"Shadows & reality"
They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven. For when Moses was getting ready to build the Tabernacle, God gave him this warning: “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.” (Hebrews 8:5 NLT)
The book of Hebrews talks a lot about shadows & reality. So much of the Old Testament was not the reality of God & His work but just a shadow, or more accurately a foreshadow, of things to come. The whole system of worship in the Old Testament was a picture of what Jesus would do. Just as the Old Testament law required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sin, so Jesus would give his life for the forgiveness of all that trust in his substitutionary sacrifice. Just as the high priest would enter the holy of holies one time a year, so Jesus once for all entered God's presence & presented himself as the remedy for sinners. The priest had to first offer a sacrifice for his own sin before making atonement for the people. But with Jesus, he was sinless & he offered himself not for his own sin but for the sin of others.
The whole priesthood leaves us longing for something better. This messy, bloody, gory system makes you long for something else, something better. Jesus is the something or rather, someone better. We see priest after priest come & go, live & die, & make atonement for the people but then someone must take his place. Jesus stopped the need for future priests because his priesthood is forever. He ever lives to make intercession for his people.
Jesus is the true & better priest that entered the holy presence of God, to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice, so that he might redeem & intercede for his people forever. This is the great reality of the plan & heart of God! And it's all realized in Jesus.
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