Looking in Hebrews chapter nine
this hour, if you would like to turn there. Now, Hebrews was written, remind
us, before the complete cessation of the old temple. The old temple
was still standing when Hebrews was being written. The temple
was not destroyed until about 70 AD, about 70 AD. So the writer's reference, the
reference is coming in Hebrews chapter nine, it's written referring to the coming demise,
it's going to end. He talks about the Old Covenant
and this is a continuation from the 8th chapter. Everything in
Scripture, it's a letter that was written. He didn't go chapter
1 and write and then chapter 2 and write. The translators
did that in order for us to have, be able to break it up. To be
able to find it and then they put verses in it and things like
that. But this is a complete continuation from where he's
saying the old, if you look at verse 13, in that he said a new
covenant. verse chapter 8, "'He hath made the first old, now
which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.' Then
verily the first covenant." So you could just put therefore
right there if you want to and that would be the same thing.
Therefore in light of what I just said and now we are going to
be dealing with this temple. Now we are going to be dealing
with this, the temple that is at Jerusalem. Do you remember
the woman at the well? As we are seeing here in Hebrews he
is talking about the old covenant going away. The woman at the
well, we talked about a little bit the first hour, she said
to the Lord, you say we ought to worship in Jerusalem, but
we worship in this mountain. And what the Lord said, the time
is coming. And now is, well, you'll need
to worship in this mountain or in Jerusalem. God is a spirit.
and they that worship must worship in spirit and in truth. And that's
what's being described here by the writer as he's letting us
know all those old covenant, all those old types and shadows
have been fulfilled in Christ, been fulfilled in Christ. That's
actually what I've titled this message, Types and Shadows, Types
and Shadows. The reason the old covenant passed
is because Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believeth, to everyone that believeth. And
we can examine, because of that, we can examine everything through
the lens of the gospel and see everything that pointed to Christ.
If you go all the way back to the very beginning, if you go
all the way back to Cain and Abel, you can see Abel had to
offer the lamb. The Lord was pleased with the
lamb. Why? Because the lamb was a picture of Christ. You go to
Noah's ark. Lord told Noah to build an ark.
That ark is Christ. It's a picture of him enduring
the wrath and us being inside of it, being saved from the wrath.
You go all the way through every picture in the Old Testament.
It all points to him. It's all about him. And he is
the revelation from God. He is what God will reveal. You
and I will not start studying our Bible and say, okay, here's
something new. that I've never seen before,
but it's not Christ, because it's always going to be Christ.
Now, he'll let you see different angles of himself, if I can put
it that way. We saw, remember in Ezekiel,
it was, I believe it was Ezekiel, he had the beast that came down,
had the four sides, all four different sides. And that's just,
we see as the humanitarian, or the, Him being in flesh, and
one, we see His deity, we see Him being a human, we see Him
as being sovereign. He's all the same though, it's
not something new is what I'm trying to say. We just see Him
from different viewpoints. Let's read our text here in Hebrews
9, verse one. Then verily, the first covenant
hath also ordinances of divine service in a worldly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle made,
the first, wherein was a candlestick, and the table, and the showbread,
which is called the sanctuary. And after the second veil, the
tabernacle, which is called the holiest of all, which had the
golden censer, and the ark of the covenant, overlaid round
about with gold, wherein was the gold pot that had the manna,
and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant,
and over it the cherubims of glory, shadowing the mercy seat,
of which we cannot now particularly speak. The Lord said to Pharisees,
search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal
life. And this morning, I hope that we can see Christ in these
types and pictures, these types and shadows that are right here.
These five or six of them, they're right here, what they represented.
In the volume of the book, the scripture says, the volume of
the book it is written of me. From Genesis to Revelation, it
is the revelation of Christ. Everything that God has ever
done points to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what he will
reveal. He will reveal nothing else but
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is all. You know, we can look
around and see that he is all and everything points to him,
even in his creation. the tree that bears seed after
its kind. Well, that's a picture of you
and I being dead. And yet the Lord causing us to
bear because of his seed, because of him, not because of us, but
bringing us from dead works to serve the living and true God,
bringing us to life. You can see a dead seed being
planted and what does it need? It needs water and it needs sunshine. and it germates, it comes to
life, doesn't it? It comes to life, the Lord does
that. Well, is it not true with the gospel that you and I need
the washing of water by the word and we need the son of righteousness
to shine his light into our heart, which is our life source. If
he doesn't do that and give us repentance and faith, we'll never
be alive. Everything in this world, everything in this world
points to God for his glory, points to the Lord Jesus Christ
and his finished work on the cross of Calvary. What about marriage? Marriage
is a union between a man and a woman. And Jonah knows this
all too well, just getting married recently. Sam, she's no longer
Samantha. She's now Mrs. Jonah Fisher. She took your name. She died
to herself, so to speak. And that's a picture of the Lord's
church. We don't have a name of our own anymore, do we? We
have his name, Jehovah Sit-Kin-You, the Lord our righteousness, that's
our name. Everything brethren, the mothers carrying the children,
the children have nothing to do with their birth. The mother
birthing the child, what a beautiful picture of the Lord birthing
his people into his family at the appointed time when he chooses.
Everything is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and his people.
Now here in this temple, we can see that as evident as well.
The first thing we come to, and I want to go through these. And
I want to give us as little information as I can, but I have to give
us as much information in order for us to understand it. So pray
the Lord would open up our understanding that this wouldn't, uh, just
be a message of details, but it would, we would see Christ.
We would see Christ in these things. If we don't see him,
we've missed it. We were wasting our time. I want to see him in
these things. So the first thing we come to, he says, um, in verse
two, for there was a tabernacle made the first, wherein was the
candlestick. That's the lamp sand. That's
the candlestick. It was seven candles on a candlestick. Seven. Well, seven is the number
of perfection. And that candle never went out.
It always stayed on. It was always lit. It was always
lit. What's that a picture of? Is
not Christ the number of perfection? He is perfect, isn't he? He's
the light of the world. He's the one that had to come
into darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. Christ is
the eternal light of his people. You know what he said? He said,
I am the light of the world. That's what he told us. That's
what he told his disciples. I am the light of the world.
That means there is no other light besides him, besides him.
By his light, all things have life. John one tells us, in him
was life and the life was the light of men and the light shineth
in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. The light
shined in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." Let me
ask you this. Do you think those priests that were in that temple,
do you think they ever looked at that candlestick and thought
of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you ever think that it pointed
them to the Lord? If it did, it was because the
Lord gave them faith to see Him. But it was a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And they missed it the whole
time. We don't worship candlesticks.
You understand what I'm saying. We see the picture of the Lord
in his perfection and the light shown forth. And if he doesn't
shine, we're in darkness. But we can't comprehend his light. He has to cause us, make us,
enable us to receive. Somebody asked me this question.
I know I probably said this last couple of weeks, but it was.
It was just one of those things where the religious individual
you ever been around somebody that's very self righteous and
what they say just kind of rubs you wrong. You know what I'm
talking about? This guy looked at me and he said. Can others
see Jesus Christ in you? He asked me that he found out
his pastor. He says, do you consider yourself
a righteous man? Can others see Jesus Christ in
you? And I looked at him. What he
means by that is, do they see self-righteousness? Do they see
my piety? What I said to that man was, they didn't see Jesus
Christ in Jesus Christ. They didn't see God in God. He's walking right in front of
them, just like this candlestick's here. They didn't see that that
was a picture of Christ. No, we can't comprehend him.
He's got to reveal himself. He has to reveal himself. And
now, because it's all been fulfilled, because the old covenant has
come to an end, we get to look back and see, oh, the candlestick,
that's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the representation right
there. When the Lord says, let your
light so shine among men that they may see your good works
and glorify, he used that verse on me. He said, well, the Bible
says, let your light so shine before men that they may see
your good works and glorify your father, which is in heaven. That
light, that light, that's what we're doing right now. We're
declaring the gospel. That is the light. That he is,
we're telling, we're preaching the gospel of the Lord's free
and sovereign grace to sinners. That's the light he uses. We're
just like that woman at the well, come see a man. Don't look at
me, come see a man. Just a beggar telling another
beggar where I found bread, that's all we're doing, isn't it? Our
good works are looking unto him in all things, not looking to
self, not examining ourself, that's not good works. Good works,
we look to Christ by faith, that's good works. Look to Christ by
faith. Now, something else about that
candlestick is the priest had to trim the light to keep it
burning. That's a picture of the preaching of the gospel,
isn't it? The church that preaches the gospel. We're just trimming
the light. It's all we're doing. We're keeping it. The Lord's the one
that keeps it burning. I don't want to misspeak on that,
but you understand what I'm saying. We're going to, by his grace
that we have, the Lord's give us the ability. We're going to
continue to try to keep the gospel being declared if he would do
it. We're just, we're like Paul,
we preach Christ crucified and our self-servants for Jesus'
sake. You know, those priests, their life was a life of servitude.
They couldn't own any land. They didn't make any money. Everything
that was done, it had to be given to them. Whenever the sacrifice
was made, they got to eat part of the sacrifice. They didn't
have, they were completely servants unto the Lord and so it is. For
the Lord's people, we are servants unto the Lord. You can own land,
yes, but you understand what I'm saying. What we have, we
know it's the Lord's, it's His. It ain't even mine. What I got
ain't even mine, it's His. It's already His, isn't it? Ain't
that true? Now look in their text here, verse two. The second
thing we see is the table and the showbread. That's Christ,
the bread of life. Now the interesting part about
this showbread is it had to be pierced through with an awl. Had to be pierced through. And
that's a picture of the Lord's humanity when he was suffering
on the cross of Calvary, being pierced through. He was pierced,
he was wounded for our offenses, bruised for our transgressions.
He was pierced through. It's the picture of the suffering
of our Lord. What did the Lord say in John
6, 35? And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. I am
the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger. And he that believeth on me shall never thirst, shall
never thirst. That's what the bread represents
here. You want to know why we believe the gospel? You know
why we crave this manna? Because hungry people eat and
thirsty people drink. And the Lord makes a need in
his people to be hungry and thirsty after righteousness. I put that
verse in In the bulletin on purpose, blessed are they that hunger
after righteousness, hunger and thirst after righteousness, you
know why they'll be field because your hunger and thirsting, not
after your own righteousness, your hungering and thirsting
after the righteousness that's found in the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what this bread represents right here. It was the sustenance
for the priests. This is what they ate. This was
their food. This was their livelihood. Is
that not a picture of us just declaring the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ as our only sustenance? He is our only sustenance. We have a need that God creates
only in his people, and then he fills that need with what
he provided, the Lord Jesus Christ, the bread of life, He said in
John 6, but I say unto you that you have seen me and believe
not. You've seen me and believe not. All that the father giveth me
shall come to me and him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out. This is why we come to him. Just because we've seen
him doesn't mean we would believe him. He has to cause us to come.
We will come. The Lord's people are drawn of
him. We're drawn by him. were drawn
to him, clinging to his life, his body, his blood, as our only
hope of eternal life, as all of our acceptance before God's
holy throne. We're just like those priests
eating that bread. Without the bread, we would perish.
Children of Israel ate the manna in the wilderness. They didn't
see that picture, did they? The manna coming down from heaven?
That was the Lord Jesus. He even told the Pharisees. That
was the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, the bread that's come
down, he said, My body is meat indeed, didn't he? My blood is
drink indeed. He said, you were so busy getting
your bellies full that you didn't realize the picture is this is
unto eternal life. My body, my blood. Now notice
the location of these items that we've read thus far in verse
two, where it was the candlestick and the table and the showbread,
which is called the sanctuary. the sanctuary, the holy place,
the holy place. Now all temples, pagan or Jew,
or most, I'll say most, because I'm sure there's exceptions,
they were normally cut into two, or there was two sections. You
would have the outer portion, you would have the inner portion.
Now here in the Jewish religion, it was the outer portion in the
temple being the holy place or the sanctuary. The inner, the
inner, portion of the temple was separated by a veil, and
it was the most holy place. And the priest only went in there
once a year to put the blood upon the mercy seat. Now this,
brethren, where these are located, called the sanctuary, what we
must, and what it represents is the most holy place being
heaven, and the holy place being earth, separated by the veil.
It's the eternal and it's time. And it represents the Lord Jesus
Christ coming in the form of a man, in time, being the light
of the world, being the bread of life, having the veil that
separates. We can't come to the holiest
of holies. If we do, we'll certainly die.
but he is our sanctuary. It's a picture that if we're
gonna go to the holiest of holiest, we have to go through the sanctuary
first. We have to go through the holy
place first. We have to have the showbread and we have to
have the light. If we don't have those two, we
cannot approach God and live, can't be done. If we don't have
Christ our sanctuary, we're gonna approach God, we'll die. It must
be by Christ alone, his body and his blood. That's what the
veil represents. That veil, that is to say his
flesh, his flesh. When he died, we must have been
in him and died, buried with him and resurrected with him. This is what is being taught
here. Christ came to this earth as
the bread of life and as the light of the world for his people,
giving everything needed for salvation for his people. something interesting about this
veil that separates. We had this study, if you remember,
when I first came up, I may have been within the first couple
months, we looked at the temple a little bit and we looked at
the veil and it's three colors, three colors. It's red and it's
blue and it's purple. And what that signifies is the
Lord's deity being blue, is humanity being read. And in between the
purple, he's the God-man. You want to get to God, you have
to be found in the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the
only way. It's the only way. Because of who he is, because
he is salvation, because he is Emmanuel, God with us, now we
can approach the throne of God. I want to show you why we can
approach the throne of God. Look at Mark chapter 15. Hold
your place here. I knew in studying this, it'd
be a lot of information, but I pray as we're going through
this, we're seeing these pictures of our Lord. That's my hope. Look in Mark 15, verse 33 through
39. And when the six hour was come,
There was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And
in the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloah, Eloah,
lama sabachtathai, which is being interpreted, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? And some of them that stood by
when they heard it said, behold, he called it for Elias. And one
ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar and put it on a reed
and gave him to drink saying, let alone, let us see whether
Elias will come to take him down. And Jesus cried with a loud voice
and gave up the ghost. Now I want you to look at this
next verse. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from
top to the bottom. And when the centurion which
stood over against him saw that, he so cried out and gave up the
ghost. He said, truly, this man was
the son of God. Because the veil of the Lord's
flesh was rent on the cross of Calvary, the veil in the temple
was rent in twain from top to bottom. This is what the writer
of Hebrews is conveying to you and I. Everything that they did
under the old covenant has gone away because it was all a picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he was rent, the veil in
the temple was rent from top to bottom. When he said, it is
finished, That veil was rent from top to bottom. We can come
boldly to the throne of grace, having obtained mercy, and to
find grace to help in the time of need. He, by his own blood,
purged our sin. He entered the holy place by
his own blood, not by the blood of bulls and goats, but his own
blood. He placed it upon the mercy seat, and the Father was
satisfied with his offering. Now, you know what the scripture
tells us? Whosoever will, Let him come, take of the water of
life freely. The spirit say come, the bride
says come, whosoever will, let him come. And let's go back to our text,
Hebrews chapter nine. The next thing we see in verse
three and four, after the second veil, the tabernacle, which is
called the holiest of all, which had the golden censer, and the
Ark of the Covenant, overlaid round about with gold, wherein
was the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron's rod that budded,
and the tables of the covenant." We come to the golden censer.
Now, do you remember when we talked about that golden censer
before? It was more or less kind of a shape like a pot, kind of
a ball and a pot mixed together. It was gold. It had a chain.
Maybe you've seen, they still use it in Catholicism. They wave
it back and forth. It has incense coming out of
it. That's exactly what it is. It's a golden censer. Now this
golden censer was a device, as I've already said, used to burn
incense, but it represents two things. First of all, it made
a cloud of incense cover over the mercy seat. The cloud of
incense covered the mercy seat that was upon the testimony.
And this came from Leviticus. This is a quote from Leviticus.
It was a cloud over the mercy seat so that the priest would
not die. The priest would not die. It
shows us when the Lord Jesus Christ was being offered up,
he was offered up in complete darkness unto his father. For
some time, the Lord allowed man to see his son being crucified. But the Lord at one point blacked
out the universe. Nobody could see in. Nobody could
see what God was doing whenever he was putting away the sin of
his people on the cross of Calvary. God was dealing with God. The
second part about the incense is it's sweet incense. And when
Christ Jesus was offered up on the cross of Calvary, he said,
it went up into the father, a sweet smelling savor. It's worship. That's what it represents. When
Christ was the only one that's ever worshiped God perfectly,
perfectly. We see that the incense here
represents the darkness that covered the Lord on the cross.
And we see the incense represents the sweet smelling savor that
went up to the father. And the Lord said, satisfied. I'm satisfied
with that sacrifice. Jesus Christ satisfied every
sense of the Father in order to redeem wretched, vile sinners
like you and I. In order to redeem his elect,
in order to make them the very righteousness of God, he says
this, he who knew no sin, he who knew no sin became sin that
we might be made the righteousness of God in him. He was made sin
that we could be made righteous. Now look lastly at these other
items. We have the Ark, which is the mercy seat. The mercy
seat. You know, when they made this
mercy seat, some of them, they were believers. Some Jews were
believers. It says every nation, every tribe, every kindred. There's
some Jews that were believers. We see the ones that were, some
of the accounts that we have of Daniel, he's our brother.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they believed God by faith. They're
our brother, our brethren. So some of them wanted to worship
God. And the Lord said, when they
made that mercy seat, he said, here is where I'll meet with
you, right here. I won't meet with you anywhere
else. You're gonna have to come by mercy and by my grace alone,
or you cannot come. It's gotta be by mercy and grace,
and it's going to require blood. going to require blood. Well,
we know who that mercy seat is. It's the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't
it? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the mercy seat. He is the
blood sacrifice. He is the high priest for his
people. He's all these pictures, every one of them. It's all about
him. The Lord brings what about the
items in the mercy seat? I love this Aaron's rod that
budded, you know, just an old dead stick for the Lord did something
to it. I like to think about Lord taking a bunch of me and
you being a bunch of dead sticks, breathing life into us. And we
just bud forth with new life, just like that. We talked about
the seed a little bit ago. That's what that rod represents. That's
the new creatures in Christ. And where are they? They're in
the mercy seat. We're in Christ. The scripture
says we're seated in Christ in the heavenlies right now. Right
now. Just a bunch of old dried up
sticks, aren't we? But he calls his new life to spring forth.
The next thing we see is the tables of the covenant. That's
God's law, isn't it? Jesus Christ kept God's law perfectly
because you and I could not. We couldn't keep one law. That's
what the tables of the covenant are. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling
the law. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Next thing we
see is the manna. The manna that fell in the wilderness.
We've already talked about that. He's the bread of life. He's
the bread of life. Where our sustenance comes from,
our life-giving force comes from, it comes from him alone. That's
what the manna represents. We see it's the Lord that gives
life from death. How did he do that? By his death.
By his death, he made us alive. Do we not see that in, for all,
in all time and in all eternity, Christ is all, Christ is all. He was all in the old covenant.
He's all in the new covenant. He's all everything. Search the
scriptures. Search the scriptures for in
them you think you have eternal life, but they are they which
speak of me. It all pointed to him. It all
pointed to him. These are all types. And these
are all shadows of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ. This is what
he is. This is what he's done for his
people. He successfully redeemed and
is seated at the right hand of the father. And in time, he's
just gonna make us see that on every single page, it's all about
him. It's all about him. Thank God
for his types and his shadows. Let's pray. Father, we are thankful
for your word. Bless it to our understanding
for we, Lord, we must be taught of you. We must be taught to
see you, and we desire to. In Christ's name we pray, amen.