`Hebrews 144 January 1, 2009
NKJ John 10:10 "The thief does not come except to steal, and to
kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may
have it more abundantly.
We are in Hebrews 9. I want to take
a little bit of time just at the beginning to sort of orient ourselves to where
we are in terms of the structure of Hebrews. As I have pointed out and as we’ve gone over several times
as we reviewed and gone through Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews is writing this
letter; but it has characteristics that are distinct from a letter that make it
not quite your typical epistle. It doesn’t have an address at the beginning to
a specific set of people. It doesn’t have a standard epistolary conclusion. There
are other elements within it that make it a little more like it was originally
an address, an oral address, possibly a sermon.
Several books of the New Testament
have that characteristic. James is one. I think 1 John also has that
characteristic that it was initially something that had been taught or had been
maybe a sermon or a Bible study that had been taught many times by the writer. Now
it was put down in writing in the form of a letter and sent to someone, but it
still has the characteristics of an oral address. So we’ve seen that with
Hebrews. It has those characteristics and it will make a point, a teaching
point, where the writer goes back and pulls in various doctrines, various teachings
from the Old Testament. Then he pulls those together and makes an application. That
application is couched also in terms of a warning passage. Now the warning
sections in Hebrews are not the extent of the application. So you have what is
called a hortatory section, which is just another way of saying an exhortation
or challenge.
So there is a teaching and then
there’s a challenge. Within the challenge there is often a warning to those to
whom the writer is writing. He’s challenging them because they seem to be based
on these warning passages about to give up on their Christian life and fade
back into Judaism. It seems from what we can tell from what is covered that
they were former Jewish priests (Levites) who had become believers. They had
left the whole system of Judaism, but now they seem to be questioning what they
had done. So there are these warnings not to give up on their spiritual life,
their spiritual growth, because it puts in jeopardy their future position,
their future rewards that God has in store for us in terms of ruling and
reigning in the Millennial Kingdom.
So that has great application for
any believer whether you come out of a Jewish background or not that there are
all kinds of pressures in life to cause us to think that we have somehow
arrived spiritually and that we’ve learned enough, we know enough; we’ve been in
Bible class enough. We’ve heard this taught so many times that we think that
we’ve arrived.
It has appeared to me over the years
that many people have sort of an invisible ceiling beyond which they will not
grow. That’s true for a lot of different things in life. The first time
somebody explained that to me I was in seminary and I was working for a very
brief time for an insurance company in sales. The sales manager talked about the fact that you’ll have
some salesmen who will be satisfied making $20,000 a year. Some will be satisfied
making $40,000 a year. Others will be satisfied only if they make $80 or
$100,000 a year. Everybody is different. Once they reach what they believe is
their monthly quota, then they sort of fade out and you don’t see them doing a
whole lot until the next month comes around. Everybody has made these
decisions. Some people have consciously thought them out; some people
haven’t.
But I see this again and again in
their Christian life where people that were very consistent for a long period
of time in their Christian life - suddenly you don’t see them so much. You
think well, maybe they are listening to tapes or listening to MP3’s or watching
videos. But they just seem to fade out and disappear and sort of coast through the
rest of their lives on whatever amount of doctrine they learned in that set
amount of time thinking, “That’s enough.” They understand principles about how
to claim a promise. They understand confession of sin. They understand a few of
the other dynamics and they sort of roll with that. Then there are others who
have a little more motivation and they realize that if they’re going to get
anywhere in the spiritual life, then they have to be in Bible class on a
regular basis. They have to be reminded of these principles again and again and
again.
I think that as we grow and mature
as believers that motivation that we have as a young believer will necessarily
change as you go through the different stages of spiritual adolescence into
spiritual adulthood.
From my own experience I know that
when I was a young believer I was really driven by getting the answers to a lot
of questions. How do we know the Bible is true? How do we know we can trust it?
How do we really come to understand it? What does the Old Testament mean? What
do all the sacrifices mean? How does all of that fit into the overall structure
of the Bible? Then you get into the New Testament. Who were the apostles and
what happened to them and what did they teach and why did they teach it the way
they did? Those kinds of questions drive you, but you reach a certain point in
study where you are satisfied with the answers that you’ve received.
I think that’s true for a lot of new
believers. They want to know more about God. They want to know more about
salvation. They want to make sure that they‘re secure in their salvation that
they can’t lose their salvation. They want to make sure that they understand at
least some basic things about prophecy perhaps. But once they get those
questions answered then their motivation has to shift. At that point motivation
is no longer learning or getting the answers to those questions. Maybe you have
a new set of questions you want to get the answer to and so that helps to
motivate you. But at another level you realize that, “Okay I’ve learned the
basics, I’ve got a foundation in terms of my spiritual childhood; but now there
is something expected of me. There is a responsibility inherent in being a
child of God that drives me toward a future goal and future position that God
has for me.” That’s what we call having a personal sense of our eternal destiny
realizing that God saved us for a purpose to serve Him not only here in this
life, but also to prepare us for a future ministry as priests and kings in the
Millennial Kingdom and then on into eternity and that each of us as Church Age
believers today have a unique and distinct role within the body of Christ to
serve within the framework of our spiritual gifts but also, when we return with
the Lord as the bride of Christ during the Millennial Kingdom.
So everything that we do now begins
to affect what happens in the future so that each decision we make today shapes
our future position, our future rewards, our future destiny as priests and
kings in the future kingdom. That is the orientation of the message of Hebrews.
So as we have gone through each of
these points we have come to the fourth section, which is the major section in
Hebrews. It began back in 7:1 and extends down through the end of chapter 10. The
teaching section or the doctrinal section is the section from 7:1 down through
10:18. Then beginning from 10:19 to the end of chapter 10 we have the
exhortation section and a warning section that begins in verse 25 down through
the end of chapter 39. That’s the warning section.
So this has been a lengthy study for
us especially as we got into chapter 9. We had to look at a variety of
different things related to the Tabernacle, Old Testament background
information to understand what the writer of Hebrews is saying and the basis
for his challenge to these Jewish believers.
In chapter 7 he began to build his
case by focusing on the Melchizedekean priesthood. Chapter 7 deals with the
whole issue of priesthood: what kind of priest is Jesus Christ? Is He a
Levitical priest? No, He can’t be a Levitical priest because He’s not from the
tribe of Levi and He doesn’t fit the physical requirements in terms of His
family linage or tribal linage to be a Levitical priest. So if He’s not a
Levitical priest, what kind of priest is He? Well, we saw in our analysis of
that chapter that He is a Melchizedekean priest, a royal priest. Therefore His
priesthood is not only oriented to Israel but is oriented to all human beings. It’s
not restricted to simply a Levitical priesthood. But that change in priesthood
reflects a change in a dispensation, dispensation being a marked out period of
time in God’s administration of human history.
So the writer of Hebrews states in
chapter 7 that when there is a change of priesthood there is necessarily a
change of covenant. Also as you go through chapter 7, we were introduced to key words that were used and mentioned several times, one of
the most important being the word covenant. But in comparison to covenant often
in the same context, there’s also an emphasis on promise leading up to the
statement in verse 6 of chapter 8.
NKJ Hebrews 8:6 But now He
That is Jesus Christ.
has obtained
a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better
covenant, which was established on better promises.
Immediately following that, there’s
a lengthy quote from Jeremiah 31:31-33 which is the key passage on the New
Covenant. Now we spent a lot of time last winter (last January and February
right before the Chafer Conference) dealing with all the passages on the New
Covenant. That seems like – jolly that was a year ago. We’re only in the
middle of chapter 9. We haven’t gone very far very fast. But this is some
extremely significant material and I don’t know whether you realize it or not,
but I’m putting my plow into unplowed ground in a lot of this.
This last week I had a couple of
very fun and engaging and challenging conversations with Dr. John Whitcomb. Those
of you’ve been exposed to the Pre-Trib Conference a couple of times have been
exposed to Dr. Whitcomb. He is sort of the patriarch of dispensational theology
today and creationism because others such as Dr. John Walvoord and Dr. Henry
Morris have gone to be with the Lord. In the early 60’s Whitcomb’s name became
known among evangelicals because he co-authored a book called The Genesis
Flood with Henry Morris. It was that book that really changed the focus and
the direction of a lot of evangelicalism with respect to creationism and
understanding origins.
Out of the impact of that book, we
had the development of various creationist ministries including the
establishing of the Institute of Creation Research of which Dr. Henry Morris
was the head. Then you had the development later in the 90’s of Answers in
Genesis and several other smaller creationist ministries came up along the way.
But what really started all that was this book that John Whitcomb and Henry
Morris wrote back in the early 60’s. It really had an impact in
evangelicalism.
It wasn’t accepted – or it did
not find a friendly reception, so that in 1968 a young seminary student
finishing up his master’s in theology by the name of Charlie Clough wrote his
maters thesis called A Calm Appraisal of the Genesis Flood. Charlie
had known Henry Morris for some years and dialogued with him a good bit. He got
to know both he and Dr. Whitcomb better. But he was looking at the response
that the book generated at the seminary level and especially among the so-called
scholars – your Old Testament Department scholars and others. Dr.
Whitcomb was the head of the Old Testament Department (Hebrew and Old Testament
Department) at Grace Theological Seminary up in Wynona Lake, Indiana. So he’s
very well qualified.
Both men have fascinating
testimonies and backgrounds. Dr. Morris was actually here in Houston and taught
at Rice and went to Berachah church back in the 49-50’s somewhere in there
before he went to Virginia Polytechnic in Virginia. Dr. Whitcomb, I believe,
was saved when he was a student at Princeton. It is fascinating to see how God
worked in their lives. But Dr. Whitcomb has presented a couple of papers the
last two years of Pre-Trib. One last year had to do with the role of the two
witnesses in Revelation 11, which is a timely topic for us on Sunday morning as
we’re getting into our study on Revelation 11. Then this year he presented a
paper on the sacrifices in the Millennial Temple based on passages in Ezekiel
40ff.
In his paper on the two witnesses
that he presented last year he was talking about some things related to the
Tribulation temple. As I went back and reread it last week it caused my
antennae to vibrate a little bit because he was raising some issues that I
wasn’t really clear about.
The primary issue - a couple of
people around here have asked me about this in the last two or three months - related
to the legitimacy of the Temple in the Tribulation. Now that’s a really
interesting question. As I was reading Dr. Whitcomb’s paper, he argued for and
stated and had various passages that he went to taking the position that it was
a legitimate worship in the Tribulation period. This is not an apostate temple,
which is what I’ve taught in the past and what I’ve heard in the past. So I
read through the paper a couple of weeks ago or last week and when I hit stuff
like that I usually pick up the phone and call Tommy and say, “What do you
think about this? I’ve always heard the Tribulation temple called an apostate
temple.”
“Well, I have too. You need to email
Dr. Whitcomb and find out what his rationale is behind this.”
So that’s generated several
conversations. But what’s interesting is this is an area that really hasn’t
been explored very well because there are passages that clearly indicate that
the temple that is established in the Tribulation is not viewed scripturally as
an apostate temple. If it’s apostate or idolatrous, then how can the Antichrist
desolate, desecrate the Tribulation temple? So it has to have some level of
legitimacy. Hmm. Okay, but they’re having sacrifices. What kind of sacrifices
are they? Are they Levitical sacrifices? Or, are they New Covenant
sacrifices? Well, we studied the
New Covenant last year and saw that the New Covenant doesn’t get established –
the foundation was at the cross, the sacrifice, the offering that under girds
the New Covenant was at the cross – doesn’t go into effect until the
Second Coming. As we looked at all those passages (if you remember) we saw that
there were various things that were always present when the New Covenant went
into effect. There is a Davidic king on the throne in Jerusalem. That Israel is
a regenerate people. They are reunited in the land. All of those things are
part of what is present when God inaugurates and brings into effect the New
Covenant. So how can these sacrifices in the Tribulation temple be New Covenant?
I don’t know the answer to that yet. I had a three-minute message on my
answering machine yesterday from Dr. Whitcomb because I raised the question
with him the day before; and he answered it and raised more questions.
The point I’m making is that it’s
interesting a lot of this is sort of coming together in the various studies we
have going with Hebrews on Thursday night and Kings because we’ve gone through
a lot of different doctrines in Kings related to the Temple and sacrifices and
things like that.
But one of the things that Dr.
Whitcomb didn't do in his paper on the millennial sacrifices was bring it out
to quite the degree that I have, and I ran what I teach on it passed him the
other day and he agreed and thought that it was right. He didn’t state it quite
as clearly as I have, and that is to understand that there is a difference
between the ritual/ceremonial sacrifices in the Temple and real spirituality. Now
this is something that is not made very clear by anyone. I began to clarify this
about 9 years ago. I wrote a series of articles for Chafer Theological Journal
dealing with the whole issue of confession of sin and its relationship to
cleansing because the real issue in 1 John 1:9 isn’t confession.
Some people, when they come to 1
John 1:9 they’ll say, “Well, that’s the only place in the New Testament where
it says to confess your sins. It doesn’t use that word anywhere else.”
But if you read 1 John 1:9, it says:
NKJ 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
And to what?
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That word cleansing is the key word,
not confession. Confession is what gets you to cleansing; but the word that you
follow and trace all the way through Scripture is really that word “cleansing.”
There is a necessity to being cleansed before we come into the presence of a
righteous just God. That cleansing we teach in two ways - is a positional
cleansing which is what happens for Church Age believers at the moment of
salvation when we’re identified with Christ in the baptism of the Holy Spirit
and we’re placed in Christ. There’s a positional cleansing. But then when we
sin as we go through life, there is a need for an experiential cleansing. Now
hold that thought.
That word cleansing there (that was
the first time I realized that the Septuagint in the Old Testament translated
atonement), the Hebrew word kaphar,
translated atonement, many times the rabbis who translated the Septuagint
translated with the word katharizo,
meaning to cleanse.
So that was like taking another layer
of blinders off of my eyes. I began to put that together realizing that you
have to have cleansing in that sense in the future Millennial Temple because
you have millennial priests who are born in the Millennium in mortal bodies
with sin natures. So in the ritual sacrifices in the Millennial Temple they
still have to go through ritual cleansing. But ritual cleansing isn’t the same
as real cleansing so that when you’re out… Let’s say you’re David and you’re
out in the fields as a shepherd and you sinned. Does that mean you have to run
back to the Temple (or with David it would have been the Tabernacle) and offer
a sin offering and burnt offering to get back in fellowship? That would be real
spiritual life. Then on your way back to the sheep, something happens and you
sin again. Oh! You have to stop and turn around and run back. I don’t know
about you, but I would never make it back to the sheep. They would starve to
death and get lost and die in the wilderness.
So there is this difference between
real spirituality in terms of real ongoing fellowship with God, between the
individual and God, and what is depicted in the ritual and ceremony in the
Temple. Now that’s really important to help resolve some of these things that
we’re going to get into in working out some of the kinks as we get into not
only Hebrews 10; but also when we get into looking at the issues related to the
legitimacy of the Tribulation temple.
The sacrifices there: are those
Levitical sacrifices or are they New Covenant sacrifices? Now at this point my
inclination is to say they’re still Levitical sacrifices in the same way that
you had Levitical sacrifices going on between 33 AD when Jesus dies on the
cross and He’s the end of the Law.
Remember all sacrifices are all pointing to the cross. And we have a
tendency to think: Well, the moment He died on the cross from that point on
these sacrifices became illegitimate. Did they? Paul doesn’t seem to ever say
that. Paul wrote a lot about this in Galatians and in Romans and then he swears
this vow to go to Jerusalem. He goes to Jerusalem and offers sacrifices. But he
doesn’t see that to be a conflict with the finished work of Christ on the
cross.
The only way (Dr. Whitcomb and I talked
about this the other day) we can see that that would work is if Paul
understands this difference between real spirituality and what is depicted in
the ritual. Only when you have that kind of distinction can you see Paul doing
that.
Now I’ve gone into all of that in
terms of this review because as we went through Hebrews 7, we talked about
change of priesthood. Jesus Christ is our High Priest. That’s related to a
change of covenant, which is the New Covenant; but we saw that it’s not put
into effect until the Second Coming. Then starting in chapter 9, we get into an
analogy related to the Day of Atonement ritual in the Old Testament.
So in the last few classes, I have focused
on three key doctrines that we must understand to understand Hebrews 9 and 10. The
first was the procedures on the Day of Atonement; the second is on the nature
of redemption; and the third is that the purchase price is blood. So that’s really
the last three lessons. So I want to summarize that very quickly before we get
into the present passage.
The first is, related to the Day of
Atonement we saw that there were certain procedures that had to take place on
the Day of Atonement. We went into all the detail looking into everything in
Leviticus 16. But when you boil it down, there were three things.
Now before we get into that we have
to understand the meaning of the word. The word atonement (and I pointed out
four things.)
So that led us to understand that
atonement was a multifaceted concept that relates to all these different
aspects of Christ’s work on the cross – redemption, reconciliation,
forgiveness, expiation, and propitiation.
So we developed this little diagram
here of a pentagon with kaphar in the
middle. Then each side represents one of these different doctrines. Depending
on the passage that you’re in and the context, the writer may be emphasizing
one or another of these doctrines. But the word kaphar is broad enough to incorporate all of these dimensions of
Christ’s work on the cross.
Now on the Day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest first would
go in and he would offer a sin offering for himself and his family and bring
that blood in before the mercy seat because before he can minister on behalf of
the people there has to be ceremonial cleaning for himself and for his family -
his family being a reference to the Levites, the other priests.
The second thing that we saw is he
comes in and he returns again into the Holy of Holies and brings blood from the
bull. He puts that on the mercy seat – one drop on the mercy seat and 7
drops in front of the mercy seat and that depicts propitiation, which really
isn’t developed as a doctrine until you get into the New Testament. But that’s
what that is a picture of. So the splattering of blood on the mercy seat depicts
propitiation.
Then the third thing that happened
is he went out and put his hand on two goats, recited the sins of the nation
since the last Day of Atonement and he would then sacrifice one goat indicating
the need for the shedding of blood to deal with those sins. Then the other goat
was left alive. A trusted friend, someone who wouldn’t be lazy, would take that
goat off into the wilderness and would let it go somewhere where it wouldn’t
come back. What that depicts is that there is finality to the payment for sin. Those
sins aren’t going to come back. They’re not going to have to be atoned for
again. They won’t have to be cleansed -those sins will not have to have a
second cleansing. It is a complete
and total payment for those sins. Now it is not a permanent payment because every
year they had to do this. It just covered the sins since the previous Day of
Atonement. So it is not a permanent payment. That’s why we have the verses
we’ll get to in this section that the blood of bulls and goats could not take
away sins permanently. But they did have a real effect. That was real
forgiveness, and there was real cleansing; but it was only for a short period
of time – only for that year.
So we move from understanding that
to connecting that to the concept of redemption which comes up in the New
Testament.
Colossians
1:13-20. The key verse there was verse 14.
NKJ Colossians 1:14 in whom we have redemption
The “in whom”
referring to Christ.
through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
Two points I’ve emphasized.
We had to clarify the meaning there
because forgiveness to many of us just means that we’re not going to hold
something against somebody. We’re not going to be angry with them. We’re not
going to be bitter or hateful towards them. But the idea here is more the idea
used in an economic sense, the wiping out or canceling of a debt. There is a
different sense there. The canceling of a debt is more of an objective and not
a subjective reality.
Furthermore, in those verses we saw
in Colossians 1:20 that this redemption, this act of forgiveness that’s
accomplished at the cross is related to the Doctrine of Reconciliation which
occurred at the cross, not a subjective thing, but an objective accomplishment
by Christ’s death. Again peace was made through the blood of His cross, the
payment price being blood.
Colossians 1:21-22 again emphasizes
the Doctrine of Reconciliation.
NKJ Colossians 1:21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now He has reconciled
Then we went in to Colossians
2:13-14 where we have the connection made between forgiveness here and the idea
of canceling or wiping out a debt.
It needs to be understood correctly
that you have your main verb in verse 13.
NKJ Colossians 2:13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having
forgiven you all trespasses,
Everything else modifies or relates
to that main idea. It should be understood in this way.
And you although you were dead in your trespasses and sins…
It’s a concessive adverbial
participle.
and the
un-circumcision of your flesh He has made you
Continues the second person plural
there.
alive
together with Him
The participle just translated as
“having forgiven you all trespasses”, but I think that when that is properly
understood, it should be understood as a causal participle –
He has made you alive because He has forgiven you all trespasses.
The reason He can make us alive is
because He has forgiven you of all trespasses. Now if that’s all there was, we
would think that happened when we were saved. But he doesn’t stop there. He
continues into verse 14 saying:
NKJ Colossians 2:14 having
Again it’s an aorist participle,
past tense.
wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against
us, which was contrary to us.
Now that’s a participle so it’s not
just having. It could be a temporal participle meaning “when He wiped out the
handwriting of requirements” or it could be a participle of means “because He
has forgiven you all trespasses by wiping out the handwriting of requirements
that was against us.”
Either way the forgiveness is the
result of wiping out or eradicating the certificate of debt that was against us,
which was contrary to us. We’re told when it happened in the second part of
verse 14.
And He has
taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
So that’s when it happened. It
didn’t happen when you trusted Christ as your Savior. It happened at the cross.
So what we must conclude from this (and I’ve wrestled a little bit with the
terminology here) is that there is a dual sense to forgiveness. There is an
objective sense and a subjective sense. The objective redemption is paid at the
cross. The price is paid objectively. It’s not positional. It’s not
experiential. Don’t confuse those two. I am going to develop three categories
– objective, subjective, experiential. Positional - experiential only
apply to the believer. The objective has to do with the fact that Christ truly
paid the penalty for every sin of every person who ever lived on the planet so
that sin is not the issue anymore. It is objectively paid for. The Father is
propitiated and mankind is reconciled to God. It is an objective reality. It
happened at the cross so that the certificate of debt is wiped out so that sin
isn’t the issue anymore. The issue is whether or not we human beings trust in
Jesus Christ as their Savior. So the cancellation of the debt is viewed in this
passage in terms of objective cancellation in relation to the satisfaction of
divine justice.
Then when we talk about it subjectively,
there are two aspects. Subjectively the two aspects are positional and
experiential. We are positionally forgiven when we are in Christ. Then when we
sin of course we are out of fellowship. That has to do with experiential. So
experiential forgiveness comes when we confess our sins.
Now when we look at the passage that
we’re studying in Hebrews 9 (just to tie this together for you) in verse 12. We
are not quite there yet but we should be next time, which of course
unfortunately will be when I come back from Kiev:
NKJ Hebrews 9:12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His
own blood He entered the Most Holy Place.
That is the heavenly most holy
place.
once for all,
What’s that next phrase?
having
Past tense
obtained eternal redemption
That is the objective sense. It doesn’t
mean everybody is saved. It just means that the price is paid for objectively
which satisfies the righteous demands of God so that His righteousness and
justice are propitiated and we can be forgiven in the sense of: all mankind is
forgiven in the sense of the sin debt is cancelled, wiped out so that that is
not the issue.
Then the third thing we looked at in
the past few weeks was the purchase price, which is blood. We saw that in the
Old Testament the blood depicts life and the shedding of blood equals the loss
of life. So this is a figure of speech that runs throughout the Scripture.
I Peter 1:2 says that:
NKJ 1 Peter 1:2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in
sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.
That is that sanctifying imagery
there, but it has to do with the application of His death to the individual
believer.
Romans 3:25 and Romans 5:9 both talk
about the fact that God displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation
by means of His blood. When did that occur? That occurred at the cross. That was the objective thing
that God did. He’s satisfied at the cross. It’s through faith.
NKJ Romans 5:9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved
from wrath through Him.
So all these phrases pick up on the
price that is paid which is termed blood but actually this speaks of His death,
redemption. 1 Peter 1:18-9 is “with His precious blood”. We saw this as a
figure of speech. It was very complicated last time. I tried to simplify it
here.
There are two ways in which this is
used. It’s called a metalepsis, which combines two figures of speech: a
metonymy and a synecdoche. The metonymy is a figure of speech where one noun is
used instead of another. One noun that stands in relation to another noun is
used. So one noun substitutes for another. That’s
called a metonymy.
A synechdoche is the exchange of one
idea for another associated idea. So metonymy has to do with a related noun for
noun; synechdoche is connected idea for idea.
E W. Bollinger in his classic work
on figures of speech states that:
In the New Testament, the expression “the blood of Christ” is a figure
metalepsis: because first the
blood is put (by synecdoche) …
Now remember synechdoche is a
related idea. Blood is put for blood shedding. So it’s a related idea. Or
death; we would say physically, physical death. So blood is put for physical death. Those are related
ideas. Then he goes on to say that:
i.e., the death
of Christ, as distinct from His life
So he is talking physical.
Then His physical death is put for the perfect satisfaction made by it.
And I’ve inserted that means that
physical death is put for spiritual death – not death for death. See
those are related nouns so that’s a metonymy. Now you’ve got two figures of
speech – one piled on top of another. That’s what makes it a metalepsis. That’s
all the technical terms so now you can impress somebody with how much you know.
We use these kinds of figures of speech in everyday language. Nobody ever told
us what we were doing. We just normally understand it when we hear somebody use
them so that it’s just a basic sense of the fact that the phrase “shed blood”
means physical death.
So that brings us up to verse 6, our
next paragraph – Hebrews 9:6. Now having laid this foundation we can work
our way through these verses fairly quickly because we have an understanding
now of all this background.
So in verse 6 we read:
NKJ Hebrews 9:6 Now
The “now” there represents a
conjunction in the Greek which indicates a change to
the next topic, a shift to a new topic. In verses 1-5 he talked about the
furniture and the arrangement of the furniture inside the Holy of Holies and the
holy place. Verses 6 through 10 he’s going to talk about their function.
when these
things had been thus prepared,
The “these things” refers to all the
articles of furniture in the Tabernacle when it became functional.
the priests
always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services.
There’s a contrast between the
everyday priest and the High Priest—that’s the significance in verses 6
and 7 that the priest went in every day, but the High Priest only went into the
Holy of Holies once a year for the Day of Atonement. The focus in this whole
chapter is on the Day of Atonement.
So in verse 7 we read:
NKJ Hebrews 9:7 But into the second part the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for
himself
The once a year doesn’t mean that’s
the only time he could have gone in because we saw the problem with the location
of the altar of incense. I suggested it was actually inside the Holy of Holies
during the tabernacle period. So the High Priest could go in for other reasons
at other times, but only once a year for the Day of Atonement.
The use of the double negative there
brings it to our attention that his entry on the Day of Atonement was on the
basis of blood, which he offered first for himself. We saw that already. The
first thing he had to do was offer the sin offering for himself and his family.
and for the people's sins committed in ignorance;
When we studied the Day of
Atonement, we saw that the sacrifices only covered ritual sins where there was
ritual uncleanness because somebody had touched a dead body or they did something
that was ritually unclean. A woman would give birth. She would be ritually
unclean for 7 days or 8 days – things like that. They’re not sins at all,
but they rendered a person ritually or ceremonially unclean or for sins that
were committed in ignorance. They weren’t willful sins or what the Old Testament
calls sins of the high hand. There were no sacrifices for willful sins. That’s
covered by the grace of God. So there’s that distinction there. The Day of
Atonement only covers the ritual sins and the sins committed in ignorance. So
on the Day of Atonement the High Priest goes in to take care of the
unintentional sins of the nation from the last Day of Atonement to the present.
It has efficacy. The blood of the bulls and the goats were efficacious, but
only for that short period of time.
Sometimes when we read these verses
we think, “Do they have any value at all or are they just ritual?” No, it had a
real value because over and over again you read in the psalms “God forgives.”
He forgave them. He was satisfied by that but it was only
a temporary satisfaction. It only dealt with that limited period of time.
We saw that the sacrifices also
emphasized that God’s justice was satisfied and the sin is completely removed
by that scapegoat that’s taken off into the wilderness, so that those sins are
never brought up again. It’s complete; it’s full; it’s total payment. That is
what Jesus emphasized at the end of the day when He died for our sins and He
said, “Tetelestai” – paid in
full. The debt’s wiped out. It is complete. Nothing more can be done.
Verse 8 - now this is an interesting
verse because it brings in an important doctrine for us, the Doctrine of
Progressive Revelation.
NKJ Hebrews 9:8 the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the
Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still
standing.
See what that tells us is that the
Holy Spirit declared this much, at that time. The Greek word is deloo which means to make clear by word.
So it emphasizes a propositional verbal revelation or to declare something. So
the Holy Spirit as the divine author of Scripture declared these realities, but
it wasn’t clear to everyone what they actually pointed to. It’s fuzzy; it’s a
shadow. That terminology will be introduced by the end of
chapter 9: that this is just a shadow. So the Holy Spirit introduces
this and this brings in the Doctrine of Progressive Revelation.
NKJ 2 Peter 3:16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these
things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and
unstable people twist to their own
destruction, as they do also the rest
of the Scriptures.
Okay, Hebrews 9:9.
NKJ Hebrews 9:9 It was symbolic
for the present time
The “it” there is a translation of
the feminine pronoun which goes back to the closest feminine noun which is the
word tabernacle in Hebrews 9:8. So the writer is saying the tabernacle was symbolic
for the present time. There "symbol" is the word parabole where we get our word parable and has the idea of image or
shadow pointing to a future reality.
in which
both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the
service perfect in regard to the conscience --
Now get this because I want to get
all this in before I take off for Kiev next week. Then we’ll come back and
review it again, but at least you’ll have these two points.
The first point I want you to
observe here is he says it was symbolic to the present time. What’s the present
time in which the writer of Hebrews is writing? Not just Church Age. What’s the present time in which he is
writing? This is the early part of 60 to 65 AD. Jesus has been dead for 30
years. He was crucified on the cross. The Temple is still in existence in
Jerusalem and they’re still offering the morning sacrifice, evening sacrifices
and the burnt offerings. They’re still observing the Day of Atonement
sacrifices. He doesn’t say that’s wrong, does he? He doesn’t say it’s illegitimate.
He doesn’t say it’s apostate. This fits with what I
was saying earlier that there is this distinction between understanding the
sacrifices as only depicting a spiritual truth from a ceremonial or ritual
point and not a reality. So he can say it was symbolic for the present time and
it’s in the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered. He
doesn’t say “wrongly.”
These apostate gifts and
sacrifices…he just says they cannot make him who performs the service perfect
in regard to the conscience. It has a ritual value as it always did in the Old
Testament, but it isn’t spiritually. It doesn’t make him spiritually complete
and it doesn’t save him. So it helps us to understand that
distinction and it’s related only (verse 10) to foods and drinks (That is the
things they could eat and not eat) that had to do with ceremonial ritual
various washings and cleansings and fleshly ordinances. See they’re only
depicting a higher spiritual truth. There only symbols. These were imposed
when? Until the time of reformation. That word
reformation is a Greek word diothosis,
which is only used one time here and it means improvement, reformation or a new
order. That from context as we will see points to the death
of Christ on the cross, not the Millennial Kingdom. So these were
legitimate up to the time of the cross.
Then we have to deal with this
awkward thing for us to understand as Church Age believers now. This whole
period of time between the cross and 70 AD was a transition period. There is
still a legitimate offer of the kingdom to the Jews that if they had turned and
accepted Christ as Messiah in 40 AD or 50 AD or 60 AD, then the kingdom would
have come in. That’s still Peter’s message in Acts 2 and in Acts 3 is to repent
and the times of refreshing will come.
So there is still a legitimacy. It’s not an
apostate temple even though say the High Priest wasn’t saved. The leaders
weren’t saved; the priests weren’t saved.
They weren’t saved in the Old Testament either. Salvation and being
spiritually right with God was never a requirement to be a High Priest or a
priest. You just had to be related to Levi or Aaron. And, you couldn’t have
certain physical deformities because what they were doing had to do with ritual
and ceremony not with real spirituality. The ritual depicted the other, but it
wasn’t identical with it.
So that brings us up to verse 11,
which states:
NKJ Hebrews 9:11 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.
That’s the heavenly tabernacle
called the heavenly temple in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 11 we will
see in 10 and 11 I believe I can’t remember the exact chapter…the heavens open
up. It’s at the end of 11. The heavens open up and you see the Ark of the
Covenant in heaven - the prototype not the one that Moses made. .
Then verse 12:
NKJ Hebrews 9:12 Not with the blood of goats and calves,.
Because that only had temporary
value
but with His
own blood
That is, His own death; spiritual
death.
He entered the
Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption
That’s the objective redemption paid
for on the cross. Then the point is made in verse 13:
NKJ Hebrews 9:13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling
the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh,
See it did something. It’s a first
class condition, if and it does.
That is it had a ceremonial
efficacy.
NKJ Hebrews 9:14 how much more shall the blood of Christ,
That is the death of Christ.
who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without
spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
That’s where he’s going in his argument.
We’ll listen to this message two or three times, pull it all together and be
ready for when I get back from Kiev.
Let’s close in prayer.