Christ is established in his death as the center of the history of grace. So that beginning with creation, right down to the

cross, every act of grace that God performed looked forward to the cross as its foundation.

And every act of grace that God is now performing in history

and will perform to all eternity looks back to the cross as its foundation so that the cross, the

sacrifice of Christ's own flesh is the center of the history of redemption.

Why is Jesus the only one through whom we can approach God?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper turns to Hebrew 726 through 8-5 for an

exploration of Jesus's unique role as our high priest and mediator. His sermon

was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on

December 8th 1996.

Let's begin with these words quoted from Exodus 2540. See that you make all things according

to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.

Now the point here is that when God came down,

assembled his people at Mount Sinai and established a kind of

of constitution with him in the mosaic law and told them how to build the tabernacle and dress as priests and do the sacrifices.

He was not making something up ad hoc.

So this text is saying, he was considering

heavenly, eternal reality,

reality, looking at it in heaven, not made by human hands,

and then in his infinite humble creativity creating something that would be like a shadow and a copy of that.

That's what that verse says. So that the whole Old Testament regime, the

Tabernacle, the priesthood, the feasts, the sacrifices, when you contemplate all of that, if you've

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