Hebrews 9:1-15
Dear RTB’ers,
A couple of partial sentences struck me today:
But when Christ appeared… (v. 11a) The author suddenly switches away from details about tent and temple worship. Something really new is coming in the next few sentences! A dramatic transition…!!
For if the blood of goats and bulls…, …how much more will the blood of Christ… (vv. 13a, 14a) Again, with two half-sentences the author compares one blood with another. …how much more…!!
It’s hard for us 21st-century believers to really understand the impact these early disciples must have felt as Jesus is doing away with temple worship and replacing it with His own teachings and His own sacrificial offering. And how very hard it must have been for faithful Jews to abandon their old ways to serve this new “sacrificial system” – Jesus’ shed blood for all humanity for all time. …how much more…!
Blessings!
I have a comment although it’s not specifically about this passage — maybe more on the verses in Hebrews 8. I have read Leviticus several times and never seemed to get much out of it until this year — it was just all those repetitious sacrifices of so many animals. But this year I finally really took in that the sacrifices were for different reasons — in particular that the first sacrifice involved cleansing the person offering it so he could approach God. And now, in Hebrews there were the readings about how because since Jesus was without sin, he didn’t need to make that first sacrifice. And also the comparisons involving the high priest and Jesus: somehow everything sort of came together for me. And, I see why this study put Leviticus and Hebrews together. I’ll have to really think about these things for awhile.
Great comment, Katey, really uplifting for all of us. No doubt, Leviticus can be a tedious study. But as you say, having Leviticus and Hebrews back-to-back, it all comes together much better. We might have to go back and re-read those early sacrificial chapters in Leviticus!
Thanks for sharing!!