Although Lutherans don’t follow religious dietary laws about what we may or may not eat, many do. Muslims do, Jews do, and so do Seventh-Day Adventists. Roman Catholics also have days where they may not eat certain foods.
Yet, we also know that if someone fasts or limits what he eats, that is a good, spiritual discipline. Jesus mentions fasting as a spiritual discipline in Matthew, chapter 6. But no one should fall into the trap of thinking that fasting or following certain dietary laws makes him acceptable to God. Such practices are a fruit of faith, not what makes someone righteous before God.
Jesus spoke to those who thought that what they ate or didn’t eat contributed to their holiness, their spiritual cleanliness, before God. He said, “Nothing that goes into a person from the outside can make him unclean. It’s what comes out of a person that makes him unclean” (Mark 7:15).
And so the book of Hebrews also warns us not to let strange doctrines about food lead us astray. Hebrews echoes the Apostle Paul’s words in Colossians:
If you have died with the Messiah to the world’s way of doing things, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? “Don’t handle this! Don’t taste or touch that!” These are all destined to perish with use because they are based on human commands and teachings [Colossians 2:20-22].
Hebrews draws us away from human commands and teachings to God’s grace that He gives us from Christ’s altar. Our text says, “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat” (vs. 10). This is the altar the Lord Jesus put in place when He sacrificed His body and blood on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.
By the body and blood of our Lord that He gives us to eat and drink, we receive Christ’s own righteousness, which brings us into communion with His holiness. Those who continue to live under the Old Covenant have no right to eat from this altar. And the book of Hebrews tells us why. They don’t recognize that Christ has come and that He is the Lamb of God, whose blood sets us free from sin.
Verse 11 of our reading from Hebrews refers to the practice associated with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament. On that day, the High Priest would drain the carcasses of the slaughtered animals of their blood. Then, he would carry the blood into the Most-Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. But that’s not what happened to the bodies of those sacrificed animals–they were burned outside the camp, that is, the city.
Hebrews then “connects the dots” of this practice to the death of Jesus. Like the bodies of sacrificed animals that were taken outside the city, so also was Jesus crucified outside of Jerusalem. “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate,” shedding His blood to make us holy.
Year in and year out, the High Priest would repeat the rites and rituals of Yom Kippur. But those rituals had a purpose: They pointed ahead to the real “Day of Atonement,” Good Friday, when Jesus Himself would be both the High Priest and the Victim.
Jesus would suffer outside the city. With His own blood, Jesus would enter the heavenly Holy of Holies to make an everlasting atonement for the sins of the world. The sacrifice He offered is now done, once for all.
When our Lord cried out from the cross, “It is finished,” He told the world that He had finished His redeeming work. Because of that, God’s people would no longer have to sacrifice lambs and goats. They had served their purpose–to point forward to the sacrifice God’s Son would make. Now, Jesus, the Lamb of God Himself, sanctifies us by His own blood. By His blood, He cleanses us from sin’s infection, making us His holy people, people who belong to God and can stand before Him.
The Book of Revelation describes who we are in its opening praise to the Lamb of our salvation: “the One who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (1:5-6).
Through the blood of His Son, God has set us apart to be His people. By that blood, He has freed us lost and condemned creatures from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. We now belong to him.
But what does belonging to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus mean for us when we live out our lives in everyday events? Our text from Hebrews tells us. It says, “Let us then go to him outside the camp and endure the insults he endured. For we do not have an enduring city here; instead, we are looking for the city that is still to come” (vs. 13-14).
We go where Jesus is. He is “outside the camp” of Jerusalem. We need not, and we cannot go back to Jerusalem of the Old Testament. To go back to the Old Testament, as if Jesus Christ didn’t come, suffer, die, and rise from death would be to walk away from the faith and reject the Gospel.
Instead, we cling to Christ crucified and Him alone. We trust Him as He gives to us the fruits of His sacrifice in His body and blood, as we await the new heavens and the new earth that is to come.
Hebrews also says, “So, through him, let us continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit from our lips that confess his name. Don’t neglect to do what is good and to be generous, for God is pleased with such sacrifices” (vs. 15-16).
Scripture tells us of two kinds of sacrifice. First, there is the sacrifice of atonement that takes away sin. That’s the sacrifice that Jesus did for us on the cross. Since His sacrifice was THE sacrifice, this sacrifice can never be repeated. Jesus did it, once for all.
But there’s also the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. These are the sacrifices where we sacrifice thank offerings to our God. Receiving the Lord’s gifts in faith, we confess him as the Giver in our hymns, psalms of praise, and thanksgiving.
Yet, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving should embrace more than our lips. They should also to envelop our lives. Paul says in Romans 12:1, “I, therefore, urge you, brothers, because of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, for this is your proper priestly service.”
What a beautiful verse. Yet, we often miss Paul’s use of the singular with the plural. He says to the congregation at Rome: “present your bodies as A living sacrifice.” Each person in the congregation was to present his body for A (that’s a singular) sacrifice. For we don’t live alone for God; we live together as a family of God, presenting our bodies as one unified sacrifice of service to Him.
So, how do we do this? As a congregation, we support what we do as one unified sacrifice of service. We support our district and through that, the Missouri Synod. As a congregation, we support local food pantries in the area. As a congregation, we even support our pastor with prayers and a paycheck, so I can focus on preaching and teaching God’s Word and delivering the Sacraments on Christ’s behalf.
God consecrates our lips to praise His holy name, and He hallows our lives, that is makes them holy, to live for Him as we serve others around us. For God doesn’t need our good works–but our neighbors do!
In Psalm 50, the Lord says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and everything in it is mine. Why should I eat the flesh of oxen or drink the blood of goats?” (vs. 12-13). God doesn’t need our food, the work of our hands, or our money. But our neighbor does–and so we as a congregation come together as one to do this.
Living by faith in Jesus Christ, we will live by love, bringing the love of Christ to our neighbors: to your husband or wife, your children, your literal next-door neighbor, your pastor, and those in this congregation. We direct such works toward those whom God has placed within our lives. Our love toward them is part of our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. Jesus says, “I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
Jesus’ blood cleanses us from all sin and sets us apart to be His holy people, His royal priesthood, living in faith toward Him AND in fervent love toward one another. Amen.
