Today, I can’t get this topic off of my mind: it seems to be the theme. As I was getting ready for the day, I began to think about where people go wrong in Christianity: they either have made their faith about being good or doing good. Then I read about the Sacrificial Presentations of the Tribes in the book of Numbers, and Jesus warning about the Leaven of the Pharisees in Mark 8, and I couldn’t help but see it here, too: the people were about being good and doing good, and not about the Holiness of God. It struck me that God wasn’t after obedience for the sake of Obedience. He wasn’t about religious adherence.
Jesus attempted to instruct the people of Israel in His day as God the Father tried to do in Moses’ day: be holy as I am Holy. God’s Law and the Old Covenant was about what the New Covenant is about: God’s presence among His people, and impurity and uncleanliness being a danger, not to God, but to the people He desires to be with. God desires to be with us, but He cannot be in the presence of sin or impurity, as His goodness and purity will destroy the one or ones who are unclean!
Don’t you see? We need Jesus, not to be good, but so that we can be in God’s presence without being destroyed! It is only by His goodness and His righteousness that we can enter the Most Holy Place, because, once and for all, Jesus, our Great High Priest, has made the perfect Sacrifice on our behalf. We can’t be good enough or do enough good. But Jesus is more than good enough. Stop trying to be like the Pharisees, following religious observance but missing out on God. Stop trying to be like the Sadducees, doing good, but having no real belief. Believe in God and seek His presence. Jesus died so that we might have that always through the Holy Spirit, and Jesus’ goodness and sacrifice is enough.
Hebrews 8
Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
For he finds fault with them when he says:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah,
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more.”
In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Comments