it means the old temple and tabernacle service; the
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND.
The temple was not overthrown till about forty years after the Son of God died on the cross. The type was preserved for a season, that the antitype might be more fully understood. The shadow and the substance were thus for forty years exhibited together. The temple still, in its rites, proclaimed what the apostles preached. Every part of it spoke aloud and said, "Look on me, and look away from me; look to Him of whom I have been bearing witness for these many ages; behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world."
But in God's sight the first sacrifice was finished when Jesus died. Then the purpose for which the blood had been shed day by day was accomplished.
Thus the apostle writes, "He taketh away the first that He may establish the second" (Heb 10:9).
To a Jew this language must have sounded strange, if not profane; quite as much so as did the words, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." A first and second what? Does he rightly hear the words?
Is it a second temple, a second altar, a second priesthood; the first being set aside? That cannot be! Israel's service is divine; it is one and unchanging. Messiah, when He comes, will confirm, not destroy it. Israel's service is a first without a second. A second is an impossibility, a blasphemy.
Yet the apostle, a Jew, writing to Jews, announces this incredible thing! He announces it as an indisputable certainty; and he expects to be believed. Had he announced a second sun or a second universe, rising out of the extinction of the first, he would not have been reckoned so outrageous in his statement as in declaring the abolition of Israel's present service, and the substitution of one more perfect, and no less divine.
1. But what is this first? Speaking generally, it means the old temple and tabernacle service; the old covenant made with Israel in the desert, from