Daily Meditations

Hebrews 9:19 Covered by the blood The events described here are a mirror of Exodus 24 where Moses and his sons were invited to approach the Lord on Mount Sinai, together with 70 elders from the tribes of Israel. This is a continuation of the giving of the sacred laws by the Lord, which are described in Exodus 20-21. The people in the camp were fully aware of what was taking place and had promised that  “Everything the Lord has said we will do.”  (A fragile commitment to the Lord, evidenced by the fact that just hours later, they were worshipping a golden calf!)  It was Moses who was entrusted with writing down the words of the Lord which, of course, included the 10 Commandments, although it was the Lord God who wrote these on the Tablets of Stone. The following day Moses built an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai and set up 12 stone pillars representing the 12 tribes of Israel. Young bulls were sacrificed and half of their blood was splashed on the altar and the rest on th...

Hebrews 9:18 There has to be blood! And here is the evidence that a death has taken place. Blood has been proved to have been shed. The Old Mosaic Covenant relied on the slaughter of endless animal sacrifices. We can only imagine the numbers processing towards the holy site, especially on Feast days when Jerusalem was full of pilgrims. We looked at the various offerings in verse 13 and in every case the creature had to be killed and its blood poured out, if it was to atone for the sins of the offeror.  “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”  Hebrews 9:22. Countless innocent animals were led to the slaughter over the centuries of Tabernacle / Temple rituals. The pilgrim would lay his hands on the beast and then kill it. The priests would collect the blood and apply it to the sides of the altar, then the animal would be butchered. Hundreds of thousands of animals must have been sacrificed in this way. These poor creatures were seen as substitutes for men and t...

Hebrews 9:16-17 Wills and death This is familiar ground, my wife worked in the law, managing Probate and Wills etc. and my work, before retirement, involved giving tax advice to solicitors and executors. One thing is absolutely sure, and it has not changed over the centuries; no beneficiary can make a claim on what is described in a Will until the testator dies. Beneficiaries may well know what has been promised to them and some greedily anticipate the death that guarantees their entitlement; however, their inheritance cannot kick-in, and the Will has no legal power until death has taken place. It seems that the legal rules being practiced when this Epistle was written were not much different to modern regulations in that a death must be proved, which today means that a formal Death Certificate must be completed. On seeing this, a lawyer will be able to read the Will and make the wishes of the deceased known. The context of this verse is very simple, v15 has already informed us that th...

Hebrews 9:15 The Mediator of a new Covenant Moses was a great mediator for Israel. How many times did that poor man have to approach the Lord God and plead on behalf of the people? Their wilfulness, blind disobedience and lack of faith must have given him many restless nights! In relation to the Covenant promises of God, it was Moses’ job to see that the terms and conditions were actually fulfilled by the Israelites, and that the resulting deliverance came about. A heavy responsibility!  Our Lord Jesus also bears a responsibility to ensure that we obtain all that has been promised under the New Covenant, namely an eternal inheritance. We cannot achieve this for ourselves, He is the mediator and He is the guarantor of the promises that God has made. Let there be no question that He means business! There was a dreadful penalty to be paid for His role in all of this, He must pay the ransom price and die our death for us. The penalty of death and the shedding of blood was, as we have s...

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, ...