Now for a few thoughts to prepare our minds for the Lord's Supper. More and more I feel the need to use our Sunday church meeting to direct our minds to the cross. This was surely the very reason for which Jesus instructed his disciples to regularly partake of the Lord's Supper. He, too, understood the centrality of the cross to the Christian religion and the tendency to forget the cross for other peripheral matters. And read 1 Cor. 2:1,2. So it is not for nothing, it is not for ritual's sake that we come to this portion of our Sunday meeting each Lord's Day. Jesus wants us to direct our attention to the cross. All Christian doctrine flows from this one and back to this one.
In Hebrews 9:23 I came across a most curious and if I understand it properly a most amazing statement regarding the heavenly tabernacle of God. All through the book of Hebrews he has been at pains to compare the new covenant of Jesus Christ with the old covenant of Moses, and he repeatedly shows the superiority of the one over the other. The writer has been explaining that Jesus died so that his will could go into affect and so that those called his children could receive the promised eternal inheritance. As the death of the testator ratifies and makes effective the will of the testator, so the death of Jesus ratified and brought into effect the last will and testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Likewise, the old covenant was ratified upon the basis of death, not in that case the death of the one who wrote it, but rather the death of calves whose blood Moses sprinkled on the book and all the people saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you to keep."
9:19-22So the material and physical tabernacle that God told Moses to build was cleansed by the shedding of blood. Now we come to a most interesting and amazing scripture.
9:23What are the copies of the heavenly things? According to the context, the copy of the heavenly was the Mosaical tabernacle. This accords nicely with what is written in 8:5. Moses' tabernacle was a copy of the heavenly one. But what is the heavenly tabernacle and where exactly is it? The immediate answer might simply be that the heavenly tabernacle is heaven and is in heaven. But the answer is a little more complex than that because you notice that the Hebrew writer informs us that the heavenly things which must be cleansed (Including at least, the heavenly tabernacle or sanctuary) had to be first cleansed with the better and perfect sacrifice of Jesus. If the heavenly things consisting of the heavenly tabernacle needs to be cleansed, one must ask the question "Why?" Of what does it need to be cleansed and why does it need to be cleansed?
The answer is given to us in the context where the writer has just plainly explained to us that it is the human conscience that Jesus so wonderfully and completely cleanses. Read 9:9,14. In Hebrews chapter nine, it is the human conscience that Jesus cleanses and which no law and no human effort or action can otherwise cleanse. But it is also the heavenly things including the heavenly tabernacle that Jesus cleanses. The clear implication is that the heavenly things, the heavenly tabernacle that Jesus so beautifully and completely cleanses is actually the human himself. The reason the heavenly things had to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus is that the heavenly things or the heavenly realities consisted of the inner man himself. The guilty conscience is the veil (which was pictured by the Mosaical tabernacle) that separates all men from the presence of God and communion with God. When the human conscience is cleansed, the veil separating us from God is removed and there is complete and free access to the presence of the Almighty God. And wonder of wonders, WE become the tabernacle of the living God. God moves in! When our conscience is cleansed, the heavenly tabernacle or sanctuary of God is also cleansed so that we become a suitable habitation and house for God.
We can establish from other scriptures, that indeed, God's people are the true house and tabernacle of God and that he dwells in us. Jesus spoke of the time when the Jerusalem temple would be replaced by a temple "not made with hands". See Mark 14:58. And Stephen and Paul insisted that no building "made with hands" could accommodate the Most High God. See Acts 7:48-50 and 17:24. Well then, just what is the nature of this temple or house of God not made by human hands and where is it? The answer is most amazing!
When Stephen made his statement about the true temple of God, he was quoting Isaiah in 66:1,2 who goes on to say that more than the earthly temple, God esteems and chooses one "who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word." And earlier in Isaiah God explains where and with whom he truly dwells. Read 57:15. So the Hebrew writer is saying only what the prophets had always said when he explains that the people of God are the house of God (3:6). Paul also confirms this truth in the oft quoted passages in the book of 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19-20.
What is most curious and striking to me is that the Hebrew writer speaks as though we are not merely the dwelling place of God but the heavenly sanctuary itself that had to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Why does he call us the heavenly things cleansed by the blood of Jesus if we are not yet in heaven? I am not sure I have a complete grasp of the answer to this question, but let me let you chew on the following scriptures.
As Christians we are said to be blessed in the heavenly realms (Eph. 1:3) where Jesus is seated (Eph. 1:20). We have been raised up with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly realms (Eph. 2:6). It is as though we have been brought ourselves to the heavenly realms. We are right now part of the heavenly realms. We are not separated from heavenly things. We have become part of the heavenly things (furniture).
And so we apparently are not just some symbol of a sanctuary, some mere earthly sanctuary whose counterpart is in heaven. No we are the real thing. We are the heavenly sanctuary of God Himself. We are the true and heavenly sanctuary of which Moses' tabernacle was only a shadow and a copy (Hebrews 8:5). We are the heavenly sanctuary that Jesus cleansed in order that we might become a suitable home for God in the spirit (Hebrews 9:23; Eph. 2:22). As believers, we are being "built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" but first cleansed by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:2, 5, 9. 22ff.) Further, we are a people who have come to the true Mount Zion, the heavenly city of the living God" (Hebrews 12:22). We are not just going there. In a very real sense, we have already come there. And we are invited and encouraged to come right on into the Holy of Holies and meet with God there. See Hebrews 10:19-22. Not symbolically, but really.
Now here is my application. For many of us, God seems so remote and so distant. We think of heaven as being somewhere far, far away. And God and all his people who have died and gone before us are also somewhere far, far away. In fact, I understand that the Bible is telling us that just the opposite is true. Heaven is not a place from which we are separated by physical distance. Nor is God. It is only sin and immorality that separates us from God and from his presence. The separation is moral, not physical. When God forgives us, we are no longer separated from him relationally. Now we have the opportunity to be close friends. In fact, we become so close to him that we are said to sit in the heavenly realms in his presence, and we are said to have come to the heavenly Jerusalem, and we are said to in fact be the heavenly temple of God. That is how close God is to us. That is how close heaven and all of God's people there are to us. We might think of heaven as being of another realm, of another dimension not of space or of time. It is equally near us at all times and in all places, as God is - if we are his people.
What a majestic truth that we are the temple of the living God. That God is not somewhere out there far, far away from us. He is literally dwelling in us. That is how close he really is, and how close heaven is and how close God's people there are to us. When life is over, we will understand it better than we do now. When we look back, the most amazing thing will be that we will realize that God was there close to us all the time. We should remember this right now and meditate on it and appreciate it and rejoice about it in our time of communion.
The wilderness had to be cleansed and made holy in order that God might manifest his presence there among his people, so the people of God themselves need to be.