Letter to the Hebrews Volume 181

 Sacrifices Pleasing to God Part 8

Hebrews 13:10 We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. KJV Note: CEV=Contemporary English Version & MKJV=Modern King James Version

We just finished reading the ⚠ warning from the writer of Hebrews that we should not judge one another who see every day of the week as sacred unto our Lord Jesus Christ, while other brothers and sisters esteem some days as more important than others and give them special observances. Likewise we learned from him the very same regard when it comes to those who would like to continue to adhere to the dietary restrictions 🖐 handed down to the Hebrew people of God in the Old Testament and not consume all foods that are now clean for all of us who are 'in Christ'. So then, we now have the writer of Hebrews making the distinction between those Hebrews back then that had not come to Christ Jesus our Lord and those who had truly done so and that would be the alter of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ or better yet the very Sacrificial Body of His which only His Blood bought, Blood born, and Blood bonded sons and daughters have a right to partake in, as it is written here by the writer of Hebrews with these words, "We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle." (Hebrews 13:10) (KJV). In other words, the writer of Hebrews was declaring these words then to all of the Hebrew converts to Christ wanting them to understand completely that the 🧓 Old Mosaic Law was now no longer to be their focus as declared by these words from Vincent's Word Studies, "Those who persist in adhering to the Jewish economy can have no part in the blessing of the New Covenant. The two are mutually exclusive. The statement is cast in the mould of the Jewish sacrificial ritual, and in the figure of eating a sacrificial meal." Also, here is what the JFB Commentary had to say concerning the same matter, "The Cross of Christ, whereon His Body was offered. The Lord’s table represents this altar, the Cross; as the bread and wine represent the sacrifice offered on it. Our meat, which we by faith spiritually eat, is the flesh of Christ, in contrast to the typical ceremonial meats. The two cannot be combined (Galatians 5:2). That not a literal eating of the sacrifice of Christ is meant in the Lord’s Supper, but a spiritual is meant, appears from comparing Hebrews 13:9 with Hebrews 13:10, 'with GRACE, NOT with 🥩MEATS.'" For those of us who have come to Christ as Gentiles and were never living under or adhering to the Mosaic Law, this would mean (in my opinion) that we should declare to all those who have not come to the ONLY Alter (being the Cross of Jesus Christ and His Sacrificial Body and death on that ➕ Cross), that their religion or religious beliefs or spiritual beliefs and practices are frivolous, faulty, and futile without the Blood of the Lamb our Lord Jesus Christ, as He said and sealed this TRUTH with these words I have often referred to because I believe them to be the most important words in all of the Bible for every sinner on the 🌎 earth whether religious or not or spiritual or not, "I am the way, the truth, and the life!" Jesus answered. "Without Me, NO ONE can go to the Father." (John 14:6) (CEV). You must understand that all of the greatest 🚹 men or 🚺 women that were and still are highly revered, regarded, and respected who died without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8) died sinners without a sacrifice for their sin and are in hell at this very moment despite all of that human reverence, regard, and respect because none of their human talents or actions or good deeds could help them in the presence of a Pure and Perfect God, as He declared to the Hebrews back in the Old Testament through the Prophet Isaiah with these words, "But we are all as the unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as a menstruation cloth. And we all fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." (Isaiah 64:6) (MKJV).

Here is what Alexander MacLaren had to say of Hebrews 13:10, "The days are past, as it seems to me, when any man can reasonably contend that the New Testament does not teach - in every page of it, I was going to say - this truth of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Time was when violent contortions and effort were resorted to in order to explain its language as not necessarily involving that significance. But we have got beyond that now, and we oftener hear from deniers this: ‘Oh yes! I admit that throughout the New Testament this sacrificial idea is present, but that is only a chip of the old shell of Judaism, and we are above that level of religious thought.’ Now, I am not going to enter upon a discussion, for which neither place nor time are suited; but I will just suggest that the relation between the ancient system of revelation, with its sacrifice, altar, priest, temple, and the new system of Christianity is far more profoundly, and, I believe, far more philosophically, set forth in this Epistle to the Hebrews, as being the relation between shadow and substance, between prophecy and fulfilment, than when the old is contemptuously brushed aside as ‘Hebrew old clothes,’ with which the true Christianity has no concern. Judaism teas because Christ was to be, and the ancient ritual (whether modern ideas of the date of its origin be accepted or no) was a God-appointed mirror, in which, the shadow of the coming event was presented. Jesus Christ is all which temple, priest, altar, sacrifice proclaimed should one day be. And just as the relation between Christ’s work and the Judaic system of external ritual sacrifices is that of shadow and substance, prophecy and fulfilment, so, in analogous manner, the relation between the altar and sacrifice of the New Testament and all the systems of heathenism, with their smoking altars, is that these declare a want, and this affords its supply; that these are the confession of humanity that it is conscious of sin, separation, alienation, and that need of a sacrifice, and that Christ is what heathenism in all lands has wailed that it needs, and has desperately hoped that it might find. There are many attempts made to explain on other grounds the universality of sacrifice, and to weaken the force of its witness to the deep necessities of humanity as rooted in the consciousness of sin, but I venture to affirm that all these are superficial, and that the study of comparative religions goes on wrong lines unless it recognises in the whole heathen world a longing, the supply of which it recognises in Jesus Christ and His work. I venture to say that that is a truer philosophy of religion than much that nowadays calls itself by the name. And what lies in this great thought? I am not going to attempt a theory of the Atonement. I do not believe that any such thing is completely possible for us. But this, at least, I recognise as being fundamental and essential to the thought of my text; ‘we have an altar,’ that Christ in His representative relation, in His true affinity to every man upon earth, has in His life or death taken upon Himself the consequences of human transgression, not merely by sympathy, nor only by reason of the uniqueness-of His representative relation, but by willing submission to that awful separation from the Father, of which the cry out of the thick darkness of the Cross, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ is the unfathomable witness. Thus, bearing our sin, He bears it away, and ‘we have an altar.’ Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ’s servants, I was going to say, obey the same law, and that law is, no cross, no crown. If Christ has not died, the world’s sacrifice, He will never reign, the world’s King. If His Cross be an altar it is a throne. If it be not, it is merely a gallows, on which a religious enthusiast, with many sweet and lovable qualities, died a long time ago, and it is nothing to me. ‘We have an altar,’ or else we have no religion worth keeping."

If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this from your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I believe You shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control of my life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...


Sincerely in Christ,


Clifford D. Tate, Sr.


Author of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you Broken by Pornography and Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus Christ and brought into Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple I Bookstore for IPod, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reade, Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…