The advice of the term was needed. The book of Hebrews as we continue on in chapter 8, Hebrews chapter 8, this evening we'll read verses 1 through 6, last time we were together we looked most specifically at verses 1 through 3, but we noted that the writer is on the theme of the more excellent ministry of Jesus. When we get to verse 6, he's going to speak about the better promises we have in Jesus, the better covenant we have in Jesus. In fact, that will be two sermons when I'm back from vacation, the better promises, the better covenant.
But let me invite you to consider Jesus and how he's much more excellent. This is God's holy and inspired word, Hebrews chapter 8 beginning at verse 1. Now the point in what we are saying is this, we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer.
Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all. Because there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. But when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.
But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. Amen. This is the word of God. Let's look to him in prayer.
Our Father, we ask that you would come and minister this word to us without you. My words are vain. And our ears are death and our hearts are hard. So grant grace by the Holy Spirit to, Lord, we would see Jesus lift him before our eyes and so bring us comfort and assurance and hope in him.
In his name I pray. Amen. Last week we noted in the first few verses this better ministry, then the ministry of the Old Testament priests. And we noted in verse one as we read that Jesus sat down at the right hand of the majesty.
We notice in verses two and three that Jesus serves in the true tent of the Lord, set up by the Lord, not set up by men. And then in verses four and five, Jesus is the substance of which the Old Testament portrayals are but a copy and a shadow. So these are some of the ways that Jesus is much better. And we'll just briefly review the first two and dig more deeply into that third one.
But by way of reminder, the writer has said it, verse one, Jesus sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. And that makes him much more excellent than any Old Testament priest could ever be. Notice that language verse one, the point that we're saying is this, we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. He sat down, we said that the significance of that of course is that he finished the work that he began.
And so he could sit down, whereas the Old Testament Levitical priests were forbidden to sit down. In fact, there wasn't even a chair in the tabernacle where they could sit down and they were not to sit down because their work was never done. There was always more work to do. There was always more offerings to be made and day after day and week after week and year after year.
But Jesus, because his one final complete sacrifice upon the cross, when we try, it is finished because he accomplished the atonement that was necessary. He could sit down at the right hand of the majesty, having done it once and for all and it being forever effective for all who look to him. You don't need to atone for your own sins. You don't need to make peace between yourself and God other than trust in Jesus who makes peace for you between yourself and God and takes away your sin that you might be forgiven and counted righteous in the eyes of God.
Jesus did it. And notice he sat down at the right hand, which is the place of rule and authority and honor that he from there now rules and reigns as the scripture says over all things for the good of his people. And from that right hand, he is our advocate with the Father and he pronounces our acquittal and he declares us righteous and he welcomes us to the throne of God. Well, we said he's better because he sat down at the right hand of the majesty and also he's better because his ministry, well, he serves in the true tent of the Lord verses two and three.
We looked at this last week, but notice those words, verse two, we have such a high priest, a minister verse two in the holy places in the true tent of the Lord set up by the Lord, not man. And the writer is saying there, of course, that the true holy place wasn't the tabernacle and then eventually the temple, which was, of course, set up and taken down by men and traveled with Israel wherever they went and wherever they camped, they set up the tent and the people camped around the tabernacle. And even when they set up the permanent place in Jerusalem, that temple, it was made with stone in Jerusalem, but it was set up by man. It was built by man.
And it was, as we noted, eventually destroyed by men. But we have a true tent, the writer says, Jesus is a minister in the holy places, the true tent that the Lord set up true, not because the others were false or wrong. It wasn't wrong for Israel to set up the tabernacle or to build the temple. They did it under God's instruction.
But it was not the final. It was a foreshadowing of that which was really needed. It was a copy of the heavenly reality. So we noted Hebrews, chapter 9, verse 24, for Christ is entered not into holy places 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.
What is Jesus doing the true tent? He appears in the presence of God on our behalf for our sake, for our good. And of course, the writer goes on to say, he ministers there. He serves there.
So Jesus does have a continuing ministry. That is, his work of atonement was once and for all complete. But his work of intercession continues, his work of mediation, his work of mediating the grace of God to us continues. And we noted from verse 3, every high priest, that is those Old Testament high priests appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices.
Those are the bloody and unbloody gifts they offered. But thus it is necessary for this priest, that is Jesus, also to have something to offer. And we noted that singular, not plural. It is not many things that he offers.
He offers one thing, that final and complete satisfaction of the justice of God upon the cross, our atonement. But he does continue to serve as a minister, interceding for us all the time and ministering in the true tent. Notice also, just sort of by way of passing here, that the passage in these verse 3 and 4 verses hints at the date of the book of Hebrews when it was written. And it does so in this way, in that the writer speaks of the work of the high priest in the present tent, not the past tense.
Verse 3, he says, he is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Not, he was appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. And the writer is thinking of the continuing work of the Levitical High Priest and Priesthood. And verse 4, there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.
They're still offering those gifts according to the law, is what he's saying. Jesus, however, is different. And so what we can say is this, we know that the Old Testament Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed when the Roman army over in Jerusalem in 70 AD, that's a historical undisputed fact. And so we can place the writing of the book of Hebrews prior to AD 70 when the temple was still standing, when the Levitical priests were still serving and the sacrifice of animals was still being offered.
But now all of that is gone for us in our day. And it is good that it is gone. For Christ is better than all of it. But of course, for the Jewish Christians first hearing this author, there was a strong temptation to give themselves to what they could see, a temple, the priests, what they had always known, the animal sacrifices.
And so to return to Judaism, so to speak, in the Old Testament and the Old Covenant, and not to go forward with the Lord Jesus who had now ascended into heaven, whom they could not see face to face. And so the writer is holding out to them as we have been saying that the whole book is doing the greater glory of Jesus. So don't turn away. Now let's come to that third point, and this is where we'll spend the rest of our time.
And as the writer says in verse 5, Jesus is the substance of which the Old Testament priests and their sacrifices and even the tabernacle are but a copy and a shadow. Verse 5, they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. So a shadow has no substance of its own.
It has no independent existence or meaning apart from what it is a shadow of. It exists as evidence of the real thing. And a copy is useful in that it points you to the existence of the real thing. It shows you the shape of the real thing.
It gives you all the details, so to speak, but it isn't the real thing itself. It's just a copy. Well, Jesus is the real thing. And the earthly tabernacle, it was but a shadow.
And of course, they used it in the wilderness wanderings that God would dwell in the midst of the people and that they could be assured that God cared for them and loved them and dwelt in the midst of his people, that they could have access to him and so on and so forth. So let's think about that tabernacle for a moment. From Exodus 25 through 27. Now actually, almost the whole back half of the book of Exodus is about the tabernacle and the priests and the sacrifice and all that.
We don't have time to work through all that material. But let me summarize for you what that was about. The Old Testament tabernacle, the sides of it were framed by upright boards covered on both sides with gold or gold plated, we might say. It measured something like 45 feet long by 15 feet wide.
It was divided into two rooms and it was about 15 feet high. So 15 feet high, 15 feet wide, 45 feet long divided into two rooms. The first room was called the holy place. The second room, the most holy place or the holy of holies.
The holy place, well, in it were three pieces of furniture. There was a golden lampstand. There was a golden table for the showbread and the golden altar where the incense was offered. The golden lampstand pointed to Christ as the light of the world.
The table of showbread symbolized Jesus as the bread of life. And the golden altar of incense was where the high priest offered prayer and it pointed to Christ as the one who intercedes for us and Christ as the one in whom our prayers, like the smoke of incense rising into the nostrils of God, so to speak, that's the image of revelation. So our prayers rise up in Christ before the face of God. And he hears them.
Well, then on the day of atonement, the high priest entered that most holy place, the other room. And he passed through a veil or a curtain that separated the two rooms and he went into the inner room, the holy of holies. And then it worked two pieces of furniture. There was the arc of the covenant, a box made of wood, again covered with gold inside and out.
And in that arc were the ten commandments written on tables of stone as a pot of manna and Aaron's raw bedded buttered. And then the arc of the covenant was covered with the mercy seat. So that on top of it was the mercy seat. And crowning it were two chair of them, two angelic type creatures.
These are man-made, of course, representations, also made of gold. And then once a year the high priest went through the curtain and he took blood and put it upon the mercy seat. And in Exodus 25, 22, God promised that he wouldn't meet with the high priest every year at the mercy seat. And around the tabernacle then, around this tabernacle, it was surrounded by a fence made of wood posts with curtains hung between the posts, a linen fence about 150 feet long by 75 feet wide.
So the tabernacle itself sat within a larger tent, a tent in the sense of curtains almost like a privacy fence, really, nearly about seven and a half feet tall that surrounded it. And so in the land around it, within those curtains there was an outer courtyard where there were two pieces of furniture. The first was an altar where the sacrifices were made. And then there was a basin of bronze where priests could wash.
And so, I mean, that's a very brief sketch. But if you had lived in the wilderness with Israel, you would have seen the tabernacle in the heart of the camp. The tribes camped all around it. The priests worked in the courtyard offering sacrifices.
And you could go in through one of the curtains that opened and you could pass into the courtyard and you could watch and see what was happening there as the priests offered sacrifices. And then as they disappeared from your site, going into the holy place where you couldn't go if you weren't a priest. And they were doing their work there. And then once a year that high priest would enter the most holy place.
Well, these priests and these sacrifices in this tabernacle were all copies and shadows of the true heavenly realities, the true high priest who is Jesus who is the true and perfect sacrifice. So the earthy pointed away from itself to the heavenly reality. The earthy prefigured it. It foresignified it.
It promised the true reality. But they themselves weren't it. Christ has always been it. So we can say it this way.
That the old, all these things of old covenant ceremonial worship, they're actually predated by the new. That is the new is the original. And they are copies of the original. So the new predates the old.
And then of course the new has come to tabernacle among us and to finish his work, which he did. And that's why because of that relationship, it was so important for Moses to get this right. Would you see how the writer here even remarks on how important, middle of verse five, he was instructed by God saying see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. And he did.
Moses of course didn't perfectly obey God in everything, the course of his entire life. But he did perfectly obey God in this. When you read the book of Exodus, however detailed it is, there will be these summary statements. And Moses did exactly as the Lord commanded.
And so we could say, well Moses was not a perfect man. I mean in Numbers 20 you remember he struck the rock when he was supposed to speak to the rock so that water would come from the rock and satisfy the thirst of God's people. Moses struck it instead of speaking to it. And it was for that reason because he'd been commanded otherwise God barred him from entrance into the promised land in his generation.
If you remember the mountain transfiguration, you know Moses did get to the promised land by God's grace. But it was vital that Moses do it correctly and rightly so that the people could believe in what it pointed to properly. You couldn't misfigure the copy or you might end up, I think it would end up misfiguring in the heart of the person who's looking beyond it to the reality. And so to mess up the tabernacle would have been to mess up the people's understanding of Jesus to mess up the priesthood and the furniture they needed and the instruments they needed and the clothing that they were to wear would be to mess up in a way the people's faith in the true reality.
Jesus to have gathered the people for worship and then to have worship God improperly would have done what? It would have obscured the glory of Jesus and so robbed the people of their hope in Jesus. And so we can certainly draw a lesson from this. Moses is obedience and the necessity of his perfect obedience regarding the worship of God.
The lesson we can draw is that God is imposing here upon his people what is often called the regulative principle of worship. That is to say Moses do what I tell you and nothing other than that. Don't get creative here Moses. Don't add to my commands.
Don't subtract from my commands. Do it as I've told you to do it because I regulate my own worship. I tell you how to worship me. I don't just leave it to you to decide in your own heart how you want to do it.
And that regulative principle is actually a principle that continues to this day and it's dear in the reformed and presbyterian world. The regulative principle forbids us to add symbols or ceremonies not expressly commanded in scripture when they have religious significance attached to them. And it positively requires of us that we make use of in worship the elements that God himself has given us for worship. That is to say the regulative principle says to us let's worship God the way that God wants to be worshiped.
Calvin went on to say this we are here taught that all those modes of worship are false and spurious which men allow themselves by their own wit to invent and beyond God's command for since God gives this direction that all things are to be done according to his own rule. It is not lawful for us to do anything different from it. He prohibits us to depart from it even in the least thing for this reason all the modes of worship taught by men in contrast to God fall to the ground. Moses is not to be an innovator.
He is to do what he's been told to do and that was to protect the glory of Jesus. And so we likewise are not to be innovators. Moses understood that the worship going on in the tent was not the true reality. He knew it was a copy and a shadow because he had been taken up and shown the reality and told to make this after the pattern of what he had been shown.
That is to say Moses knew he needed the true mediator, Jesus. And that Jesus was going to come. And these were shadows of him and foreshadowing of him. And so then to impose on people something in worship that God hadn't commanded not only obscures the glory of Jesus and the sight of Jesus, but we can also say this, it oppresses the conscience.
That is, as we do in worship what God has commanded and we're persuaded that this is what God has commanded us to do, we are free. We are at liberty to give ourselves wholeheartedly, enthusiastically with an untroubled conscience that I'm doing in worship. What God wants me to do? Think of those elements of worship.
What are the elements of worship? What are the things we do in worship? What we do is one has summarized it in many half. We do five things in worship that God has commanded.
That is we sing the Bible, we pray the Bible, we read the Bible, we preach the Bible and we show the Bible in the sacraments. Now I don't mean that all of our songs are out of the Hebrew or Greek and can't be translated. But the content is biblically sound, theologically true. Likewise our prayers.
There are many prayers in the Bible that it would be good for us to pray word for word. But we can also pray in our own words but we are taught to pray in accord with the Bible and not contrary to. So we sing the truths of the Bible, we pray the truths of the Bible, we read the Bible, we preach the Bible and we show the Bible and the baptism in Lord's Supper. That is we show the promise of God in a visual way.
Those are the elements of Christian worship and we are to do them and not add or subtract from them. And so let me give you an example that may help you this and I mean no offense to my brothers and sisters who hold a different view of worship. I'm pointing out the regulative principle of worship. There is what you might call the liberal view of worship and that's anything goes to do whatever you want.
I mean the hardcore liberal view, if I did it I would be good enough for God and whatever I did it ought to be just fine. But then there's what historically we might call the Lutheran view of worship as opposed to the Reformed view and that is that we are free to do anything that's not forbidden in worship. That's different than saying we must do what is commanded and only what is commanded. The Lutheran view says yeah do those things but also we're free to do other things as long as they're not forbidden.
Leaving what those things are to the teachers of the church, the pastors and tradition of the church so to speak. And so just as an example maybe to highlight this distinction would be to know even the liturgical season of Lent with its imposition of ashes. Now no one's against reminding ourselves of the brevity of life, the reality of death, the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness and his sufferings on our behalf. We're not against any of that.
Nor celebrating at the end of thinking of those things the resurrection which we do around here. We're partly liturgical in that sense. But I mean consider some things that sometimes people believe about these things. There was a news article in 2017 that pointed out in the coming Lenten season for Roman Catholics who are not supposed to eat meat on Fridays as an act of penance.
The problem was that in 2017 St. Patrick's Day and its traditional fare of corn beef meat and cabbage was on a Friday. And so what to do? Well the bishops across the states gave their flop the go ahead to partake in meat in celebration of St.
Patrick's feast day when ordinarily they shouldn't. But there was disagreement across the church on this. The diocese of Trenton and the archdiocese of St. Louis limited meat eating permission only to St.
Patrick's Day events held in a parish. So you couldn't go to Arby's and get the corn beef or make it yourself at home. But if it was being served as a meal at the parish that would be fine. By contrast the diocese of Denver and Lincoln should say that they would not be granting permission that year to eat meat on St.
Patrick's Day. Now that didn't mean Catholics were off the hook. In places where bishops granted permission Catholics were encouraged to abstain from meat, not on St. Patty's Day on Friday, but to go ahead abstain from eating me on Saturday.
Or do some other form of charity as a substitute. I'm not trying to pick. But do you see how complicated things can get in the life of the church if we impose rules for the worship of God on people that God himself hasn't imposed? You could imagine the conflict in a very conscientious Christian who just wants to honor Jesus with their life and knows that Jesus declared all foods clean.
Jesus hasn't forbidden meat eating and then is told by his religious authority and teachers in church with the weight of that authority. Well you can't eat it on Friday. Okay we'll make an exception on this day and so on and so forth. How that would trouble the conscience of a believer.
And so for this reason we think that's inappropriate. It's inappropriate for me or church authority, leadership and teachers, to assert you have an obligation that God has not obligated to you or forbid you a pleasure that God has not forbidden to you. Who am I to do that? I'm to stand, we're to stand on the authority of God's word and to do what God tells us to do as Moses in a great example did here along this line by way of example again in that liturgy of land many churches practice the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday.
I saw this prayer in another church one time with regard to that liturgy that said grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence. Now listen, God never commanded Christians to swipe ashes on their forehead as a sign of anything. Historically speaking in fact that is a very recent history. You can't find it in the Apostolic Church for the first thousand years of Christianity.
The first documented witness to this practice is in 1050 AD in the Western Church, the Roman Church and not till 1091 in the Eastern or Eastern Orthodox Church. So you got to go 10 centuries before it appears that it was practiced in various places of course for about 400 years until the time of the Protestant Reformation with the Reformers said we don't find that in the Bible so who are we to tell you you have to do it? So they took it away Luther took it away Calvin took it away the other Reformers the other Protestants did and though we often associated with the Anglican Church even today it's not until the 1950s and 1960s that it actually appears in a right in the book of common prayer in worship. It's a very recent addition and I'm simply saying this that we are not to be violence to the conscience of God's people, God alone is Lord of the conscience and has left it for you from the doctrines of commandments of men because we end up obscuring the glory of Christ when we impose our will and our ideas.
Look if you want a sign applied to you, a sign of death, that sign is baptism. That is baptism among other things is a sign of death and judgment. The waters of baptism are like the waters of Noah's flood and the waters of the Red Sea that swept away the Egyptians. Jesus underwent a baptism of judgment so that we could be baptized into his name and that identified with him in his death and we are baptized then and so in Jesus who passed through the waters of judgment we have passed through in him the waters of judgment and we can simply confess and give thanks that he died in our name and that application of water like his death for us is once and for all.
So I know that was a very extended application but it was vital for Moses to do it exactly as God commanded to put on display and not obscure the glory of Jesus to set people up to believe in the Messiah to come our great High Priest because the substance is him and the old was a shadow and the glory of course in his coming is that where we have all failed, all of us. The greatest Protestant reformer who had the right doctrine of the regulative principle regularly fails in even worshiping from the heart and in truth by the Spirit in the ways that God has commanded. Our hope is not the perfection of our own worship and certainly not in some self-righteousness about we do it right and everybody does it wrong. None of us worships God the way we ought and that's why we praise God for the more excellent ministry of Jesus who brings us to God in his grace.
Praise the Lord, let's pray. Father thank you for Jesus our great High Priest and thank you that you wash all our sins away. Give us for we like Moses often go astray and have not obeyed you from the heart and in what we do. You know that better than we but there's a Savior.
We thank you for him in his name. Amen. Amen let's stand together and sing.