It’s easy to get wrapped up in religious rituals. For some people, it’s the music that they most enjoy. Others feel good about putting money in the offering plate, or engaging in works of service to others. For others, receiving the Lord’s Supper is the most meaningful part of worship. Some people think they need to be rebaptized whenever they want to rededicate their life to Christ. And it’s all too easy for us to divide up into different groups based on how we want to worship God.

But today’s passage reminds us that it isn’t what we do that matters – it’s what Christ has done that makes all the difference. Yes, the Old Testament ceremony of the Day of Atonement was important. It pointed forward to the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross. But because it was only a foreshadowing, it had to be done every year – in order to keep reminding the people of what would one day be done for them. The fact is that no religious ritual has ever had the power to save us.

So, instead of getting bogged down in the worship wars, let’s try to keep the main thing the main thing. As verse 26 says, Jesus has appeared once for all. By the perfect and complete sacrifice of Himself, He has put away all the sins of His people forever. So, however we remember what He has done, it is His one-time sacrifice on the cross that really matters.

And as we remember His sacrifice, let’s also look forward to the time when He will return, not this time to bear a cross, but to wear a crown – to save us from all our divisions and disagreements, allowing us to worship Him as He deserves, in Spirit and in truth.

Hebrews 9:23-28 (ESV)

23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.
25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own,
26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.