Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices; so it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer. Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law; who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, “See,” He says, “that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.”

–Hebrews 8:1-5 (NASB)

Teaching on Hebrews 8:1-5 regarding the Temple as a Shadow and a Copy of the supernal Temple above with references to Colossians 2:16-17 which describes the festivals and holy days as shadows of things that are to come–the substance of Messiah.

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Sermon Twenty-nine: Shadow and a Copy
Originally presented on November 2, 2013
from the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews sermon series

I should also start out by quoting someone who commented on one of my previous reviews of this series:

While I don’t know how Lancaster approaches the passage you cited, one aspect that most folks don’t appreciate is that the background view is one in which the heavenly sanctuary and the earthly one are operating simultaneously in parallel, with the earthly one reflecting the operations of the heavenly one and receiving its authorization therefrom. The lack of this perspective also is responsible for a less-than-accurate English translation of the passage. For example, the word rendered as “change” can mean simply “difference”; hence what was intended as a comparison becomes falsely tainted with a sense of replacement. The encouragement offered in the Hebrews sermonic letter is that operations of the heavenly sanctuary continue to be effective even if those of the earthly one become unavailable, or are interrupted, or the sanctuary is destroyed outright (all of which occurred either just before or just after this letter was circulated).

I hope you got the distinction being made in the aforementioned quotation. If not, read it again slowly and carefully. It’s important.

Todays’ sermon is just loaded with great information so let’s get started. Lancaster began by quoting from Ezekiel 43 where we see the prophet being taken spiritually to the Third Temple that will exist in Jerusalem in the Messianic Era, effectively inventing time travel (at least according to Lancaster).

Then he led me to the gate, the gate facing toward the east; and behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the way of the east. And His voice was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shone with His glory. And it was like the appearance of the vision which I saw, like the vision which I saw when He came to destroy the city. And the visions were like the vision which I saw by the river Chebar; and I fell on my face. And the glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate facing toward the east. And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house.

“As for you, son of man, describe the temple to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the plan. If they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the house, its structure, its exits, its entrances, all its designs, all its statutes, and all its laws. And write it in their sight, so that they may observe its whole design and all its statutes and do them. This is the law of the house: its entire area on the top of the mountain all around shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house.”

–Ezekiel 43:1-5; 10-12 (NASB)

God is telling Ezekiel that His Divine Presence will dwell in this Messianic Age Temple forever! God commands the prophet to describe the Temple he sees in the vision to the Israelites so they will be ashamed and repent of their sins. Why? Because it was their sins that resulted in the destruction of the Temple as it existed in their day, for Ezekiel was physically in exile in Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem was in ruins.

At this point in the sermon, I couldn’t help but think about how Judaism sees the cause of the destruction of Herod’s Temple as baseless hatred between one Jew and another. Rabbi Tzvi Freeman writes a rather lengthy midrashic description of this baseless hatred against the backdrop of recent events in modern Israel in the article The Tunnels That Rebuilt Jerusalem.

He also wrote this:

To the Rebbe, the exile of the Shechinah was a painful reality. To the rest of us, well, we have other concerns. Again and again, the Rebbe struggled to bring us to his perspective:

Perhaps, for you, this exile is not so bad. And you feel you are doing whatever you can about it, anyway.

But it is not just you alone in exile. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the generations of their children, as well all the heavenly host—in fact, the entire creation—all is unfulfilled, in exile and imprisoned. Even the Creator, blessed be He, locks Himself into prison along with His creation.

Until you get us out of here.

-from Pity on the Cosmos

As you read this, Tisha B’Av is less than a day in the past and yet once you have fully entered a period of mourning, is it so easy to hold back the tears at its end? Not only should we be grieved at our loss but we should be ashamed of our sins. We should repent and repent quickly for our master the King could return at any moment.

To return to Lancaster’s sermon, he next visits Exodus 25:

Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it.

–Exodus 25:8-9 (NASB)

I recently wrote a commentary on these verses relative to where and how we come close to God, but the more plain meaning of the text tells us something wonderful. It tells us that God laid out the pattern, the blueprint if you will, of the Heavenly Temple Court for Moses and instructed him to construct what amounts to a scale model of the Heavenly Court on Earth in the form of the Tabernacle. For everything in the Tabernacle and about the Tabernacle was an earthly replica of the Heavenly originals…everything…and everyone.

That means every object you see described in Exodus that is used in the Tabernacle has a counterpart in Heaven. It also means that every person, the High Priest, the other Aaronic priests, the Levites, everyone, have Heavenly counterparts. Imagine.

Not only that, but Lancaster said that even earthly Jerusalem, the Holy City, is a replica of sorts of a Heavenly Jerusalem. This isn’t as farfetched as it may seem:

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

–Revelation 21:2 (NASB)

Just think. If you’ve ever visited Jerusalem and particularly the Old City (sadly, I have not), then you could choose to see just the streets and stones and tourists, or you could allow yourself to envision Jerusalem as a sort of earthly reflection (though a mirror dimly) of the perfected Jerusalem.

And even though we don’t currently have the Temple with us, we know from Ezekiel that we will, and that when it existed and when it will exist again, every action of every one of the Priests on Earth will be a reflection of the Angelic Priests in Heaven. What is it like when an Angel offers incense on the altar before God I wonder?

We know from the two previous sermons in this series, Melchizedek and The Bypass that Yeshua (Jesus) is the High Priest in the Heavenly Temple. We have to believe that there are also Angelic Priests who attend and assist him in his priestly duties, just as God commanded the earthly Priests to assist and attend the Aaronic High Priest.

We also learned during these prior sermons, that the earthly Tabernacle and later Temple and the earthly Priesthood were considered “weak” only because they could not deliver what the Heavenly Temple and Priesthood do: permanent absolution from sin and resurrection immortality.

But then the earthly Temple and Priesthood weren’t designed to do any of those things. I’ve been exploring how Torah observance was never, ever meant to justify anyone before God in my Reflections on Romans series, so this is certainly a parallel.

At this point, Lancaster is finished with his introduction and proceeds to read Hebrews 8:1-5. So we have such a High Priest in Yeshua in the Heavenly (original and eternal) Temple, who is a “minister” in the “true tabernacle” which was “pitched” not by man but by God.

Verse 3 hints at what “gifts and sacrifices” are offered by Yeshua the High Priest, but that won’t be covered in today’s sermon. However, verse 4 says something important:

He would not be a priest at all [on Earth], since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law…

Yeshua, of the tribe of Judah and the house of David, would not be a Priest on Earth and will not be when he returns. He does not overturn or override the Law of the Temple, since only Aaronic Priests of the tribe of Levi may serve there (and will serve there in the Messianic Age). Yeshua’s priesthood doesn’t replace the Levitical priesthood, it exists altogether separately in a completely different venue.

So Yeshua will not be High Priest on Earth upon his return and will not function as a Priest in “Ezekiel’s Temple” in Jerusalem. But he still will have to perform an inauguration:

Now the king and all Israel with him offered sacrifice before the Lord. Solomon offered for the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to the Lord, 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the sons of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord. On the same day the king consecrated the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord, because there he offered the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings; for the bronze altar that was before the Lord was too small to hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings.

–1 Kings 8:62-64 (NASB)

Yeshua will be the great King and perform duties in relation to the Third Temple just as Solomon the King inaugurated the first Temple.

…who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things…

–Hebrews 8:5 (NASB)

Here’s where we encounter what Lancaster calls “Christian theological bias.” When we read “copy and shadow,” we’ve been taught in the Church to think “empty,” “meaningless,” “vain,” and even “forgery.” We’ve been taught that all that “stuff,” the Temple, the Priesthood, the sacrifices, and of course, the Torah (Law) had a temporary use but it was all meant to expire and be replaced by the Holy, Heavenly, originals and specifically by Jesus, the High Priest of our hearts, for we replace the stone Temple as little, flesh and blood, spiritual temples.

But that’s not it at all.

To understand this better, Lancaster takes us to Colossians 2:16-17. The quote below is taken from the NASB translation:

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

Some background. Lancaster says this was part of Paul’s argument against the ascetics, those people who believe that one can only be spiritual by disdaining anything that might be physically pleasurable and imposing severe self-discipline and abstention upon themselves.

While there are some practices in Judaism that follow an ascetic pattern (Tisha B’Av and Yom Kippur), the majority of Jewish observances (and remember, Paul was an observant Jewish Pharisee who advocated for Jews in Messiah performing the mitzvot, including Shabbat and the Festivals) such as Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Festival of Weeks), Sukkot (Festival of Booths), and Shabbat (the Sabbath) were and are celebrated largely by eating and drinking.

Lancaster is interpreting Colossians 2 in a way that says when we observe the festivals, Rosh Chodesh (the observance of the New Moon), and Shabbat, we are experiencing a foretaste of what it will be like in the New Covenant age to feast at the table of Messiah:

I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

–Matthew 8:11 (NIV)

This could well support Gentile Christian observance of the Biblical holidays in the present age since Yeshua (Jesus) was not just speaking of Israel but of the people of the nations “from the east and the west”. If you or I as non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah were to keep a proper Shabbos, observe the festival of the New Moon, and build a sukkah in our backyard this fall, in performing each of these acts, we are also experiencing a “shadow or copy,” a scale model, a brief tasty little treat of the magnificent banquet that we will be permitted to join in the Messianic Age.

So shadows and copies aren’t cheap knockoffs or poor imitations that need to be cleaned out to make way for the originals. They are previews, coming attractions of the main event, like watching the previews of a biggest, best movie ever to be made in anticipation of one day seeing the entire film in 3D.

But…

…but here we find “Christian theological bias” again, this time in how these verses are translated. Lancaster offered a couple of examples:

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

–Colossians 2:16-17 (NIV)

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

–Colossians 2:16-17 (NASB)

I put in bold the words “were” and “however” in the first quote and the word “mere” in the second. Why? Because Lancaster says they don’t exist in the Greek. Later translators added those words to insert an anti-Torah bias into the text. If you just read and understand the Bible in English (or probably a lot of other translations), you’ll completely miss it.

I compared English translations and found the Holman Christian Standard Bible to be just slightly more honest:

These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is the Messiah.

Unfortunately, it still uses the word “was” which isn’t in the Greek. The Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, and the other observances are shadows cast by the Holy observances that will enter our world with the Messiah’s return. They are not past, they are present and future.

In other words, the Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot are all tasty hints and treats, samples from the dessert tray, so to speak, of what is to come, but the full meal deal, so to speak, is the Messiah. Yes, he is the full substance, but we have been provided with previews so we can look forward to what’s coming and experience some of that wonder and delight in the here-and-now.

What Did I Learn?

I felt I already had a pretty good handle on Hebrews 8:1-5 from the background of my general knowledge plus Lancaster’s prior sermons, but what I didn’t expect was how Colossians 2 was so easily applied to the same usage of “copy and shadow.” I was also unconscious of how modern Christian translators have been guilty of some “hanky-panky by apparently playing fast and loose with the oldest Greek manuscripts we have of the text, inserting anti-Torah, anti-Festival, and anti-Jewish bias into Christian minds and hearts.

Face it. Most of us don’t read the Bible in the ancient languages and we rely upon our English Bibles. I find great meaning and truth in the Bible, but on some level, I also feel betrayed. This is a good illustration as to why we must learn to educate ourselves and not depend solely upon traditional Christian learning sources. It’s not even that anyone is lying, but the history of the Church is fraught with traditions stemming from the earliest days of Gentile Christianity, when every effort was made by those pulling away from their Jewish teachers and mentors in the Messianic faith to re-interpret the scriptures in a manner that rendered them totally devoid of their original (Jewish) meaning and truth.

Small wonder most Jews really hate Paul. They’ve learned to interpret him in exactly the same way as most Evangelical Christians, only Christians see Paul’s (supposed) anti-Torah writings as a virtue rather than a curse.

I hope you conclude, as I have, that there is nothing about the Heavenly Malkizedekian Priesthood or the Heavenly Tabernacle that undoes, makes obsolete, or terminates the effectiveness and authority of the Torah, the Temple, and the Priesthood here on Earth. When Messiah does return and rebuild the Temple (actually, the Temple Mount is too small to hold the Temple described by Ezekiel, so the geography of Jerusalem is going to have to change somewhat), those Torah Laws that govern the Temple, the Priesthood, and the sacrifices that have been put into abeyance for nearly twenty centuries will be applicable again.

Until that day however, we remain in exile with just the periodic precursors of the age to come to comfort us.

When the Holy Temple was destroyed, there was a wailing voice heard throughout the whole world. The Ministering Angels said to G-d, “Master of the Universe, do You have such emotions of sadness? Isn’t it written ‘Splendor and glory are before You?’ ”

G-d answered: “My House is destroyed, and My children are manacled in chains. Shouldn’t I be suffering?”

– Midrash, Yalkut Shimoni, Tehillim 679

From the day that Jerusalem and the Holy Temple were destroyed, there is no joy before G-d… until Jerusalem will be rebuilt and the Jewish People will return to it.

– Midrash, Yalkut Shimoni, Eychah 7009

From my father’s sichot: When Mashiach will come (speedily in our time, amein), then we shall really long for the days of the exile. Then we will truly feel distress at our having neglected working at avoda; then will we indeed feel the deep pain caused by our lack of avoda. These days of exile are the days of avoda, to prepare ourselves for the coming of Mashiach, speedily in our time, amein.

-from Tanya: Ch. 11. This subject (p. 379) …infinitely more so. (p. 381).
Compiled and arranged by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, in 5703 (1943) from the talks and letters of the sixth Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory; translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan

How long, Moshiach? How long?