Hebrews 9:1-10

Hebrews 9:1-10 … Our reading today is preliminary to conclusions which are reached in Hebrews 9:11-28, so we should confine ourselves to understanding the preliminary things. Hebrews 9:1-5 gives a quick summary of the portable tabernacle God directed Moses to build. It’s a five-verse summary of Exodus 25-40 and indicates how sinful man could approach God, who is holy and pure. The process was detailed and involved a high priest who went through a purification routine and could only enter the “Holy of Holies” once each year on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) with a basin of goat’s blood representing a substitute sacrifice for sin. Hebrews 9:8-10 tells us that this was a symbol or type … a picture indicating a future, more permanent way, a better way, into the presence of God. The Old Testament is intended to point us to Christ (the name Christ is the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah). That’s what we should be looking for throughout the Old Testament, and that’s the point Hebrews will make here.