The Efficacy of His Priestly Ministry
SABBATH AFTERNOON Read for This Week's Study:
| Exod. 25:8; Matt. 27:50, 51; Acts 7:54-56; Heb. 6:19, 20; 7:23-28; 8:1, 2; 9. |
Memory Text:
| "Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens" (Hebrews 8:1, NKJV). Not long after the Creation . . . our first parents fell into sin. . . . In the wake of this terrible crisis, God's first concern was for human restoration and the eternal security of the universe. The death of a member of the Godhead —a contingency already determined in the foreknowledge and council of God (see Rev. 13:8)—was the only means to that end. "To secure human participation and cooperation in this supreme endeavor, God moved quickly to inform our first parents of the plan. At the same time, He put in place a teaching device to keep it perpetually before their attention and that of succeeding generations"—Roy Adams, The Sanctuary (Hagerstown, Md., Review and Herald, 1993), pp. 17, 18. That teaching device, of course, was the sanctuary service. The sanctuary became the center of Hebrew worship, and through its activities and ceremonies it pointed suppliants to the cosmic realities of human salvation in a coming Messiah (see Heb. 9) and to the ministry of Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary. This week we will look at that heavenly sanctuary and Christ's ministry there. |
*Study this week's lesson to prepare for Sabbath, June 21.
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