Daily Meditations

Hebrews 9:14 The blood of Christ, the eternal Spirit, the living God! And here is one of the most potent verses in the whole of Scripture, for in just a few words the author dismisses the effects of centuries of animal sacrifices and throws open a door of understanding to the supremacy of the offering of Christ Himself. It is His blood that changed history and His sacrifice that completely removed the need for any more ceremonial killing of animals as substitutes for men. There are four main principles set out for us in just a few words. Firstly, the offering of Jesus was  “through the eternal Spirit.”  That Spirit is God Himself. Individual Jews made their animal sacrifices through earthly priests who mediated for them at the altar and at the Mercy Seat. The Spirit of God acts as our mediator and thus God, in His mercy, took His Son and presented Him as a one-off, eternal sacrifice for the sins of men. This event needs never to be repeated, it was God who brought an end to an...

Hebrews 9:13 Ceremonial cleanliness As we have seen, there was more than one kind of blood offering that could be made to the Lord God under the Old Covenant. Burnt offerings and Fellowship offerings did not require the shedding of blood but Sin and Guilt offerings did. If a priest was seeking to make reparation for an unintentional sin he had committed, then he must offer a bull and its blood must be shed and sprinkled before the Lord. The same applied on the Day of Atonement when the sins of the whole congregation were cleansed by the shedding of blood. Leaders in the Camp were to offer male goats, and a common person could offer a female goat or a lamb. The poor could bring a dove or a pigeon to the priest to sacrifice, and if you were completely poverty-stricken, the Lord accepted a tenth of an ephah of finest flour. In the case of a guilt offering the worshiper must bring a ram to be sacrificed. All of these sacrificial offerings were made daily before the Lord at the Tabernacle, ...

Hebrews 9:12 Eternal redemption by His blood!! Let’s begin our meditations on this verse with some enlightening words from Leviticus 17: 1 , “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”  This is not just a scientific discovery or a biological fact; the Lord God has decreed that His creative acts allowed for His creatures to live and breathe because they have pumping hearts and because there is a pulsating fluid that is circulated around their bodies. Without this we would all die! Blood not only helps us to breathe and act but it also nourishes the cells in our bodies with all the nutrients that we need for life. Thus, the ancient sacrificial system was a form of substitution, in order that one creature might live, another had to sacrifice its blood. This substitutionary system was instituted by God to pave the way for Yeshua who became the ultimate sacrif...

Hebrews 9:11 A more perfect Tabernacle This verse begins with the 3-letter word “But” and what a “But” it is!” The singular most transformative event that has change the entire world and our reason for living as human beings who inhabit it, follows on from this “but.”  Christ has come, He has come as the ultimate High Priest, He came in fulfilment of centuries of Jewish devotion to God and He came to open the way into a Tabernacle that far surpasses any structure made by men and that is sited on planet earth. The Tabernacle that God has instituted, of which the earthly tent was just an imperfect copy, is heavenly and spiritual and, like the Garden of Eden, has been closed to men from the beginning of time.  Christ the Messiah came as a High Priest, we’ve already established this, but He also came to fulfil that which already existed under the Old Covenant with the Jews, and to be established as High Priest of that which is to come. (many Bible versions and manuscripts use...

Hebrews 9:10 The time of the new order Look at how the author here dismisses the trappings and rituals of religion. After centuries of detailed attention to the Law and its practice, he writes to his Jewish contemporaries and scornfully rejects all that has passed before. These regulations were so engrained in Jewish thinking; they were such a huge part of their heritage and their national institutions that this scathing rejection must have hurt many of them. They were new believers, only just beginning to embrace the reality of the New Covenant and here is a fellow Jew trashing the whole system that identified them and their culture.! But wasn’t it the Lord God who instituted the practices in the first place? How could He now be jettisoning everything their ancestors had taught them? Yes, it was hurtful to some. That is why the writer must go on to stress the superiority of the New Covenant. Those ancient sacrificial practices were nothing by comparison, they were only food and drink,...

Hebrews 9:9 A clear conscience for worshippers Notice carefully the words used here by the author of this Epistle, he wants his readers to understand that whilst the Law and the tabernacle and religious systems are now defunct, they are provided to give us an illustration that is up to date. The Old Testament of our Bibles is not a historic collection of memories and regulations that have been superseded or overtaken by the New, they are God’s Word, they still have huge lessons to teach us, in fact every event and Scripture in the New Testament has its roots in the Old. The New Testament is the fulfilment of all that had been written by ancient writers from Genesis to Malachi.  There is one outstanding lesson to be learned from our Jewish ancestors, it is that to have a clear conscience before God we cannot rely on sacrifices and offerings made by men. Once again, this brings into focus every other religion that exists or has existed for they all encourage human efforts, obedience ...