Lent 5

Jesse Jacobsen

Typeset

1 What does the most holy place have to do with me?

Our services are formal, in comparison with most other churches.

Some people have a hard time knowing what it all means,

and what our Divine Service has to do with them.

I can appreciate that.

But you know,

we don’t have anything on the formality of the Temple.

I’m talking about the ancient Israelite Temple,

built originally by King Solomon to replace the Tabernacle.

Temple Worship was very exacting,

with many different rites and observances.

Unlike paganism,

where each priest or priestess does whatever seems best to them,

Temple worship was strictly commanded by God, in detail,

so that the people would know exactly how to behave toward Him.

In fact, the Temple was only the center of something larger:

a daily, weekly, yearly life of worship

for every single person in Israel.

God described this life of worship for them, in detail,

and you can find it in books 2–5 of the Bible.

Some people think that OT worship knowledge belongs in the past,

because it must have been dull, boring, or just too primitive.

That’s a pretty ignorant point of view.

Some people think that what scripture says about OT worship

is of no benefit to us at all.

That was before iPods, cell phones, and digital TV.

Can such old knowledge have any use for us now?

Today’s epistle lesson says “yes.”

The fact is, Israel worshipped the same God we do,

and their worship was centered and focused upon Jesus Christ,

through their worship at home and in the Temple.

Just as anyone today who rejects Christ or loses faith in Him

is separated from God and heaven without exception, so also the Israelites who rejected Temple worship

were cut off from God and from their people.

Our theme today is a question we’ll ask of our Epistle lesson:

What does the Most Holy Place have to do with me?

Our answer comes in two parts:

We’ve been estranged from God’s glory. But Jesus’ sacrifice provides us the way in.

2 Hebrews 9:11–15

But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

2.1 We’ve been estranged from God’s glory.

What does the Most Holy Place have to do with me?

We have to begin by understanding the question.

The Most Holy Place was a special room in the Temple,

based upon the Tabernacle from the time of Moses.

It was called “Most Holy” because of what it contained:

the Ark of the Covenant

(yes, the same ark sought by Indy Jones in that movie),

and even more importantly: God’s visible presence in Israel.

That presence was sometimes called “the glory of the Lord.”

It says in Exodus 40:34:

Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

Then, in 2 Chronicles 7:1, after Solomon dedicated the Temple, it says:

When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD filled the temple.

God’s visible presence in the Temple was what made that place holy:

first, the Most Holy Place with the Ark, then the outer room beyond, called the “Holy Place.”

A thick veil or curtain separated the two places,

so that the priests could do their work in the outer room

without dying before the presence of almighty God.

The veil wasn’t to deprive the Israelites from something good,

but to provide a safe way for sinful people

to have the holy and righteous God present among them.

Those two places were under the same roof,

and outside was another part of the Temple, without a roof.

There the priests prepared everything they needed

by washing in water set there for the purpose.

There the priests made the many burnt offerings

upon a great altar built to God’s design.

Outside the outer walls was the city of Jerusalem,

considered holy because of the Temple in its midst.

Finally the whole promised land of Israel was set apart,

because of God’s presence in the Temple.

While the people of Israel were special,

having the true God among them, they also knew the importance of that veil or curtain

between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place.

Special or not, the Israelites were still sinful human beings.

Without the veil, God’s presence would destroy them.

The whole system of Temple worship taught them one thing above all:

their sins against God separated them from Him:

their wrong actions, wrong words,

and even their wrong thoughts.

Their sins required the shedding of blood,

and someone else to take their sins away from them.

God doesn’t require the same sacrifices from us,

but the basic truth remains:

Our sins demand the shedding of blood,

and we need someone else to take them away.

Like the Israelites before us,

our sin separates us from the place of God’s glory,

so that we could not live in His presence.

Once a year, God commanded the Israelites to observe a certain day.

It was the Day of Atonement.

Nobody was to do any work, as on the Sabbath.

Why not? Work distracts from what’s truly important,

from the lessons God was teaching that day.

One of the men descended from Aaron, Moses’ brother,

was the high priest, distinguished from all other priests.

On the Day of Atonement, the high priest had an important job.

Two animals would die that day: a bull and a goat.

The bull’s blood made atonement for the high priest’s sins,

so that he could enter the Most Holy Place,

just that one day for the whole year.

When he entered behind the veil with the bull’s blood,

he took a censer with fire from the altar, so that smoke would fill the room,

and shield Him from God’s glory.

After applying the blood for his own sins,

to the Mercy Seat on the holy Ark,

he’d leave and get the goat’s blood.

The high priest had to apply the goat’s blood,

to cleanse the Temple itself,

because of all the people’s sins committed that year.

He applied it throughout the Temple,

and then came for a third animal: another goat.

The two goats had been brought early that day,

and a lot cast to choose which would die, and which would live.

Holding the head of the second goat,

the high priest confessed all the sins of the people.

Then the goat was led into the wilderness,

and left out there alive, bearing the peoples’ sin.

There is much more to this than I can describe today,

so if you want to learn more about the Day of Atonement,

please read Levicitus 16 this afternoon.

Understand, though, that Israel is God’s people,

and what we learn about their sin applies also to us.

Also understand that all of these things are about Someone

whose life we know from the Gospel, who also bore all the sins of God’s people, and who provided His own blood to cleanse us.

These things are all about Him,

and the way our sins separate us from the Most Holy Place.

2.2 But Jesus’ sacrifice provides us the way in.

What does the Most Holy Place have to do with me?

Our text shows us that Jesus’ sacrifice provides our way in.

It says, But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation.

The Israelites were given these ways to worship God,

but they all pointed to something better: a Fulfillment.

There would have to be a fulfillment,

because the blood of goats and bulls

is not the same as our blood, but we are the ones who sin against God’s holy Law;

and the scapegoats of hundreds of years,

bearing alive all the wrongs of Israel…at some point there would have to be a reckoning,

and a payment.

So Jesus came as a better High Priest,

because He has brought what the Israelites were taught to expect:

the greater and more perfect tabernacle, of which the earthly tabernacle and temple was only a shadow.

It says, Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place.

True, human blood, with human DNA. Yet also the blood belonging to God’s Son,

infinitely precious to the Father.

By the shedding of His own blood,

this better High Priest entered the true Most Holy Place.

But hear again what it says:

once for all.

He didn’t have to go in once for his own atonement,

and then again to cleanse the Temple for the people.

He didn’t need the smoke of the censer

to obscure the glory of God for his own protection.

Jesus went in to the Father’s presence only once,

because He needed no atonement for Himself.

He was already perfect,

possessing God’s glory as His own.

Jesus went through the veil once, and He did it for all,

having obtained eternal redemption.

That word “all” should be very precious to you,

because it leaves no doubt that you are included.

When Jesus died,

the magnificent earthly Temple still stood in Jerusalem.

But when He had finished shedding His blood to redeem us,

the veil in the Temple between the Holy Place

and the Most Holy Place

ripped in two from top to bottom.

This was not possible by human hands,

because it was a heavy, thick curtain. and because access to it was strictly limited.

The veil was torn in two

because its purpose had been fulfilled.

Its time was over.

About 40 years later,

after the good news had been taught in the whole world,

the Temple was destroyed,

and has never been rebuilt.

This was God’s doing,

because the people of Israel now have access in Jesus

to the greater and more perfect Tabernacle.

But think of the terror of the Jews,

in finding that the curtain was torn.

Nothing was there to shield them from the presence of God.

That would be terrifying, but for one thing:

Jesus’ blood has purchased atonement for all.

No longer must we send a High Priest behind the veil every year.

Now, we have one who serves us there day in and day out.

In Numbers 19, the Israelites were told to make ashes by burning a heifer.

These ashes were then kept in a safe place,

to purify the Israelites who became ritually unclean in their day-to-day lives,

from being near to a dead human body.

This taught the Israelites that death is not a good thing,

but its effects could be removed for all by another death.

It served to purify death from among them.

That’s what our text refers to,

when it shows why we need not be in terror without the veil.

For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

With the blood of Jesus,

all our old, wrong deeds, our wrong words spoken each day, and the wrong thoughts we struggle against,

they may no longer trouble us.

In their place, we have been given

a life of God’s service each day on earth, and an eternal life in His glorious presence.

The last sentence in our text shows an important distinction.

Jesus is called the Mediator of the New Covenant, by means of death. This New Covenant is contrasted with the “first covenant,”

meaning the Law and worship of the Israelites.

All the sins committed under that “first covenant,”

the ones confessed upon the scapegoat,

are paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Jesus says: This cup is the New Testament in My blood,

and it is: the new covenant of God’s grace, a guarantee of God’s favor

that was not available in any other way.

You have been called from the old life of sin and death,

by the forgiveness and power of Jesus’ holy blood.

You have been given the inheritance of a saint,

by God’s grace alone, through faith alone.

Jesus has made a way for you into the presence of God,

into the true, eternal Most Holy Place, called heaven.

Meanwhile, His blood cleanses your conscience,

so that your life in His service has already begun.