Hebrews 10:18
“He concludes, I’ll forever wipe the slate clean of their sins. Once sins are taken care of for good, there’s no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them.”
“Then he says, “I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.” And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.”
Because of the cross our sins are entirely wiped away by Christ’s blood shed there. God has erased them from our ledger. When others wound us and apologize, do we wipe away that wound in the same way? The will to forgive does not guaranteed memory will cooperate. When it doesn’t the arising emotion must be acknowledged but then turned from. Over time Satan will not be able to mine our memory so successfully and God increasingly imparts his grace so we can be grace-full toward the one who wronged us. God’s forgiveness is instant. For us forgiveness is a process. Expect it and Satan cannot accuse us when memories rise up again.
Lord, thank you for leading me along this path of forgiveness. Open my eyes to hurts I carry. Give me grace to be grace-full.
Hebrews 10:16
“This new plan I’m making with Israel isn’t going to be written on paper, isn’t going to be chiseled in stone; This time “I’m writing out the plan in them, carving it on the lining of their hearts.”
“This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
The heart was the seat of the will for the ancients. Law written on the heart ruled over the will to sin. The illustration still holds for us who know the heart as a life-giving essential organ. The law carved on our heart’s lining means every particle in our blood stream is subject to it and therefore our physical existence. Our blood feeds our mind so the law’s influence is felt there too. God’s ‘law’, or the way things really are, permeates our living. It should lead to wisdom, restraint, humility, and all other of Christ’s attributes. Does it?
Lord, you know my capacity for self-deception. Please keep me alert to the way things really are, including my relationship with you. Keep me close, full of you, serving you.
Hebrews 10:11-14
“Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it! Then he sat down right beside God and waited for his enemies to cave in. It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process.”
“Under the old covenant, the priest stands and ministers before the altar day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins. But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. There he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a foot stool under his feet. For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.”
Sin is a problem and so is the understanding of sin. The world believes in degrees of sin, no-fault sin, and situational sin. God sees only sin. Satan creates complexity and confusion regarding sin. God makes things simple. All the purifying we need is provided in one perfect transaction, the cross. It is there for the taking for those with repentant hearts and a hunger for righteousness.
Lord, my heart is yours. I want to keep it there. Help me!
Hebrews 9:22
“Practically everything in a will hinges on a death. That’s why blood, the evidence of death, is used so much in our tradition, especially regarding forgiveness of sins.”
“In fact, according to the Law of Moses, nearly everything was purified with blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”
Blood is important as evidence of death, not because it points to the death’s violence, though it does that too. Sin guarantees death. How we try to wiggle out of this! Sin’s consequences always come calling sooner or later. It’s alure overpowers our will. Our emotions become entangled. Consequences become literally unthinkable, and we become the walking dead. Our lives begin to putrefy. If willing, we allow this to call us to repentance, cleansing and healing. If not, our misery leads us down even darker paths.
Oh Lord I tremble at the danger of falling into sin and away from you. I step off your path many times a day. Please lead me to repentance, a turning away from that evil. Let me never allow that transgression to lead me farther still away from you. I am afraid of my weakness, my human propensity to sin. Please be my strength.
Hebrews 8:10-12
“This time I’m writing out the plan in them, carving it on the lining of their hearts. I’ll be their God, they’ll be my people. They won’t go to school to learn about me, or buy a book called God in Five Easy Lessons. They’ll all get to know me firsthand, the little and the big, the small and the great. They’ll get to know me by being kindly forgiven, with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean.”
“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the Lord; I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already. And I will forgive their wickedness and I will never again remember their sins.”
Then, there will be peace on earth. It is the only answer to man’s messes that makes sense.
Hebrews 8:5
“These priests provide only a hint of what goes on in the true sanctuary of heaven, which Moses caught a glimpse of as he was about to set up the tent-shrine. It was then that God said, “Be careful to do it exactly as you saw it on the Mountain.”
“They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven. For when Moses was getting ready to build the Tabernacle, God gave him this warning. “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.”
1The old covenant gave hints of a heavenly reality. That is why the directions for building the tabernacle were so specific. The earthly meeting place, though it seemed solid, was nothing more that a collection of swirling atomic energy. It was only a representation of a truly real place in another realm. The closer science looks at our world the more ephemeral it seems. God calls us into relationship with him in a more real place where we will be more our real self. It will be a revelation to meet more-real loved ones gone before. I look forward to meeting them free of the darkness and heartache sin wrought in their earthly lives. Joy.
Lord, I look forward to this. Thank you for coming to teach us, call us, to be more real in you. Spirit, thank you for faith, hope and love you give me now. Thank you for the future you promise.
Hebrews 8:1-2
“ In essence, we have just such a high priest: authoritative right alongside God, conducting worship in the one true sanctuary built by God.”
“Here is the main point. We have a High Priest who sat down in the place of honor beside the throne of the majestic God in heaven. There he ministers in the heavenly Tabernacle, the true place of worship that was built by the Lord and not by human hands.”
Imagine Christ as worship leader. Certainly, there would be no more church wrangling over worship style and substance. He conducts worship of God though Christ himself is worthy of the same worship. But his purpose has always been to point to the father which he continues in eternity. This is a peak at how the triune God-head functions, glorifying one another, eternally fulfilling their roles as Christ taught us. Then, as now it seems worship is not just a part of prayer and the church service, but the center of our lives.
Lord, I am glad you lead worship in eternity because I will need your help. The older I get the more I struggle to find words for prayer. Unleash my head and mouth. Lead me in worship even now that my entire life may be worship of you.
Hebrews 7:23-25
“Earlier there were a lot of priests, for they died and had to be replaced. But Jesus’ priesthood is permanent. He’s there from now to eternity to save everyone who comes to God through him, always on the job to speak up for them.”
“There were many priests under the old system, for death prevented them from remaining in office. But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. Therefore, he is amble once and forever, to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf.”
These verses tell us, in addition to the enduring the cross, Christ is also our high priest. Though the cross is emphasized in evangelical theology these two functions are really two sides of the same coin. Both are essential to our eternal destiny. The cross spans all humanity but Christ’s priesthood is more intimate. It is how I need him daily. It comforts me to know he faced my temptations victoriously. Even more to know he accurately transmits my situation to the father because he ‘gets it.’ God entered the world to save, come alongside and faithfully represent us. The cross is multidimensional.
Lord, you are good, wise and faithful. To know you is to love you, and I do! I am privileged to have your word before me, read and study it, and hear you speak through it. You are so great and I so small yet you know me well and truly. Thank you for providing so sufficiently, for loving me.
Hebrews 7:11-14
“If the priesthood of Levi and Aaron, which provided the framework for the giving of the law, could really make people perfect, there wouldn’t have been need for a new priesthood like that of Melchizedek. But since it didn’t get the job done, there was a change of priesthood, which brought with it a radical new kind of law. There is no way of understanding this in terms of the old Levitical priesthood, which is why there is nothing in Jesus’ family tree connecting him with that priestly line.”
“So if the priesthood of Levi, on which the law was based, could have achieved the perfection God intended, why did God need to establish a different priesthood, with a priest in the order of Melchizedek instead of the order of Levi and Aaron? And if the priesthood is changed, the law must also be changed to permit it. For the priest we are talking about belongs to a different tribe, whose members have never served at the altar as priests. What I mean is, our Lord came from the tribe of Judah, and Moses never mentioned priests coming from that tribe.”
Just as God is totally other from us, Christ is other from priests of the law. In no way does he represent a correction to or enablement of it. He can fulfill it, only possible because he brings something other to it. God’s provision of Christ as sacrifice for man’s sins came out of the blue, surprising everyone including Satan. Christ, a new, other, kind of priest, is exactly what we need, what I need.
Lord Jesus, thank you for interceding for me. You get it because you lived it along with us. I love you.
Hebrews 6:18-20
“We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.”
“So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.”
I do run for my life to God. He is the only hope for me and the evil and heartache surrounding me. He is the only one who makes things work right. I hold tight to him, my spiritual lifeline that carries me into God’s presence where I am released from my sin self to be my true self. I love the image of Jesus running on ahead of me running after. It is easier to follow the path because it is not yet blurred with time.
Genesis says about Melchizedek only that he was a priest of God most high. He briefly enters Abraham’s story to bless him How many Melchizedeks has God placed throughout time? We tend to darken the past we do not know. Yet God was there, ever reaching out and giving light for all men to live by through the creation and other Melchizedeks.
Lord Jesus, give me strength to run my race well, following the path you have broken before me to the Father. I long to see the world healed. Show me what to do. Let me be a healer for you.
Hebrews 6:17
“When God wanted to guarantee his promises, he gave his word, a rock-solid guarantee—God can’t break his word. And because his word cannot change, the promise is likewise unchangeable.”
“God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind.”
God’s word is unbreakable. This refers to the written word, and the living word Jesus Christ. It applies also to God’s private word to us. When God speaks into a quieted mind that has emptied itself before him that word is bound by his character. God’s word works the same in our puny lives as it did for Abraham, a giant in faith. Always, it is solid rock that can be trusted.
Hebrews 6:1-3
“So come on, let’s leave the preschool fingerpainting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on “salvation by self-help” and turning in trust toward God; baptismal instructions; laying on of hands; resurrection of the dead; eternal judgment. God helping us, we’ll stay true to all that. But there’s so much more. Let’s get on with it!”
“So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding. Surely we don’t need to start again with the fundamental importance of repenting from evil deeds and placing our faith in God. You don’t need further instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And so, God willing, we will move forward to further understanding.”
Peterson uses art as an illustration for becoming mature in our understanding. Imagine moving from fingerpainting to a Caravaggio and this lesson comes into focus; milk to maturity. The artist is God, who weaves blessing and suffering in and out of our lives creating beauty only he can give. It is a grand adventure!