Study Desk

"‘For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Isra'el after those days,' says Adonai : ‘I will put my Torah in their minds and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people.

"‘None of them will teach his fellow-citizen or his brother, saying, "Know Adonai !" For all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest,

Now the first covenant had both regulations for worship and a Holy Place here on earth.

which had the golden altar for burning incense and the Ark of the Covenant, entirely covered with gold. In the Ark were the gold jar containing the man, Aharon's rod that sprouted and the stone Tablets of the Covenant;

but only the cohen hagadol enters the inner one; and he goes in only once a year, and he must always bring blood, which he offers both for himself and for the sins committed in ignorance by the people.

For they involve only food and drink and various ceremonial washings — regulations concerning the outward life, imposed until the time for God to reshape the whole structure.

he entered the Holiest Place once and for all. And he entered not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus setting people free forever.

For if sprinkling ceremonially unclean persons with the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer restores their outward purity;

For where there is a will, there must necessarily be produced evidence of its maker's death,

and he said, "This is the blood of the covenant which God has ordained for you."

For the Messiah has entered a Holiest Place which is not man-made and merely a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, in order to appear now on our behalf in the very presence of God.

for then he would have had to suffer death many times — from the founding of the universe on. But as it is, he has appeared once at the end of the ages in order to do away with sin through the sacrifice of himself.

so also the Messiah, having been offered once to bear the sins of many , will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to deliver those who are eagerly waiting for him.

For the Torah has in it a shadow of the good things to come, but not the actual manifestation of the originals. Therefore, it can never, by means of the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, bring to the goal those who approach the Holy Place to offer them.

Otherwise, wouldn't the offering of those sacrifices have ceased? For if the people performing the service had been cleansed once and for all, they would no longer have sins on their conscience.

For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

This is why, on coming into the world, he says, "It has not been your will to have an animal sacrifice and a meal offering; rather, you have prepared for me a body.

It is in connection with this will that we have been separated for God and made holy, once and for all, through the offering of Yeshua the Messiah's body .

But this one, after he had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, sat down at the right hand of God,

from then on to wait until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet .