After a serious car accident in Venezuela, Carlos Camejo was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials released the body to the morgue and a routine autopsy was ordered. But as soon as examiners began the autopsy, they realized something was gravely amiss: the body was bleeding. They quickly stitched up the wounds to stop the bleeding, which in turn, jarred the man to consciousness. Camejo said, “I woke up because the pain was unbearable.” Equally jarred awake was Camejo’s wife, who came to the morgue to identify her husband’s body and instead found him in the hallway—alive.
Enlivened with images from countless forensic television shows, the scene comes vividly to life. Equally vivid is the scientific principle in the morgue. Sure, blood is ubiquitous with work in a morgue; but the dead do not bleed. This is a sign of the living.
Thought and practice in Old Testament times revolved around a similar understanding—namely, the life is in the blood. For the ancient Hebrew, there was a general understanding that in our blood is the essence of what it means to be alive. There is life in the blood; there is energy and power.
This notion of blood and its power can also be seen in the language of sacrifice and offering found throughout Near Eastern culture. Just as it was understood that the force of life exists in the blood, there was a general understanding of the human need for the power of perfect blood, a need in our lives for atoning and cleansing. The blood of a living sacrifice made this possible temporarily, but God would provide a better way.
When Christianity speaks of Christ as the Lamb of God, it is a description [of the One] whose blood cries out with enough life and power to reach every person, every sorrow, every shortfall, every evil. He is the Lamb who comes to the slaughter alive and aware, on his own accord, and with his blood covers us with life. There is life in the blood of Christ, whose entire life is self-giving love; there is power, and he has freely sacrificed all to bring it near.
The Christian story tells of a time when we will bow before the slain Lamb who stands very much alive, though bearing the scars of his own death. He is not dead and buried, but beckoning a broken world to his wounded side, offering love and life, mercy and power in blood poured out for you.
Some individuals have sought to rid Christianity of blood language, speaking only about Jesus’s love instead. The blood of Christ, however, is integral to Christian theology. If we lose the language of blood, we lose the gospel. The hymn “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” by William Cowper captures the role of Christ’s blood beautifully:
There is a fountain filled with blood
drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains.
As our author in Hebrews begins the exhortatory part of his letter, he says…
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
In making transition from instruction (1:1-10:18) to exhortation (10:19-13:25), the preacher assumes that the foregoing ten chapters, truly believed, ought to have produced a profound dual confidence: confidence in one’s access to God, and confidence in one’s advocate before God.
“This paragraph is actually a single sentence of continuous admonition, applying the truths developed in the letter and with all this in mind. The first part (vv. 19–21) is causal (“since”), summing up God’s great gift from 5:1–10:18 with two privileges—first, what Christ has done for us (vv. 19–20, the bold entrance he has effected into the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary); and second, what Christ has become for us (v. 21: “a great priest over the house of God”). The author informs us what we have in Christ and then what we should do with it. This latter comes to us via commands (vv. 22–25), a string of three hortatory subjunctives (“let us” commands), which enumerate our responsibility. Interestingly, the three center on the three main blessings—draw near in faith (v. 22), hold firmly onto hope (v. 23), and spur one another to love (vv. 24–25)” (Grant R. Osborne and George H. Guthrie, Hebrews: Verse by Verse, Osborne New Testament Commentaries (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), 209.)
Faith, hope and love, of course, are the great triumvirate of 1 Corinthians 13:13 and also were qualities that Paul looked for in all his churches.
“No old covenant worshipper would have been bold enough to try to enter the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. Even the high priest entered the Holy of Holies only once a year. The thick veil that separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies was a barrier between people and God. Only the death of Christ could tear that veil (Mark 15:38) and open the way into the heavenly sanctuary where God dwells” (Warren Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: New Testament, p. 832).
Now, however, the author of Hebrews gives them three gracious invitations: “Let us draw near…” (v. 22), “let us hold fast…” (v. 23), “and let us consider…” (v. 24). This threefold invitation is based upon our confidence to “enter the holy places.” And this confidence rests upon the finished work of Christ. We enter not through the blood of bulls and goats, but through the blood of Jesus Christ…into the very presence of God.
Our paragraph starts with the word “therefore,” indicating that this exhortation is based upon the realities that our author has established—the Christ is a better high priest offering a better sacrifice in a better tabernacle by a better covenant. “In view of all that has been accomplished for us by Christ, he says, let us confidently approach God in worship, let us maintain our Christian confession and hope, let us help one another by meeting together regularly for mutual encouragement, because the day which we await will soon be here” (F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 244).
Do you remember what we saw in the last few weeks in vv. 14 and 17?
“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Heb. 10:14).
Therefore, draw near to God!
“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more” (Heb. 10:17).
Therefore, draw near to God!
As he begins, he assumes matter-of-factly in the opening phrase that his hearers have a proper confidence in their divine access: “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh . . .” (vv. 19, 20). Their confident access comes from the torn curtain of Christ’s crucified body. The rending of Jesus’ flesh on the cross, which brought his death, perpetrated a simultaneous tearing from top to bottom of the curtain that had barred the way into the Holy of Holies (Matthew 27:51). Now they walked confidently through the torn curtain of Christ, so to speak, into the presence of the Father.
Charles Spurgeon so eloquently says…
“For believers the veil is not rolled up, but rent. The veil was not unhooked, and carefully folded up, and put away, so that it might be put in its place at some future time. Oh, no! But the divine hand took it and rent it front top to bottom. It can never be hung up again; that is impossible. Between those who are in Christ Jesus and the great God, there will never be another separation.”
Paul in Romans 8:38-39 encourages us:
38 For I am sure [that’s that confidence again] that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The inner courts of Herod’s Temple were accessible by 10 gates, through which only Jews could enter. Inside there were several chambers and a courtyard where sacrifices were made. At one end was the holy place, with the Holy of Holies separated by the curtain.
Whereas before they could only have surrogate access through the high priest, who slipped behind the curtain once a year for a heart-pounding few minutes, they now had permanent access through the blood and torn body of Christ.
https://nearemmaus.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/herods-temple/
This confidence lay in nothing that we have done—no amount of good deeds, not even a sincere heart—it has everything to do with what Christ has done for us, shedding His own blood. This nicely complemented the preacher’s earlier encouragement: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (4:16). They had deep confidence in their access to God” R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews: An Anchor for the Soul, vol. 2, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), 30.
“Drawing near” has been the concern of the plan of God ever since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. How can sinful man recapture the joys of fellowship with God? The key question, asked in Psalm 15:1 by David was “O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” In other words, who can meet with God? Well, the answer for centuries was through the tabernacle and then through the temple. But now a “new and living way” has been opened up for us to have fellowship with God.
Drawing near to God has been the chief concern of the author of Hebrews. On three other occasions in Hebrews where our author encourages us to draw near.
“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).
“Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).
“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb. 11:6).
There are several other NT texts that affirm the same thing, two of which are:
“For through him [i.e., through Christ] we both [i.e., believing Jews and believing Gentiles] have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:18).
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18a).
Now, there are many people who are off limits. The president, for one. Supreme court justices. Actors and actresses often have bodyguards, as do professional sports figures. But listen to this: the infinitely transcendent, more-important-than-anyone-else, almighty God of this universe, not only is approachable, but makes Himself approachable by the sacrifice of His one-and-only precious Son.
And we can approach Him boldly.
This boldness is a complete contrast to the way the High Priest entered the Holy Place under the Old Covenant. “He went with fear and trembling, because, if he had neglected the smallest item prescribed by the law, he could expect nothing but death. Genuine believers can come even to the throne of God with confidence, as they carry into the Divine presence the infinitely meritorious blood of the great atonement; and, being justified through that blood, they have a right to all the blessings of the eternal kingdom.” (Clarke)
The tense of the verb shows that we have this confidence as a continuing blessing. It never fades or disappears. We can never forfeit it or lose it.
We can enter God’s presence and fellowship with Him by means of “the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Heb. 10:20). Christ’s sacrifice provided a new and living way compared with the old, and now dead, way of the Old Covenant. “The way” in this verse is not Jesus Himself, in the sense of Jesus being the way to salvation (John 14:6). It is, rather, the way of direct access that Jesus opened for us through His death into God’s presence.
“The way to God is both ‘new’ and ‘living.’ It is ‘new’ because what Jesus has done has created a completely new situation, ‘living’ because that way is indissolubly bound up with the Lord Jesus himself” (Leon Morris, p. 103).
It is wonderful to have this real, anytime and anywhere access to God. Sam Storms mentions several advantages to enjoying the immediate presence of God, that I want to close with today.
To draw near to God means that we have these privileges and blessings:
Prayer: God wants us to tell him everything; to cry out with our complaints and our needs and our gratitude and our confusion and our hopes for the future.
Fellowship: God wants to walk with us in a relationship of intimacy and openness such that when we sin, we would never think of running from him in fear but to him in faith.
Power: To draw near to God is to be a recipient of his power; to experience the very power that raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him to the right hand of the Father (Eph. 1:19ff.).
Protection: When we draw near to God, we enjoy his protection; we avail ourselves of the promise that no weapon formed against us can ultimately cause any harm; to draw near to God is to know and rest assured that “if God is for us, who can be against us?”
Enjoyment: Paul says in Romans 5:11 that because we have been reconciled to God through Jesus, we “rejoice in God.” To draw near to God is to freely and openly and sincerely rejoice in his goodness and greatness and every other truth about him that we know.
Pleasures: In Psalm 16:11 we are told explicitly why we should seek the presence of God, for there and there alone we find “fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.”
Hear his voice: We draw near to God when we are open to hearing him speak, first and foremost in and through Scripture but also in those tender communications from his Spirit to our spirit.
Manifest presence: To draw near to God is to experience in an almost tangible way a heightened sense of his presence. Of course, God is always and everywhere present with us but there are times when that presence is manifest or intensified and we are enabled by the Spirit to feel and enjoy and sense it in ways never before known.
Communion with God: To draw near to God is what the Puritans used to call having “communion” with God; feeling his love, knowing his commitment to our welfare, resting in the peace that he brings.
And the most amazing thing about this privilege is that God is the one who makes this possible. He wants us to draw near and He wants to bless us with these multiple blessings!
God is the good news of the gospel. Getting him. Knowing him. Seeing him. Savoring him. Enjoying him. Relishing him. Being satisfied with all that he is for us in Jesus. Experiencing God himself in his presence and power and majesty and love. God himself as our faithful friend and constant companion and ever-present lover and Lord is the gospel!Says Piper:
“And all of this is for our joy and for his glory. He does not need us. If we stay away he is not impoverished. He does not need us in order to be happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. But he magnifies his mercy by giving us free access through his Son, in spite of our sin, to the one Reality that can satisfy us completely and forever, namely, himself” (Piper, “Let us Draw Near to God,” March 23, 1997).
We can draw near to God because Jesus voluntarily shed His blood, His life-giving blood, in our behalf. That, and that alone, provides complete and final forgiveness from sins.
Perhaps you wonder, “Why will the holiness and majestic beauty of God not consume me but rather, as you suggest, thrill me and bring unparalleled pleasure and joy?” The answer is because the blood of Christ has been shed and we need never, ever again fear the wrath of God!
That confidence has nothing to do with whether we have lived a clean and good life, but whether we have entered the “new and living way.”
We have “confidence to enter the holy places,” that is, the immediate presence of God, because Jesus died and rose again! He opened up for us “the new and living way” through the curtain, that is, “through his flesh” (10:19b). It is “new” because it was previously unavailable to those living under the Old Covenant. Only those who are members of the New Covenant experience this privilege. And it is “living” because it is access through a person who is alive, a person raised from the dead who always lives at the Father’s right hand to make intercession for us. And it is “living” because it is life that is imparted to those who avail themselves of it.
Grace Still Amazes 