31st January, 2011

BRUCE C. WEARNE

Read Hebrews 10: 1-10

Those who, having been disciplined liturgically to participate as the Lord's own guilty-but-redeemed people, in rites which culminated in the yearly sprinkling of the blood from a spotless sacrificial lamb (John 1: 29, 36 Exodus 12:1-5, Leviticus 22:17-33), have been, year by year, not only involved in a rite that recalls the Passover, but in a symbolic reaffirmation of Abraham's words to Isaac on Mount Moriah: "God Himself will provide a lamb for sacrifice my son" (Genesis 22: 8).

The sacrifices came to a yearly culmination in the Day of Atonement rite (Exodus 30: 10). They were to continue, maintaining a generation-by-generation consciousness of their dire need for the Lord's forgiveness. But this meant that these sacrifices themselves were not the fulfilment of God's promises. They were fully recipients of the Lord's promises but they were involved in a liturgy of the "not yet", learning anew that God would fulfil His purposes for His creation in His time.

For if that fulfilment had been embodied in these rites, and not simply foreshadowed, then guilt, including the conscious recognition of sin, would have been removed completely. But the purpose of those sacrifices was precisely to bring them to remembrance, to assist worshippers of the Lord to maintain conscious recognition, of the very thing that still had to be dealt with. The liturgy was to provoke the guilty to recognise, not just that they were sinners fully deserving God's anger (Psalm 95: 10-11), but that despite their (wayward, blundering, wilful and ignorant) sin, God intended something much better, something else, not just for them but for Himself in His relationship with them as their God, their Father, their Shepherd, their King.

He had in mind the complete restoration of His image, and as long as His people were still beset by a consciousness of their sin, they had not actually become recipients of this full deliverance, His full deliverance (9: 8,11). In this context, we might well render Psalm 95:8 in these words as an earnest plea: "Oh that today you would hear and listen to His voice still speaking to you: "By no means harden your hearts as happened in the wilderness, that time when your fathers, having seen all that I had done for them, provoked me mightily by putting me to the test…"

In following the Lord God, step by step, it was His intention for them, His bidding (THELEMA), that they learn that it was just not possible for the blood of bulls and goats (from the gifts and sacrifices) to take away sins. God's own people were being taught in a year by year, century by century, curriculum. They were being methodically prepared. They were being formed historically. It was God's firm intention that they be ready so that their attention would be drawn when that voice came crying in the wilderness (Isaiah 40: 1-5; Matthew 3: 3, Mark 1: 3, Luke 3: 4), "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1: 29, 36).

The announcement of Jeremiah, referred to previously (8: 8-12) - "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will bring in a new covenant over the household of Israel and the household of Judah, and it will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors..." (Jeremiah 31:31-34) - meant indeed that the Lord had promised to "remember their sins no more" but it did not mean that the prophet had the remit to revoke the Levitical priesthood. Only the Melchizedekian Kingly Priest could do that. The Levitical priesthood would remain for as long as there was a need for those "with the compassionate ability to work with the ignorant and the wayward". (5: 2). But with the arrival of Christ Jesus, the Levitical order is revoked, and by the One who, in His death, rising and ascension, embodies God's will. These are the days in which the Lord Almighty, through His Son, is actively confirming that new covenant.

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