It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
Hebrews 9:23
Warning! I hope that you’re sitting down right now. If you’re not, you better do whatever you have to, so you don’t fall down. Move heaven and earth so you can put yourself in a position and place so you can take the shock of your life. I’m about to tell you something that’s just so stunning. So shocking. Something that will knock down one of the things that you thought was absolutely true. Ready – here we go.
I was not a perfect child. Shocking. Take a minute to catch your breadth and then read on. Because I wanted to do what I wanted to do, I had to come up with ideas about how I could convince my parents that what I just did was OK. Or, what they just discovered I did sometime in the past was also OK.
Growing up with the idea that the world owed me something, that I do anything that popped into my head, there were plenty of opportunities to practice different approaches. I had lots of experiments on how to move my parents from an anger where their board of education met my seat of understanding.
One strategy that I thought had lots of promise was the “I had to” approach. This is where I pleaded with my parents that I had no control over what I just did. The “I had to” defense also said that they might be at least partially responsible since they were my parents.
But, as you can imagine, my “I had to” defense didn’t last very long. My smart parents saw through it and quickly let me know some things about life. I was personally responsible for what I said and did. This also led to “earning” the wages that came along with my behavior and attitudes.
Whenever someone says that they had to do something, they’re saying that it was necessary. Something that just had to be done. It was a requirement. There was no way out. It was needed.
That’s what the writer to the Hebrews is saying about the tabernacle. Just by being here on planet earth, it had been made dirty. And why? Because people just like you and me live on it. And somehow, our sinfulness rubs off on everything here. There’s no way to stop it. There’s no way to prevent it. It’s the way it is.
For a minute, think about the trash can in your kitchen. I bet you didn’t see that one coming. But, for a minute, remember all the stuff that goes into it. Does it really go into the trash container? Or does it go into a plastic bag that sits inside the trash can?
If you’re like us, we buy plastic bags that have a lemon smell that go inside the kitchen trash cans. We carefully put all the garbage from cooking into the plastic bags. And then, when it’s full, I take it out and put it the giant trash Nothing ever touches the kitchen trash can itself.
And yet, every so often, I have to take that kitchen trash can outside and wash it with bleach. That kitchen trash can picked up the smells from the garbage without ever touching it. But not just once. Over and over that kitchen trash can gets smelly without ever touching garbage.
That’s sort of what sin does in this world. It stinks up the place. Nothing gets away without being dirtied by it. The sacrifices of this world just aren’t enough to take care of sin once and for all. They don’t have the power.
When Adam and Eve sinned, their relationship with God was broken beyond human repair. But a lot of other things that weren’t involved got messed up. Relationships that once were equal were tilted, making one more important than the other. Plant life changes to produce thorns and thistles. People had to work hard to get enough to eat[1].
If we’re honest, it’s not so hard to imagine that the world around us is dirtied by sin. When we’ve been selfish with someone, that always comes back around. We become more and more selfish. And people become selfish with us. Our selfishness infects us, everyone and everything around us.
Even the tabernacle, the place where people came to meet with God was dirtied by sin. So, sacrifices had to be made for it. To clean it. To make it totally separated and holy to God. And not just once, but over and over. And over. And over.
This is why God had to come down from heaven and step into this world. God himself was the only one with the power to offer a once-and-for-all sacrifice for all sin. No angel could do it. No firstborn of many spirit children made by heavenly parents.
No amount of sacrifices and prayers offered by people like you and me could pay that price. Could remake us back into how God first made us. To talk face to face with him. To walk with him in the cool of the morning. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the only one who could make the kind of sacrifice to bring us back to God. To make us into his pure and spotless sons and daughters. To reunite us with God and one another. To make peace with God. He had to do it. And I’m so glad he did.
Noodling Questions
How easy is it to think of ourselves as perfect? Give examples.
Give three examples of how your sin “stinks up” your world.
Why did God have to do it all when it came to forgiveness of sins?
[1] Genesis 3:16-19
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