Hebrews 10:19-25, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the fresh and living way that he inaugurated for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. And let us hold unwaveringly to the hope that we confess, for the one who made the promise is trustworthy. And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and even more so because you see the day drawing near.”
Several weeks ago, we, in Bible Study, were examining the early Church. While many of us think of the church as a single monolith, uniform in thought and deed, such was not the case. The primary expression of early Christian up to the year 70 AD was what historians call the Jerusalem Church.. This Jerusalem church was headed by James the Just or sometimes called James the Less. James was the brother of Jesus and the Jerusalem church saw itself as a radical wing of Judaism commonly referred to as a messianic community. One of the primary sources of information we have concerning the Jerusalem Church is of course the book of Acts, which speaks considerably of its activities. In addition to the book of Acts several other historians of that day provide for us supplemental information on this era of the early church. These include the Roman Historian, Tacitus, the Greek Historian Tseutonius and of course the ever popular Hebrew historian, Pliny Josephus.
Jerusalem politics in the days of the Jerusalem church was intense and volatile. The well-known militant group, the Sircari and their co-conspirators, the zealots, were ever pushing Jerusalem closer and to a physical confrontation with the powers of Rome.
The zealots and the Sircari wanted to rid Jerusalem of the presence of Rome, its soldiers and officials, and in 70 AD these groups led the citizens of Jerusalem in an uprising against the Roman authorities. This act is now known as the Jewish Revolt of 70 AD.
Rome’s response was swift and brutal. Thousands were massacred and the revolt came to a blood end in the outlying fort called Masada where the ring-leaders of the uprising were rounded up and executed. Caught up in this blood bath of 70 AD, were many who belonged to the early church and Tacitus and Josephus report that not only was James the Just killed the year before in 69 AD, but the temple in Jerusalem was leveled and what was known as the Jerusalem church was utterly destroyed leaving the lingering remnant to scatter to the far corners of the earth.
This destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD was the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy when he said to the women “weep not for me but for yourselves because a day is coming when there will be gnashing of teeth and no stone will rest upon another in the city of Jerusalem.” ith the decimation of the church in Jerusalem, the survival of Christianity now rested upon the activities of the outlying rural gentile churches that had not been affected by what had taken place in Jerusalem. These churches were strongly associated with their founder and operated across the landscape of Asia Minor in places like Corinth, Collossae, Phillipi and Thessalonika. These churches had been founded by the Apostle Paul, a missionary, and without them we would not have a religion called Christianity today.
In contrast to the church of Jerusalem, that had been very parochial and narrow in membership, these Pauline churches were attractive to non-Jews or gentiles as they were called, and celebrated a faith and belief in Jesus Christ has a pre-condition for membership in the church rather than circumcision or being of the seed of Abraham.
People in these gentile churches did not have the history of their Jewish counterparts and had been for the most part involved in the Greco-Roman culture of their environment when they came to the church. Therefore, one of the ongoing balancing acts that had to be maintained by the Apostle Paul, their founder, was to affirm their cultural and ethnic identity while not ignoring the theological base upon which Christianity was built. In other words, Paul was constantly celebrating their diversity while holding fast to the core beliefs that made them part of the Christian community.
The text selected by the missionaries today represents a classic case of Paul reminding believers of the high price and sacrifice that Jesus performed on their behalf. Paul begins by first affirming that those whom he is speaking to are undoubtedly apart of the Christian community. He refers to them as Brothers and Sisters.
We must not forget that there had been real resistance to accepting gentiles as equals in the church and so intense was this problem that Paul had to personally return to the council in Jerusalem to plead the case of the gentiles. There had been those in the church that had not wanted to extend membership to gentiles because they were different:
They dressed different,
They acted different,
Spoke differently,
They ate different foods
They had different ways
And because of that some in the church wanted to exclude those who they did not understand. They wanted to keep Christianity to themselves and make it a sort of private club. They wanted to set boundaries and establish parameters that said “Us Only”. They wanted to be in the “in crowd” and keep everybody out. Hum, that sounds like some people today who treat the church as their private domain:
They treat the church as their private property,
They treat the church as their personal country club,
They treat the church as a closed community
But Paul says to those that felt that way that Jesus had paid to high a price for you to be snooty:
To high a price for you to look down on others
To high a price for you to be arrogant
To high a price for you to think that you are better than your neighbor
To high a price for you to have your nose stuck up in the air
After all, Paul says that if it had not been for Christ where would you be. Friends before you complain and criticize somebody else, just take a minute to think about:
Where the Lord has brought you from,
Where the Lord rescued you from,
Where the Lord delivered you from,
What the Lord spared you from,
What the Lord cured you of,
What the Lord saved you from
And then maybe you won’t be so quick to try and keep others out because the truth of the matter is that if we had been left to ourselves most, if not all of us, would have been left out too.
So Paul embraces them as brothers and sisters, members of the family, co-laborers for Christ and says since we have the assurance or what the text says, confidence that we are going to “enter the sanctuary”.
Let me stop right here and place this sentence in context. The sanctuary that Paul is talking about is the interior part of the temple. The temple in Jerusalem consisted of basically three parts: there was the outer court followed by the inner court followed by the “Holy of Holies”. Now back in Jerusalem the outer court could be entered into by anyone but Jewish males could only enter the inner court and the high priest could only enter the holy of holies and that could only take place once a year on what the Jews called the Day of Atonement.
On that day, the high priest would enter the holy of holies to make a sacrifice on the behalf of the people to seek forgiveness of their sins. The high priest would enter the temple with a rope tied about his waist and with bells attached to the hem of his garment so that if in the event that God did not accept the sacrifice and opted to kill the priest who represented the people, the other priest who still were not allowed to enter the holy of holies could pull his body out without entering the holy of holies themselves. As long as they could hear the bells of his garment they knew that he was still alive and doing well, but if the sounds of the bell ever stopped that meant that their hope for redemption and salvation was gone and that the priest was in trouble and needed to be pulled out.
Let me stop right here and drop this in somebody’s spirit. When I was a child we used to sing a song that said joy bells ringing in my soul. You see as long as your bells are still ringing that means that there is still hope for redemption and salvation but if your bells stop ringing that means that your hope is gone. That is why it is important that you do not let anyone kill your joy:
Yes they may talk about you, but don’t lose your joy
Yes they may malign your name, but don’t lose your joy
Yes they may turn their backs on you, but don’t lose your joy
Yes they may lie on you but don’t lose your joy
You see as long as your joy bells are still ringing there is still hope that the Lord can make a way out of no way.
People may wonder how you can smile when all is going wrong in your life, its because I still have my joy.
People may wonder how you can say give them a warm hello when you know and they know that they have been talking about you all week long, its because you still have your joy.
People may wonder how you can laugh and have such a good disposition when they have been dumping on you, its because you still have your joy.
People may wonder how you can keep on getting up when they keep on knocking you down, its because you still have your joy.
One of my favorite songs says: “I still have my joy, I still have my joy, after all that I’ve been going through, I still have my joy. You hold onto your joy because if your joy goes out it means that you are spiritually dead and have to be pulled out be somebody else.
Back to the text, so the holy of holies was reserved for the high priest. The holy of holies is where God was and the thought up until that time was that only the high priest could stand in the presence of God. Now, the holy of holies was separated from the inner court and the rest of the temple by a large curtain and so to get into the presence of God the high priest had to go behind the curtain. This curtain was called the “veil of the temple” and was considered to be one of the most sacred items in all of Jerusalem. The area behind the veil was called the sanctuary. So watch this, nobody could enter the sanctuary and stand in the presence of God but the high priest who was a Jewish male.
But saints, listen to the Apostle Paul here. Paul says Jesus has changed all of that. All of that rigidity, law and rules, Jesus has changed. Jesus has opened a new path to the presence of God.
In the old system only the Jewish Male Priest could step into the presence of God. But when Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was rent or torn in two now making it possible for there to be access to the presence of God.
Notice here that Paul says you have a confidence brothers and sisters that you can enter the sanctuary.
Paul says brothers and sisters, that means male and females
He is talking to lay-people which means that you no longer have to be a priest
He is talking to gentiles which means that you no longer have to be Jewish.
Because of Jesus, a non-Jewish, non-male, non priest can stand in the presence of God. I don’t know about you saints but that makes me shout because it means that now I can stand in the presence of God for myself.
Now once the priest would get into the sanctuary he would take the lamb that he had brought for a sacrifice and would slay the lamb and take the blood of the lamb and sprinkle the lamb’s blood on the altar in the sanctuary. Now the other name for altar was the mercy seat. And the belief was that if the blood of an innocent, perfect, unblemished lamb was sprinkled upon the altar or the mercy seat then God would forgive the people.
Now watch what Paul does here. Paul says that for us our altar is our heart, our mercy seat is our heart and our hearts have been sprinkled with the blood of Christ. Not our blood because our blood is not innocent or perfect, but the blood of Christ is the blood of the precious lamb, perfect and unblemished. Then the priest would, after sprinkling the altar with blood would wash the altar in water that was thought to be pure. Therefore, Paul says that after our hearts have been sprinkled, our bodies were then washed in pure water. You see friends, that’s why you are baptized, because it symbolizes your body being washed after your heart has been touched by the blood of Christ. The song says: What can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
When I was a kid, Saturday night was bath night and Mama would not let you just take a hand cloth and dab a little water here and dab a little water there, no, she put you down in that tub under the water to make sure that you were clean. That is why when we baptize you we put you down under the water to symbolically make sure that you are clean.
Now Paul closes by saying that since all of this was done on your behalf you now have a responsibility to others. Now that you understand what God has done for you, you have a responsibility to encourage others to remain constant and committed. Paul says that it’s your job to make sure that others do not abandon the meetings or in others words forsake their coming to church. When you look around and don’t see certain people in church, don’t whisper to your neighbor and talk about them, go home get on the phone and tell them that you missed them encourage them not to abandon the meeting, not to forsake the assembling of themselves, encourage them to make it to church next Sunday. If God has sprinkled your heart with his blood and washed you anew and there is joybells ringing in your soul then encourage each other.
Each week I program my little phonetree machine and have it place calls to the membership to encourage them to come to church on Sunday. But while putting this sermon together and reading this passage of scripture it occurred to me that I just might be guilty of using technology to do what the Bible says you ought to be doing. It occurred to me that by using my machine I just might be helping you, the members, to be lazy and not do what the Bible says you ought to be doing. The Bible does not say that a computer ought to encourage one another not to abandon the meeting, the bible says that you ought to encourage one another not to abandon the meeting.
I am just wondering if I have just a few folk that God has done something for
A few folk whose hearts have been sprinkled and touched by the blood of Christ
A few folk who have been washed in the blood of the lamb
A few folk who have been made to stand in the presence of God
A few folk who did not qualify to stand in the presence of God under the old rules but qualify under the new rules
A few folk who still have their joy
A few folk who don’t mind encouraging somebody else because God has been good to them, I am wondering if we don’t have a few folk who will get on the phone and encourage each other not to abandon the meeting.
I know you get that call on Saturday and as soon as you hear my voice and realize that it’s a recording you say “Oh it’s the church and you hang up before the message is over.
But what would happen if every one of us in here would just call three people and encourage them to come to church.
What would happen if the members got a call that was not a recording but was a live person.
What would happen if instead of my voice you heard the voice of another church member who is on the phone
not to gossip,
not to talk about anybody,
not to complain,
not to whine,
not to criticize,
not to bicker,
not to be negative
but to encourage you to come to church and not abandon the meeting. What kind of church do you think that we would have if we did just what this Bible says that we ought to be doing. What would happen if on this missionary Sunday, we all decided to be missionaries and take it upon ourselves to get on our own missionary journey and assignment next Saturday and get on the phone and call each other and encourage each other not to abandon the meeting. I have decided that I am not going to make you lazy and let a computer do what the Bible says that you should be doing and that is that we all encourage each other to be consistent and committed.
