The Eleventh Day of Christmas: On Sapphire Pavement

4 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12 starts with a claim that we’re surrounded by the witnesses of Hebrews 11. We tend to think of them as above us in heaven, not all around us. Ever wonder why “surrounded”? That question gets answered, but first there’s some instructions: put aside everything that interferes with your endurance. Look to Jesus to fend off discouragement. Know that present difficulties are like the wind sprints a coach makes you run—it’s training. Accept the training. Pursue peace, look out for each other, watch out for bitterness. 

And then we get the answer: we are surrounded by witnesses because we “have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire [Sinai]…But you have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.” Notice: “you have come,” not “will come.” This is not a promise that we’ll be in heaven one day; it’s a claim that we’ve already been there. What could that possibly mean?

This is what Jesus bought us in the Incarnation. God became man; lived as one of us lived and died as the last sacrifice for sin, was raised and ascended to heaven as our Forerunner, where He sits today at God’s right hand in the Holy of Holies of the heavenly tabernacle. Earthbound and embodied as we are, the Incarnate Christ brings us with Him. When we draw near to God seeking help, where are we? 

In the heavenly tabernacle, that’s where. In the throne room of God Himself; we go there whenever we draw near for help. We go there whenever we make our offerings (we’ll get to that tomorrow). When we do these things—even something as simple as calling out to God for help with a screaming toddler—the roof opens up, the walls evaporate, and we are standing in front of God’s throne, surrounded by the entire company of heaven, the angels, and all the saints who have gone before us. That’s where we really are. If we can’t see it, well, we walk by faith, not by sight. 

This is what the Incarnation bought us: you, in this body, embedded in this life, can stand on the sapphire pavement before God Himself in heaven—boldly, let us not forget—and ask for help. And you can expect to get it, because your High Priest is sympathetic. So ask.

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out the Hebrews 12 episode of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Tenth Day of Christmas: Still No More Sacrifice!

3 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 10:19-11:40

Since there is no more sacrifice for sin, since Jesus put paid to all of that forever, what’s stopping us from going into the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God? Nothing, that’s what! So now we draw near boldly, trusting His faithfulness to His promise. Part of that life is making a point to be with God’s people so that we can encourage one another. 

At the time and place this was written (Jerusalem, c. A.D. 60), that was bold advice. The Hebrew church was greatly persecuted, and publicly associating with Christians would bring the persecution down on your head, too. It would have been much easier to go back to the Temple service, and forget about the whole Jesus thing. After all, God built the Temple, too, right? We can just serve God by offering sacrifices there, and life will be so much easier. 

Nope. There’s no more sacrifice for sin, remember? Jesus finished it. If you turn your back on Jesus to go back to that, (1) the sacrifices don’t help, because that magic doesn’t work anymore, and (2) you face God’s judgment for rejecting His Son. Again, remember the time and place: Jesus promised the destruction of the Temple before that generation was over. Clock’s ticking. Now anybody who’d just ignored Moses’ Law on a serious matter would be stoned to death—not the most humane way to go, maybe, but pretty quick. If you knowingly, willfully disregarded this warning and went back to the Temple, then you got caught up in the Jewish revolt of A.D. 68. The Christians fled the city; they knew the revolt was doomed. The Temple believers stayed to fight—a slow death by starvation in the siege at best, and a crucifixion when the city fell at worst. Titus lined the roads in Judaea with crosses: days of constant torture eventually ending in death by thirst or asphyxia, whichever came first. 

How terrible would it be to have endured decades of persecution as a Christian only to give up at the last minute just in time to catch that judgment? So the writer urges them to keep trusting God and remain faithful, and sets before them a series of examples. Some of them trusted God and triumphed in this life; others trusted God and “wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, benign destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.” What they all have in common is that God is allowing them to wait to receive His final consolation, because He is giving us a chance to join them. So follow the Man Jesus, who lived His life trusting God. 

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out my Hebrews podcast episodes on The Fourth Warning Passage and The Hall of Faith with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Ninth Day of Christmas: Sit Down; There’s No More Sacrifice

2 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 9:1-10:18

As we saw yesterday, the second half of Hebrews’ main point (8:1-2) is that Jesus ministers in the heavenly tabernacle, the reality that Moses copied in Israel’s tabernacle. Even the earthly copy had a whole set of furniture and services, Hebrews says, but “of these things we cannot now speak in detail.” (That’s an invitation if there ever was one! If you want to read more, the description starts in Exodus 25. Notice that among all that furniture, there’s nowhere to sit. The work is never done!)

Once the furnishings were consecrated, then the sacrifices began in earnest. There’s a whole litany of services, pre-eminent among them the annual Day of Atonement sacrifice. No one ever entered the Holiest Place in the tabernacle, except on this day, when the High Priest would go in to present the blood of the sacrifice and cover the nation’s sins for the year. In that very service, the Holy Spirit showed the planned obsolescence of the Levitical order: the sins were only covered (not taken away) and only for a year. Next year, you had to do it all again…. 

…until Christ—”pleased as Man with men to dwell”—came into the heavenly tabernacle. He too bore the blood of a sacrifice, not of bulls and goats, but of a sinless man. Administering a superior priesthood in a better sanctuary, He offered the final sacrifice: His own innocent blood. The innocent man died for guilty mankind’s sin, and that’s the end of the matter. The stain is gone, the debt settled. And then Jesus sat down at God’s right hand, until His enemies are made His footstool (Psalm 110 again!). Remember how I said there’s nowhere to sit in the tabernacle? That’s not quite true. There is the Mercy Seat—the top of the Ark of the Covenant, between the cherubim, where God Himself sits. “Come and sit at My right hand” indeed! 

Jesus sits, as no priest did before him, because He fully and finally settled the matter. Fulfilling Jeremiah’s New Covenant promise, God says, “Their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more.” When that happens, when Jesus puts paid to all the sin forever, there is no more sacrifice for sin. There’s nothing you must do—or can do—to expiate your sins and failings. It’s all been done. It’s over. That’s the best possible news.

If you’d like to hear more about this section of Hebrews, check out Episode Ten and Episode Eleven of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Eighth Day of Christmas: Incarnate God in the Heavenly Tabernacle

1 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 8

Anytime a speaker says, “Now here’s the main point…,” pay attention. The main point of Hebrews is right here: We have this High Priest in Jesus, seated at God’s right hand, ministering in the heavenly tabernacle.  The first part of that is not a surprise; it’s what the whole first half of the book was about. But…heavenly tabernacle? That hasn’t come up before. 

The hints are there in Exodus. God brings Moses and the elders of Israel up the mountain, and they see God standing on a pavement of sapphire stone, and eat in His presence (24:9-11). Then God takes Moses further up the mountain, gives him detailed instructions on the tabernacle furniture, and concludes with the instruction Hebrews quotes: “See to it that you make them according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.” In other words, Moses didn’t just hear instruction, he saw the real tabernacle in heaven. When he had the earthly tabernacle made, he was copying what he’d seen. 

And Jesus, who couldn’t enter the earthly copy of the sanctuary under the Law because He’s from the wrong tribe, serves as High Priest of an older, superior priesthood in the real tabernacle—the one God built, not the earthly copy—administering a new covenant, as the prophet Jeremiah once promised. The old covenant of external laws was always meant to go obsolete, to make way for a covenant that could transform the human heart. This—the complete renovation of the human heart—is what Jesus came to do. And He succeeded.

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out Episode Nine of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Seventh Day of Christmas: Perfected Forever

31 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 7

Jesus could never serve as a priest under the Law. The Law entrusted the priesthood to the family of Aaron. Jesus isn’t a descendant of Aaron; He’s from the wrong tribe entirely. But God isn’t trying to make Him that sort of priest. 

The Aaronic/Levitical priest of Moses’ Law had to be a descendant of Aaron, who in turn was a descendant of Abraham. But long before the Aaronic/Levitical priesthood was ever established, Melchizedek served as priest of the Most High.  Who is this guy? You’ll find his story (what there is of it) in Genesis 14; He met Abraham with a divine blessing, and in turn Abraham paid him a tithe. That means—has to mean—that Melchizedek serves as Abraham’s superior in an older priesthood. A priesthood that has no recorded end and depends, not on genealogy, but simply on divine calling—a calling renewed 500 years after the Aaronic priesthood began, when God moved David to write the song we know today as Psalm 110. “Yahweh has sworn, and will not relent: You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” 

Jesus, the recipient of this prophetic promise, called by God, already risen from the dead, no longer needing to offer daily sacrifices, lives forever to intercede for us, and is therefore “able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him.” He is already perfected forever—and remember, He’s our big brother, our Forerunner. Where do you think He means to take you?

If you’d like to hear more on Hebrews 7, check out my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Sixth Day of Christmas: Anchored Souls

30 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 6

Hebrews is written to encourage people not to give up, and we all need that from time to time, don’t we? For the original readers in their time and place, giving up meant conceding that the respectable people were right to murder Jesus. High stakes, right? “If you’re gonna do that,” the author says, “then nothing I say is going to make you repent, so I’m just gonna move on to talking about other things.” He’s right; after they’ve experienced all the goodness that God gives in Jesus, if they’re gonna go back to “Give us Barabbas!”—what do you say to somebody like that? But they’ve come so far already; he’s confident of better things from them.  

These people don’t lack experience of God. The same way they are seeking to be partakers with Jesus, they are already partakers of the Holy Spirit; the same way Jesus “tasted death” for them, they have “tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” They have what they need; they just need to be diligent. Keep encouraging each other daily. Keep going to Jesus for help. All it takes is faith and patience—the same faith and patience Jesus showed, and helps us show—to inherit the promises. 

What promises? It doesn’t really say yet, but we’ve had some sneak peeks. Jesus has anointed companions; He unashamedly calls us brothers; He partook in all our weakness and temptation, won the victory, and has ascended to God’s right hand as our High Priest. Where do you reckon His companions end up? 

God promised Jesus this priesthood, and confirmed it with an oath (see Psalm 110, and we’ll come back to that). In every storm, we can anchor our souls to that promise: Jesus enters behind the veil into the very throne room of God, and He enters as our Forerunner…which means we are coming along with Him. Because He became one of us and attained to the very presence of God, we—His little brothers and sisters, the children God has given Him—now have access to the very presence of God. How’s that work? Stay tuned.

If you’d like to hear more detail about this passage, see Episode Seven and Episode Eight of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Fifth Day of Christmas: Every Second Counts

29 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 4:14-5:14

As we saw yesterday, holding fast to our confidence in God is not a solo effort; we need to be exchanging daily encouragement with our brothers and sisters. But that’s not the only place we should be seeking help; we also have Jesus Himself as our High Priest. Like any other High Priest, He was appointed by God from among the people. He has compassion on us who are “ignorant and going astray” because He was one of us. He was tempted in every direction just as we are, with one crucial difference: He didn’t ever give in.

Because He was one of us, God could appoint Jesus as our “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (more about him later). Following the duties of that office Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears” to the Father – think Garden of Gethsemane, here. The Father heard Him, and was able to save Him from death. But He didn’t, and because He didn’t, Jesus “became the author of eternal salvation to those who obey Him.”

I’ve often heard this passage preached in a completely unsympathetic way: “Jesus endured every temptation without sin—what’s wrong with you, ya wimp?!!!” But that’s not how Hebrews presents it. Hebrews acknowledges our weaknesses, assures us that Jesus sympathizes, and orders us to “come boldly to the throne of grace” to get the help we need. You know what “come boldly” looks like? It’s how you go into the E.R. with chest pains or an arterial bleed. You don’t wait demurely in line; you stagger right up to the desk, interrupt everything, and loudly announce your problem, because every second counts. That’s how you come to Jesus. He knows that every second counts, and He stands ready to help. 

If you’d like to hear more on this passage, check out my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Fourth Day of Christmas: Encourage Each Other’s Hearts

28 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 3:1-4:13

Hebrews 3 begins with a direct address: it’s speaking to “holy brethren,” to “partakers of the heavenly calling.” Because we belong to Jesus, He is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters. He has made us holy, because He was faithful to His calling, as Moses was faithful in his time. If Christ Himself has faithfully made you holy, you’re stuck in the people of God. The question now is whether you will be faithful with what He has given you—and the danger of failure here is very real. After all, the people who followed Moses didn’t turn into not-Israel when they failed…but they did fail, and they all died in the wilderness because they didn’t trust God. 

If we were retelling their story, we would point to the rebellion at Kadesh Barnea, when God told them to go up into the promised land and they refused, as the climax of the story. Hebrews locates the failure much earlier, at Massah, where that generation complained against God and went “astray in their hearts.” And so Hebrews challenges us to attend to our hearts, and that’s not a job anybody should tackle without help. 

Hard-heartedness doesn’t have to happen intentionally; it sneaks up on you. And so we should be diligent together, “encouraging one another daily.” To be a “partaker with Christ,” one of His companions who fully exhibit His victory in this life—to succeed where the Exodus generation failed, in other words—we need to remain confident to the very end. That confidence is more fragile than we like to think. So let’s not allow a day to go by where we don’t encourage each other, and Christmastide is a great time for it. The Son was faithful, so that we could partake in the divine nature. Remind someone of that today! We all need it.

For a longer discussion of this passage, see Episode 4 and Episode 5 of my podcast with Chris Morrison at Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Third Day of Christmas: Hope That Can’t Be Faked

27 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 2

Jesus, by taking on humanity, became “a little lower than the angels,” as Psalm 8 says. But Psalm 8 also says that God “put all things under” man’s feet. So which is it? Are the angels above Jesus, or under His feet? The author of Hebrews resolves this tension by pointing out that it’s a process. Jesus became lower so that He “might taste death for everyone,” and for exactly that reason He is “crowned with glory and honor.” As we already saw in chapter 1, He sits at God’s right hand until His enemies are made His footstool. 

But Psalm 8 is not principally a meditation on the Messiah; it’s a meditation on the nature of humanity. Through Jesus, God is “bringing many sons to glory.” And so Jesus unashamedly calls us His brothers and sisters, prefigured in the words of Psalm 22 (“I will declare Your name to My brothers”) and Isaiah 8 (“Here am I, and the children God has given Me”).

Isaiah 8 is particularly striking, written just before a catastrophic invasion. Isaiah’s ministry was to announce the impending judgment and that God would preserve His people through it. Knowing his homeland was about to be invaded and destroyed, Isaiah did the most foolish thing you can imagine: he kept having kids. Because God assured him that there was hope, and he believed God’s promise. Likewise Jesus, believing God’s promise that He is bringing many sons to glory, is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters, to identify fully with us. It’s a sign of hope that can’t be faked. He became one of us, so that we could one day be His companions, “crowned with glory and honor.”

For a longer discussion of this passage, see Episode 2 and Episode 3 of my podcast with Chris Morrison at Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Second Day of Christmas: Oil of Gladness

26 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 1

In the opening verses of Hebrews 1, we learn that the Son has been appointed heir of all things. This is not a status He’s had from eternity; He earned it in the incarnation when He purged our sins and redeemed the entire human race, and now He sits as an incarnate son of Adam at the right hand of God. That’s good news for us, but there’s more. 

“You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” He may have purged our sins “by Himself,” but in His victory, the Son is not alone. He has companions. Who are these companions of the Son? What do we know about them? At this point, all the text tells us is that He is anointed with the oil of gladness “more” than His companions—which means these companions share His anointing. They get lesser portions of the same thing.
How does one become a companion of the victorious Son? Keep reading; that’s one of the questions Hebrews was written to answer. We’ll be exploring the answers Hebrews gives over the rest of Christmastide. 

For a longer discussion of this passage, see my podcast with Chris Morrison at Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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