but after the second veil a tabernacle which is called Holy of holies,
Hebrews pauses to walk its readers through the old tabernacle, room by room. Here it reaches the curtain that hung inside the tent. That curtain carries the weight of the whole description. It closed off an inner room, and so it told every worshipper how near he could come to God.
The name assumes a count, and the count starts at the entrance.
In Hebrews 9:3 the veil of the Temple is called the "second veil," the curtains at the entrance being counted as the first.
Each curtain let fewer people through than the one before. The last let only one man through, once a year.
The first entrance-curtain, the wide Gate of the Court, seemed to say "Come" to everyone. The second entrance-curtain, the Door of the Holy Place, seemed to say "Come" to any priest whose hands and feet had been washed at the basin. But the third entrance-curtain, the Veil of the Holiest of all, seemed to say "Not yet". The Holy Spirit taught men, by that excluding Veil, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made known. That Veil shut out every man except one. But the yearly entrance of that one man was "a shadow of good things to come". It pointed forward to the end of the "not yet" period, and pictured how the way into the Holiest would one day be shown.
The curtain was not just part of the building. God had a reason for hanging it there, and the reason was distance.
Within the second veil no one could enter. God gives His reason: the Holy Spirit was showing by this "that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made known." The purpose of the veil was to show that the people could not come to God. He could give them laws, punish them if they broke them, enable them to look to Him; but they could not come near.
Hebrews does not describe the two rooms evenly. One writer points to a small detail in the wording: gold.
In the outer sanctuary the lampstand was pure gold, and the table of showbread was overlaid with gold. Yet the gold is not mentioned in connection with these, while verse 4 mentions it three times in connection with the holiest… Gold is a picture of the glory of God. That glory was bound up with Judaism, yet God could not reveal it in any full measure under law and its shadows. So the Spirit of God would direct our attention to the greater revelation connected with the holiest. This is a picture of Heaven itself, while the outer sanctuary is a picture of the sphere of Judaism and the earthly priesthood.
One writer begins with what the tabernacle was for, then says what the veil stood for. The figure works two ways at once.
In general the tabernacle was where God dwelt and revealed Himself. The veil was, as we know on the same divine authority, the flesh of Christ. It concealed God in His holiness of judgment — in His perfectness as sovereign justice itself. But it showed Him in perfect grace to those to whom His presence revealed itself.
The cross changed that curtain, and one writer names what God did with it.
On the death of Christ the veil was torn from top to bottom, and God has come out in fullest light. In Christianity the believer has boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.
Many readers hear that tearing as the veil being done away with. Another writer marks the difference between two words.
The veil is torn in Hebrews; and that is why, as has been said, it is not really "having boldness to enter into the holiest," but into the "holy places," because the two are now joined. Yet that does not mean, as it often seems to be taken to mean, that the veil is removed. "Torn" and "removed" are different things. If the veil is Christ's flesh, that is not removed, nor do we want it removed. By Him we draw near to God; but He had to die that it might be so.
- Counted — It is the second curtain because the count starts at the entrance. Each curtain let fewer people through, and this last one let only one man through, once a year.
- Closed — Its purpose was to show that the people could not come to God. By a curtain that shut them out, the Holy Spirit taught that the way in was not yet made known.
- Golden — Gold is named three times for the inner room and not once for the outer. Gold pictures God's glory, and the inner room pictures heaven itself.
- Flesh — The veil stood for the flesh of Christ. It hid God in His holiness of judgment and showed Him in grace.
- Torn — Christ's death tore the veil from top to bottom, but did not remove it. The two rooms are now one, and the way in is still through Him.
having a golden censer, and the ark of the covenant, covered round in every part with gold, in which [were] the golden pot that had the manna, and the rod of Aaron that had sprouted, and the tables of the covenant;
This verse lists what stood in the innermost room of Israel's tabernacle. Each item is a picture, and the chapter presses one question: what was each one pointing forward to?
The whole system belonged to this world. It was temporary, because the sacrifice that opens the way to God still lay ahead.
The first covenant had many ordinances of divine service, and very instructive ones. Yet the sanctuary was a worldly one, and it could not be anything else. The infinite sacrifice for sin had yet to be offered... So the veil was still not torn, and the way into the holiest was neither open nor revealed... all was of the first creation, shadowy and provisional, at best the witness of good things to come.
Older translations read "a golden censer" here, where the ESV has "the golden altar of incense". On the older reading the incense altar itself, which stood just outside the veil, is missing from the list — and that absence is deliberate.
The reason for leaving out the incense altar is significant: true worship must really be in the presence of God. Unless we are in His presence we cannot be worshippers... But when we come to the holiest of all, the first thing mentioned is the golden censer. That, we might say, is really the altar of incense. It was not the piece of furniture itself. But when Aaron entered the holiest on the day of atonement, he carried this golden censer and offered incense before God on it. So worship is priestly in character, based on atonement, and in the presence of God.
Why does the censer appear inside the veil here? One writer answers from where Christ now is.
Normally the censer was in the holy place; but the holiest was its true place... Now that Christ has entered the presence of God as our Great High Priest, the censer is there with Him... Aaron stood in the holiest and had to come out again; Christ has forever sat down, having offered "a single sacrifice for sins."
Manna was the bread God rained down in the desert. The jar that held it was gold.
If Israel loathed the manna, God told Moses to fill a golden pot with it and put it in the ark of the covenant, to be before Him forever. This means that God will never forget, nor will He allow to be forgotten, that lowly life of Jesus here... God has taken the One whom men despised and loathed and set Him in the very midst of His glory... As a diamond is put into a golden setting because it is the only setting worthy to receive it, so God has set Christ there above every ruler and power, above every name that is named.
The second item in the chest was a dead stick.
There was also Aaron's rod that budded, the witness that God had really called him to the priesthood. It was a rod cut off, its life taken away. Then, in the presence of God, it budded and brought forth fruit. This is a beautiful picture of how Christ, cut off in death, brings forth much fruit in resurrection, and is so marked out as the true Priest.
The stone tablets of the law lay in the same chest. Only one heart ever delighted in that law.
In Psalm 40 the Lord comes into view saying, "I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart." This is the true answer to the tablets of stone in the ark. 2 Corinthians 3 calls those same tablets a ministry of death. Remember that, and we see the infinite moral distance between Christ as man and the whole human race. What was a ministry of death to man, even under divine training, was in Him the delight of His heart...
The ark travelled through the desert. When its journeys finally ended, its contents were not the same.
These were the contents of the ark on its wilderness journeys: the pot of manna, the record of the Lord's faithfulness in providing for His redeemed in the desert, and Aaron's rod, "a token against the rebels," to "take away their murmurings." Then the moment came for the poles to be drawn out. Israel's wanderings and wars were over. The records of wilderness need and wilderness failure went unnoticed. Nothing remained except what formed the eternal foundation of the throne of the God of Israel and of all the earth. Nothing was left in the ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses put there at Horeb.
- Shadow. The first sanctuary belonged to this world. It was a shadow — at best a witness of good things still to come.
- Censer. The censer, not the altar outside, stands in the holiest, because worship belongs in God's actual presence — and Christ has entered there and stayed.
- Manna. The gold jar holds God's own memory of the lowly life of Jesus; the One men despised, He set in the midst of His glory.
- Rod. A dead stick that budded settles who the true Priest is — one cut off in death and marked out in resurrection.
- Tables. The law that was death to man was Christ's delight — so all three items in the ark point to the same Person.
and above over it the cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy-seat; concerning which it is not now [the time] to speak in detail.
At the centre of Israel's sanctuary stood the ark, with a gold lid and two winged figures bending over it. The writer names them and then stops, and the weight of this verse lies in where those figures looked and why he breaks off.
The word behind "mercy seat" is a technical term. It appears only twice in the New Testament: here, and in Romans, where it names Christ Himself.
It is remarkable that Paul uses a different word from the one used in John's Epistle... In John's Epistle, Christ is called the hilasmos, but in the Epistle to the Romans He is called the hilasterion. The New Testament uses this second word in only one other place, and that use settles its meaning beyond fair question. When the apostle lists the furniture of the holy of holies in the ancient tabernacle, he speaks of the cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy-seat (hilasterion, Heb. 9:5). From these two passages, then, there can be no doubt that Christ is the reality the mercy-seat, or propitiatory, pointed to, just as He is also the hilasmos, the propitiatory sacrifice.
The cherubim also, shadowing the mercy-seat are called "cherubim of glory." ... Jehovah appeared in the cloud upon the mercy-seat — the cloud of glory — and this may be the reason why the cherubim are called "cherubim of glory."
Scripture never describes what these figures looked like. It records where they faced and how their wings were set.
Scripture gives no hint of what the cherubim looked like... but it notes their position and posture with care... They looked down on the covering — the covering that once a year was sprinkled with the blood of atonement. Inside the ark lay the tablets of the law. Yet the ones who carry out God's judgment gazed at God's work of atonement for man, and not at His commands of obedience from man. Their wings — for they did not walk on this earth, they were heaven's swift messengers — stretched up high, covering the mercy-seat; God's throne must be guarded by His heavenly servants. Because they were made of gold, they showed that God's glory in carrying out judgment always keeps His glory in mercy in view!
Sprinkled blood changed what that seat was called, and what it meant.
The capporeth, the seat of atonement, truly became the mercy-seat — the throne of righteousness became a throne of grace. The faces of the cherubim, always symbols of judicial power and so tied to the throne, bent toward the mercy-seat to look at the blood. That blood declared God's righteousness and satisfied it. In Israel all this was still only a picture and a shadow. As yet there was no real way into His presence.
An Israelite hearing about these figures did not think of welcome. He thought of the sword at the gate of Eden.
He thought the cherubim of glory guarded the way into God's presence just as completely as the cherubim with the flaming sword guarded the way to the tree of life at the entrance to the garden of Eden. He thought God was to be kept at a distance. Faith's thought is that through Christ we can draw near with boldness to a throne of grace.
The verse ends by breaking off. One writer explains what the apostle turns to instead.
- Place. The mercy seat is the hilasterion, the propitiatory. Romans uses that word of Christ, so He is the reality the golden lid pictured.
- Blood. Sprinkled blood changed that seat. The throne of righteousness became a throne of grace.
- Gaze. The cherubim look down at the blood-sprinkled covering, not at the law inside the ark. Judgment's own agents read mercy.
- Distance. To an Israelite those figures guarded the way in, as at Eden's gate; faith now draws near with boldness.
- Focus. The writer stops short of explaining them. Glory on display belongs to another day. His subject is Christ — His Person, His finished work, His grace.