The End of the Toll Road--July 20, 2021

The End of the Toll Road--July 20, 2021

"But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption." [Hebrews 9:11-12]

Picture this: you're riding along in the passenger side of a car on the turnpike, and you see a sign that announces there is a toll both coming up.  "Have payment ready," it declares in a bright amber warning.  You start reaching into your pockets to check if you have exact change.  

You pass the first sign and come up to a second, and then a third.  Now there are flashing yellow caution lights and rumble strips in the concrete, alerting to you to the indisputable fact that a toll is going to need to be paid, and in the very near future.

At last, the vehicle slows down as you approach the toll gate. You come nearly to a stop, and then the barrier arm rises, seemingly on its own, as you pass under the roof of the tollbooth kiosk, and then you proceed on, speeding along your way to your destination.  

When you look at the driver in confusion, the answer comes back simple, "EZ-Pass. It's all prepaid."  How about that?  All those warning signs, with all their flashing lights.  All the rumble strips and announcements to have your payment ready, they were all pointing toward the moment of the transaction... and when you actually got to the tollbooth, you discover it's taken out automatically, and in a sense has already been paid long before you got into the car because the EZ-pass had been set up in advance to pay from the driver's account in a bank somewhere. 

Think about that moment.  After you go through the tollbooth, the warning signs will stop--you're off the turnpike now.  They were literally just signs--they were there to point ahead to the place at which the payment transaction would happen.  And yet in a sense, your driver had already committed to paying the toll from the moment the EZ-Pass was set up.  The warning signs, the rumble strips, and all the rest--even the arm on the gate at the tollbooth--they were all pointing to a moment of payment that the driver already had taken care of.  Once you're through the gate, the warning signs are no longer necessary.  But you also realize once you're through that those warning signs had a role in pointing ahead to the tollbooth, but they themselves didn't actually take your money.  They were signs that pointed to a reality that came after them.

Well, if you can picture all of that, then really you already understand something of how the writer of Hebrews sees what Jesus has done for us, and how his laying down his life at the cross does what centuries and centuries of day-in, day-out sacrifices of lambs, goats, and calves could not.  Jesus' willingness to lay down his life is the end of the road--it is the point at which the whole sacrificial system ends, and yet in hindsight you can see that all those countless sacrifices offered by high priest after high priest were signposts, pointing forward to what Jesus would do with his life.  After the toll booth there are no more signposts announcing a toll because the toll has already been paid. They serve completely to point ahead to the upcoming tollbooth and the transaction that happens there, but they themselves don't do anything or accomplish anything beyond pointing.  The writer of Hebrews says that all of our human-offered sacrifices are like that--they themselves didn't do anything, but they pointed the place of redemption at the cross, where Jesus offers his own life--where God offers up God's very self!  

What a gift of grace it is to discover at the point of paying your way, that the price has already been paid, and that you are free to keep going without one red cent to your name.  What a gift it is to know that before any of us began our lives, God had already chosen to pay the price of our passage by God's own self--and that Jesus puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak.

That's grace for you, friends:  at the very moment you start worrying about how you are going to pay your way through, the news comes that God has already chosen to pay it all for you already, even though the price is God's own life. 

Now, who will you tell that good news to... today?

Lord Jesus, thank you for your commitment to lay down your life that we might be free on our journey home.