CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

There is no testament, if the testator has not died. Death must come in - that order must go. A testament is of no force whilst the testator lives. A living Messiah was of no avail. God could not have anything to do with the people on any other ground than death. Death comes in - all is now clear. Covenant in Scripture is what declares the thing absolutely. ‘Now I will make another covenant with them, I will write the law in their hearts’ (chapter 8: 10). A covenant, similar to a will, depends upon God and upon death too. They had no right to accept the first covenant. The first covenant was established by blood. It was impossible for God to enter into covenant with man except on the ground of death - death was upon man.

Verses 16 and 17 are a parenthesis, verse 18 resuming the thread. Under the blood of the testament they bound themselves to obey. It was death to them if they were disobedient, yet, as a shadow, the blood of the covenant contained the germ of blessing, what it was to God Himself; it met His eye. God would provide the ‘death’. It was important for a Jew to know and understand that we are not brought on to new ground but by the death of the testator. On the ground of blood, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel saw God, and did eat and drink; Exodus 24: 9 - 11.

Purgation of sins is the point - a purged conscience is consequent upon this. In order that we might get a place in heavenly places, Christ died, and concurrent with this the veil was rent. Everything was now done, and God could come in and rend the veil on His own side. The purifying of heavenly things here (chapter 9: 23) is that we might get in. The tabernacle was looked at as defiled because of the state of the children of Israel. God could not open heaven in Exodus 24 without blood, and apart from death we could not enter. The heavenly things were typified by the tabernacle. “He shall make atonement for the sanctuary, to cleanse it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel”, Leviticus 16: 16. Has our sin reached to heaven? Undoubtedly it has: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51: 4); then there is the casting out of Satan also. The heavens therefore needed purification with better sacrifices.

Now we are to be found in association with Christ in this place (heaven). It is all moral now, not we going ^[p. 112] up to heaven, but He coming down to us. We do not go into heaven as a natural place at all here; but all the spiritual atmosphere of heaven comes to us. He brings it by coming into our midst. The “heavenly things” are the things connected with the service and worship of God.

In Romans we find a man personally on earth. In Hebrews we find a man on his way to heaven. In Colossians the point is a Head in heaven. In Ephesians the point is that we are members of Him who is our Head - union.

Of old the blood was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, and on the things in the tabernacle; and then there was the scapegoat (Leviticus 16). So in Hebrews 9 we get the three things the mercy-seat in verse 12,

the things sprinkled in verse 23,

and lastly, the scapegoat in verse 28.

The point in the Hebrews is that it is approach in the house of God. I consider the house to be the sphere where the Holy Spirit is. Thus we find in this epistle if a man left this place it was all over with him.