Clough Hebrews Lesson 43

What is the Tabernacle? – 9:11-12

We’re in the section that starts in Hebrews 8:1 and continues through 10:18. There are three things that are better; from chapter 8 there is a better covenant. Hebrews 9:1-10 there is a better tabernacle. And in Hebrews 9:11-10:18 we have a better sacrifice. Tonight, since we begin with verse 11 we begin with a new section and we’re on the better sacrifice. Now this section, of all the sections of this epistle, this sounds like it’s old hat but this is going to be thick and slow because it is this section that was used by the Protestant Reformers to attack Roman Catholicism and historically this is a very, very important section of Scripture. As we go through this I’m going to try to show you some of the historical applications and the attacks that were made using these Scriptures, why Calvin, for example, majored on this one passage and just used it as a club, over and over again in the 16^th century to hit Catholicism all over Europe and therefore, if you want to be historically knowledgeable alone this passage is important.

But it’s important for many other reasons and that is if you don’t understand what is going on here you don’t really appreciate all the Jesus Christ did for us. So we begin in verse 11 we begin. It is best to break this down into three parts; it is the better sacrifice, verses 11-14 speaks of the efficacy of the better sacrifice. And I’ll deal with the other sections, 15-22 is the necessity of the better sacrifice and then from 9:23-10:18 the finality of the better sacrifice. So the efficacy, the necessity and the finality. These aren’t absolute labels but they’re kind of approximate.

Tonight we will attempt to get through two verses and I want to as we go through this as we have been doing on Wednesday nights, show you some of the methodology and how we arrive at conclusions in hopes that you won’t just hear an exposition of Scripture but that you’ll be trained a little bit in the processes that go into interpreting Scripture and that will make you a better Christian and a stronger one and you’ll be less vulnerable to this “the Holy Spirit” taught me the interpretation and it was that, or the Holy Spirit said this or the Holy Spirit said that. Spirits say all sorts of things and some of them aren’t very holy. So just beware of this Holy Spirit interpretation business. You have to interpret Scripture on the basis of hermeneutics or rules of interpretation and this is what we want to go through. Those of you who have been studying the Greek, tonight you will be able to see how at least it pays off and we won’t even have to have a special class in exegesis to show that the fruits of your labor enjoyable.

Hebrews 9:11, let’s look at verses 11-12 together, “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building, [12] Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us all,” or “for us.” Now this is one sentence and the first thing to do when you come to a sentence like this, it looks like there’s just enumerable details in this thing so the way you have to do is just start breaking it apart, disassemble it, and then just take it a little bit at a time and it won’t overwhelm you. But if you take a sentence that’s this thick and try to whip through it, you’re going to get snowed. So let’s just take it easy.

First let’s pick out the subject of that sentence and the verb, the main verb, there are several verbs in it but what’s the main verb? Entered, that’s the main verb. Jesus Christ or Christ is the subject in verse 11, the main verb isn’t found until the middle of verse 12, “Christ entered.” So let’s look at our sentence, what we have. “Christ entered,” now we’re going to get involved in a lot of details on the way, don’t lose the forest. Here it is: “Christ entered,” that’s the big concept here and then it’s going to be supported by other things.

Now there are two participles that are also in this sentence; one is clear in the English, the other isn’t, so we’ll probably need the help of someone that’s looking at a Greek text to pick out the first one but the second one is easy to see from the English. [someone answers] Okay, “having obtained” down in verse 12, “having obtained,” there’s one participle you want to check. Anybody figure where the other one is. [someone answers] All right, “being come a high priest.” Now when you have participles like this it helps to relate them to the main verb, just kind of fit them together. Those participles are added action and you want to learn to relate those to your main verb and also observe something. Observe the order that the guy is giving you these things in. He has designed this as a literary work and therefore he’s going to show you, give you clues as to what he’s emphasizing by the way he feeds it to you. Now he doesn’t feed this to you as a simple sentence, he doesn’t feed this to you on a normal subject, verb, participle type arrangement. He feeds this one, “being come,” bar before that main verb, and then “having obtained” after the main verb. See how the main verb splits the two participles; those two participles are not put back to back. One is before the other is after.

Now, though in the English you can’t get this, these are aorist participles and the important thing about these that you have to remember, nine times out of ten, there’s always one out of ten times it doesn’t work, but nine times out of ten the action of the aorist participle tends to precede the action of the main verb. By precede it can mean chronologically precede or logically precede. For example, the Father logically precedes the Son but that doesn’t mean He chronologically existed before the Son. You must think of things in an order. The number two, logically precedes the number three but that doesn’t mean that two came into existence a thousand years before three did. There are the certain logical order or it can be a chronological order and the aorist participles usually try to convey this.

Now in this case the actions are very, very close. Here “being come a high priest,” “having obtained,” you almost have to say they’re simultaneous to the main action of this verb in this case. Jesus Christ, when did He become a high priest? He became a priest at a point in time and if you’ll turn to Hebrews 1:2-4 you’ll see where it speaks in other language of this same phenomenon. God “has in these last days,” the author tells us, “spoken unto us by His Son, who He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; [3] Who, being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,” and then participle, [4] “Being made so much better than the angels,” etc. etc. etc. So you have Jesus Christ ascension and session, that point far after His death and His resurrection when He ascended and at that point these activities begin to take over.

So let’s look at 9:11, and look at something else about this sentence. We’ve noticed the subject, the verb, we’ve noticed these two participles, both are aorists, both describe actions very closely related to His entering in. Now what else do you notice about verses 11-12, the way the author spreads the things out. He sprawls it out over two verses. Do you notice anything about the way, as your eye reads the words, the sequence of words, what is it that you eye has to wade through before you get finally to the main verb. What’s the repetitive thought there, it occurs several places; you have to wade through the stuff before you finally make it. Anyone kind of summarize what that’s talking about there. [someone answers] All right, they are details associated with the tabernacle. Do you notice anything about those details associated with the tabernacle? [someone else] What isn’t, the tabernacle isn’t? [reply] All right, but there’s another “not” there’s a whole series of nots, it’s not only talking about the tabernacle but what else. True, the tabernacle is there and he does explain what it isn’t but then even after you get through that you still have to wade through some more stuff. What’s he seemingly really hung up on here? [someone answers] All right, what He is, let’s [can’t understand words] in verse 12 those clauses phrases that he’s getting in there, by, by, by, by, over and over, what seems to be his concern, what’s on his mind. The main verb, just think of this now, here’s where your English will help you if you can remember, the main verb is “enter,” all these other phrases along the way are trying to amplify that verb for you. Now what are all these clauses doing for that main verb. [someone answers] All right, He did it all by Himself, good point, this comes out in the tense. But just the clauses? [someone answers] Okay, and let’s generalize now, we’re in the area.

The main verb is to “enter in,” all those “bys” that you see in there is his attempt to show you the terms of entrance… the terms of entrance. What is it that He’s entering into and on what basis does Jesus Christ enter His priesthood? And the fact that he stretches all this out, separating one verb, participle, way up there in the beginning of verse 11, then your eye has to go through all these phrases, one after another, there’s four or five of them there, count them. There’s four or five phrases that you have to dig your way through before you hit the main verb. Now those phases, here’s something to learn when you become a more advanced student of the Bible you learn to appreciate this more, is watch the sequence that the guy is telling you this stuff. He’s stuck all these phrases out here to catch you because naturally you want to get to the main verb, when you read this is where your mind wants to work to, the main verb. Well, what’s he getting to, what’s he getting to, what’s he getting to, but if the guy keeps pushing you off with all these phrases it means that he wants you to look at those phrases.

So we can say, just before we get into any of the details in verses 11-12 what? Just back off for a minutes, look the way he’s structured these two verses, he has a certain emphasis; it’s on the entrance of Jesus Christ and it’s the means of entrance. So whatever we deal with by way of fine detail now, just kept the big broad picture in mind that he’s involved with the process of how Jesus Christ enters, whatever it is that He’s entering, but how He enters, the means of entrance.

Now we’ve got our big picture, now let’s come to clause by clause word by word, verses 11-12.

“But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come,” now some of you will have modern translations; does anyone have an alternate translation of the phrase “good things to come,” somebody surely should have another translation because a lot of modern translations do not translate it that way. [someone answers] All right, we’ve got a problem right here, “good things to come,” or “good things that have come.” And in the manuscripts behind the book of Hebrews there are these two readings. This is, if you have study Bibles there’ll probably be a little letter in the text off in the margin there’ll be an alternate reading. Some study Bibles have this when the text gets blurry. Those of you have a Greek text, though I haven’t had a chance to show you and I guess you haven’t had a chance to deal with it but you’ll see there’ll be a whole bunch of stuff underneath, on the bottom part of your page, and you’ll see all sorts of numbers and letters and everything else tied in with this verse because there’s alternate readings here.

Now, there are ways of deciding between these readings and I’ll just show you one way tonight of why this reading, “to come,” things that aren’t here yet but are coming, is the superior reading to “things that have come.” The word “to come” is a word which occurs, it’s mello in the Greek and it occurs again and again in this epistle. Let’ see where it occurs, turn back to Hebrews 1:14, I want to show you something. When you get like this you want to see how the author of this thing, you know, which one of these readings fits what we know of the author. In 1:14 here’s where this mello thing occurs, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who mello,” “who are about to be heirs of salvation.” Now that’s future, future to the time of writing verse 14. Just an observation.

Hebrews 2:5, “For unto the angels has he not put in subjection the world mello,” “the world to come, whereof we speak.” The coming era, or the coming age of history, future to the time of this writing. Hebrews 6:5, this is that section of Scripture that we spent so much time in, “Have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world mello,” “the world to come,” future of the time of his writing. Hebrews 10:1, “For the Law, having a shadow of good things mello,” “to come,” now that’s future to the Old Testament, not necessarily to the time of the writing. Hebrews 10:27, “But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries,” the idea here is it’s just about to do it, future to the time of writing. In Hebrews 11:8, “By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out,” etc. etc. etc. The idea is that he was about to receive this as an inheritance, future to the time of writing. Finally Hebrews 11:20, “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come,” or the coming, and in context it’s future to the time of this writing. And then the most persuasive example is Hebrews 13:14, this summarizes the mentality of this particular author. “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come,” future to the time of writing.

So all this repeats, repeats, repeats, repeats, repeats, repeats, the emphasis in Hebrews is on the fact that Jesus Christ has arrived, Christianity is final, but surely in the face of all this evidence you see there’s a strong secondary theme in this epistle that the final age has not been ushered in. Jesus Christ is in the driver’s seat but the bus hasn’t arrived at the destination yet. And so the theme occurs over and over and over and over and over again, so it would be logical of these two readings that Jesus Christ is a high priest concerning those things which are to come, those things which are yet future. So we’ll take that and move on.

Hebrews 9:11, “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come,” and these good things include the blessings, the material and the immaterial blessings, the millennial kingdom and the eternal state, now do you notice in the English that we have three parts of this sentence all begin with by, by, by. In the Greek all these sentences begin with dia: dia, dia, dia.. The problem we have right here, it’s an interpretation problem and again we’re going to pause and we’re going to slowly go through this so you can see the method. By the way, to summarize what we just did before, that process I showed you of going through verse by verse by verse by verse the author of Hebrews is something you have to discipline yourself to do because we’re coming upon another interpretation problem where people make lots of mistakes because you’ve got to interpret the Scriptures in the author’s own vocabulary, not Paul’s, not John’s, not Peter’s, let this man speak for himself with his own set of words. Don’t try to read in and go too fast. All right, that’s a way you have of protecting yourself; get a concordance, you can do this yourself, if you’re hazy on something find that word in a concordance. If you want a concordance, Strong’s or Young’s those are two good concordances. They’re good works to get, get one, learn how to use it and it will repay you many dividends; it will certainly be worth more than 85 devotional books that you could buy.

Now these “bys” all have to be handled in some way; we’ve got to decide, we’ve a problem here, and let me show you what it is. This preposition, dia, or through, can be translated like this, “by means of,” or “through.” “Through” would mean going through a place, we call that the locative use, “by means of” is the instrumental use. The question is, what’s the first dia, or the first “by.” We know that the second and third ones are instrumental, you can guess that by just looking at it. Verse 12, “by the blood of goats and calves…by His own blood.” Those are clearly instrumental. Now the problem is the first one, “by a greater and more perfect tabernacle.” Now if it’s instrumental it means “by means of a greater tabernacle He has entered in,” but if it’s locative it means “through a greater tabernacle He has entered in.”

Now how are we going to decide between instrumental and locative, we’ve got to make a decision here in our interpretation. How do we make this decision? We make the decision first by going and discussing the word tabernacle. If the tabernacle is something that can be an instrument, then it opens up the possibility for that use, but if the tabernacle is something that just doesn’t seem to fit being an instrument but it is a place or a building or a location through which Christ can move then we take the locative meaning. So however we interpret this first “by” hinges on what. We’ve got to temporarily bypass this problem for another one. What’s the other one we’ve got to hit now? We’ve moved from one mess into another one and this one, the mess here is we can’t really pin down this “by” accurately until we find what? We’re going to postpone opinion there and move on to another problem, solve that and then we can come back and pick this one up. The identity of the tabernacle. See the word tabernacle, the “greater and more perfect tabernacle,” we’ve got to pin down what is the “greater and more perfect tabernacle” in verse 11. If we can’t pin that down then we’re not going to be able to work with the “by.”

[someone says something] It doesn’t make any difference, see, because both of these are genitives and the case…you can have a… you can go… if it’s by means of, it doesn’t make any difference here, dia plus the accusative is on account of, if it were that yes, but in this case we’re faced with one of those things that can go either way, the Greek doesn’t pull us down enough so now we’ve got to go to something else to get our reference point. So let’s go to this tabernacle and see what we can dig up here. Let me go through some of the… again, I’m not doing this so I’m trying to hinder you from getting a precise picture of Scripture, I’m doing it because I consider the Wednesday night crowd the group that’s really interested so let’s go through process here.

The first and most popular interpretation of the “perfect tabernacle” is that it equals Christ’s incarnate body. This was the interpretation of Calvin, it was the interpretation of most of the Reformers, it was very popular with Owens, the Puritans interpreted it this way. Now let’s suppose the tabernacle is Christ’s body. Here’s the problem. The next part of this phrase, “not made with hands, that is to say, not of this” and the word “building” is “this creation,” “not of this creation.” Now if the tabernacle is Christ’s body do any of you see a little heresy that can creep in here. Think of Christology and the hypostatic union. Can you see what’s going to happen. Just suppose we make this equal to body, now what’s going to happen? No true humanity, it’s going to make the human body of Christ illusory, isn’t the human body of Jesus Christ part of this creation? And if you’re going to argue that it isn’t you’re in danger of making Christ a phantom and in history that is known as Docetism, that Jesus Christ is just kind of a phantom, He appeared as a man but He really wasn’t true humanity. He really wasn’t there physically and materially. So that objection has always been made against this interpretation.

Aquinas and others who tried to protect this interpretation… [someone says something] Well, the point that the Docetist would make is that it’s saying when it says “not made of hands, that is to say not of this creation,” it would mean that it wouldn’t be a material body, “this creation” is the material universe all around us, and the Docetist always argued that see, Hebrews 9:11 is really teaching the Docetic view of Chrsit. So what the people did, such as the Reformers and earlier Aquinas, they tried to stave off the Docetists and they tried to keep the interpretation, yet at the same time hold these Docetists away from it and they way they did it was to argue that Christ’s virgin birth was so miraculous that though Jesus Christ’s body was kind of like ours it was radically different from ours, being sinless. And to that radical difference, that is, its sinlessness can account for this clause, that is to say “not of this creation.” But I just point all that out to show you that this classic interpretation has always engendered a problem with doctrine and you kind of get suspicious of an interpretation that goes like this, it kind of makes you wonder, wait a minute, let’s back off and see what we’re going here.

So you can defend it, like Aquinas did if you want to, but it a more serious objection and that is this slogan, that is, “not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation,” is used in a very similar passage, over in Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians; 2 Corinthians 5:1. Now let’s see what happens. If we lose anyone as we go through this process, don’t faint by the wayside and get discouraged, just raise your hand and I’ll try to pull it together for you. But I want to train you to think specifically about subjects, verbs, objects, God wrote His Word in language and if we want to interpret accurately and get the proper blessings out of Scripture we’re going to have to be accurate and it means spending effort and here’s where lazy people just phase out.

2 Corinthians 5:1, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Now that is talking about, in context and other places, that’s talking about the resurrection body. Now if that’s the case, now watch what happens turning back to Hebrews. If that’s the case, that the tabernacle here is Christ’s resurrection body, not His incarnate body, His resurrection body, we have another problem. See we have one problem, if you make it equal to His incarnate body, that is you do have a problem with the Docetist counter point. If you make it equal to His resurrection body then you’ve got the problem of the fact that it appears to be, by means of this resurrection body that He’s entering into the tabernacle, which you can argue is alright, except the emphasis here is on His death and sacrifice and resurrection bodies don’t die. In fact, he goes right down the theme in verse 12, “but by His own blood He entered into the Holy Place.” The emphasis is all on the death in the immediate context. So again we’re troubled with this phrase, “not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation.”

So to back off and summarize what we’ve done so far: we’ve said is it possible that this tabernacle is Christ’s body, be it incarnate body or resurrection body. Either time we do this we’re going to run into a little problem. So therefore this seems to be not a good interpretation. Now what’s the flow behind this interpretation, and here’s a lesson to learn. The flow behind this whole thing that we’ve got through talking about the last five minutes is it has taken something for granted and what we took for granted in all this discussion that’s gone on in the last five minutes is such an obvious thing that you never saw it slipped to you but I slipped it to you and we moved on and everybody followed, and what I did was, at the very beginning I said the tabernacle is Christ’s body and we moved on from there, and no one ever questioned the fact that could the tabernacle in this epistle mean Christ’s body. And the reason this seemed like a simple assumption is that in Paul that’s true; in Paul it is true that the word tabernacle is used of Christ’s body, but we haven’t proved it with this author. And you see what’s happening? You get adjusted by listening to Paul that when you come to this guy you start listening to him through Paul’s vocabulary. And so you set up an interpretation that may not be there at all. So let’s back off of that one.

Let’s come to the second one that’s been put forward This one is a modification of the first one and this one is that it’s not Christ’s body but the Church; the Church is the tabernacle. This is an even weaker interpretation. It stands on one thing, in the book of Revelation Jesus Christ does say that believers are the pillars in God’s tabernacle and so it rests on that if you want support. But, this involves two assumptions. The first one we sneaked in an assumption, namely this, that the tabernacle is a symbol of Christ’s body, but now we’re sneaking two of them to you, because now the Church is a symbol of Christ’s body, so this interpretation depends on two things. You’ve got to prove that the body is the symbol of the tabernacle and the body is also the symbol of the Church. You’ve got to metaphors all mixed up together here. True, Paul uses these but does this author use them and the answer is He doesn’t, unless he’s using them here which is the question at issue. So the second interpretation isn’t much better than the other one. In fact, the second interpretation is reading John and Paul into the passage because you’re used to reading it in John and you’re used to reading it in Paul so you tend to think well, it must be here too, same book, same Bible; no it isn’t, different letter, different authors, see.

So let’s back off from the second one, let’s go to the third interpretation that’s been put forward, and that is the perfect tabernacle is the universe; the material universe and that you have the Holy of Holies, and the Holy Place, Jesus Christ in the Holy Place would be Christ on the cross on planet earth and the Holy of Holies would be wherever He is, He goes into the Holy of Holies. The problem is verse 11, and that is to say, “not of this creation,” the whole tabernacle isn’t of this creation but if you’re going to make the tabernacle the universe and then turn right around and say in the next phrase and say the universe is not of this creation you’ve got a big problem. So we have to back away from that one; that one doesn’t seem to fit the data.

So what do we do with it; let’s look and take a survey between the contrast between the Mosaic tabernacle and the new tabernacle in this epistle, and as you go through you notice certain contrasts begin to develop. In Hebrews 8:1 the new tabernacle is in heaven; the Mosaic tabernacle is on earth. This is an inductive study of the books vocabulary. The new tabernacle is set by the Lord; in 8:2 the Mosaic tabernacle was set by man. In 9:24 the Mosaic tabernacle was made with hands; in the verse we’re seeing it is not made with hands. In 9:24 one is said to be a copy, the other is said to be the true.

Now looking at all these contrasts, which you pick up by just reading the epistle and getting a broad base of data from this author, this is why true Bible study takes a long time and demands a lot of attention unless you’re going to come up with a bunch of nonsense. So these are a bunch of antithesis. Now if you just let your eye slip down to Hebrews 9:24 the problem is resolved. The antithesis is on earth, in heaven, 8:4, 8:1, set by man, 8:2, set by the Lord, 8:2, made with hands 9:24, not made with hands, 9:11; one is a copy, 9:24, and the other is true, 9:24. Now here, when we look at this text, Hebrews 9:24, “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us,” notice, “into” a place, “into heaven itself.” And then remember when it says “figures of the true,” remember that passage we studied in the Old Testament when Moses went up on Sinai and God showed him a pattern of that which was true, that which was in heaven. But the pattern, it was a place, not a person’s body, it was a place.

So with 9:24 we come to the fourth interpretation or the fourth possibility for this thing and that is it is equal to the third heavens. The tabernacle, we can’t force anything more out of the text, we’d love to know a lot of details and our curiosity is whetted as to what this thing looks like, but all we know from the epistle, this man’s vocabulary, is that it’s the third heavens. [someone says something] No the whole thing… the whole thing is there, because you see that distinction between the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place is no longer valid because the veil is broken and so there’s no longer two tents but one, so now that distinction, that’s where that other interpretation, that universe thing broke down. That’s the one I was tending toward when I started you off back, four or five chapters ago and I got crunched when I came here. So this tabernacle is a place.

Now let’s go back to our other problem, what started all this discussion off about 20 minutes ago? The “bys” wasn’t, all those dia’s, we’ve got those three dia’s, by, by, by. These two are instrumental. Now since we’ve defined what the tabernacle is, what’s this one? Locative, not locative case, I’m sorry, that’s probably why you’re thinking of case, this just means locative in the sense of motion, through. So now we can translate that “through,” and it means the idea of Christ walking through the thing to the n point there, where it’s the Holy of Holies, just like the priest walked through the thing.

So when we see this verse 11 now, backing off and putting in what we’ve seen, “But Christ being come a high priest of good things to come,” and now you see a comma there; now when you see this first “by,” that hangs with the main verb, “entered” down in verse 12, it’s describing how He entered, He entered “by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation.”

Then in verse 12 we have two instrumentals, the basis on which He entered, and here we have a very, very fine point but important point of doctrine. “Neither by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of His own blood He entered into…” Now let’s look at this; “by means of His own blood,” nothing in this verse says that Christ carried His blood up into heaven; some hymns in church history have been sung this way and written this way and this was a theology that was actually, originally in history, designed to vindicate the Roman Catholic mass, the idea that Jesus Christ brings His blood literally and physically up into heaven. Now here again we’ve got another problem or error that people make. I’ve already shown you one error in all this discussion and that is don’t read Paul’s vocabulary into this guy’s writing. That’s one error you can make in your Bible interpretation. Let the man speak for himself.

Now the second error is using typology in reverse. And that’s what’s happening with these people who say Christ brought His blood into heaven. What they’re looking at is this: in the Old Testament we have a type; in the New Testament we have an antitype. Can you give some illustrations just so we’re clear here on what a type and antitype; can someone just whip off an illustration, type and antitype. [someone answers] All right, David is a type of Christ so you have the Old Testament type which is the example, the New Testament fulfillment which is the antitype. Now, types are useful for illustrating doctrine after the antitype comes into existence, not before. And so you can’t say in David’s day you could somehow know well, yeah, he was the Messiah, but you wouldn’t know exactly what qualities about David’s life would typify Christ until Christ Himself came. Now, after Christ has come we can look back and say hey, look at this, David’s life parallels Christ’s.

So we go from this antitype over to the type, therefore we build our doctrine from the antitype, not the type. The type is only used as a check on doctrine that you’ve already developed, but the type itself doesn’t develop new doctrine. Always remember that. The doctrine is inherent in your antitype, that’s where the doctrine’s inherent and the type clarifies the doctrine or tests the doctrine. In other words, if you’re not sure that you really are reading the New Testament doctrine right you can kind of go back. Example: Christ is the lamb that taketh away the sin of the world; if you’re not sure what that means, go back and see what the lambs were doing in the Old Testament; they were being slaughtered and so on, and that [small blank spot] picture of this business. But the Substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ is a doctrine that comes primarily from the pages of the New Testament text, not from going back and finding lambs in the Old Testament. We only do that because the New Testament leads us to do that.

Now what these people have done is they’ve taken an Old Testament type, which is the high priest on the day of atonement and we’ve already read that passage in Leviticus when on the day of atonement the high priest would come in with blood into the Holy of Holies. That’s true; in the type he brought the blood in. So he brought the blood into the tabernacle; that is in the type. Now the problem is, what about the antitype? Did Jesus or did Jesus not bring His own blood to heaven? To decide that issue you have to go to some explicit place in the New Testament where it is strongly implied or explicitly taught, then you can illustrate it from what went on in the day of atonement. So you always move from antitype to type. But these people don’t do it, they pick up this fact out of the atonement and move it this way, they’re going the wrong way and that is an erroneous system of interpretation of Scripture. Don’t build doctrine from types. So this business of bringing blood, and when Bob Thieme, somebody says something about this and everybody goes into hysterics and the point is, he’s just trying to point out that you don’t build doctrine out of these types on this point. And all we’re talking about now is this business of bringing blood into heaven. But in that matter there’s no New Testament basis for it, so you can maybe, you know, you can well I think he did; well, fine for your opinion but there’s nothing in the New Testament that says that. What this does say, “by means of His own blood” is simply the basis on which He claimed entrance into God’s presence. His blood, it means His physical death, on the basis of Jesus Christ’s death He claimed entrance, that’s all that verse is saying, “by means of His own blood,” by means of the death.

“…He entered in once,” that means once for all, Greek students, what familiar word do you see there, one of our little favorites, hapax, once for all He entered into the Holy Place. And we’ll come back to that verse because that’s very important in the Reformation period; Jesus Christ entered once and for all, He doesn’t have to enter 85 times, He doesn’t have to enter every Sunday, He entered once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal inheritance for us.”

Now this “having obtained” is another thing that we want to look at. It comes from the verb to find, and for those of you who are interested in Greek and those of you who are taking Greek, there are three voices; active, middle and passive. Some of you may not be clear on this, it’s kind of hard to grab hold of what this middle voice is. The active voice is I find something; passive voice is I am found by someone. So what’s the middle voice; it can be reflexive, I find myself or it can be softer than that, it means just I find, it’s not what I find, it’s just I find, I obtain. And so this means “I obtain,” it’s a softer way of saying I find, when you say I find, active verb, you want to know hey, what’d you find. Whereas with this the emphasis is more on the subject doing the finding.

Putting that together with another little pronoun in verse 12 do you notice what this author is signaling to you? He’s put two signals in that verse to point to something. One is in a pronoun and the other is in the middle voice of this word, “find.” Can anyone see what he’s trying to tell us? I’ll give you a hint, the pronoun is before the word “blood.” What thrust is he trying to drive home here? Read the first part of verse 12 over a couple of times and look at the contrast there. That’s where the contrast comes out and it is amplified with the middle voice of this word “find.” The subject of obtained is Christ. [someone answers] All right, here we’re introduced to the fact that the priest and the sacrifice are the same. The priest in the Old Testament had a sacrifice that was different from himself, he didn’t cut his own throat and bleed to death. He cut an animal’s throat and it bled to death. Then he took the blood of the sacrifice, which wasn’t his own, and walked into the Holy Place with it. Here “by His own blood He entered in, and he Himself obtained, eternal redemption for us.” So all the focus is on the complete totality and independency of the Second Person of the Trinity in securing our salvation.

The Holy Spirit, if I may put it this way, the Holy Spirit is not the central focus of the act of obtaining salvation for you, it is God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ who is the central focus for obtaining salvation. The Holy Spirit has been given into history to draw attention to that fact, not to Himself. So when you hear Holy Spirit this and Holy Spirit that, and this spirit and that spirit and the Holy Spirit and so on, then you know that we have a theological aberration. There’s an emphasis here that’s completely unscriptural.

So let’s look at “having obtained.” He has “obtained eternal redemption,” the word “redemption” again, basic doctrine review time, comes out of the doctrine of atonement, the blood atonement, since we covered this in the morning series we’ll just take a few minutes to review. The doctrine of blood atonement, what historic event do you want to identify the blood atonement with, gives you a clear picture of it, before Christ. Exodus, okay. In the Exodus think of the door, think of the blood, think of the angel passing over, there you’ve got a historic picture of blood atonement for you. You can pull all the things out of there if you just key your memory, blood atonement—Exodus. Think of what happened; God cursed the nation, the Exodus is basically a curse, a curse falls upon us. You have to be insulated from the curse; how are you going to be insulated from the curse? By blood. Where do you get blood from? Somebody has to die for it, “the wages of sin is death,” and since that’s the ultimate course it’s needed for insulation, you need the ultimate insulation, and the ultimate insulation is to exhaust the curse on something, like a lightening rod, you have a voltage potential between the planet earth and the atmosphere above and this voltage potential, sometimes in a thunder storm you read 3000 volts between your head and you toes if you feel funny sometime in a thunder storm that’s what’s happening and you have a 3000 volt potential between your feet and your head and it becomes many, many more thousands of volts just before the discharge of the lightening, this is why if you’re ever close to a lightening discharge your hair starts going up and everything else, if that ever happens to you, hit the deck, or you’re going to get a real shock and a surprise real soon. So you have this tremendous volt potential. Now that voltage potential is all exhausted, all that potential energy is converted when you have this discharge that occurs.

Now it’s the same thing in an analogous way, God’s curse; God curse upon sin is death. And the only way you can get rid of this thing is you have to have your own lightening rod, somehow the curse has to be discharged and you can’t wipe the curse out and pretend it isn’t there any more than you can pretend the potential isn’t there between the earth and the atmosphere. It’s there and it’s going to discharge on something. It’s going to discharge on the easiest place it can, usually a high telephone pole or something, some rod that’s sticking up high and if you’re out in the golf course and you swing your club up and many people have been killed by this, gooks going and golf out in the middle of a thunderstorm, they deserved to be killed anyway, and they stick a metal rod up in the air and they wonder why they get hit with lightening. Well, they’re just providing an antenna, that’s all they’re doing. Except that doesn’t help them after it happens, all that knowledge.

So you need something to discharge the curse and that is another life, and thus arising out of this whole thing is the concept of substitutionary death. I can’t pay the price without killing myself; you can’t pay the price for the charge that hangs over your head. There’s no way any of us… because in discharging it we would kill ourselves and so therefore the concept of substitution, Jesus Christ died for us, and out of that we have three words. Let’s put them up here and then distinguish what we mean, three ways of looking at blood atonement. One: redemption, what’s the key concept behind the word “redemption?” How does it look at this whole process of discharge. Its emphasis is on the sin involved in the payment, the cost of the sin involved. Redeem, you have redemptive saving stamps, that kind of stuff. Redeem, you buy back the price for sin. So the word “redeem” when you see it in your bibles, it’s looking at blood atonement, yes, but it’s looking at it from the standpoint of cost. When we come to communion, you know usually when we have the second element, we usually pray something, Father we pray that now the Holy Spirit will illuminate our hearts to the great cost of our so great salvation, that though it is free to us it is of cost infinitely to Your Son. All right, the cup is the cup of redemption in communion, and so this is why the cost factor is prominent.

Now you come to propitiation and the word propitiation means to satisfy, and instead of the cost of sin the word propitiation draws emphasis to the fact that God is wrathful and is going to discharge; it’s the concept of His wrath, He’s angry and you’ve got to do something to pacify His anger; the God of the Bible is a God of wrath and He hates sin and all who touch it, He hates them too. So propitiation draws emphasis to changing God’s attitude here.

Reconciliation, changing man’s status; the couple who is having problems reconciling it means they are through being enemies, at least until they live together for a few more days. So you have this reconciliation of man, turning around. This draws emphasis to the hostility and the enemy type attitude that we have toward God. That’s what you want to remember about reconciliation. That’s point at man, not God; propitiation is pointing up-up, God is angry, reconciliation is never doing that, reconciliation is pointing look, here I am, an active enemy, not just a passive enemy, I am an active enemy that hates God. Only enemies have to be reconciled.

So these are the three words; since redemption is used in this verse it obviously is drawing attention to the cost factor.

Now one concluding remark: why did Jesus Christ have to have blood to enter? Was He a sinner? Anybody think about that? What would you answer to that? [someone answers] Yeah, but you’re building your doctrine from the type, let’s go the other way around. Think for a moment, all that’s true but it’s just a typology, the types are true because this is true but I’m asking why is it true. Why did Jesus Christ, when He goes into the new tabernacle, He’s got to bring blood in. Of all people you’d think it wouldn’t be Him. [someone answers] All right, two reasons why the priests in the Old Testament. Remember, why he brought blood into the tabernacle, for himself and for the people; those were his priestly duties. Christ isn’t bringing it for Himself, He’s bringing it for us. [something else said] Well, on the basis of the blood, I meant in the Old Testament the priest brought the blood in for the people and for himself; in the New Testament Christ, the basis of His death is not for Himself, He’s not claiming entrance to the throne room of God, Father, I died for My sin so open the door. He’s rather saying, Father, I died for sins now open the door to My people. Now this is the powerful message of Hebrews, open the door to My people so they can enter in, that’s why Jesus Christ operates on the basis of His blood.

We might even, in closing, speculate here on a point and this is speculation because it’s a fourth or fifth step derived from Scripture, but here’s a question you might think of. Could Jesus, had He not died for the human race, suppose somehow He was incarnate and He went into the throne room of God, could He ever have been admitted to the throne room of God had He not died for the sins of the world? And I think the answer would have to be no, the Father would not admit Jesus Christ into this particular office because this particular office had to be God and man and by man it must be collective man, the human race was ordained to be kings and priests, that was God’s sovereign plan for history. So Jesus Christ has to be identified with the human race corporately to sit on the throne because He reigns, not just as an individual, He reigns as THE representative of mankind. That was mankind’s place, to reign as king and priest. Christ, by Himself, as an individual in His humanity, doesn’t fulfill that; He can only fulfill that with His people, so if He’s going to be the priest He has to make a way for His people. If you have trusted in Christ tonight you are part of His people.