Church Write-Up: Hebrews 9

Here are some items from last Wednesday’s LCMS Bible study. It will not be meeting again until sometime in January. But the church will probably have a Thanksgiving service and Advent services, and I will write about those.

The main text on which the pastor commented was Hebrews 9:24-28. I will post that:

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:
25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others;
26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (KJV)

A. The Greek word diatheke refers to a will or a covenant. The pastor highlighted two usages of the word in Hebrews 9. First, it is used for a will. A will becomes effective once the person dies: that is when his or her inheritance passes to the people to whom it is bequeathed. Similarly, according to Hebrews 9:15-17, the eternal inheritance is passed on to the saints after Christ has died. Christians receive what God gives to them after Jesus’ death. Second, diatheke in Hebrews 9 is used to mean a covenant. The authors of Hebrews refers to the Mosaic covenant, or agreement: God agreed to be Israel’s God, and Israel agreed to be God’s people through obedience; if Israel disobeyed, she lost the land. At the institution of the Mosaic covenant, the people and the holy things were sprinkled with the blood of animals, for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Moses said, “This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you” (see Exodus 24:8). Similarly, the pastor noted, Jesus at the last supper said took the cup of wine and said that it was his blood of the new testament (Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; Hebrews 11:25).

B. Hebrews 9:23 states: “It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.” The pastor seemed to question the interpretation of “patterns” in Hebrews that states that it refers to an actual sanctuary in heaven (see Hebrews 8:5), as if the Tabernacle and Temple on earth were copies of the sanctuary in heaven. To quote the pastor’s handout: “‘Copies’ or ‘representations’ of the heavenly things—-the tabernacle and the vessels represent heavenly things—-doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a heavenly version of the tabernacle—-John tells us that Jesus’ flesh took the place of the tabernacle.” In support of his point about John, the pastor referred to John 1:14, which states that the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us, and to Jesus’ statement in John 2:19: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The presence of God on earth is not in a building but in Jesus, and the Tabernacle is a type of Jesus himself. Indeed, the Greek word translated as “pattern” in Hebrews, tupos, can refer to a type of something to come (Romans 5:14). The pastor’s interpretation fades in and out in terms of making sense to me. It is difficult to bypass that Hebrews is speaking of something in heaven that is like the earthly sanctuary. I was thinking: “Well, if there is a Temple in heaven, are animals offered there?” Then the pastor referred to Hebrews 9:23 in saying that the things in heaven do not need the blood of animals but Jesus’ better sacrifice. Yet, it is not as if there is a literal altar in heaven on which Jesus dies and is burnt, like the sacrificial animals in the Old Testament. The Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple still express what Jesus did, from a Christian perspective.

C. The pastor tied in the other Scriptural readings to Hebrews 9:24-28. The Old Testament reading was the story of the widow of Zarephath in I Kings 17. To quote the handout, “The widow with Elijah trusts God’s word through Elijah with both the oil/flour and their lives and the death of her son.” The Gospel reading was the story of the widow’s mite in Mark 12: “The widow of the Temple in Mark 12 trusts God with her well-being, giving all that she has to the LORD.” Similarly, the Jewish Christians in Hebrews are encouraged to trust God, even though persecution is tempting them to leave Christ and to return to Judaism. Not only were they tempted to return to Judaism because Judaism was a legal religion, the pastor said, but, if they were former priests and scribes, Judaism guaranteed them a job in the Temple. But they were to recognize that the new covenant was better than the old: Jesus only had to be sacrificed once, whereas the old covenant required the continual sacrifice of animals. Jesus was interceding for them before the Father, knowing what it was like to be them. And, there was the hope of an eternal inheritance. Also, like the widows, who lived each day, Christians live each day, but they do so in anticipation of Christ’s second coming. The pastor likened Jesus’ second coming in Hebrews 9:28 to how the high priest on the Day of Atonement came out of the sanctuary and pronounced the people forgiven.