Still sinning, eh?

Posted on 29/12/2012 | Leave a comment

More from the Letter to the Hebrews. Here’s yet another dire warning from the author (Heb 10:26-31):

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?  For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”( Deut. 32:35) and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”  It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

We may sin accidentally but to keep on sinning deliberately now that these so-precious things have been made ours for the asking, the taking, is to invite judgment, to court disaster.

Now our author is not talking about the things we often worry about –is this act a sin or is that one? No way.

He speaks here of the unspeakable sin, that of wilfully, deliberately turning away from Jesus, as we have observed previously in chapter 6. The context of this chapter (especially verses 33 to 35) make this plain. In such a state how can there be any sacrifice that can really bring forgiveness and wholeness?  If we reject the ultimate gift, the treasure beyond our wildest imagination, the security apart from which there is no security, the unfathomable love that sent His Son into the hands of corrupt and malevolent mankind and the dread horrors of the cross, …. what then is left for us? Utter darkness. No salvation. No loving assurance. No hope.

Think of a lover who has done all for the beloved but then the beloved one spurns that great love and openness and turns away, spits in the face of the lover. It is the ultimate outrage.

Such is the general state of the human race. The offer of life must be received, taken hold of.

Think about this: the offering Jesus has made is a single offering. It is sufficient for all time, for all people, for all sins! It is totally sufficient. It cannot be repeated. It will not be repeated. That would be totally unnecessary, unlike the ceremonial rituals which pointed to the real and have now been replaced. Finally.

Yet this immeasurable offering cannot be taken lightly, frivolously. We cannot assume God’s grace, take it for granted, not feel the despair, the dread it replaces.

This grace is such astronomically great news. Our refusal of that gift is breathtakingly stupid, insane, suicidal.

Yet even such a decision by an individual is respected by the Lord God, the loving Father –a decision to put oneself far away from all that is good and solid, all that is real and true, so valuable is our personhood, the image we bear, that we can never escape from. Our freedom to turn away from such love remains eternally.

As followers, we may find ourselves sinning again and again after believing, because of our constant fallibility. Yet his great sacrifice remains for us. Jesus’ words about the 7 times 77 forgiveness reminds us we may be forgiven again and again and again. His forgiveness is inexhaustible. Remember, we are taught to forgive others who sin against us after that pattern in Jesus’ so-called Lord’s Prayer.

But if we take all this grace for granted without feeling the horror, the dread, the enormous cost to the Son of God in his offering, our hearts will be progressively hardened and the point may be reached when we fall away from that wonderful provision of grace and mercy. So hardened, that we may lose all capacity to turn to our loving heavenly Dad. We will have insulted the Spirit of grace.

What then is appropriate for us now, as we read these words?

In God’s purposes, it is never too late. We must enter, truly, deliberately, decidedly, determinedly, enter God’s household, by His design –by the blood of Jesus. There is no other way, no other name is given under heaven to save us. This is also the consistent affirmation of the apostles Paul, Peter and John.

No other way. Some may introduce another way— “my way”. When we face judgment, accounting for our lives, our words, our actions, our thoughts, will you be confessing “Your will be done”?

Or will your song be “I did it my way”?

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The Sacred Cow of Going to Church

Posted on 23/12/2012 | 2 comments

We have seen in the wonderful Letter to the Hebrews that because Jesus is faithful and the promise is lock solid, guaranteed, at last we have something to hold unswervingly.This is the place to be. But notice how the author keeps addressing, not a lot of individuals, but a group of people. This is their place corporately. Together.

So now in chapter 10 and verses 24 and 25, he addresses how and why they met together:

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another —and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

This all leads to our author’s plea to concentrate on the care of one another. How critical it was that they should consider how to spur one another on toward love and good deeds. It was the role of everyone, not just some vicar or pastor or a dominant leader. Their meeting together—their ‘worship’, was all about encouragement and stirring up one another. In the NT the meaning of ‘worship’ is service by one another, to one another.

Here is the only place in the NT calling believers to be together regularly, but it is often quoted by clergy to keep people coming to their church. It really means something quite different.No one among the first believers “goes to church”. They were the church when together, wherever. They were together the Body of Christ present to encourage, to serve one another and to spur one another on to love and to excellent deeds!

Until the Day of his return, which seemed to them quite ominous.

Two important things stand out. First the necessity of meeting together—we cannot do without our brothers and sisters. We cannot do without expressing the Body of Christ. We must not go it alone. A hand or an eye cannot stay alive apart from being attached to a living body—to recall Paul’s metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12. They were not just a lot of individuals collected together. They were a body! A living body.

Secondly, the one essential matter when gathered was to encourage one another. If we fail to do that we have departed from God’s ordained pattern, God’s design. To follow God’s amazing design, his plans and specifications is to truly worship him. To do otherwise, is to dishonour him.

Look, we are asked to consider how to stir one another to love and good deeds. There is a pattern to follow, and the mundane details are left to us to arrange. But the pattern, most certainly, always concerns reproducing Jesus’ life, his love, his servanthood, his actions, priorities, behaviour, his perfection, his will, his purpose, his way, his truth, his life—by looking unto Jesus.

Our author is consistent with the other authors of the New Testament documents. It is clear that they did not come together to hear or see a “service” conducted by a minister. Nor did they come to hear a preacher. They did not come together to sing “worship songs” or hymns organised by a “worship leader” or clergyman.

They came together to care for one another, to weep with those who weep, to comfort one another, to encourage one another, to help one another in building up faith, to love one another, to confess their needs and faults with one another, to pray for one another, to submit to one another ….

The phrase one another appears over 40 times in the New Testament in relation to believers together.

How can we practice this if an “ordained” priest or minister or a dominant leader is present?  They will instinctively do what they have been trained to do, what they are paid to do. There is no hard evidence of any official or officers active in the churches described in the New Testament record. There is function and not form. There is dynamic action led by the Holy Spirit, his gifts distributed among his people, the organisation of the Holy Spirit.

Today, churches are frequently described in terms of their leader, pastor, priest or minister, in terms of a dominant controlling leader. Jesus sternly warned his disciples to avoid this scenario. Paul warned against this and constantly calls himself ‘a servant/slave’.  Peter echoes Jesus words that God’s people are not to be ‘lorded over’ by leaders. And so does our author.

God knows how much we are in need of him, his resources and how much he has to give us through our brothers and sisters when we submit to one another in the fellowship of Jesus.

We need all the help we can get, eh?

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Perfect unmatched design ignored

Posted on 15/12/2012 | Leave a comment

I am really fired up by looking at the Letter to the Hebrews. Just look at chapter 9 verse 11,

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation.

Clearly, for our author, along with the rest of the New Testament writers and teachers, under this New Covenant, human constructed temples, buildings, “churches” have been superseded in favour of a more perfect tabernacle, not made with human hands, not a part of this creation. Those who first received this blessing understood they had access to a perfect place, singly and together, the place where Jesus is: at the right hand of God. Think about it—what a privilege this is! They met together in homes, courtyards, public spaces, not in specially designed buildings. So different from the old deal with the nation of Israel and its temple. Everything has changed!

Specially designed buildings came much later, and with it came veneration of spaces, consecration of buildings just like the pagans around them. (Even the Jews did not venerate their synagogues.)

Stupid, human, pagan ideas came in, ushering in the imitation of worldly religion, organisational administration and waste of resources. The invention of sacred places was perhaps necessitated by the invention of ‘services’ and formal liturgical ‘worship’. It became part of the triumphalism of the Catholic multi-national organisation that took root in the third century (which persists today in many forms) and then evolved into establishment of mystical sanctuaries where God is somehow imagined to dwell.

This stuff is totally without apostolic mandate. It slaps Jesus in the face, ignoring his work and denigrating the perfect place he has prepared for us. Do we think we can do better than God? As Isaiah (Isa 66:1) shouted

“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.
Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?
 Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?”

Why do we Bible-lovers persist in behaving like the rest of mankind when the Father has planned something so much better for us? Why have we gotten so far away from the teachings of the apostles? There is so much in this Letter to the Hebrews which should turn our hearts to the real, away from the shadows and make us feel sick of the pathetic, boring, world-conforming imitations around us.

Just look at the total confusion around the use of the word “church” (from the Greek ekklesia).  In the Greek that word meant meeting, gathering. It was the everyday, common word for assembly. And now it commonly means a building, a total manipulation of the meaning to replace the gathered people of God in and around Jesus, with something made by human hands. How pathetic.

Remember how Jesus turned angrily on the Bible-lovers of his day who kept on putting tradition before the Word of God, that word which will never pass away, though all other words, systems, philosophies, religions, will disappear. What will he say to us when we see him face to face?

When are we all going to get it?

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POSTURES

Posted on 09/12/2012 | 4 comments

We continue looking at the Letter to the Hebrews, and in chapter 10, verses 11 to 14 we read,

Day after day every [Jewish] priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,  and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool.  For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Again our author returns to this constant theme to remind us that under the Old Covenant a priest needed to repeat the sacrifices every day without fail. Not only that, but also, these sacrifices are useless in taking away sins and restoring full friendship with God.  No wonder a new arrangement was necessary.

The posture of a priest is standing. A priest stands to make sacrifices and offerings, is never seated. So it was with the priests of Judea in Jerusalem in the Ancient World. And so it is today with many modern priests.

But Jesus’ posture in sacrifice was to allow his precious body to be stretched out and nailed to the tree.

But then he is said to have entered and stood with his blood in the heavenly sanctuary. Now, his posture is seated and at the place of greatest exultation, power and influence where he waitsfor his enemies to be under his feet.

The Letter to the Hebrews over and over, gives a clear and unmistakable assurance to anyone who wants to draw near to the Father, that the way is open—a full, complete, sacrifice has been made by Jesus in his death for the many, for us, and one that makes “perfect” forever.

This perfection is “for those who are being made holy”, those who are in his way, pursuing his truth, living in his endless life. This is both a done deal and an ongoing process! Cool, eh?

The result is again, one sacrifice has perfected (the Greek verb here means the action is done, final) those in the on-the-earth process of being made holy (the Greek verb here means the action is ongoing).

Then in verses 19-21, we read that this is a new and living way. Not the old, not a dead way! Not a theoretical or philosophical way! This way is his body, Jesus’ body,  that wonderful body which men and women touched and by which they were touched. How different this is to Greek ideas with its abhorrence of the human body. How much this underlines the fact that these heavenly things are realities and not just “spiritual”. A real, warm, flesh and blood, human body sits (that is, reigns) beside God Almighty right now, for us.  Moses is no longer in view. Jesus has replaced Moses—the great high priest over the house (Greek, oikos) of God. The household, true family.

So we can draw near to God with a sincere heart and with full assurance. We do not have to pretend, to act it out, to imagine or have some magical or mystical access—or be insincere. It is a matter of sincerely believing. And drawing near to stay, not to withdraw, to abide, permanently! Jesus told the 12 that it was better for him to go away—because they could have access to him in his absolute reign on high continually.

The place to be!

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Holiness for the many

Posted on 30/11/2012 | Leave a comment

Continuing looking at the Letter to the Hebrews, in chapter 10, verses 1 to 3, the writer drives home again that the Jewish law is a mere shadow with great limitations. Those same sacrifices were continuing—they did not stop because they were ineffectual, he said. They did not bring holiness.

In religious circles today, what offerings or worship do people make that needs continual repetition? Do these make them holy? Do these remove the feelings of guilt? We are often reminded that feelings are untrustworthy. Sure, only God is trustworthy! Yet, if we feel guilty, it may be because we have not entered into the true life in the Spirit, promised for us for us in the New Covenant to give us great hope for what is to come.

Much of today’s public expressions of Christianity carry continual reminders of sins to the hearer. In many places the order of service (not a New Testament idea) obliges people to confess sins in a vague, non-specific sense and they are expected to feel contrition. Then there are often sermons preached ‘six feet above reproach’ which are designed to induce guilt feelings but not real guilt. (Actually amongst the primitive believers in Jesus, there were no sermons, no preaching, no clergy, just encouragement and exhortation by one another.)

Real sense of guilt comes from God, from the Holy Spirit, a result of the reality that we have offended God and friendship with him has been severed as a result. It is a precondition for true holiness.

Hebrews 10 goes on to show that Jesus understood these famous words from Ps 40:6-8 to apply to him,

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me;  with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. 7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll —I have come to do your will, my God.’”

Jesus accepted the central mission on which God had sent him—to offer himself in a human body, in his own human body, to do the will of God. Remember the scene in the garden, Gethsemane? And this perfect offering has replaced all other! This once for all obedience makes us holy, an emphatic statement much repeated. We do not understand this cosmic event, but we are amazed at its wonderful depth and sure of its benefits.

Jesus was no puppet, no mechanical man dictated to by God. No. Jesus had a will of his own. He chose to make his will conform to the Father’s will. It was the will of the LORD to bruise him, we read in that amazing servant song of Isaiah 53. At Heb 10:10,  our author maintains

by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all

Holiness is a gift from another to be received by turning to Him and believing—can’t be achieved any other way.

Do you get it?

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On death and judgment

Posted on 23/11/2012 | 8 comments

We are looking at the Letter to the Hebrews and in chapter 9 and verses 25-26, we are told that Jesus’ doing away with the sin of many was a once-only event. He cannot be offered again and again like the continual offerings in the earthly tent or even worse, in some ritualistic, religious ceremony using pagan-like church altars by sacerdotal ‘priests’ in a human inspired ‘service’.

But now, ritual has been done away with forever—now we have the real. Instead of an ineffectual sacrifice we have the Real Presence of our great high priest at our gatherings.

God and man at table are sat down!

Hebrews 9 continues …

Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. (9:27-28)

We will all face death once and once only. And after we die, we will face the Judgment, each one, and only once, no hint of a second chance here or anywhere else in the Scriptures. And why should there be, from God’s point of view? We have been warned. Prepare to meet your God.

But, in contrast, Jesus, in completing his earthly work for us, offered himself and was sacrificed once. He died. God’s Messiah died! And he died once only, as we will. But after his death, no judgment for him, he lives, the sinless one who died for the sinful many.  He appeared once as a helpless human being like us. He died once, like us. Judgment for all men is faced once.

But he will appear a second time— the only New Testament occurrence of the phrase “second coming”!  The time for sin-bearing is then over–it is then the Day of Salvation.

His salvation, not judgment, comes for those who are waiting for him. Paul in 1 Thes 1:9-10 describes Christian believers as those who

have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead —Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

What a simple and yet profound definition of a Christian! and totally consistent with this amazing letter. Though judgment awaits all men and women, we who are his, gladly serve God and eagerly wait for Jesus’ return.

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THE BEST OF ALL

Posted on 18/11/2012 | Leave a comment

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote that the Holy Spirit shows (the Holy Spirit must be a real person! He shows, speaks, can be grieved, etc)showsthat the way into the true Most Holy Place of the Lord was hidden. In fact, only once a year could just one man enter the temporary copy standing on earth! (Hebrews 9:8)

But now a different tabernacle now stands! It is a person, a human like us, yet unlike any of us, the one-and-only Son of God.  He has tabernacled –pitched his tent— among us by coming in human flesh. Now he lives forever in God’s presence to carry on his work for us who abound in his work, participants in his movement. In him we find all our needs met, all our dreams fulfilled, all our weaknesses helped, all our sins forgotten.

We have seen how the conscience of the individual remained clouded and confused and rose up to condemn him under the Old. Only the outward was included, the inner person remained untouched. A better “tent” was needed to touch the inner person. It is here. And it’s no leaky tent.

So our author reminds us yet again He offered himself, which deals with our guilty conscience, but more than that: that we may serve the living God!

“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and came to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

To be ransomed means a price was paid for our freedom. What an astronomically great price! And now our great privilege is to serve the living God.To serve is to worship—to acknowledge his tremendous worth. Worshipping God means working in his service. It does not mean sitting in a church pew being entertained –or bored to sleep.

To serve the living God—how good is that!

As John Wesley shouted : THE BEST OF ALL IS GOD IS WITH US.

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Instead of rules and regulations

Posted on 14/11/2012 | 4 comments

The first covenant had regulations—lots, as well as the amazing earthly sanctuary, says the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, (chapter 9, verses 1 to 5). The spectacular tent with its out-of-this world design, specially crafted furniture, consecrated unrefrigerated food, the Most Holy Place, incense, the gold covered covenant box, not to mention the hundreds of rules governing the ceremonial work of the priests.

So, what are the regulations of the New Covenant? The setting up of numerous different kind of earthly sanctuaries called “churches”? A worldwide institution “the Church”? Pulpits, pews and altars? Mystical foods? A new order of priesthood? Transcendent sacrifices?  Better smelling incense? A priestcraft elite? Excited audiences and religious entertainment?

None of the above. Definitely. Absolutely not. Full stop.

But as you know, tragically, all too soon, men set up such things which were not even a shadow of the real. These survive today after a long history of slowly evolving forms: Catholicism, Anglicanism, sacramentalism, mysticism, countless other isms, formality, liturgy, clergy driven—old, superseded models but without any of the glory of God, no cherubim, no stone tablets written with the finger of God, no budding rod, and no true sacrifice for our atonement, and without any mandate whatsoever from the Lord of Hosts for the shabby substitutes men instituted. Empty. God has left this kind of house.

Under the Old Covenant, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry.  But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance, as it says in Heb 9:6-7.

But today in so many earthly temples, earthly priests regularly enter their sanctuaries to carry on their ministry and without any Aaronic authority, imagining they re-crucify the Lord of glory on some pathetic copy of an altar. In a mockery of the real, the true, they imagine wine is magically changed to blood by their mumbo-jumbo mantra instead of directing needy souls to see that Jesus has finished his work once for all and ensure the people of receive their inheritance, now.

In the old Jewish order, sins committed in ignorance were atoned—wonderful grace assuring worshippers that it did not depend on them dotting every ‘i’.  But the so-called sacrifice of the mass keeps people in perpetual dependence on a mediatorial priesthood, for they must come continually to maintain the believed benefits of forgiveness.

But what can really cleanse from sin? And what about sin not done in ignorance–deliberate?  What can cleanse my conscience? –nothing in the old covenant arrangement, glorious though it is. A better deal awaited God’s people, now come in the Christ and his offering for us.

So again you may ask, what are the regulations of the New Covenant?

Well there are none. There are patterns to guide us and above all the example of the Lord Jesus, who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. The habits, practices and attitudes he demonstrated to his little band of followers are there for us to practice towards one another : love, forgiveness, joy, patience, service, cooperation, togetherness, thanksgiving. Here we are not remotely on the same planet as Law, rules and regulations.

Jesus has gone from us to a place where he is constantly at work for us.

And there is the glorious gift of his Spirit! In his place he sends the Holy Spirit! People in the NT era knew they had received the Spirit from Jesus. They knew because they could abound in the work of the Lord (1 Cor 15:26). They knew because they were members of a functioning body all joined together, each with manifestations of the Holy Spirit to encourage one another. They knew because the Word of God flowed from their hearts and through their lips. They were bold, courageous.

Yes. There is also the eternal Word of God by which we continually hear His voice. What marvellous resources!

Surely we have such abundance in this great design plan that Jesus has inaugurated! What need then do we have of formalised institutions and commercialised religion? Of priestcraft and liturgical magic?

To hang on to such substitutions instead of God’s creative, revealed ways is to dishonour Him. To hear and put into practice His ways is to honour Him, to hallow His name.

Hear!

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A new deal has come

Posted on 06/11/2012 | 1 comment

Our writer to the Hebrews said the first agreement was defective (8:7-8) and a better one was always needed. Our author has already shown how much more serious this new deal is and it cannot be ignored.  God’s design for his people’s service unfolded in the New must be followed and not lost or replaced by worldly or pagan ideas and practices.

The choice for us to worship (=serve) God is a choice between two systems, two ways.

There is the system of law following the type of Aaron: Christ is redeemer and because of his wondrous act, his death on the cross, we compel ourselves to love and obedience, though it may not be our delight.  So we have a striving and not the promised rest from trying to be righteous. Others around us looking on get the message we are self-righteous though we may deny it. And they have every right to form that opinion.

By pursuing the way of law at the expense of the Holy Spirit and his revealed Word, we invariably add in our own ideas, mixing right with wrong, light with darkness and dropping the true and real by hanging on to vain traditions and practices of religion. Like sheep we go astray.

But a much better deal has been made for us! We are called into the experience of the Lord Jesus in the power of his endless, imperishable life in which he works in us who draw near. He promises to energise within us, in our own life, breathing his life in us, so that it becomes our new nature to love him, delight to do his will—his own life in us. That is, to worship him in Spirit and in Truth, each of us and together.

Surprise: Meeting together as Christ’s people today (“going to church”) is frequently inferior to that experienced even by Jews in Jesus’ day. For example in the synagogue, there was no pastor or priest ruling over them, running the show, so anyone was able to speak and to question what was said.  No one person jealously guarded who was allowed to share the word of God and for how long.

Nor did they think they were meeting in the ‘house of the Lord’. And each synagogue (means gathering) was independent and they did not have to toe the line of any outside superintendent, C.E.O., denomination board, statement of faith, or any head office.

Hebrews 8:7-8. God found fault with the first covenant in the hands of his ancient people and said (in the words of Jeremiah 31:31-34) ….

I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God, and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach or say to one another, “Know the Lord,”
because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’

We are supposed to have embraced the new arrangement. But appallingly, today, we see a denial of much of the glorious features of the New. Instead of God’s laws poured by the Holy Spirit into their minds and written on their hearts, many are content to get their spiritual input not from the Lord Himself, but from middlemen with agendas—spiritual directors, priests, pastors. Instead of being the people of God, many see their identity as Baptist or Catholic or Evangelical and so on. Tradition, blind, mindless tradition.

So instead of all God’s people being in unbroken fellowship with the living God—knowing Him in their personal experience—they are dependent on professional Christians as mediators.

In the fantastic deal we have received in Jesus, we have become part of a household, a family. We are each born into a Body—the Body of Christ. Individualism is contrary to the New Deal and to our organic, community life in the Body of Christ. We are many members and one body. God has made covenant in Jesus with a people, not with individuals.

Hebrews 8:13. When the Lord talks about a new agreement, he means that the first one is out of date. And anything that is old and useless will soon disappear. (CEV)

All kinds of spirituality are inadequate and have now been made obsolete by God’s flawless design. What is not planted by the Father will be rooted up, said Jesus. And what is built, if not with God’s specified materials, will be destroyed, even if on a good foundation, said St Paul.

It seems to me, God is calling on us to abandon obsolete, sinking, old-hat stuff that we should have jettisoned ages ago and join Jesus’ movement of love, joy, freedom and power as he promised. What do you think?

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You doing God’s stuff?

Posted on 30/10/2012 | Leave a comment

As we read in Hebrews 8:1-2, we do have a high priest, who sits in the place of absolute majesty in the Universe, and who serves in the real sanctuary, the most holy place, the true tent set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being. Under the Covenant with Israel long ago, God commanded an earthly, temporary, mobile sanctuary, a tent! a copy of the real sanctuary to be established by Moses with priests appointed under the law of Moses to offer up gifts and sacrifices.

But when Jesus came, he could not even approach the Tent of meeting—he was a layman! He was not even an acclaimed rabbi, let alone a priest (8:4).

Did you get that? He was a layman, not a priest! Yet in that humble form, with no religious or institutional status, he showed perfectly the character, the face, the loving-kindness and compassion of God! And by his life and death in that lowly status, he entered the TRUE sanctuary and forever abolished the whole system of exclusive priestcraft. He smashed for all time the clergy–laity hierarchy divide. So why does it still persist even in evangelical Protestant churches?

Look at Hebrews 8:5: that earthly tent made by Moses was just a copy, a shadow of the real, of what is actually in Heaven. Yet it had to be done kosher, right? So Moses was strictly warned by God:

 ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’(Exodus 25:40

God gave Moses the pattern, the design plans, for the tent of meeting and the worship to be made by Israel, which was to be visible, not just virtual. These plans could not be compromised in any detail. Understand the seriousness of following the exact plans given by the Lord Architect, even under a temporary covenant. Moses was allowed to see the transcendent, glorious form and then was instructed to materialise what he saw. No additions. No subtractions.

Following God’s instructions, Moses fabricated, erected and furnished the Tent, not a permanent structure like the worldly religions everywhere else. God was on the move with his people! The living God cannot be compromised, cannot be reduced to images or reproduced in buildings.

Now, if it was so important for Moses and Israel, under an inferior and temporary covenant arrangement, to implement exactly the Lord’s design, how much more critical it was that the apostles correctly implement the Lord’s plans for the Body of Christ to be visible on the Earth and be on the move!

And the followers of Jesus, without any Jewish authority, did so, as our letter under review and the rest of the New Testament shows. They obeyed Jesus’ words and in the power of the Holy Spirit their obedience turned the world upside down. The evidence is there in all the New Testament scriptures. We have the Lord of glory on the move in his gathered people. We see Almighty God reproduced in the face of Jesus and visibly in his gathered people: God’s pattern!

Many Christian leaders tell us they cannot see the Lord’s design for gathering of God’s people which he handed down to the apostles, and which was then implemented under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What! The pattern’s on every page of the New Testament. But we are so used to having a D.I.Y. religion based on human thinking, founded on worldly ideas, we just assume that what we have always done is right.

If the Lord is to be honoured and given the ‘worth-ship’ He deserves, a serious, radical and unbiased approach to the New Testament is needed to see  God’s pattern for his Body. But we must remove our churchy, religious glasses to see it, and to throw out both the baby and the bathwater.

Even more so, since Jesus’ own ministry is carried out, not in a mere replica of the heavenly, but in the dwelling place of God. His work is astronomically superior to the old Mosaic order. The new arrangement Jesus has made with his people is much superior to the old one as it is established on better promises. And itcalls for even closer attention from you and me, to what God wants and the careful putting into visible form, God’s perfect design for his people.

Notice Jesus’ terrifying answer  to the troubled question his politically correct and concerned disciples put to him after he had rebuked the Pharisees over what defiles a person (Mt 15:12-14): Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up!

God is jealous for his plans and designs for his work to be followed by his servants, including us. Look carefully and thoughtfully at what Jude wrote (Jude 3):

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

Are you prepared to see how proud arrogance, abysmal ignorance, sheer blindness, rank disobedience and shoulder-shrugging complacency has subjugated God’s perfect design in the totally controlled, commercialised, industrialised, entertainment-based, consumer oriented  Churchianity of today?  Stay tuned.

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