Study Desk

So let us try as hard as we can to enter God's place of rest. We must try hard so that none of us will be lost by following the example of those who refused to obey God.

We have a great high priest who has gone to live with God in heaven. He is Jesus the Son of God. So let us continue to express our faith in him.

The high priest has his own weaknesses. So he is able to be gentle with those who do wrong out of ignorance.

So we should be finished with the beginning lessons about Christ. We should not have to keep going back to where we started. We began our new life by turning away from the evil we did in the past and by believing in God. That's when we were taught about baptisms, laying hands on people, the resurrection of those who have died, and the final judgment. Now we need to go forward to more mature teaching.

God made a promise to Abraham. And there is no one greater than God, so he made the promise with an oath in his own name—an oath that he would do what he promised.

God wanted to prove that his promise was true. He wanted to prove this to those who would get what he promised. He wanted them to understand clearly that his purposes never change. So God said something would happen, and he proved what he said by adding an oath.

These two things cannot change: God cannot lie when he says something, and he cannot lie when he makes an oath. So these two things are a great help to us who have come to God for safety. They encourage us to hold on to the hope that is ours.

The people were given the law under the system of priests from the tribe of Levi. But no one could be made spiritually perfect through that system of priests. So there was a need for another priest to come. I mean a priest like Melchizedek, not Aaron.

So this means that Jesus is the guarantee of a better agreement from God to his people.

Also, when one of those other priests died, he could not continue being a priest. So there were many of those priests.

So Christ can save those who come to God through him. Christ can do this forever, because he always lives and is ready to help people when they come before God.

So Jesus is the kind of high priest we need. He is holy. He has no sin in him. He is pure and not influenced by sinners. And he is raised above the heavens.

Every high priest has the work of offering gifts and sacrifices to God. So our high priest must also offer something to God.

God called this a new agreement, so he has made the first agreement old. And anything that is old and useless is ready to disappear.

So surely the blood sacrifice of Christ can do much more. Christ offered himself through the eternal Spirit as a perfect sacrifice to God. His blood will make us completely clean from the evil we have done. It will give us clear consciences so that we can worship the living God.

So Christ brings a new agreement from God to his people. He brings this agreement so that those who are chosen by God can have the blessings God promised, blessings that last forever. This can happen only because Christ died to free people from sins committed against the commands of the first agreement.

So Christ was offered as a sacrifice one time to take away the sins of many people. And he will come a second time, but not to offer himself for sin. He will come the second time to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

So when Christ came into the world he said, "You don't want sacrifices and offerings, but you have prepared a body for me.

Then he said, "Here I am, God. I have come to do what you want." So God ends that first system of sacrifices and starts his new way.

And so, brothers and sisters, we are completely free to enter the Most Holy Place. We can do this without fear because of the blood sacrifice of Jesus.