A woman spotted an antique copper kettle for $2 at a garage sale. It was badly tarnished, so she asked the man running the sale if he thought the discoloration would come out. “Hmm. Let me see,” said the man as he disappeared into his house with the kettle. He came out ten minutes later with the same kettle now gleaming. He handed it to the woman for inspection. As she took $2 from her purse to buy it, the man coughed and pointed politely to a new price tag dangling from the kettle’s handle. It read: “Like New: $20” The owner felt that his trouble to clean away the grime and to remove the discoloration made the kettle ten times more valuable than it had been minutes earlier.
Everything is more valuable once it has been fixed and cleaned. That’s why people spend weeks even months preparing their house for sale. They will replace floors and paint the walls even though they won’t get to enjoy the finished product. Going through that hassle, however, should help them get a better price for the house.
The Bible teaches that we sinners need a proper spiritual cleansing if we want a happy future. Our sermon text this morning assures us that we have received such a cleansing from Jesus, the better high priest. I thought the best way to explain God’s Word today is to speak to you from the perspective of a Jewish priest who can better relate to the words of our text than many 21st century Christians can.
Shalom my friends. Peace be to you! My name is Joshua. I am a priest who served in the temple at Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. I am ashamed to say that like many of the priests in my day, I was slow to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the promised Savior we had been waiting for. What convinced me? Well, the Holy Spirit of course. He did so through the dramatic events on Good Friday, and through the preaching of Jesus’ disciples. I was on duty that Friday when Jesus died. The Evening Sacrifice had just been offered. A lamb’s carcass was burning to ash, and its blood had been sprinkled around the base of the Altar of Burnt Offering.
While other priests attended to the burnt offering, I gathered up a handful of incense and entered the first room of the temple. Boy, was I excited. You see, ministering before the Altar of Incense is a privilege each priest gets to do once in his life. I suppose it’s how your pastor feels when he’s asked to preach at a pastors’ conference—it’s a privilege they don’t get often.
That Friday, Good Friday, was my turn to stand before the Altar of Incense and to offer prayers for my people. As I took a deep breath to begin, the silence was interrupted by a protracted tearing: r-i-i-i-i-i-p! The thick, ornate curtain which hung in front of me tore from top to bottom. Imagine someone grabbing your country’s Declaration of Independence, the one with the original signatures from 1776, and tearing it in two.
The temple curtain wasn’t just a piece of our nation’s history, however. Its purpose was to separate the Holy Place, where I stood, from the Holy of Holies. That’s the second and only other room in the temple. It’s the place the Ark of the Covenant used to be situated until we lost it 600 years earlier. As a regular priest, I was not permitted to enter the Holy of Holies. I was not even allowed to peek. Anyone who would have tried would have died. It’s like what would happen to any of us if we thought it would be interesting to stick our head in a blazing fire as if it was nothing more than a bowl of water. The human body is not made to withstand fire. Neither are sinful human beings equipped to stand in the presence of a holy God—and that’s what the Holy of Holies symbolized: the place God rested his feet on earth while he sat on his throne to rule the world (1 Chron. 28:2).
I’m not sure how long I stood there in front of the torn curtain, mouth agape, heart pounding like thunder echoing off the mountains. When I realized that I was still breathing, still part of this world and not standing before God’s judgment throne to be punished, I slowly backed out of the temple and told the other priests what had happened. It wasn’t until weeks later that I was able to make sense of it all. By then, I had listened to several sermons by Jesus’ disciples. I was also among the large group to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection! Yes, I am here to tell you, that Jesus is the Messiah that we were waiting for. He’s your Messiah too—the one appointed by God to secure a place in heaven for you.
Let me explain what Jesus did for you and me by using pictures that I am familiar with. Remember how I said that no priest was allowed to even peek into the Holy of Holies, that room behind the curtain? While I could not go into the Holy of Holies, God did direct the high priest to enter that room once a year on the Day of Atonement. On this day, the high priest would change out of his colorful high priest garments. He would bathe. Put on simple white garments. And then he would take the blood of a bull with him behind the temple curtain. He would sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the Covenant. It’s like what you might do with a cleaning solution at home. You sprinkle some of it onto your counter before wiping it down to rid it of germs.
What the bull’s blood was supposed to clean was all the sins the high priest and we fellow priests had committed that year. The high priest would then make another trip into the Holy of Holies with the blood of a goat. That blood was also sprinkled onto the Ark to hide God’s sight from the sins the rest of Israel had committed during the year.
But you might be wondering: “How can animal blood wash away human sin?” You would be right to ask that question. It can’t, just as your toy Monopoly money can’t be used to buy anything in a real store. But God commanded the Day of Atonement ritual anyway because he was illustrating what God’s Son, Jesus would accomplish with his death on the cross. Our Bible reading this morning states: “For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own… But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 9:24-26)
What the high priest did every year on the Day of Atonement was a picture of what Jesus would do. With his death, he entered heaven itself (not the manmade temple) and offered his blood (not the blood of an animal) as a real and lasting payment for each one of our sins!
How can blood cleanse like this—even if it is the blood of Jesus? When you shop for cleaning products, you’ll find baking soda, borax, and bleach, but you won’t find bottles of blood, will you? Bloodstains are blotches that you want to get rid of, not clean with. That is true. But what is blood’s function inside your body? It delivers oxygen to your muscles, and it also carries away toxins. Your blood literally cleans you from the inside out.
Is this not the kind of cleansing we need from—a cleansing of our souls and our hearts that harbor so much evil—a cleansing that borax and bleach cannot accomplish? The blood of Jesus delivers to you this kind of cleansing because his blood has carried away the toxin of your sin. And consider how in Holy Communion Jesus literally offers you that cleansing blood of his together with the wine as it slides down your throat!
Are you bothered by things you have done in the past? Do you feel guilty because no matter how hard you try to be a good parent or employee, you fail? Are you afraid that because you often go through the motions of being a good person that on Judgement Day God will say, “You don’t belong in heaven. You only pretended to be pious.” It’s good that you should feel bad about the sins you have committed. But don’t let those feelings of guilt linger and consume you. Jesus, your Messiah, has fixed the problem. Like when a stranger goes up to the cashier and pays for your bill at a restaurant, Jesus went up into heaven itself and spoke on your behalf before God the Father. He didn’t appeal to God’s goodness to forgive us. No, he held up his hands and presented the payment for our sins: not worthless animal blood but the blood of the sinless God-man.
What does this mean for you now? It means you can rejoice that heaven is open to you. It also means that you’ll want to live as a citizen of heaven—to live each day with purity. We priests were reminded of that truth when we went to work. Our uniform was a simple white robe and white turban. The white reminded us of the pure life God had called us to live.
As you wait for Jesus to return, picture yourself dressed in such a white robe every day—a robe that you won’t want to drag through any puddles of sin. But don’t treat this robe like a wedding dress that you just sit around in lest you get it dirty. This white robe is also your work uniform, as it was for us priests. Take your God-given purity and put it on display as you treat others with genuine love. Serve them humbly as Jesus served you and me. And when you stumble into sin, like you will, run to Jesus, the better high priest. For he has and continues to give you complete cleansing from your sins. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
(pre-service warm up) What’s the best deal you’ve found at a garage sale?
Why would an attending priest have been shocked to witness the tearing of the temple curtain at Jesus’ death on Good Friday?
What spiritual truths was God illustrating for the Old Testament believers with the Day of Atonement?
What makes Jesus a better high priest than any high priest that came before him?
If blood normally stains objects it touches, how can we be sure that the blood of Jesus actually cleanses us from sin?
What effect should Jesus’ sacrifice have on our day-to-day lives?
