The Reality Versus the Shadow
Hebrews 10:1-16 (19-25)
John Tung, 3-25-07
I. Introduction
The title for today’s message sounds like an athletic competition between two teams: The Reality versus The Shadow, like the Nationals versus the Orioles, or The Redskins versus the Cowboys. But the sermon is not about games, it is about Christ. It is about the reality of Christ versus the shadow of Christ reflected in the OT animal sacrifices.
And since in the Christian church calendar it is the Lenten season, a time to reflect about the suffering of Christ, that is why I have chosen for us to think and reflect about Christ’s sacrifice, but in relation to the OT sacrifices.
And in our Scripture reading during worship services this year, we have been reading sections of the book of Hebrews. And you might be wondering what the main theme of the book of Hebrews is. Well, the main theme of Hebrews is that Christ is better than the OT sacrifices.
One passage among many that speaks about this is in Heb. 10:1-16. So, let us turn to that passage right now. [Read.]
II. Why is Christ (the reality) better than OT sacrifices? 10:1-16:
And we want to begin by asking the question why is Christ’s sacrifice better than the OT sacrifices? And we ask this question because this was the question that the people back then was also asking.
Knowing that Christ had given his life as a sacrifice for our sins, people wanted to know how about the OT sacrifices: do they still need to carry those out? And if not, why not?
To answer those questions, the writer of Hebrews wrote this whole book.
And one of the ways the writer of Hebrews answers these questions is by using two images to help them understand the greater value of Christ’s sacrifice over the animal sacrifices.
In Heb. 10:1, he uses the image of “shadow” to illustrate what the OT sacrificial laws were all about. He says they are good laws, they aren’t bad or useless - they are good. But they are not the “reality” - and by “reality” this second image, he refers to Jesus Christ.
And as the writer of Hebrews goes on to explain the difference, there are three reasons that Christ’s sacrifice is better than the OT sacrifices.
A. Because he is the Final over the Cyclical: 1-4
The first reason is “Because he is the Final over the Cyclical” (slide).
Because Christ’s sacrifice is the final, once-for-all sacrifice, that’s why it’s better than the annual or cyclical sacrifices the OT priests had to perform over and over again.
For those of you reading Leviticus in the 2007 daily Bible Reading Guide, you have just read about all the sacrifice of animals.
And they had to be repeated day after day, year after year, and this was giving a message that these sacrifices were not the final sacrifice.
If it was the final sacrifice, then these cyclical sacrifices would have stopped.
But the very fact that they were repeated, done over and over again, showed that it was necessary, but that it wasn’t the final reality, but merely pointed to the reality. Therefore, they are called shadows.
When you stand under the sun, you see a shadow on the ground. (Does the sun cast a shadow of me on the ground while I’m up on stage?) That shadow is a shadow of you, but it is not you. You can’t feed a shadow. You can’t improve the life of a shadow. You don’t talk to a shadow. But you feed a person, a person’s life can improve, you talk to the person. A shadow reflects the person whose shadow is on the ground. We all know that a shadow is not the real thing, it reflects the real thing.
In the same way, when we have all the OT sacrifices where goats, bulls, sheep, doves were sacrificed, it would be foolish for us to think that those sacrifices in themselves were the reality, when in fact all those sacrifices were pointing to the greatest sacrifice of all, that of Jesus Christ.
That’s why when Christ came he was called the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. And his sacrifice was the last sacrifice for sins. That’s why Christians don’t carry out animal sacrifices now. Christ has completed it.
But why did God have the OT people perform animal sacrifices when they weren’t the final sacrifices?
Well, God had in mind a time when the final sacrifice would come. He did not have in mind the final sacrifice to come at the beginning, but later on.
So, until the final sacrifice came, there were these “shadows,” which were annual reminders of sins and showed that they still needed the final sacrifice to take away their sins.
But until that final sacrifice came, they still had to faithfully perform the OT sacrifices because those sacrifices prepared the people and taught them the reality that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
This may seem strange to us, but God often does things in stages, rather than all at once. God does things through first of all a stage of preparation, which can last quite a while, before he brings on the fulfillment or the final reality.
But isn’t that what parents also do for their children? We give them allowance, when they are old enough to receive allowance, in order to prepare them for the time when they can handle money on their own.
If there were no preparation, and the child all of a sudden, now as an adult, is given a lot of money to handle, he or she may not know how to handle it.
It is the same with internships, schooling, being on kids’ sports teams, they prepare us first before we can handle the responsibility of life on our own.
But that doesn’t mean the preparation is bad or unnecessary. While we were younger, we needed them. They are good and necessary. But they point to something greater than themselves.
And that is how we should see Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. It was different than all the animal sacrifices in the OT, but it was fulfilling the meaning of those sacrifices. But without the OT sacrifices, it would not prepare people to understand that the price of life and blood had to be paid for our sins. That’s why the OT sacrifices were good, but Christ is a better sacrifice.
What has helped me to understand this idea better is actually due to something that I learned a long time ago from a college philosophy class.
In that class, there were many concepts I really didn’t understand, but when the professor mentioned the concept of “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (slide), somehow I understood it.
This concept was developed by Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher who specialized in mathematics. And an example of what this says is that in a 2-dimensional world, giving the x and y axis location of a point is sufficient to precisely locate that point. But in a 3 dimensional world, then just giving the x and y axis location of a point is not enough, you also need to give it the z axis location.
The college professor was less interested in applying this concept to math as he was to applying it to life. And the point he was making was that in people’s thinking, they often make the same mistake - they mistake a particular object for the final reality, when in fact it is not the final reality - it is a partial reality.
In a very practical way, we can illustrate this by saying that some people think that money is the ultimate reality. Or that Coca-Cola had a commercial with the lingo, “It’s the real thing.” But is Coke the real thing - the ultimate reality? Obviously no.
So with money, some think that’s the ultimate reality, that you can get this or that and be happy. But is money the final reality? What if you have money, but have no life? Or are there things that money cannot buy? A person who gives his whole life over to the pursuit of money is guilty of misplaced concreteness. Money is not the ultimate reality.
Likewise, when in the OT, people performed sacrifices - that was fine and good – but it was fine and good in a 2 dimensional world. But when Christ came, he brought in a new dimension. And in that 3 dimensional world, in this new reality, we need a new sacrifice, a sacrifice that fulfills all the OT sacrifices - that completes it. And that is Christ. That’s why Christ’s sacrifice is greater than the OT sacrifices.
B. Because he is the Personal over the Legal: 5-10
But the sacrifice of Christ is also greater than the OT sacrifices for another reason. And that is because he is the Personal over the Legal (slide).
As we move on to vss. 5-10 in Heb. chap. 10, we see this reason.
In vs. 5-7, we read: “with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. 7 Then I said, ‘Here I am - it is written about me in the scroll - I have come to do your will, O God.’ 8 First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them’ (although the law required them to be made). 9 Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’”
And in vs. 10, it says, “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Here Christ quotes OT words and applies them to himself. He says that the OT sacrifices were not what God desired, not what he really and ultimately desired. But instead what God desired was something personal, and as it turns out, it was the body of Christ.
Christ knew that God was not ultimately pleased with animal sacrifices to take away human sins; that God was pleased to have Christ offer up his own body to take away our sins.
That is what I mean by personal over the legal.
The legal requirements were the animals, but what God was really pleased with was a person who could truly take away our sins. The legal cannot save, it can only teach, but the personal can save. And through Christ’s sacrifice, as that appointed person, we have been made holy. His holiness in principle has been given to us.
But this idea of the personal over the legal also has broader applications. God is always more pleased with personal sacrifice than just legally meeting his requirements.
We can legally fulfill his requirements for giving money to God, or doing something for him by serving him because it is a membership requirement, or even coming to church regularly and see it as a legal requirement. But if we are not personally engaged, personally giving ourselves and our hearts to God, then it is misplaced concreteness.
I think this is where passages like 1 Cor. 13 are also coming from:
In 1 Cor. 13, it says (slide): “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
If I can do all these great things, but have not the ultimate reality of loving God and loving people when I do them, then I may be legally considered great, but I am not really personally great. Something very important is actually missing. My heart is not in it. It is misplaced concreteness.
God desires personal involvement more than legal requirement. God wants us to fulfill the spirit of the law and not just the law itself.
Just like God wants us to be personally involved with our children, and not just legally fulfill our obligations to them. When our kids were younger, I remember Elizabeth telling me once before that when I am home I am home in body, but not in my mind. That hurt. What she was saying was that I was home, but I my mind was still on church. So I had to learn to be present at home in my mind as well as in my body.
C. Because he is the Spiritual over the Ritual: 11-16
The third reason why Christ’s sacrifice is better than the OT sacrifices, which another pastor described in this way, is because he is the Spiritual over the Ritual (slide). (Stephen Funderburk, sermoncentral.com)
What we mean here is that the OT sacrifices were performed as a ritual, as part of a ceremony, with precise instructions on how it was to be done, but it was meant to be seen as pointing to a greater reality, a spiritual reality. God used the OT sacrifices to show his requirements to the people.
But the Old covenant was the prelude and the repetition. We can call it the ritual. But the reality is meant to be spiritual. And this we read in vs. 16, “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. (Referring to the New covenant) I will put my laws I their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
The old covenant, the Ten Commandments, the sacrifices, were written down to be observed. This is what we mean by ritual.
But what God always intended was that the laws would be written not just on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of our hearts. That it would be ingrained and internalized so that it would become second nature to us.
It’s kind of like what math teachers did when we were young. They taught us math by memory, to drill the multiplication tables into our heads. But the aim was to have it become second nature and we can use it later on at a minute’s notice to solve problems.
So, applying this to our worship, what God wants is for us to not just ritually show up every Sunday, but to worship God from our hearts and spirits and to offer up ourselves to him.
This is worshiping God in spirit and truth, and not on this mountain or that mountain. The Samaritan woman had thought true worship was shown by worshiping on Mt. Gerizim as the Samaritans thought, and not in Jerusalem, as the Jews thought. But Jesus said neither was right. Worship God is worshiping him in spirit and in truth. The Samaritan woman had a case of misplaced concreteness. She ritualistically made one place the only place you can worship and neglected true worship that involved her spirit.
So we should always be sure we are focused on the reality and not just the shadow.
II. Applications: Make Sure You Have the Reality and Not Just the Shadow (10:19-25)
Are there other applications we can make to this principle? Yes, there are. The writer of Hebrews also tells us some more applications from vss. 19-25.
In vss. 19-25, we see there are three applications related to faith, hope and love.
A. We have full assurance of faith because it comes from Christ and not our actions.
The first application, as far as faith goes, is we have full assurance of faith because it comes from Christ and not our actions (slide).
We see this in vs. 22, where it says that in light of the final and greater sacrifice of Christ’s death for our sins, then if we have trusted in him already, then we should no longer be worried about our salvation.
The way vs. 22 says this is that “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”
In other words, if we have come to Christ already, and have accepted his death for us as the price of our sins, then don’t worry again about whether we are really forgiven. Because Christ has truly died for us and taken away our sins, then we don’t need to be weighed down with false guilt or burdened into thinking that we didn’t do enough to be forgiven. Many Christians may still carry that weight, they think they didn’t do enough to be saved. But when a person thinks like that, they are focusing on themselves and not on Christ.
But Christ has died for our sins, he is the greatest sacrifice, so don’t worry about whether you are saved or not, once he is in your life.
I think another application for those who first read this verse in the early church is that some people thought they still had to make animal sacrifices for their sins, that Christ’s sacrifice was not enough. But that’s not so. Christ’s sacrifice is once for all. His sacrifice for us is final and full. Our sins are paid and canceled, there is no more debt.
So, assurance of faith comes from Christ and not our actions.
B. We have an unswerving hope because God is faithful in the promises he made.
The second application is we have an unswerving hope because God is faithful in the promises he made (slide).
Real hope comes from God, not from us. I cannot promise and guarantee anything to you. I can only try. But God does not just try, he actually accomplishes. He can make promises and keep them because he can guarantee the results of his promises.
So you might say, “I do hope in God, but there are times when my hope in him is very shaky.” Well, that’s understandable. That’s human. But when this verse talks about hope it is not talking about what you hope for, like what you wish for. It is talking about what you rely on because God has said it. That’s the kind of hope this verse is talking about.
And because God is able to keep his promises - all the promises - he has made to us, we can place our hope in him. All his words of promise to us he will keep. So we can always depend on him and we can let our hope in those promises serve as our anchor when we find ourselves in situations when we are tossed around.
Sometimes on TV they show people who are stuck in a hurricane. Here are these people in raincoats being blown back by the powerful winds and driving rain. These people try to grab onto something strong, like a tree, in order to avoid being blown away. But if they grab onto something that is not stronger than the wind, they will get blown away.
In life, if what you tried to grab onto doesn’t hold you in place that means it is not strong enough. You have misplaced your trust in the wrong concreteness. And you have to let that wrong concreteness go and find the right concreteness. And there is nothing stronger or more concrete that you can find to hold onto than God.
C. We have a wonderful community of people that we should love.
The third application has to do with love: We have a wonderful community of people that we should love (slide).
God could have left you all by yourself when he saved you. He could have saved you and put you on an island where there is no one else around. Maybe some of you might say that’s not a bad idea, at least you won’t have conflicts with people.
But that’s not God’s idea of life. He saved us and places us into a community of other believers. And in that community we can gain so much benefit. We can grow spiritually. We can find strength and encouragement. We can ask for help for things we don’t know the answers to. We can strengthen one another. We can help one another.
That’s why the writer of Hebrews ends his application with this one. If we don’t have fellowship with other believers, our faith will be seriously impacted negatively and it’s easy to forget our hope.
When we are with other believers, it can really lift us up and remind us about God. I don’t know of an instance when my fellowship with other believers did not help me. So you need to develop or continue to have fellowship with other Christians. Don’t give up on it. Some people have given up on Christian fellowship for many months or even years - don’t do that. They might think they’re too busy to have fellowship with other believers. But if they’re too busy to have fellowship with other believers, they are too busy. They have to give up some busyness and have fellowship with other believers once again.
This is God’s word right here, not just what I want you to do.
God is our concreteness. And when our faith, hope and love are related to God, then we are in good shape. Make sure that you have the right concreteness. Let us pray.
