So yeah, Happy Rapture Day, everybody. There is a prophet over in Korea who is saying that today is the end of the world. That today will be the day that rapture happens and that all biblical prophecy will be fulfilled. Today. Today, people. But he does say, though, that it is only actually for his people. His special group of people that are the true Christians and they're the ones who are gonna be raptured and we're all gonna be sorry Because they're gonna be gone, but that's kind of like all Cults, isn't it? They all have this like it's only us We're all we're the ones who are special. We're the ones who have the real knowledge and we're the ones who you know, are the ones who are going to be saved, right? And it's always built on the same thing. It's always built on these minutia that they're looking into the scripture. They're piecing things together here and there. They're like pulling stuff out of, uh, newspaper clippings and applying it to the Bible and stuff like that. And lo and behold, here we have in front of us the next and the author here says this sort of a thing is no bueno. So, everyone, Hebrews chapter 9 verse 1. Now, even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread. This is called the holy place. And behind the second veil, there was a tabernacle, which is called the Holy of Holies, having a golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna and Aaron's rod, which budded. and the tables of the covenants. And above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. But of these things we cannot now speak in detail. Now, when these things have been prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle, performing the divine worship, but into the second only the high priest enters. Once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit is signifying that this, that, The way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed, while the abertat vernacular is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly, both gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations of the body imposed until the time of reformation. But when Christ appears as a high priest of the 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. This is the word of the Lord. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for being among us today, and we pray, Lord, that you would just grant us the blessing of this fellowship and the blessing of your word. We ask, Lord, that you would open our ears to hear, open our hearts to receive, open my mouth to speak your truth. In Jesus' name, amen. So before we get into the fun stuff, I've got a brief aside here that I've got to cover. So, chapter 9, verse 1, now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctionary. That word even implies that also the new covenant has these regulations of worship, and I've got to say here that Too much of the church has been let go to whatever the people feel. Right? The fact of the matter is that God gets a say on how we do church, how we do worship, and how we handle the sanctuary. Right? We got worship and the holy sanctuary. God chooses how he does that. In fact, in the Old Testament, he spent all of Exodus explaining exactly how to set up the temple. Well, the tent, right? He spent intricate detail on what you're supposed to do, what's the problem, you know, like what's the mannerisms of doing that. And we today throw all of that thing out saying you could just come to God any old way that you want. You can't. Now, in theological terms, this is called the regulative principle, which just basically means that looking through the Bible to figure out what constitutes real church and what doesn't. and a lot of this uh stuff where you've got all of this music and then this tiny little thing that isn't really studying the bible and then moving on to other stuff is kind of not how the bible puts it that's not the point of this text though if you'd like to see exactly how much the new testament speaks about how to run church then uh first corinthians 14? Is that what it is? No, 1 Corinthians 11 is your place to stop, but there are other places as well. But like I said, that's not in our text, so we're not going to cover it. So, I was coming to this this morning, and I was looking at all this, For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, which was the lampstand, the table, and the sacred bread, and the holy place. Now, when you speak to Jews of the time, this was intimate knowledge that they had from childhood, right? They would have known every single part of this. They would have known about the altar. They would have known about the Ark of the Covenant. They would have known where all of this was placed within the temple. It's kind of, uh, they just grew up with it. It was knowledge. It's kind of like with me. I grew up in a Catholic church and so I can go into any Catholic church and instantly know the layout of the whole place because they're all laid out the same. You know, there's the, the golden tabernacle that keeps the consecrated host. There's the altar in front of it. Uh, there's usually two wings off each side because the church is actually supposed to be in the shape of a cross. There's the, uh, you know, the stages of the cross, the 12, you'll see 12 numbers around every Catholic church. Those are the stages of the cross. There's the holy water and every one of the entrances. So if anybody started coming to me and started talking about, well, you know, there's the tabernacle and the altar and the holy, uh, the holy water and the incense, I know exactly what they mean. I don't need that explained to me. I grew up with it. And this is what the audience of this book would have heard when they heard all that. And all of these things, unfortunately, takes a lot of time to explain. A lot of time to look into. There's huge amounts of symbolism in every single one of these. There's even symbolism in how they're placed in the temple. Like the fact that one is sitting on this side and the other is sitting on that side all means something. And I was afraid that I was gonna have to go into all these details until I hit verse five and it said, and above it was the cherubim, the golden overshadowing of the mercy seat. My goodness, I could talk all day about that. But of these things, we cannot now speak in detail. So what the author here is saying, yeah, you know about all of that, but that's not the point. And the author doesn't spend too much time expanding on things that are not part of his argument. In fact, John Calvin in his commentaries, which if you know anything about John Calvin, he was not someone who was prone to leaving out details. He had this to say in this portion of scripture. As nothing can satisfy curious men, the apostle cuts off every occasion for refinements unsuitable to his present purpose, unless the longer discussion of these things should break off the thread of his arguments. If, therefore, anyone should regard the apostle's example and dwell more minutely on the subject, he would be acting very unreasonably. So, in other words, if Isaac Winters sit here and tell you all about the tabernacles and all the placements and going into the minute detail and the spiritual things, then you know what? I would be unreasonable because the author says that's not the point. And he would even go on to say, There might be, indeed, an occasion for doing this elsewhere, but it is now better to attend to the subject of which he treats. It may further be said, and this is the point I want to go into, that to philosophize beyond just limits, which some do, is not only useless, but also dangerous. There are some things which are not obscure and fitted for the education of faith, but description and sobriety ought to be observed, lest we seek to be wise above what God has been pleased to reveal. I know I've said this before and I'll probably keep saying it, but one of the things that Calvin was really, really big on was learning the text. He wanted to know what the text said. And he was very, very careful about not putting too much into the text. He wanted to make sure that he also didn't leave out anything into the text. But he said, and this is equally dangerous, it is important not to pull too much from text. And I think the principle is here being shown by the author. And so, so many people hit this section and other sections and get bogged down in the minute stuff. They want to analyze every little bitty piece of the text to draw out some sort of spiritual meaning. And in doing so, they miss the point of the text entirely. And this isn't a new thing. If you look, Paul, when he was writing to the Ephesians, was talking in Ephesians 4.14. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful schemings. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him. by human cunning. How many times have you heard these teachers talk about these amazing things that they found in Scripture? They'll talk about numbers, they'll talk about symbolism, they'll talk about how this God represented that, or how these things in Revelation appear to speak on various signs of things coming and you're reading the text and you're going, I, um, I don't see any of that here. And furthermore, this particular section of the text is not talking about that at all. I have this pet peeve when I'm listening to other, uh, Preachers they're giving what I call they're giving the right sermon from the wrong text And so if I were to sit here and go into the minutiae of this Tabernacle area I'd be falling into the same thing and in first Timothy in chapter and in Titus Paul was telling to the brand new elders of the church of Ephesus and the church of Crete that you need to avoid these people because they're endlessly debating genealogies and talking about speculations about the Bible. They're going way past the text. They're talking about things which the Bible has not made clear. As Alistair Begg would say, the main things are the plain things. And the author of Hebrews is here showing that you could get bogged down all this temple cosmology if you want, but there's not point. The point is Christ has come and he was the high priest. So maybe start there. The stuff that you know to be true in the Bible is probably a good place to start in your life. There are lots of places in scripture that are difficult to understand. Some places that need quite a bit of study to really get to. But I find that most people who are asking the really difficult questions haven't even started on the easy ones yet. There are things in scripture that are plain and we are called to focus on those and then move on to maturity, because maybe by then you'll have answered that question or you'll realize that, oh, that's not the point of this scripture at all. So these cult leaders. these special church leaders, these people with knowledge where the Holy Spirit has illuminated things to them. Have you noticed one thing about them all? They all sow divisions within the church. It's always a closed off system. They're always saying, that these other people over there are not Christians and we're the true ones. And yet all throughout scripture, do you know what the number one sin throughout the New Testament is? The one that is being called out in almost every single letter. Divisions. Do not sow divisions in the church. And so while these guys are preaching, they have special knowledge from the Holy Spirit, they're in the process of committing the one thing that the Bible is very clear they're not supposed to do. Talk about majoring on the minor things, and then they'll talk about separation from the world. They'll talk about how these guys need to be separate from people, not associate with sinners, not associate with the world, and yet Jesus himself, in his high priestly prayer in John, John 17, prayed to the Father, I send my disciples out into the world. I do not pray that you would take them out of the world, but that you would protect them from the evil one. And so you've got these guys who are focusing in on these Rapture Day issues, and yet, The plain thing in scripture is that we're supposed to be here in part of the world. And all of these cults are all of the same stripe. We are supposed to be separate. We're the only ones here, but God has been clear that that's not how we're supposed to be. And then you've got the other side of it. You've got the more intellectually minded. Myself. This is a danger that I run into all the time. You see something in scripture that require that you think, oh, that's really cool. And it kind of spins your head off in different directions. And you want to like flow from it and start applying this to all sorts of philosophies and stuff like that. The problem that you can run into is that this particular thing in scripture may have nothing to do with that at all. And so, you're gonna spend time trying to figure out something that God has explained to you, or that is in scripture, that isn't the point. Like I said, it's specializing in missing the point of Scripture. So you've got the two competing things with your us four, shut the door. You've got the intellectuals who are going way off the rails, and you've got the people who understand the dangers of all this. And so they say, well, the Holy Spirit is revealing this to me. they focus on heavenly things and things which are obscure and they say well they're obscure on purpose but the holy spirit has revealed this to me so i'm super special and you should listen to me and the author says here that there are things that can be talked about and at length But we're not talking about that right now. And so you see why I find it providential that all of a sudden we're at this text and it's rapture day and I'm like, oh look, here's the author calling these guys out. Had they read scripture, they would realize that they were in error. And all of these things here in scripture, all of these stuff from 2 to 5, the author points out all of this stuff. The reason why it's not the point to even look into what is going on is because all of these things are meant to keep people out. And he even says this here, now when these things, these temple stuff, now when these things have been thus prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle, performing divine worship, but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, and not without taking blood. The regular worshipper, the regular Jew, the devout person of Israel could not go in to see the holy things of God. The altar, the tabernacle, the, well not the tabernacle, but the altar, the basin for washing things, the brazier for the incense, the menorah, all of these things, they couldn't see them. They weren't allowed in. Only people who were of a particular family, the family of Aaron, could go in to see them. And even they weren't allowed into the inner part where the actual Ark of the Covenant was. Only the high priest was. And only on one day. Yom Kippur. As we see here, these things in the temple, the whole point is they keep people out. And only the special people get to go in. Does that sound like your other stuff? All of these cults? All of these people who have special knowledge? All of these serious scholars? They're the only ones. They're the only ones who can bring you into heaven. They're the only ones with the special knowledge. They're the only ones that you can be a part of. Those people in Korea are the only ones getting raptured. Y'all are missing out. Sorry. And it's always this separation. And the author here says, no, that's not the point. You are missing the point of scripture if you're focusing in on these things, because in verse 11, but when Christ appeared, as the high priest of the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, and not with this creation. So Christ entered into the holy place. He entered in the real holy place. He is the one who is really in heaven. And remember when we talked about on the day of the crucifixion, the veil of the temple tore and was made open, the way into the Holy of Holies was suddenly revealed on the day that Christ was crucified. And the Holy Spirit would say, the Holy Spirit, verse eight, is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing. The outer tabernacle. The inner one was ripped, but the outer was still there. When did that go away? Yeah, 70 AD. When the temple was torn apart stone by stone, that sanctuary no longer stands. Now there stands nothing between you and Christ. Nothing between you and the throne. And what did Christ say was the basis? What did he say was the requirement? All of these other people will put all these barriers in front of you. You have to get the right check marks. You have to be a part of this group. You know, a lot of times there's food you're not allowed to eat. There's clothes you're not allowed to wear. But When Christ the high priest came, he is the one who made intercession for you. He is the one who stands before the throne. He is the one who says, come on in, follow me. So if anyone says to you, That they're it. That they're the only ones. And I don't mean like, that says specifically this group. Like if someone says, our group are the only ones. Just remember, that outside of the faith, outside of a faith in Christ, there are no barriers to the holy place. And also, there are no behaviors or beliefs or anything that is required of you. You don't have to follow somebody else's God plan. We have God's plan here. And it is based on faith in Christ alone. And so if you hear these guys, if you hear any group says that we've got it, we're the only ones, Beware of them, because the right answer is Christ is the only one, and we follow Him. want to be. I don't want people to be Christians based on their association with me or even with the association of the church. They should be Christians because Christ is Lord. Jesus saves. He is the great high priest. It is him and him alone who is the one who brings us into the inner sanctuary. And so if you find these groups out there who want to keep you out, who want to make, or want you to be part of their special little club, tell them, no, all are welcome. Because the author here makes the point that this incessant studying of little tiny things are not helpful. They miss the point. So let us not get lost in the complicated stuff. Let us do what scripture makes plain. For we know that in Scriptures, the plain things are repentance of your sins, confession that you've done wrong. We know that you're supposed to live a pure as you can life. We know that you're supposed to be in prayer. We know that you are supposed to be in the study of the Word, growing in maturity, and all of these things. And so, We are to focus on that. And, also, let us accept our brothers and sisters in Christ, even though they have a different belief than us. The worst thing you can do is put a stumbling block in front of another Christian, especially a young believer. That's wrong. Don't do it. And how do we know that they're our brothers? Well, in Christ all are one. I never assume that the person in front of me, who says they are a Christian, is not a Christian. I can look at their life and see that the Holy Spirit maybe hasn't regenerated them, but I don't know. I'm not their God. I can look at a church and a philosophy and go, well, that isn't Christian, but that's the church. That's the philosophy, not the people in it. And when we find other brothers, let us accept them and not say I'm special because you're not. Jesus is special. For he is the high priest who went into the holy place And there we have access. It is through Christ alone and only Him. And anything else is useless pontificating on stuff that doesn't matter. So Lord, we pray that you would just Be with us and help us to focus on the plain things. Help us focus on the things that we know how to do already and to do those things as we move on to maturity. Help us, Lord, to focus in on what your text says and only what it says and not look off and try to make weird things that sound cool or make us seem smart. Lord, help us to live with the knowledge that you are God, you have made a way for us, and that through you, we are accepted. And I pray this, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.