Our Hope Is in Jesus

Hebrews 9:23-28

I did some dumb things when I was in college. I loved college, I just hated class. One of the dumber things I did was cave exploring. Actually it was beyond dumb; it was stupid because none of us had any idea about what we were doing. The cave that we explored was condemned! The way we got into the cave was that we found a hole at the base of a stump on the side of a mountain opposite where the main entrance was known to be, and we eased down into it into pitch darkness—dumb!

We realized that we had entered into a huge room and with our lights we saw over in the corner a hole that led further down into darkness. So, being stupid, we squeezed into it and when we finally got completely down this narrow and shallow shaft under tons of earth where my nose would actually touch the rock that was above it, we realized that we were desperate because the only way that we could see to go was down with No seeming way out.  As we rounded a downward corner someone noticed a tiny light high above us, a long way above us. It was just a pinpoint, but we had found the only way out! Two weeks later a search and rescue team had to get another “dumb bunch” out of that same cave.

Why do I tell that story? In Hebrews, we see a group of Jewish believers, with rogue Jews among them, who were threatening to go back to Judaism because of persecution. To me it would have been like crawling down into a dark hole with no way out. Judaism, or any religion, offers no way out off the dark state that mankind was born into! Our only way out is Jesus Christ. For the believer, to return to cold, calculated religion offers no freedom from guilt and daily failure. In fact, with any religion the harder you try to get out, the deeper you get in, because it’s all about you and it’s all up to you. 

For the non-believer in Jesus Christ, there is no hope in any religion of ever entering into the eternal presence of God. Only total forgiveness through our Lord Jesus Christ can grant all who are born into Adam access to the Father. To the Jews that the author of Hebrews is talking about, total forgiveness does not come through the shed blood of innocent animals. In order for man to be able to enter into the new covenant, which is a relationship with God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the God-man, had to die and shed His own blood.

He Is the Only Door to a Relationship with the Father.
“Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these” (Heb. 9:23).

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest had to cleanse everything by the sprinkling of the blood of bulls and goats, which were only substitutes for the death that sin required of all the people. This shed blood of innocent animals prepared the way for him to go into the presence of God on one day of the year, and on that day to have his sins and the sins of the people covered for one more year.

But the shed blood of Christ, the God-man and our High Priest, did a far greater thing than that. Just as the Holy of Holies in the earthly tabernacle could not be entered except by the blood of bulls and goats, the true Holy of holies (the true presence of God which is in heaven), could not be entered by man except by the shed blood of Christ.

Therefore, when Jesus Christ passed into the heavens, having died for us on the cross and resurrected from the grave, He took with Him, as Heb. 9:11-12 says, not the blood of bulls and goads, but His own blood. Our High Priest purified and opened the way for us to truly worship in the presence of our Holy God.

The Heavenly tabernacle where Jesus would bring all His faithful followers had to be consecrated and entered first by Himself, by the infinitely better sacrifice of his own body and blood. He prepared the way for us to worship through Him in the presence of God. He is the door—the only way to the Father—as He himself said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep…. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he shall be saved, and will go in and out, and find pasture” (John 10:7, 9).

Who would want return to “religion” which is all about man and what he can do? Who would want to crawl back into the cave of what we can do for God, when, through Jesus Christ, we can enter boldly into the presence of God and worship Him because of what He has done for us. We can, through Jesus Christ, because of His shed blood, experience His eternal presence in us doing through us what we could never begin to imagine. Praise His name!

Wayne Barber is senior pastor of Hoffmantown Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico.