Sermon from May 21, 2006
A gospel song we used to sing declares: "He the pearly gates will open." Other Christian poetry says the pearly gates open onto streets of gold, which are lined with mansion after mansion. Some people hear that and say, "It is childish to think that heaven is literally like that, and we ought to put a stop to it." I have no objection, but I do have a question about the criticism. If you don't like to picture heaven as a walled city with pearly gates and golden streets, how do you picture it?

My freshman-year English prof in college ridiculed the biblical image of heaven as a place "where people just sit around and play harps." Of all people an English professor had forgotten an unshakable law of human thought: the mind has to have some mental picture of heaven to work with, or it doesn't work well and may not work at all.

So, if you don't like traditional pictures of heaven, bless you! But if you reject them, one of two things happens. Either you come up with a different picture of heaven – no easy task! – or you reject all pictures of what heaven is like.

Rejection, I think, is what many people have done. But there is a catch. If you refuse to compare heaven to anything, you are in fact comparing it to nothing. You are depriving your mind of all mental pictures of heaven. So, when it comes time to think about heaven, you have nothing to think with and therefore nothing to think about. I wonder if that is one reason many people do not think about heaven.

If the only way to see is to put your glasses on, then you'd better put your glasses on. If using mental pictures is the only way we can think about heaven, then we should welcome them and use them freely and without apology.

The Bible uses many mental pictures to help us think about heaven and God and what He has done for us. We have been considering in detail one of these mental pictures in our effort to understand the death of Jesus Christ. The Jewish high priest offered sacrfices for sin on the Day of Atonement. In this way God's covenant with Israel was preserved and renewed.

The New Testament letter of Hebrews used that particular Jewish institution to help us make sense of the death of Jesus. Hebrews says, "If you want access to the meaning of Jesus' death, go back to the Day of Atonement, and compare the Jewish sacrifice for sin and Jesus' death on the cross." We have made two comparisons so far.

Jesus is our great High Priest, and His death on the cross was a sacrifice for sins. Today, we consider a third comparison that we seldom hear about. When we read Leviticus 16 last month, the Jewish high priest did something after he sacrificed the bull for his sins and the sins of Israel. He entered the Most Holy Place and sprinkled blood on the Ark of the Covenant, the place where God was present on earth with his people. Hebrews used his entrance into the Most Holy Place to help us grasp further the meaning of the death of Christ. Let's begin in Hebrews 9:2-3.

Heaven's Most Holy Place
If you are not familiar with the Old Testament, verses 2-3 give a simple sketch of the layout of the Jewish temple. A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand, the table and the consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place.

So, we have two rooms: the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. A curtain divided them. The Holy Place doesn't play a part in what follows. What happened in the Most Holy Place was central to the writer's understanding of the death of Christ. Let me show you. Turn back to Hebrews 8:1-2.

The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest (Jesus), who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man. What sanctuary was he talking about?

Verse five helps us, when it says that they (the Jewish priests) serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned (in Exodus 25:40) when he was about to build the tabernacle: "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."

It sounds like the old Jewish temple in Jerusalem was the copy of a temple in heaven. Did the writer expect us to believe there is a temple in heaven with two rooms, separated by a curtain? You may not believe your ears, but your ears are okay. It is the idea that astounds. Before you dismiss this idea as nonsense, think about something.

Verse five calls the old Jewish temple a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. We think of copies as exact things. When you photocopy a document, you want it to be an exact copy. But a shadow is an inexact copy.

The old Jewish temple was a shadow of the temple in heaven, as different from it as the shadow of a tree is different from the tree itself. Have you ever tried to chop up the shadow of a tree for firewood? We never mistake a shadow for the reality, but there would be no shadow, if there were no tree. There would be no Jewish temple, if there were not something in heaven very much like it and very different from it.

Do you believe that Christ ascended into heaven with a real body? That's what the Church confesses. Well, why should we be surprised that His real body should have real surroundings to go with it? Heaven is not less real but more real than earth.

Into the Presence of God
Hebrews 9:11-12 focuses more closely on this temple in heaven. When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. Abruptly, he drops the subject. In verse 24 he picks it up again.

Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence.

We cannot avoid the heart of the matter. Christ died. What meaning do you give that? The apostles presented it as the central act in the history of the world. But why? They said it atoned for the sins of the human family. But how? Well, yes, how? Have you ever held up to your adult powers the crucifixion of Jesus and tried to put into words how that event could atone for the sins of the world?

Try it, and I think you'll find a terrible poverty in yourself. I find my efforts fragile. It's like trying to carry molten steel in a paper bag. Under pressure of our own mental poverty maybe we'll sit at the feet of Hebrews and find those strange images of heaven strange as always but strong. We shall find it satisfying to picture Jesus, the Son of God

     Condescending from sovereign authority,
     Dying by obliging hands with high court approval,
     Defeating death in a display of His Father's power,
     Exchanging the body we know for a body yet unknown,
     Proceeding with joy before the shy and silent Seraphim,
     Passing through the great torn curtain to His Father's face,
     Sprinkling on His Father's vesture His own blood,
     And saying, "Father, I am home. Be merciful to Man."

The point of Hebrews is precisely that. As the Jewish high priest, alone with sacrificial blood in the Most Holy Place, was the sole representative of the entire Jewish nation before God, so Jesus, our great High Priest, alone with His sacrificial blood in the Most Holy Place of heaven, is the sole Representative of the human race before God.

Jesus, Mediator and Substitute
That's it. That's it. Don't miss it. That is what has altered the human situation permanently. One of us is permanently in the presence of God. Jesus Christ slept. He hungered. He had biceps and anterior cruciate ligaments. He was tempted in all points just as we are. He still has the scars from His sojourn among us. He drank the cup of man to the dregs, and He is peramanently in the presence of God, representing our interests.

Hebrews 7:24-25 expresses it this way: Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

He can do that, because He is not just one of us. He is also the Son of God, creator and heir of all things, the exact representation of God's being. In Jesus of Nazareth God and Man united forever in one person. Heaven and earth are married forever in this person. That is how wholly and unconditionally God has committed Himself to the human family (see Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 125).

It's too much, isn't it? It's too good. We can't take it in. But we have to try. What drives the world is what people are willing to give their lives for. What drives the universe is what God was willing to give His life for. God couldn't just say to sinful man, "I forgive you. Don't worry about it." That would trivialize evil and mock our suffering.

The sacrifice of Christ gives substance to God's forgiveness. In a mystery God bore in His own life the consequences of our injustice and cruelty by subjecting His Son to the consequences of our injustice and cruelty. God the Son came into this dead-end street and died a death He did not owe to pay a debt we could not pay. "Go ahead," He seemed to say, "and do your worst to me. I will bear it, and I will transcend it, and I, who am one of you, will sit down at God's right hand, and I will be your advocate, and I will extend my authority throughout human life like leaven in a lump of dough, and I will some day eradicate the injustice and the cruelty of man and restore creation."

Who else could do this on behalf of mankind? In taking that responsibility upon Himself Jesus was more than our Representative. A representative is someone we send to do what we ourselves might just as well have done. Jesus is our representative before almighty God, but He is more than that. He is our Substitute. He did for us what "we could never have done for ourselves, and which does not need to be done over again," (The Death of Christ, 132).

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.... we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishneess to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength – 1 Corinthians 1:21-25.

The Apostle Paul was saying nothing other than this: the death of Jesus was the wisest and the most powerful thing God could do. How could Paul say that? What did he and the rest of the apostles see that we don't see?

Our reflections on Hebrews give us a significant part of the answer. Jesus died a sacrificial death for the sins of the world in obedience to the will of God. It is strictly accurate to say that His "death belongs to the way God rules the world," (Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 64).

Ruling the world through willing, sacrificial death was and is Christ's work on earth. He can do it, because He is God's final word to mankind, the heir and creator of all things, the exact representation of God's being, who tasted death for everyone and was made perfect through suffering. He can do it, because even though He was tempted in all points as we are, He was without sin. He can do it, because God raised Him "forever beyond the threat of death" (Bauckham, 48) to an indestructible life.

That is who offered Himself to be the sacrifice for sin in obedience to the will of God. And now, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them – Hebrews 7:25.

His sacrifice and His entrance into Heaven began to rule the world, because as representative and substitute Jesus changed "the causal structures of reality." In Him God and man are joined forever, and that makes reconciliation with God a real and permanent possibility for the rest of us, if we repent of our sins and hold on to Christ.

So, what ... shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31-32) God is for us.

The human family, knit together electronically and economically, seems further apart than ever, as people kill each other and threaten death with weapons that strike fear into our hearts. The aborting of the young, the neglect of the old, the absence of loyalty in the workplace, the corrupting power of illicit drugs, the disengagement with truth in academia, and the glorification of the lie in our culture create an environment that oppresses the human spirit and threatens it with despair and a hard heart.

     But the cross of Christ says to the human family in all its agonies: God is for us.
     When personal and national dreams die, God is for us.
     When health fails, God is for us.
     When leaders betray our trust, God is for us.
     When the unimaginable happens, God is for us.
     At the cross God is for us. In the Most Holy Place, God is for us. Don't be afraid.