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Hebrews 9:16-17

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...
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Hebrews 9:15

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...
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Hebrews 9:14

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...
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Hebrews 9:13

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, ...
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Hebrews 9:12

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...
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Hebrews 9:11

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...
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Hebrews 9:10

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,...
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