Hebrews 9:11-14 Free to Serve

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.     Hebrews 9:11-14, ESV
 
Even as the writer of Hebrews explains how Jesus is the fulfillment and consummation of the Old Testament types and symbols, he reminds us of why those types and symbols were so important. They were earth-bound representations of the genuine article. In Hebrews 9:11-14 we are told of how Jesus entered into the heavenly tabernacle as the great high priest, offering His blood as the perfect sacrifice for sins and purchasing eternal life. 
 
The Old Testament sacrifices were not without worth. When the priest took the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkled the people with that blood (Exodus 24:1-8), the people were made ceremonially clean; they were set apart from the rest of sinful men as God’s special people. What a divine gift of grace! But even though those sacrifices mattered, they pale in comparison to the sacrifice Jesus made in the heavenly holy of holies. There He offered Himself as the spotless Lamb of God. There He purified us from the need for repeated ceremonial sanctification by redeeming us from slavery to sin. As a result, instead of being set apart by a ceremony that looked forward to a day of actual redemption, believers are forever set apart for God, enabled to serve Him by their redemption from slavery to sin.
 
The implication is this: to know Jesus as Savior is to be free from those things that hinder our service to God. This may demand a bit of a worldview shift. We so often speak as though we are hindered in service to God by the government, by our health, by our financial or vocational circumstance, or by the behavior of others. The truth is that we are free to serve our God even when the external circumstances of this life make that service unpleasant or even painful. The true obstacle to serving God, our sin, was dealt with by Jesus in the heavenly tabernacle.
 
I pray that you will find new freedom “to serve the living God” even today!
 
Pastor Don