Read Hebrews 9:1-8

Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. ² A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand and the table with its consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. ³ Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, ⁴ which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. ⁵ Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover. But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.

⁶ When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry. ⁷ 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. ⁸ The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still functioning.

Let’s Pray.

Before we get going this morning, I want to give y’all a little insight into what it’s like to be a preaching pastor week in and week out. You know that each week you are going to be challenged to present a document that is roughly 2000 years old – the Bible and the Gospel – in a way that is relevant to a group of modern-day people, and the best way to do this is to find some kind of a story that makes it relatable. So, each week becomes this search for the “right” story and some weeks it comes really easily and some weeks it is a challenge. This week was an exceptional week because a challenge in my own life became incredibly applicable as a means of conveying the Bible.

You see, this week was a transitional week for the Ruddock home. No other week in over 7 years has the idea that “one door closes and another opens” been more real than between Saturday and Tuesday of this past week. Not yesterday, but last Saturday I took the kids to go swimming with my parents at their place in the Del Web community. For a couple of hours each Saturday it’s open to family and friends, so the kids can go swimming. In the middle of swimming Shane recognizes he needs to go to the bathroom, stops playing, waits for me to get out and dry off, and then makes it to the bathroom and goes in the potty. As a dad I was doing some fist pumps y’all! This was such an awesome moment for me because for over 7 years now we’ve been changing diapers of one child or another and the end is in sight. He’s been doing good the past few weeks, but when he self-recognized and stopped playing, that was a game changer. We may finally be past diapers and oh, what a feeling it is!

That elation stayed with me for 48 hours y’all. But on Tuesday all of the Farm League baseball schedules came out and Shane is playing t-ball for the first time. So this Tuesday was the first time we’ve ever had two children playing sports at the same time. Shane has done Soccer Shots at daycare, but now we are balancing two schedules for baseball, and we’re baseball-ing basically every single day except for Monday and Tuesday. One door closes, another door opens. It’s always a shift with parenting but this is a shift that takes a little more nuance than the last one.

See, with diapers it was easy. You know what to do. You have a mess to clean up and you clean it. But, with two boys starting sports I’ve found myself with a new job as a dad. I now have the role of “coach”. Whether I’m coaching the teams the boys are playing on or just playing coach when we’re practicing or playing around at home, I am now a coach and it has been a big transition because I have had to do some reflection and realize that I am not the best at getting a kid or anybody hyped about a sport. I’m just not that “hype person” like some people are wired. I’m that personality that if you come to me excited, I will help hone you. I understand what it means to be dedicated and to pour into something with constant practice and sharpening of skills. But that doesn’t come easily or immediately, it takes time to get ready for that kind of a coach and so I’m having to decide if I just don’t be involved until one of my kids shows that level of desire for a sport or activity, or do I have to adjust who I am to fit the needs of my children at this point in time.

And, really, that’s the same thing we’ve been talking about since we started this series. We’ve been talking about the glory of the Lord, but, really, we’ve been talking about how God has been parenting us and transitioning with us through the course of history. It started when he revealed himself to Abraham for the first time and He established a people who called him God. Then he became not only the God who sees, but the God who saves and the level of relationship with His people changed. They were now understanding of his desire for them and they wanted to know more about Him. Moses being the representative for the people was the one to voice this with those beautiful words, “Show me your glory.”

God revealed as much of himself as he could and in doing so, it turned out that his children – the people of Israel – were not quite ready for the fullness of His glory. It was too much, but God had promised Moses that he would go with them and that he would never leave their side.

So, God gave Moses, as a part of the original covenant with the people of Israel, the dimensions, materials, and construction needed to create a place where God could reside amongst His people without destroying them. The tabernacle. And within the tabernacle resided two areas. One where the priests could draw close to the presence of the Lord in their day-to-day activities in the Holy Place where the consecrated bread and the altar were located. And a second, inner room that laid behind a veil where the ark of the covenant was and where God’s glory would reside within it alongside items that had encountered the power of the Lord and revealed it to the people – the manna that kept them alive in the wilderness, Aaron’s staff that budded as a sign of the living God, and the tablets with the covenant on them. The very documents that reveal to us what God is truly concerned about for his people – that we be like him: Holy.

But why was all of this necessary? Because we couldn’t handle God. He was that dad that was going to be too intense of a coach for us to be able to handle before we were ready. God, as a good Father, saw that and he held himself back. He used a veil to hold himself back from us because we were not prepared for the fullness of his glory. And why weren’t we prepared? Why aren’t we prepared? Sin.

It’s as simple as that. Sin. We are sinful in our very nature. It is our default setting, and our sin does keep us from God. Again, in the post-Christ era of our relationship with God we don’t take our sin seriously enough – and I absolutely include myself in that we. We don’t take our sin seriously enough because we have only ever experienced God on this side of the veil, but we need to see what our sin kept from us for so long and what our sin continues to keep from us today. And we need to understand this because we need to understand just how limiting our sin is. All of this was necessary because of our sin. We talk about privilege a lot in today’s society, and we hear people saying, “Check your privilege.” When it comes to our assumptions. But think about the privilege that we have with regards to our sin. We don’t think twice about it, but it matters. It separates us from the glory that resides on the other side of that veil. Yes, we are offered grace, but God still cannot be around sin. When we sin, we keep our hearts on the other side of the veil. We separate ourselves from a God who desires to be with us. He desires to be with us so much that he gave us the dimensions for the only way he could be with us in any way, shape, or form for thousands of years.

Imagine that. Imagine, as a parent, that you have all of this love for your children and you have this desire for your children, and you couldn’t share it with them because if you did, they would die. So, you hold yourself back not for your own sake, but for their sake. Wouldn’t that be absolutely excruciating? God had to go with his people, frustratingly watch as they failed time and time again, and know that as you go with them you are helping them, and that for one day out of the year, one of your children would prepare himself and be able to come in and be with you for that one day.

Imagine only getting to see your children – only one of your children – for one day out of the year, each year. Would that be enough? No. Not at all. It wasn’t enough for his people, and it wasn’t enough for God. I mean, would you expect to have a great relationship with your children if you were only able to see one of them one day out of the year? Probably not. And if we look through the Old Testament we can see God’s desire for his people, for his creation to be with him in glory. So, something had to change. The very dynamic of the relationship had to change and – as Moses put it – we are a stiff-necked people, so God took it upon himself to change the dynamic.

And so, we come back around to this idea of a parent going through transition. When we first encountered God’s glory, he made it easy for us to be his people: just believe in him and no other. That was like diapers. It was straightforward and the people had a God they could claim as their own. But the needs of God’s people shifted to needing him in a more present way and God’s glory is not something that can easily be bound up. Like an intense coach, if God revealed the fullness of his holiness and his glory upon us, we wouldn’t have been ready for it and so He had to adapt his “parenting style” so that he could still be with us as our Father, but without being too much for us to handle. God me that need with the veil and the Holy of Holies. But, sooner or later, this period would prove to be transitional because, like we said, it just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for God, and it isn’t enough for us. We need Him more and He desires to be with us the way a loving parent desires their children to be gathered around them. So, we find ourselves in Hebrews discussing the Holy of Holies and how it worked, but, more importantly, we find ourselves on the precipice of what we know to come. In verse 8 it says, “The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still functioning.” That other way is about to be revealed to us, but we need to understand this period of transition more. We need to understand it so we can have a better appreciation for God’s love and desire for us. His ability to sacrifice desire and hold himself back for our sake. Because when we understand that, we stop taking for granted the nature of the grace we are offered, and we start to fully appreciate that God disclosed another way into the Most Holy Place. So that we can fully appreciate the miracle that is our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ and his ability to unveil our hearts before our God.

Let’s Pray.