The Essential, Sufficient, All-Powerful Blood of Christ
11/14 Reading Portions: 1 Chronicles 3-4; Hebrews 9; Amos 3; Psalm 146-147
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11/14 Reading Portions: 1 Chronicles 3-4; Hebrews 9; Amos 3; Psalm 146-147
Hebrews 9:23
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.
PURIFIED
Under the Mosaic Law, the sacrifices were commanded with instructions that the innocent blood of animals be shed. Thus, the tabernacle in the wilderness was given to facilitate those sacrifices, a picture of what would happen in heaven (Heb 8:5) after Messiah came in the fullness of the time (Gal 4:4). The tent and the priesthood were ordained as mere foreshadows of what Christ Jesus would accomplish in His person and atoning work. Our verse today answers two questions that should naturally arise from reading the previous verse:
Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Hebrews 9:22
What is that question? Why is almost everything purified with blood under the Law of Moses? The tabernacle was only a copy of the gospel work of Christ accomplished in heaven. The blood of bulls and goats could never purge our sins (Heb 10:4). It could not during the days of Moses. It could not before Moses, going back to the days of Adam. It cannot now; neither can it in the age to come. All the imagery, both in the copies of heavenly things (the tabernacle and its implements), and in the activities performed in and about those copies (the priesthood, the sacrifices, and shed blood), were not down payments or layaway plans; they were witnesses of God’s written will so we might be the beneficiaries of Christ’s inheritance at His death through His shed blood. By its witness to God’s will in the days of Moses until Christ, the blood could only testify upon its application by purging the copies of heavenly things, viz., the tabernacle, its implements, and its employees. This is why those bringing sacrifices during this system must also be saved by God’s grace; and their faith to trust that they were forgiven through that system, was still a testimony of that grace. For true, eternal forgiveness could only come by the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, purging heaven with His precious blood. Not in theory, but in truth. The next question that would naturally arise is this: Why must heaven be purged? Because of the sometimes presence of Satan. Satan gathered with the unfallen angels in heaven (Job 1:6; 2:1), and he also accuses God’s redeemed in heaven (Rev 12:10). He had every right to be there, because when Adam fell in his rebellion in the garden, Adam not only turned over to Satan his dominion over the earth (Gen 1:28; 2 Cor 4:4), but he also turned over to Satan his living fellowship with his holy Creator (Gen 2:17; 3:9). By God’s law in worship, and by God’s prophetic decrees in warfare, Satan possessed everything that was Adam’s; and thus had every right to stand in God’s presence. But by His righteous life and perfect sacrifice, Jesus purged heaven of Satan’s foul stench, and by Christ’s precious blood, Jesus has become the propitiation not only for our sins,
but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:2
Hallelujah! What a Savior!