- Preacher: Steve Constable
- Sermon Series: Hebrews | Jesus Is Better
- Sermon Title: God’s Blood
- Scripture: Hebrews 10:19 – 31
Sermon Discussion Questions
1. Warm-Up
Perhaps the closest experience we have of understanding what the writer is describing about as a change of systems in chapters 9 and 10 is not from our religious experience but from our school experience.
Go around the group and maybe share how you felt the day you left high school. Do you have clear memories of the day? What were you sad to be leaving behind? What were you happy or relieved to be putting behind you?
2. READ Hebrews 9
3. [9:1-7] Outside of watching Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark, most of us don’t have a clear sense of how Hebrew religion worked. What the writer is describing is not what was happening in the New Testament era but what was happening in the book of Exodus when God showed Moses how to worship Him in the Tabernacle. Find a Study Bible and look for a picture of how the Tabernacle was laid out.
Find:
a. The Holy Place. What was kept there?
b. The Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies. What was kept there?
c. Who would go into each place, how often and for what purpose?
4. a. Hebrews 8:5 says the plan which involved setting up a moveable, tented enclosure set up in the middle of the desert was a copy. [See Exodus 24:9-11, 25:40]. What was it a copy of, who directed Moses to make the copy, and how do you think the fact that the Jews knew that this was a copy help them in worship? b. Reading Hebrews 9:8-10 what specific things does the writer tell us to help us with our worship?
5. The writer’s comparison here is between a temporary conceptual idea burned into Israel’s memory by habit and religious practice over centuries and the real thing fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Read 9:11-15. List some of the significant ways in which Jesus accomplishes what the placeholder concept of Old Testament sacrifice could never do.
6.[9:16-28] Jesus entered the real Most Holy Place and presented Himself as an offering to God on the behalf of sinners once and for all. How does this whole story and ritual from Exodus through its explanation in Hebrews motivate you to praise God for the cross of Jesus?
7. Because of the perfect work of Christ, the promise that God will remember our sins no more is absolutely secure. As Corrie Ten Boom used to say “God takes our sins—past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing Allowed.’” As you close, spend time praising Him that He has accomplished what only he could do and He has done it forever for His people.