The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship (Hebrews 10:1).
It’s OK to admit it.
Reading through some parts of the Jewish Torah – the 5 books of Moses, or what we call the Pentateuch – can be an exercise in bewilderment, disorientation, and seeming irrelevance!
Why did the Lord specify so painstakingly how to deal with bodily
discharges (Leviticus 15)? Infectious skin diseases (Leviticus 13)? How to
erect the portable worship centre, the Tabernacle (Exodus 26)? How to dress and
consecrate the priests (Exodus 28,29)? How to respond to mildew? The meticulous
arrangement of the tribal camp (Numbers 2)?
And on and on it goes – chapter after chapter after chapter.
In addition, we encounter the exhaustive direction on sacrifices: burnt
offerings, sin offerings, wave offerings, peace offerings, thank offerings together
with the ritual use of incense and oil and salt.
To those of us in the west in the 21st century, it all seems a
bit much.
But, even a cursory reading reminds us that God takes very seriously the life of – and worship by – His people.
In the most Jewish of books in the New Testament, the writer to the
Hebrews zeroes in on the multi-faceted picture of Christ portrayed in the
Mosaic Law.
In Hebrews, Jesus is unmistakably identified as the long-awaited Messiah, the ultimate visible expression of God’s glory.
And in Hebrews, Jesus speaks not only for God, but
as God.
He is the fulfillment – both positively and negatively – of what is sketched for us by the sacrificial system mandated by the Law of Moses.
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming— not the realities themselves. For this reason it
can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly
year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship (Hebrews 10:1).
The author is stressing that the efficacy of the Old Testament
sacrificial system was limited: the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year
after year [were incapable of making] perfect those who draw near to
worship.
Nor were they ever intended to achieve the removal of sin, but were
representative or symbolic: the law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming— not the realities themselves.
Those good things that were to come, were fulfilled in the Lord Jesus.
Consequently, for Jew and Gentile Christ-follower in every age and every place,
the sacrifice of Christ is effective, complete, final.
He is the sacrifice – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
But Jesus is also the High Priest – our perfect, ultimate representative to the Father.
Notice the elegance and yet force, of the argument as the text of Hebrews
10 continues. The writer begins with the inability of the sacrifice of millions
of animals over 14 centuries to comprehensively eliminate sin:
If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the
worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have
felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of
sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away
sins.
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God.’"
First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin
offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although
the law required them to be made).
Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets
aside the first to establish the second.
And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs
his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can
never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one
sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.
Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool,
because by one sacrifice he has made perfect for ever those who are being made
holy (Hebrews 10:2-14).
Takeaway: many of us avoid the book of Hebrews; it
seems foreign and remote.
However, great treasure is to be found for those who can
perceive the Gospel from a Jewish perspective.
The text shouts loud and clear for Jewish believers, and by extension, to all of us, that in Christ and His Gospel we have a new and better Mediator and Covenant – Christ and His Gospel.
And as such, we have not only a superior Mediator and covenant with
Almighty God, but to us accrues better hope, better promises, a better homeland,
a better priesthood, and better eternal possessions.
~graphic from freebibleimages.com
