After showing how Christ, our High Priest, ministers a better covenant in Hebrews 8, Paul at this point in his epistle begins to contrast Christ and the New Covenant with that of the Old Covenant and the Levitical priesthood. The patterns of the real things could never be as effective as the reality, just as a shadow of a body could never be real without the body, which casts it. This seems to be the theme of what Paul communicates to his readers in this chapter. The Levitical priesthood and all it did could never offer real forgiveness for the sins of the people it represented. On the other hand, Jesus, coming as he does in the end of the age, accomplishes what the old order could not.
After describing the Tabernacle and its contents, Paul goes on to tell us that the Levitical priesthood performed their religious rites, while continually entering the Sanctuary (Hebrews 9:6). The priests carried out their religious duties, entering the Sanctuary several times each day, to trim and light the lamps therein (Exodus 30:7-8), to offer prayers before the golden altar at the times of the morning and evening sacrifices (cf. Luke 1:5-10), and to sprinkle the blood of the sin offering before the veil and to put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of incense (Leviticus 4:1-7).
Although in the course of time every priest of the Levitical order would enter the first Sanctuary, only the high priest was permitted to enter the second or the Holy of Holies (Hebrews 9:7), but even he was permitted to go beyond the veil only one day each year, the Day of Atonement. Nevertheless, upon that day he entered three times, once with the censer to create a cloud of prayers before the Mercy Seat (Leviticus 16:12-13), a second time with the blood of a young bull for his own sins (Leviticus 16:11, 14), and a third time with the blood of the goat for the sins of the people and to make an atonement for the Holy Place, wherein the Levitical priesthood ministered (Leviticus 16:15-16, 18-19), and, while he performed these rituals, no one was with him (Leviticus 16:17).
Thus, the Holy Spirit made it evident through Moses’ testimony that the religious ordinances under the Old Covenant could never be used to bring the people into the Presence of God, which was represented as residing within the Most Holy Place, beyond the veil (Hebrews 9:8). Thus, the Holy Place, itself, was a pattern for the then present age of the Mosaic Covenant, the religious ordinances of which were physical and couldn’t possibly heal the consciences of men, because a man’s conscience is a spiritual matter. Therefore, no one, under the conviction of sin, could come into the Presence of the Lord (Hebrews 9:9). In fact, the Levitical priesthood was itself sinful, in that the very Sanctuary, in which they ministered each day, had to be cleansed due to their own sins. How, then, could it be possible for an unclean priesthood to lead a sinful people into the presence of God? Such a thing could never be, and this is what the Holy Spirit indicated, when he prescribed these ordinances through the hand of Moses.
Paul concludes his description of the ordinances of the Old Covenant by saying that all of it, the whole covenant stood in physical matters, food and drink offerings and various washing rituals, which were worldly (earthly) ordinances imposed upon the people until the time of refreshing (Hebrews 9:9-10), which would come at the time of Christ (cf. Galatians 4:4; Ephesians 1:10), when all things would be restored to its original state, i.e. a theocracy (cf. Acts 3:21). Christ rules the nations from his throne today.
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