himself, and then thirdly, he secured an eternal redemption, Hebrews 9:12. A part of what that “securing an eternal redemption” entailed is, verse 14, “He purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” In other words, he changes us. He brings real pardon, real forgiveness, real renewal of the heart so that we can begin to worship and serve God. This is showing us what Jesus has done for us on the cross using the language and categories of Old Testament worship.
Let me give you another analogy or story illustration that maybe will help. Think of this as a great debt that needs to be paid and you're not able to pay it. There’s a story about this dating from the days of Czar Nicholas I in Russia. There was a young man who was the son of a friend who had been given a responsibility—a great deal of responsibility. He was in charge of finances in the military division. But, unbeknownst to his overseers, he was a gambler and he borrowed from the treasury and he found himself going deeper and deeper into debt as he was gambling this money away.
The day came when the books had to be audited. He went to the safe, he took out the ledger, he looked at this debt, and he wrote at the bottom of the ledger, “A great debt who can pay?” He was despairing. He knew he was going to be caught and he was despairing of this debt that he owed because he had stolen this money and gambled it away. He planned that night to take his life at the stroke of midnight. He pulled out a revolver and had it sitting on the table beside him.
That very night he fell asleep, actually, before he did it. Fell asleep—head was on the table—and Czar Nicholas I, visiting this particular outpost as the story goes, came into this room, saw the young man there who had been a friend, saw the revolver, saw the note on the ledger, “A great debt who can pay?” and Nicholas wrote one word at the bottom of the ledger—“Nicholas”. When the young man woke up he saw his own writing, “A great debt who can pay?” and then in the handwriting in the Czar himself, “Nicholas”. And he realized that he had been forgiven. He had been forgiven because the Czar was willing to pay the debt for him. He dropped the gun, knew that he was forgiven, and his life was spared.
It’s an illustration of what each one of us faces. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can give me peace within? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. We get an eternal redemption through Christ.
So how do we apply this? Let me give you two applications as we close. Let me ask questions to apply.
1. Has your conscience been cleansed? Or do you have a clean conscience today? Now listen, scripture teaches that we should keep a conscience void of offense, and it teaches that when we sin against someone else, and we know that there’s a barrier between us and this other person, that we should confess. We should make that right—make appropriate restitution. But that principle, without the Gospel, can be misapplied. And when I’m talking about cleansing your conscience, I want to be careful that you don’t misunderstand.
When I was a younger Christian, I had it in my head that I had to clear up every possible thing that I ever did, intentional or unintentional. That became such a bondage to me—this is no joke—that I remember going through a Taco Bell one night, I drove off with my food, and I realized that he had given me an extra taco. I felt like I had to go back the next day and offer to pay for the extra taco, otherwise, I would have been stealing food that I didn’t pay for. That’s bondage. I did that. I actually went back and they looked at me like I was crazy.
That’s not what this is talking about. And when I’m asking if you have a clear conscience, I’m not saying, “Have you confessed every single sin, every single mistake you’ve ever made?” Don’t abuse the principle of keeping things right with other people. Don’t abuse that. And the reality is it doesn’t matter how much you confess. Without the Gospel, your conscience is never going to be cleansed because you can’t do enough. A great debt who can pay? What can wash away my sin? You can’t wash it away. It’s just like hosing off the smell of the sewage. You need a deep cleansing of the heart, and the only way you get that is through the death of Jesus Christ for your sins.
I remember years ago hearing the story of a woman, deeply troubled in her conscience. She just could not get peace with God. She kept going to her pastor asking for advice, trying to get some answer. He tried various things. Nothing seemed to work. He finally told her, “I don’t think you’re ever going to be satisfied until you’re satisfied with what satisfies God. And what satisfies God is the blood of Jesus.”
When I’m asking this morning if you have a clear conscience, what I’m asking is this: have you seen your sins covered by the death of Christ? And do you believe, and are you resting in the fact that Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient? It’s enough. It’s enough! And if you’re covered by the death of Christ, there’s nothing left for you to do to be accepted with God and to have access into his presence.
You say, “What if I sin again?” “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” You can renew that fellowship with God. You can do that, and so there’s a place for confession. But it’s confession in virtue of what Christ has done in God’s faithfulness and justice.
Why does it say he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins? Because the very justice of God demands that if those sins have already been paid for, he cannot require a double payment—and he will not. He will not punish you for sins that have already been punished in the body of his son Jesus.
Is your conscience clean? Are you trusting in Christ? Are you resting in Christ? Are you living in the daily recognition and realization and reality of that? It’s so easy for us to slip back into a “works” mentality—a performance based mentality—where we think it’s all up to us to keep our act together so that God will bless us. Don’t fall into the bondage of legalism.
On the other hand, don’t ignore sin. Don’t act as if you have nothing to confess, nothing to forgive, no need to be forgiven. But instead, deal with sin and guilt in your conscience in a gospel way by taking your sins to Jesus, trusting in his death on your behalf.
Horatius Bonar, this great Scottish pastor and hymn-writer, put it so well.
Not what my hands have done
Can save my guilty soul;
Not what my toiling flesh has borne
Can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do
Can give me peace with God;
Not all my prayers,
And sighs and tears
Can bear my awful load.
Thy work alone, O Christ,
Can ease this weight of sin
Thy blood alone O Lamb of God,
Can give me peace within.
Thy love to me O God,
Not mine, O Lord, to Thee
Can rid me of
This dark unrest,
And set my spirit free!
Thy grace alone, O God,
To me can pardon speak;
Thy power alone O Son of God,
Can this sore bondage break.
No other work, save Thine,
No other blood will do,
No strength save that,
Which is divine,
Can bear me safely through.
It’s all Christ! He does it all. Are you trusting in that work? Is your conscience clean, purified because you’re resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ?
2. Are you serving the living God? Notice that the passage tells us that Christ purifies our conscience. “He offered himself [this is verse 14] without blemish to God to purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” In other words, his work didn’t end with just cleansing the conscience, but he did so that we would serve the living God.
It’s language that really has to do with worship and the service that belongs in worship. But it encompasses our whole life. The whole life of the Christian is to be one of worship, to be one of service to the living God—serving the living God so that in grateful response to what he has done for us, we devote ourselves to him, to loving him, to serving him, to pleasing him.
And again, we’re not doing it in order to earn this salvation, we’re doing it because he’s already saved us through the precious blood of his son Jesus Christ. And when that grasps your heart, when that lands with power and you reflect on the debt you owed and the weight of this burden that you couldn’t possibly bear—this debt that no one could pay—and you recognize it’s paid—I’m freed, I’m forgiven—the relief that you should feel, the joy that you should feel, the freedom that you should feel when you have wrestled with that sin and that guilt and have taken it to Christ and you see it completely dealt with, that should then lead to a life of joyful service to God and joyful gratitude to him for what he has done.
Are you serving with that kind of joy this morning? Are you worshiping with that kind of joy this morning? That’s our privilege, brothers and sisters, when we recognize what Jesus has done for us. Let’s pray together.
Gracious God, we thank you this morning for the truths of your holy word, even passages such as this which are difficult for us to understand and wrestle with and apply. Yet, when we get to the heart of them, you’re just reminding us of that Gospel story of Jesus and his blood—Jesus and his death on the cross for our sins—reminding us of that most simple of all truths—Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
And so we thank you Lord, for your love and your grace. We thank you for this amazing, all-sufficient provision of Jesus Christ to cover our sins. We thank you that the heavenly ministry of Christ, who has entered into your presence on our behalf, is enough and that the debt is paid, that our consciences can be freed from all of the burden of guilt and shame and we can now worship you with reverence and joy and awe at your grace and your holiness.
Lord, would you by your Spirit cause these truths to land in our hearts with the kind of weight and gravity that they should, that we would feel these things deep in our hearts, that it would be transforming for us—not just information, not just doctrine, but doctrine that leads to doxology worship and a devoted life.
Lord, as we come to the table this morning, may we see in the emblems the very things we’ve been talking about in the message—that in the bread and in the juice we have a picture of the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ for our sins, that sacrifice which frees us once and for all from the debt we owed. May the response of our hearts now be one of grateful worship to you. We pray this in Jesus’s name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
