Hebrews Chapter Nine, Entering The Holiest Of All

 

Hebrews 9:6 Now when these things had been thus prepared, the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services. [7] But into the second part the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people’s sins committed in ignorance;

 

The writer is addressing the preparation of the tabernacle during the wilderness wandering, when Israel camped for forty years, and only when the tabernacle was thus prepared would the ministry of the priesthood begin, verse 6.

One cannot stress how powerful the pull and history of Judaism was to the first century Christians. The church began entirely Jewish and was considered a sect of Judaism called the Way. Jesus had come as Israel’s Messiah and Jewish patriotism filled the minds of the followers of this new ’sect’, Acts 1:6. But during the church’s formative years it became increasingly clear that Christianity was not a sect of Judaism, or its natural progression. Christ fulfilled and put away the Law, abolishing the necessity of the priesthood and sacrifice on Jewish altars by His death.

 

Despite that, Judaism clung to the disciples of the Lord. The new church remained in the region around Jerusalem until driven out by persecution, preaching only to fellow Jews the salvation found in Christ. When God the Holy Spirit compelled Peter to preach the gospel to Cornelius, the Jews were angry with him for being in the presence of unclean Gentiles, Acts 11:3. The first church council, held in Jerusalem, dealt with the Law of Moses and its application to the Jewish Christians and Gentile converts. The council given by James through Paul and Barnabas was thoroughly Jewish, Acts 15:20, because Judaism and its (human) benefactor were everywhere known, Acts 15:21.

 

Paul disputed with Peter about Judaism’s importance in Christianity, and its influence over its adherents in Antioch, Galatians 2:11. Peter understood the liberty Christ set him free to, having exercised it with Cornelius’s household. But James’ followers, clearly still staunch practitioners of external Judaism, intimidated Peter, confused even Barnabas, and sent a conflicting message to Gentile believers, Galatians 2:14.

 

Later, Paul takes counsel from James and the elders when they said, “You see, brother, how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law,” Acts 21:20. Rather, it seems these Jewish Christians ought to have been zealous for Christ, the giver of the Law. Peter once again had the right of it when he testified at the Jerusalem council, “why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” Acts 15:10. An overabundant zeal for the Law can deceive its devotee into trusting the Law (their own effort and righteousness) rather than Jesus Christ. This was the crux of Paul’s teaching: that salvation apart from the Law was found in Christ, and both Jew and Gentile would be saved this way, Romans 3:28.

 

James counsels Paul to have himself ceremoniously cleansed with men who had taken a vow, Acts 21:23, 24. James asserted the same pressure on Paul that he did on Peter at Antioch, and Paul goes with these Christian Jews to the temple to be ritually cleansed and identify himself as a keeper of the Mosaic Law. A vow goes far back in Israel’s history. One example can be found in Numbers 21:2, which states, “If You will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.” There is an “if”, “then” formula with the vows, being conditional, and contingent with action as an answer to God’s interposition.

 

A disastrous vow, infamous in the Bible’s annals, came from Jephthah, in Judges chapter 11. He proclaimed that if God delivered the people of Ammon into his hands, he would offer to God whatever came out of his door to greet him as a burnt offering upon victory, Judges 11:30, 31. As it happened, his daughter came out to greet him, and in order to fulfill is vow, he did as he said he would. Some like to rationalize that Jephthah made his daughter remain a virgin for the rest of her life; in other words, he never permitted her to marry. But the context doesn’t permit it. His vow was to offer a burnt offering of what came out of his house to greet him, and it says explicitly in Judges 11:39, “he carried out his vow with her which he had vowed.”

 

Granted, Paul had taken a vow once beforehand, Acts 18:18. But the issue of Paul’s message wasn’t to renounce Moses or the Decalogue. It was personal freedom in Christ to live as a new creation. Jew or Gentile, one was born again into the family of God and not bound by the constraints of their former life. James emphasized Law obedience to the Jews, while treating Gentile converts a little like proselytes to Judaism, giving them several very Jewish commands to follow, though Paul controverted them in his epistles, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, Romans chapter 14.

 

Why are we considering this? These things happened in Jerusalem around 62 or 63 AD, according to most Biblical historians. The epistle to the Hebrews was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD. It must be noted and kept in mind that the author is, in a very real sense, dismantling the holy ground of the Jewish mind with his depiction of the tabernacle’s impotence to effect genuine salvation in those who attend it. The Way, or Christianity, was very new to Jew and Gentile; and while its identity was grounded in Judaism, it was not its extension or outgrowth. Christ tore down the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile, figurative of the outer wall of the tabernacle’s court, which Gentiles were not permitted to enter.

 

The house of ministry with its utensils and furniture, peopled by God’s chosen priesthood, was a temporal thing whose efficacy consisted primarily in demonstrating man’s sinfulness and how God had determined to reconcile the fallen race of Adam back to Him. The priests performed the services required of them by divine sanction, but that sanction was to prepare a people unto good works whose faith was not in their temple, but in their God. The Jews were to be a made an evangelistic vehicle to convert the Christ-rejecting world to true faith, as God once used them as a retributive tool to punish the wickedness of the nations that comprised Canaan.

 

The priests only had open access to the first part of the chamber, the holy place. The veil prevented open entry or even the ability to look into the Holiest of All, which the high priest alone was given the honor and responsibility to go once a year. On the Day of Atonement the high priest would bring blood to sprinkle on the mercy seat, a cloud of incense obscuring his sight to prevent his death. This had to have been extremely daunting, to venture into the presence of God’s Shekinah glory. But if one trusted that God was true, then he knew the smoke would provide the barrier that permitted a holy God to abide the presence of a sinful man. This too created the image of our Lord entering the true Holiest of All in Heaven, with His own blood, before the Father.

 

The verse clearly states that the blood was an offering. First for the high priest, and then for the general and entire population of Israel, including those adopted by proselytism. Here we see the imagery of our Lord clearly revealed. In the blood offering all Israel is atoned for, good or bad, holy or wicked. The blood’s value isn’t on how many it can save; it is in whom is offering it. The blood is of infinite value, for the sacrifice is also the high priest, harmless and undefiled, who gives His own life to redeem our lost race.

 

Note that the high priest went in once a year for the atonement. He did not need to go back millions of times to atone for every individual in Israel whose sins needed forgiveness. Though the individual would come with an offering before priests, this indicated that the person in question recognized their own sins and shed blood to remit them. The Day of Atonement represented the blotting out of sin itself, our sin nature, or Original Sin, if you prefer. Christ’s blood, symbolized by the lamb’s, did away with sin once (one time) for all (all people for all time). Considering the system of worship and sacrifice, expressed on Jewish altars for 1500 years, one can see why the Jew would be hesitant to surrender it, or have a difficult time accepting that it had become obsolete.