A Look at Tabernacles and Priests in the Old and New Covenants
As we look into the second part of the message let’s recap the major parts of the previous message. We discussed the tabernacle both the earthly and heavenly tabernacle. In describing the earthly tabernacle we noted it contained two characteristics.
First, it provided a limited key to worship. We saw the Old Testament sacrifices did not remove sin between the worshipper and God. They were simply a means to maintain good standing within the community of Israel. An individual was allowed to remain within the community if they continued to practice these “atoning” sacrifices.
Second, the earthly tabernacle provided a sign for true worship. It was the symbol for what God wanted to accomplish. The sacrifices offered on the altar paved the way for the ministry of the Messiah to the people. The sacrifices showed people the awful consequences of sin. It produced physical and spiritual death. The sacrifices showed the worshipper the principle of substitution of the innocent in place of the guilty. And it showed them God would one day provide a true substitute for their sin.
Although this earthly tabernacle provided a limited key to worship and a sign (or symbol) for true worship, the heavenly tabernacle on the other hand is the true key to worship. The heavenly tabernacle is the true key to worship because it is where God really dwells. And we can really only worship God if we are related to Him through His Son Jesus Christ. This relationship to His Son gives access into heaven. Unless we have that we do not have true worship. That was the lesson we learned about the tabernacle.
Remember our key idea for that passage is the New Covenant has replaced the antiquated system of worship under the Old Covenant with a better tabernacle and a better priest. And this new system is not just better it is in this way, perfect. Now we will discuss the difference between the priests of the Old and New Covenants.
II. The Priest
A. The earthly
1. Needed a substitute sacrifice
First we will look at the earthly priest under the Old Covenant. There are three characteristics of the earthly priest. The author of Hebrews tells us the first characteristic of this earthly priest is he needed a substitute sacrifice. We note this in verse 7. Here it says, “Into the second [room], only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.”
The author describes the Day of Atonement in this verse. The Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, was a special day in which the high priest entered into the Most Holy place (the second room the author mentions) to offer sacrifice for the sins of the nation. And when he entered, he offered the blood of an animal killed in place of the people. It was slaughtered, as we mentioned last week, as a substitute for the penalty of death each person deserved for sin.
What we notice from this passage is the high priest needed a substitute for himself. He didn’t offer the sacrifice only for the people. He too had sin that needed to be atoned for. He was not perfect. He could not come into God’s presence without a covering or God would kill Him as he entered the Most Holy place. He needed a sacrifice that was killed as a substitute for his sin.
2. Needed to repeat it
The next characteristic of the earthly priest is he needed to repeat it. The sacrifices had to be carried out again and again. There was a need (and we’ll discuss the reason in the next section) for an ongoing sacrifice on behalf of himself and the people. Verse 6 notes this. “Now when these things have been so prepared (that is the tabernacle, the place of worship), the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship.” The work of the priests was never done. They say a woman’s work is never done but this is worse. They offer again the same sacrifices daily but the job never gets any closer to being finished. There is no end in sight for their labor. They can never hope to get done because there is no provision in the law to allow for the completion of the tasks to which they are assigned. And it has to do with the third characteristic of the priest.
3. He could not cleanse worshipper’s conscience
And this third characteristic is he could not cleanse the worshipper’s conscience. As we mentioned last week and reiterated above the sacrifices offered no forgiveness of sin. They produced an earthly cleansing by which they allowed an individual to continue to partake of the rights, the rituals and the blessings of the community of Israel. If they would not continue to receive this “physical” cleansing they would not be allowed to remain an Israelite “in good standing.” They would be removed from the midst of the nation.
We see the problem that arises from this ritual offering that cannot cleanse from sin in verses 9-10. From the middle of verse 9 we see, “Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation (or change).”
Here is the problem that looms large in the midst of this Old Covenant. The people sin; they offer sacrifice; they are atoned for according to the covenant but there is no attendant peace. There is no peace that is granted between themselves and God. There is no removal of their sin by which they can breath a sigh of relief and say, “It is finished.” They can remain in the midst of the group but the sin they have committed simply weighs upon them. They know there is a physical (temporal) cleansing. The Day of Atonement prevented God’s discipline from being poured out upon the nation for failing to observe the ritual but there was no promise of forgiveness at the judgment. There still hung over the individual a shadow of impending condemnation. All these sacrifices and gifts offered could not cleanse the conscience of the worshipper. Why? Why did God do this? Again we mentioned it last week but this symbol of the tabernacle and priest was only that, a symbol. It was to cause an individual to look to God’s fulfillment found in the Messiah. Because this covenant had no provision for completion a new covenant had to provide the means for completion.
So the conscience could not be cleansed through the ritual. And everyone who looked to find this cleansing through ritual found themselves frustrated. For in this ritual there was only the reminder of sin. I’ve done it again. It should have created in someone a hunger to find the way of true cleansing. It should have produced a looking forward to the real way past the symbol.
This, however, is the great dilemma of all “religion.” And let me define the term religion in the sense I am using it here. Religion in a negative context is man’s attempt to get to God through ritual or his own effort. Whenever the Jew sought to establish a relationship with God through His deeds in the participation of the temple ritual he was practicing religion. Real worship always expressed itself through trust in God’s Word (this is called faith). Faith is not believing your own thing about God. Faith is believing in what God says in His Word.
And wherever you see religion it never satisfies the hungry soul. A person who truly seeks for God comes up empty in their man made attempts to please God by their own effort. The Hindu who continues to wash in the Ganges will find no real cleansing for the conscience. The person who practices self-imposed punishment to somehow cleanse themselves (walking on their knees, beating, cutting themselves) will find no relief. This cannot cleanse the conscience. Doing good to make up for past sin likewise cannot cleanse the heart. The sin remains and so the conscience lingers with the stain of that sin.
This is why we have to truly understand what faith is. Someone may say they have faith but the question is “What is it they have placed their faith in?” If their faith is not in the Word of God, the Bible, and in the work of Christ on the cross to cause them to be born again then their faith is worthless. Faith that is not a biblical faith is no faith at all.
B. The heavenly
So what is it God has ordained to comfort and cleanse the stained stricken conscience? God has given, not earthly priests who cannot offer a sacrifice to cleanse the conscience but, instead, He has given a heavenly priest by which the work of forgiveness is completely accomplished. Let’s look at the characteristics of this heavenly priest.
1. He is perfect
The first characteristic of this heavenly priest is He is perfect. In verse 14 it says, “Christ . . . offered Himself without blemish to God.” In chapter 5 the author of Hebrews stated the earthly high priest was “beset with weakness” (or sin). But Christ was able to offer Himself without any defect to God.
“Without blemish” was the term used throughout the Old Testament to describe a sacrificial animal that would be acceptable to God. There was to be no defect, no problem with the animal to prevent it from being accepted as an offering. This would make the worshipper realize the animal was not being killed because of any problem with itself. It was being killed because of the sin of the worshipper. And here the author describes Jesus as being without blemish. He can be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
In the same way, Jesus didn’t die because there was anything wrong in Him. He died because of our sin. Our sin was placed upon Him. He took it upon Himself and so was offered for us. Jesus is the perfect “high priest of the good things to come” who “entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands.” He is perfect.
2. He needed no substitutes
The second characteristic of this heavenly priest is He needed no substitutes. Verse 12 notes, “not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place.” This characteristic logically follows the first one. Because Jesus was perfect (spotless) He needed no sacrifice for Himself. He did not need to offer anything for His own sin because He had none. Hebrews 4 mentions this. He “has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” He was able to enter heaven itself for us because there was nothing to hinder His entrance.
Jesus did not offer His sacrifice as a flawed priest. He had no weakness, no defect, no sin to prevent Him from offering Himself. This is the difference between His sacrifice and the sacrifice of human priests. The sacrifices the other priests made were always substitutes. They had nothing of their own to offer. The works of their labor, their own handiwork was flawed. As sincere as these priests might be their own offering would be unacceptable to God. So they by necessity had to offer a substitute offering. But this was not true for Jesus. He offered His own blood and God accepted His sacrifice because it alone was perfect.
3. He needed only to make one sacrifice
The final characteristic of this heavenly high priest is He needed only to make one sacrifice. Again in verse 12 it says, “not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”
The phrase “once for all” doesn’t signify once for all people but once for all time. The truth of the matter is that because Jesus’ sacrifice was perfect and because His sacrifice was brought into heaven itself there is no more need for any further sacrifice. Jesus’ blood shed 2000 years ago was sufficient to pay for the sins of the whole world for all time. Anyone who would claim to offer a sacrifice on His behalf today is committing blasphemy. Why? God said the need for sacrifice has been finished in Christ. To continue to offer sacrifice is contrary to God’s decreed will.
Do you understand the significance of the little phrase in verse 12 “once for all?” First, it means no further sacrifices need to be made either in heaven or on earth on our behalf. They are finished. Christ offered this complete sacrifice once for all time. So this says we need not look to any other system of worship containing an earthly tabernacle or earthly priest because they can never remove the sin that keeps us from God. At best they are only a symbol of what God has done in Christ; at worst they are a profaning of the completed work of Christ He accomplished once for all time when He entered the true tabernacle in heaven. Christ accomplished in actuality what mankind in symbol never could.
Second, this phrase means those who come to trust in the power of the death of Jesus in shedding His blood to forgive their sins can have their conscience completely cleansed from all wrong doing. Listen to verse 14. “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
These dead works of which the author speaks are human ritual attempts to cleanse a person’s conscience from sin. They can never work. The system of priests and tabernacles God established under the Old Covenant was never meant to cleanse a person’s conscience from sin. They were the symbol of what He was going to do in Christ, “the high priest of good things to come.” And mankind’s other attempts to cleanse the conscience actually blaspheme the work of God in Christ. God calls these the traditions of men and tells us that people who practice them honor God with their lips but are far from them in their hearts. Why is this? Because they refuse to follow God’s Word. Instead of looking for a way to cleanse the conscience according to the Word of God they look for other ways instead that bolster their pride instead of humbling it. But what man could not do because of His own inherent sinfulness Christ did once for all when He offered Himself upon the cross. When He shed His blood for us and offered it in the heavenly tabernacle He provided eternal redemption for us.
And so the author says Christ has shed His blood to cleanse our conscience from these dead works to serve the living God. If you are a Christian you should have a clean conscience. If you do not there are least three possible reasons why.
First, you have never understood the true grace of God in which you are to stand firm. You have not recognized the work of Christ on your behalf and entered into His salvation. You may know something of what Christ did but you have not received His complete cleansing offered at the cross. You are still trying to please God and free your conscience through your measly attempts at good works or sacrifice. You can no more offer the works of your own hands for your cleansing than the Old Covenant priests could. Christ must save and He alone. If He isn’t ALL your righteousness then He isn’t any of your righteousness. Until you repent of your self-righteousness and receive Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf then you cannot have a clean conscience because you are not right before God. God has provided only one way to be cleansed once and for all. It is the sacrifice of Christ offered once on our behalf.
A second reason you might not have a clean conscience is you understand what this grace says and you have entered into it and received Christ’s righteousness but you continue to let Satan defeat you by allowing him to bring up your past sin. Satan is the accuser of the brethren. He will continue to bring up sin that is washed under the blood of Christ. He will bring up things that happened years ago to cause you to be in despair. The Scripture says for the believer our sins have been cast into the depths of the sea. If God refuses to bring them up why do you allow Satan to bring them up before you? Christ’s sacrifice has cleansed your conscience to serve the living God. We no longer serve Him out of fear but in love for Him who gave Himself for us. Paul says the love of Christ controls us.
A third reason you might not have a clean conscience is you are presently living in an unrepentant disobedient condition as a believer. You cannot have a guilt free conscience if you refuse to repent of sin of which the Lord has continued to convict you. By living in this way you grieve the Spirit of God. And how can you expect, as a Christian, the joy God promises if you are not willing to be obedient to the Spirit who has sealed you until the day of redemption.
Perhaps there are some of you here who are in this very condition. You are content to lie, to steal, to be sexually immoral, to harden your heart to the Word of God, to refuse to spend time in the Word of God. How can you have a clean conscience before God when you know His Word says to keep yourself from “filthiness, silly talk, or coarse jesting” and yet you watch TV or listen to music that has these very characteristics? You smirk at the unclean things said and every suggestive sentence but you justify it by saying it’s not that bad.
Your way to a pure conscience is repentance. When you recognize your sin do not hesitate to turn away from it. Don’t let it grow to become bigger but repent and turn to Him. Believe God’s promise to you when He says, “If we confess our sin God is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
But this clean conscience God has provided for us through the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf should cause us to serve the living God with our whole hearts. The freedom we have in Christ isn’t to live as we choose but to live as God would choose. We who have been born again are servants of the living God. We are no longer slaves to sin but to righteousness. And God has cleansed our conscience from dead works (these man made attempts at ritual purity) to truly serve the living God.
So let me ask you, “Have you been forgiven of your sin through the blood Christ shed on the cross for you. Have you called out to God to save you through Christ and give you eternal life through His great and precious gift? If you haven’t done so let me encourage you to call upon Him today.
If you have been cleansed through the blood of Christ are you living for Him or living for yourself. Christ has cleansed our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Are you looking for opportunities to serve Him or serve yourself? Dedicate yourself today to seek opportunities to serve Him.