Audio Transcript

All right, well, beautiful singing. I’ve not met you. My name is Aaron, and I’m the preacher-pastor here. I’m glad you’re with us today. So, if you have a Bible with you, if you would open up to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter nine. Our textual study this morning will be verses one through fourteen. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there are Bibles scattered throughout the pews, and it’s on page 583 if you want to turn there. So, Hebrews 9:11-14.

I’m actually going to read the entire passage this morning, and then I’m going to pray for the Lord’s blessing on this time, and then we will get to work through the text. So, Hebrews nine, starting in verse one, I’ll be reading out of the ESV.

So the Bible says:

“Even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared. The first section, in which there was a lampstand and a table and the bread of presence, is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was the second section, called the most holy place, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, an iron staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. Above it were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things, we cannot speak now in detail. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but in the second, only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy place is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age. According to this agreement, gifts and sacrifices are offered. They cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but only deal with the food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands (that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctified for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”

That’s God’s word for us this morning. Would you please pray with me?

Lord, thank you for this time. Grateful to be here. And, Lord, I pray that you would bless the preaching of your word for the glory of Christ. Please help me to be a good communicator. Help me to exposit this passage well. I pray for the congregation that you would give them ears to hear, that they would listen and rightly apply this word to their lives. I pray so in Jesus’ name. Amen.

So one of the truths we see in scripture is that God has birthed in our hearts a conscience. Now, our conscience is not free from mistake. There’s a score of a hundred on every exam. Likewise, we actually get so twisted around in our own sin. The New Testament tells us that we actually can, like, sever our conscience. But that being said, a conscience is something that God has given to mankind as a gift, a gift that can help guide us, direct us to good things. Or maybe at other times, a conscience is a gift from God that almost acts like a dashboard light in our cars, that warns us of some potential dangers ahead.

However, in scripture, one of the primary reasons why God has birthed a conscience in our hearts is to help us know that indeed there is a God, a God that we have been created for, one that we are to worship and to serve, one that we are to live in relationship with. Now, our conscience does not give us necessary information for us to know who this God is or how we are to properly worship him. So we actually need God’s revealed word to help us to know God and to know how we are to worship him in spirit and truth.

As mentioned, our conscience is still there to at least prick our hearts into knowing some general thoughts about God and our purpose to worship him. And this is why, as mankind, we can struggle actually with a guilty conscience if we’re not Christians. For those who are not yet Christians, like you, in a sense, you know some of your purpose, which the Westminster Confession so rightly states: that our purpose as mankind is to worship God and know him forever. But unless God reveals himself to you through his word, through his Spirit, who opens up his word, you can struggle in life with a conscience that will never be satisfied.

Which, by the way, I think is what the philosopher Pascal wrote about when he referred to, like, the God-sized hole in our heart. This is what our conscience is wanting to fill. This hole in our heart, left unfilled, as Augustine wrote, just leaves our life feeling restless. But it’s not just non-Christians, I should say, that can struggle with a guilty conscience; I think even more so actually Christians can struggle. Not only do we have a conscience, but we also have the Spirit of Christ living inside who convicts us as we get off course if we’re not living a life of faith in ways that are worshipful to our God.

Now, I share all this with you this morning to help set us up for a passage of scripture, a scripture that not only talks about the conscience, but how our conscience is satisfied. As through our passage today, we see in God’s revealed word how we are to come to God in ways that we worship and serve him in spirit and truth.

Before we get to our text today, just maybe a real brief reminder where we left off in our study of Hebrews. So right now, we’re in a larger section in this letter where the author of Hebrews continues to show why Jesus is a better and superior high priest in comparison to the high priests of the Old Testament, who ministered to an old covenant that God made with his people. This was a covenant where God’s people promised to follow his law, where in turn God promised to bless them, which was a good covenant in terms of the agreement that was made. But the covenant had a huge fault in that mankind continued to break the covenant with God by sinning, which required an old covenant meaning there would be a sacrificial system, which we talk about quite a bit more in our passage today.

So in Hebrews, Jesus is better, a superior high priest, an old covenant priest, because he is the one who ushered in a new covenant, which we talked about a lot last week. In this new covenant, God and God alone signs a covenant. So the entire new covenant will be based upon the Lord and his promises—promises that we know that he will keep. Because Hebrews has already told us that God cannot lie. And in this contract that God and God alone has made with his people, it’s one that he has signed and sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood that he shed as a sacrifice for his people on the cross.

As mentioned, our passage today in the next few weeks is part of a larger section of Hebrews where the author is very deliberate and very thorough to ensure that we, his readers, see just how much better and how much superior Jesus is, as he is the only one who can satisfy our conscience.

So at the intro, if you want to look back to me, starting at verse one, if you’re visiting with us, please just keep your Bible open. I’m just going to walk us back through the passage.

So verse one, which is the author picking back up some of the teaching in the Old Testament Tabernacle teaching, they touched on in our passage last week when he refers to the tent made by human hands, which was the tent that was made according to the pattern that God gave to a man named Moses. So in verse one, now, even the first covenant, referring to the old covenant, in that covenant, God laid out regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness, which is a place by which mankind could approach God.

Verse two of our text describes that place. It reads that the tent was prepared, where there were rooms. Inside the tent, there were rooms where in the first room, or the first section, which you enter into, that room had some furniture filled with it. In our text specifically, there was a lampstand and a table where the bread of presence sat upon. You can read more about this in Exodus 25, not just a point of interest for us this morning.

So last week, I mentioned the tabernacle seems to actually be a callback to creation, to Genesis one and two, where God and mankind dwelled together in the garden of Eden, which was like a temple-like place, where Adam, our first father, actually served like a priest-like figure. So if you remember, in that garden, there was a tree of life. Many scholars think that this lampstand here is meant to be like a tree of life type figure, as the lampstand had several prongs, three on each side and one up the middle. The bread of presence, which our text just mentioned, obviously, this is a meal. This communicates fellowship. This is what man had with God in the garden. In fact, this is why mankind was created—the purpose of living in fellowship with God. That’s what our conscience is longing for. Our conscience will not be satisfied until this is m