EPISODE 250 HEBREWS CHAPTER'S 9 and 10 "Heart Transplant"

Welcome to Share the Word. In this episode, Pastor Paul Nitz paints a great picture of the sacrifice made by Jesus and how it is superior to the repetitive animal-based rituals by the priests of the Old Covenant. But he doesn't stop there. Then again, when does he ever? Hebrews chapters 9 and 10. Heart transplant.

On December 3, 1967, and I remember what a stir this caused then, a 54-year-old man named Louis Washansky received a human heart transplant in a hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The surgical team was headed by Dr. Christian Barnard. Mr. Washansky was dying of severe incurable heart disease. The donor organ came from a 25-year-old woman named Denise Darvall, who was severely injured by a drunk driver in an auto accident, and she was taken to Cape Town's Groote Schuur Hospital, where she was pronounced brain dead.

When they realized she had the exact same blood type as Mr. Washansky, her father gave permission for her vital organs to be used if they could be. Mr. Washansky eagerly agreed to this experimental surgery because he was out of options. The critical five-hour operation was successful and was celebrated all over the world, and the surgeon, Dr. Barnard, was lauded and became famous everywhere.

I remember him. His name was on every news show at the time. Although Louis Washansky died a little less than three weeks later, it wasn't from heart failure. It was from pneumonia, meaning what Barnard had accomplished was still a monumental achievement, proving such a lifesaving procedure was possible. After all, heart disease has been the number one cause of death worldwide for many decades. Jumping ahead almost 60 years now, last year there were approximately 5,000 human heart transplants just in the United States.

The only reason there weren't more was because of the lack of available donor organs. A donor heart has to be used within several hours. They can't be stored. But when it comes together, to date, heart transplant surgeries have added on average 13 years to their recipients' lives, with the longest-lived survivor to date being a man named Bart Janssen, a Dutchman who's been alive for 40 years since his heart transplant operation. I think he still is. The Medical Science Update has been brought to you by Share the Word, where you can learn the big ideas of the New Testament chapter by chapter.

With all that in mind, Hebrews chapters 9 and 10 provide a full summary of the big theological ideas the writer has been laying out for his first-century Jewish readers, and for all the rest of us who read this part of God's Word ever since. Let me summarize his summary. He's been presenting the case that Jesus and all that God accomplished through his life, death, and resurrection is far better than anything Old Testament Judaism offered, and God's plan had now replaced it. He explains in detail that the old covenant made with Israel back at the time of Moses was never intended by God to be permanent, that although it was necessary in its time, had always been a temporary system until the arrival of the far better and permanent covenant God would bring about through Jesus. That is what he calls the new covenant.

How is the new covenant better than what had been practiced in the Jewish religion? Well, he has been stressing that the terms of the old covenant were mediated by men, sinful human priests, all of whom eventually died and needed to be replaced, and their most important work, sacrificing animals for people's sins. That was never finished because those sacrifices had to be repeated over and over, year after year. Whereas the new terms of the covenant, the new covenant he's describing, are mediated by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who unlike the Old Testament priests is a perfect, eternal being. His sacrifice, because of who he was, was a complete, once-for-all atonement for people's sins that never needs to be repeated.

That contrast is clear since the gospel accounts all point out it was at Passover, one of the busiest days of temple sacrificing, where priests killed millions of animals probably over the years, that just a few hundred yards away outside the city gates, Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, was hung up to die. On the cross, when our sins were transferred onto him, he experienced the wrath of God, suffering and dying in our place. And when he finally cried out, It is finished, remember the veil inside Jerusalem's temple that had always blocked access to the Holy of Holies was torn in two by God's own hand. A way of direct access to God through his mediation was now available. And after Jesus' work on earth was done, the author repeatedly tells us he sat down at the Father's right hand in heaven, demonstrating the payment for sin was forever completed. We don't need priests.

We don't need altars. We don't need temples anymore. What we do need are the benefits of the new covenant Jesus made possible and offers to all of us who will put our faith in Him. In chapters 9 and 10, the author doubles down on his contention that the Old Testament system requiring physical structures like the tabernacle and later the temples, with their special furniture and implements, human priests, slaughtered animals, all that is over. He begins chapter 9 by describing briefly the old setup at the tabernacle, the original place of worship and sacrifice back in Moses' time. He says there, A tabernacle was set up and in its first room were the lampstand and the table with its consecrated bread.

This was called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered Ark of the Covenant. This ark contained a gold jar of manna, Aaron's staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. Above the ark were the cherubim of the glory, overshadowing the lid of atonement. Then he says, But we cannot discuss these things in detail now. His readers knew what he was talking about, but most readers of Hebrews today probably do not.

Those verses, though, surfaced a memory for me from the 1960s involving a traveling Bible teacher who came to my home church and set up a detailed scale model of Israel's tabernacle based on the original instructions found in Exodus chapters 25 through 40. Each night of this conference, his teacher shared a message on one of the pieces of furniture or implements in the tabernacle and how it was symbolic of something that would one day be fulfilled by Jesus and the new covenant. He demonstrated, piece by piece, the point the author of Hebrews is making here when he says, Everything about the tabernacle was illustrative. The author says that exactly in chapter 9, verse 9. The most famous piece of furniture there was in the Most Holy Place, sometimes called the Holy of Holies.

It was the Ark of the Covenant, an acacia wood box a little less than four foot long, covered with gold inside and out. It had a solid gold lid that was called the mercy seat. Attached to each end of the mercy seat lid were solid gold figures of angels bowing low with outstretched wings. Inside the ark were kept a few sacred treasures like the actual tablets containing the Ten Commandments and a golden bowl holding manna, that supernatural food God fed the Israelites with in the wilderness. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the holy high priest of Israel, dressed in white linen from head to toe, entered that place, the Most Holy Place, to make the required annual sacrifices of atonement for the nation's sins. When he entered inside the veil, he had to first burn a kind of incense that filled the place with scented smoke.

And then, after the smoke of the incense was heavy, he sprinkled the blood of the special sacrificed animals on the mercy seat, called in some versions the lid of atonement. This all had to be done exactly the way God prescribed to Moses. If all was done well, the Shekinah glory, the manifest presence of God, would appear to show the offering for the nation was accepted, although the thick smoke kept the priest from seeing God's face, it says. If you want to read about just how carefully this all had to be carried out, you can find it in Leviticus chapter 16. Later, that whole setup from the tabernacle was carried to Jerusalem when King Solomon had a beautiful, permanent temple built there. Solomon's temple, described in 1 Kings chapters 6 and 7, was finished around 960 BC and was in use in Jerusalem until it was destroyed by the Babylonian army in 586 BC.

By in use I mean every day, morning and evening, sacrifices were made in that temple. Special ones made every Sabbath and every new moon, and the most holy ones made annually on Passover and the Day of Atonement. Blood, blood, and more blood was shed. As the author says here, without the shedding of blood, there was no forgiveness. 2 Kings chapter 25 describes how many of that temple's sacred treasures—ornate furniture, golden bowls, candlesticks, bronze pillars, all kinds of artifacts—were carted off by the Babylonian conquerors before they burned the city of Jerusalem. This is confirmed by the records of the Babylonians themselves, some of which are housed in the British Museum today.

Interestingly, neither the biblical records nor those discovered that the Babylonians kept tell what became of the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of God's own presence and its lid, the mercy seat, where the sacrificial blood was sprinkled. That means that later, when the second temple was built in Jerusalem by Herod the Great, the one which was the center of worship in Jesus' time and still in use when Hebrews was written, the most holy place of that temple was empty. There was no Ark of the Covenant or mercy seat in there. That's confirmed, by the way, by the first-century Jewish historian Josephus in his work The Jewish Wars. So, when Jesus died on Calvary and called out, It is finished, and God tore the veil of the temple from top to bottom, He exposed the holy place as it was then, just an empty room.

By the way, whatever happened to the Ark of the Covenant and its lid of atonement, the mercy seat? There are few mysteries in all history over which there's been so much speculation. Some ancient Jewish writings maintain that back in the sixth century B.C., when things looked grim as the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem was ready to break through, Israel's priests took the Ark of the Covenant through underground tunnels Solomon had built for just such crises and hid it in a subterranean chamber that's never been found. That's actually very plausible because such tunnels do exist under Jerusalem, and there have been several expeditions trying to find the Ark of the Covenant, not only in Jerusalem but in other locations as well. You know, thinking about this whole topic brought up more memories for me.

For example, I heard a sermon once when I was young by whom I don't remember, but it was very effective because I still remember parts of it many, many years later. In it, this preacher dramatically described the suffering of Jesus on the cross and the earthquake that occurred when he died, and he said that when that earthquake happened, it not only tore the veil of the temple inside the holy place, but split open the rocky ground on Calvary where Jesus' cross stood. And he suggested that when the Roman soldier pierced Jesus' side and the blood flowed out, some of it seeped down through the cracks in the earth, running down, dripping on the hidden mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. Wow, what an image. He sounded pretty sure of that too. That graphic image has stuck in my mind all my life.

Although, I'm sorry to say, there really is no actual biblical support that that's the way it happened. I wish there was. You've got to know if that was true, the author of Hebrews would have had a field day with such a powerful symbol, wouldn't he? But what he does tell us, what we may honestly glean from what he tells us is, I think, just about as good and as powerful an image. At chapter 9, verse 11, he writes this: But when Christ appeared as a high priest of good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood he entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

And then he reiterates at verse 24 and following, For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, meaning any physical temple or any holy of holies. That was a mere copy, he says, of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Now once at the consummation of the ages he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. At the consummation of the ages means this is the most important thing that's ever happened or ever will happen in our world. Christ's sacrifice at the cross was the literal climax of history. This passage, though, strongly suggests that the tabernacle described in the Old Testament law of God was so carefully designed and constructed because it was a model of an actual one existing in heaven.

A greater, more perfect one not made by human hands, as the author here puts it. In fact, he says that the Old Testament tabernacle was a mere copy of the true one, and then goes on to say Christ, after completing his work of redemption, entered this true heavenly tabernacle with the blood of his own sacrifice in the presence of God. I really can't think of a reason not to take this literally. That is, that Jesus, after he died, acting as our eternal high priest, presented the blood of his once-for-all sacrifice to God in a heavenly tabernacle on its mercy seat. That he actually did that, finally fulfilling all the illustrations, all the symbols God's people had been practicing for centuries and centuries under the instructions of the Old Testament law. Now that's a very powerful visual.

Let me get back to where we started as we wrap up this part of Hebrews. A key line from the last few chapters comes at chapter 8, verse 13, where it says, When God speaks of a new covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete, is now out of date and will soon disappear. The author used three descriptive words in those lines to describe the old covenant system. The first one means to get worn out and so be ready to be discarded, as with something that has served its purpose and is no longer any good. The second one means having grown old, lost all its strength and vigor. And the third one means ready to disappear, to pass away for good.

That was true spiritually since Jesus had now come and inaugurated a new and better covenant. Where sin is completely and finally dealt with for all those who will accept Him. But it was also true literally, because the physical temple in Jerusalem was right then on the brink of being destroyed by the Romans. That happened within a year or two of this writing. God had already exposed the fact its holy place was empty and its presence was no longer there. So the old system that had been failing for a long time finally came to an end when the Romans sacked and burned Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and destroyed that last temple.

The things that had been at the very heart of Judaism since the time of Moses were worn out and were passing away. In God's plan, it was time for something new, something far better. What specifically brought to my mind that opening I gave you about heart transplants? It's from these verses at the end of chapter 9. Listen. But now, once for all time, He, that is Jesus, has appeared at the end of the age to remove sin by His own sacrificial death.

And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ was offered once as a sacrifice to take away the sins of people. It sounds to me like the author was thinking about this parallel, how every one of us is dying from a severe incurable heart disease, not like Mr. Wachanski's, a heart disease called sin. In the Bible, the word heart is used to identify the real us, our spiritual reality. Our hearts, in that sense, are fatally diseased. And what's at stake is much more consequential than anything threatening us physically.

These verses are a pointed reminder that our lives here are only temporary, and that we all have an unavoidable appointment with death. Our human bodies will grow old, and our physical hearts eventually will fail. But the real us, the spiritual part of us, moves on and is heading toward a day of judgment, the author says. What we all desperately need is a radical intervention, a spiritual surgery only God could perform. We need a heart transplant. We need a new heart.

And that's what God is offering us in the new covenant mediated by Jesus Christ, a new heart. Have you had that kind of heart transplant? In chapter 10, the author underscores again that this is why the Son of God came out of heaven, to make this new and much better covenant with God possible for us. He reiterates there just what it took for this to be possible when he writes, The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of better things to come, not the better things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. If they could have, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared.

But instead, those sacrifices actually reminded them of their sins year after year. For it is not possible for the blood of animals to take away sins. That is why when Christ came into the world, he said to God the Father, You did not want animal sacrifices or sins offering any longer. But you have given me a body to offer. You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. So I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God.

When Christ came, because of who he was, he was able to make that perfect and final sacrifice for sin and, as a result, inaugurate this new and much better covenant with God. This time, all the benefits of the covenant are graciously available for anyone, Jews or Gentiles, all of us. All of us who will believe into Jesus the Savior receive complete forgiveness of our sins, a new heart, a restored relationship with our Creator, and an eternal home in heaven. Next time, we're going to clarify the one indispensable thing that unlocks all the benefits of the new covenant for us, and that is faith. The righteous ones will live by faith, he says here. Thanks for listening, and be sure to join us when we continue to explore the biggest ideas in the book of Hebrews.

And if you will, help us share the Word by taking a moment right now to pass it along to someone who's curious about the Bible. You can find our entire archive of past episodes at www.sharetheword.org. Thanks, Paul. If you've enjoyed this and other podcasts, as Pastor Paul mentioned, please help us and share them everywhere. The colorfulness of the many ideas that Pastor Paul shared were not only thought-provoking and painted a picture emphasizing the true value of how the blood of Christ eternally cleanses sins, fulfills the law, and provides direct access to God. Encouraging believers to hold fast to their faith and the superior permanent salvation.

Although some of the things, as he said, were not scripture, they certainly emphasized the imperativeness, the importance of the blood of Christ, as well as our acceptance and belief in Him.