The Pattern. Hebrews 8:1-5. Part of our series through Hebrews, Jesus Is Superior. Preached at The Valley Remnant Church on October 25, 2026.
The other day my family and I went to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. As you go up into the upper levels, you see the paintings. The actual originals. Not a reproduction. The genuine article. Then you come back down to the lower floor and you see the same artwork again, but now it is copies. You can buy them in the gift shop. You can take them home and hang them on your wall.
Nobody walks out of that gift shop thinking they just bought an Andy Warhol. Everybody knows it is a copy. Nobody is going to try to resell it as if it were the real thing. Or they shouldn’t, anyway.
Now imagine the people who run that museum switched everything around. They put the real art in the basement and all the copies up top. Everybody comes in wanting to see the real thing. They walk right past it. They spend the whole day staring at reproductions and go home thinking they saw the original.
That is the danger the writer of Hebrews is warning about in chapter 8.
Hebrews 8:1-5 (CSB):
Now the main point of what is being said is this: We have this kind of high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; therefore, it was necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he wouldn’t be a priest, since there are those offering the gifts prescribed by the law. These serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was warned when he was about to complete the tabernacle. For God said, Be careful that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.
The Pattern
Look at that word in verse 5. Pattern. It means an impression. It means a mold. A sculptor first shapes the original. Then he can make a mold of it and pour out copies. He is not making the original again. He is making a copy of something that already exists.
That is what the tabernacle was. God gave Moses the design on the mountain (Exodus 25 through 31), and Israel built it just as commanded (Exodus 35 through 40). The curtains, the loops of yarn, the goat hair, the utensils. All of it was fashioned after something that already existed. The pattern was not invented on Sinai. Moses was shown what already was. The heavenly sanctuary. The true Holy of Holies. The place where Christ dwelt from all eternity.
The first readers of Hebrews were being tempted to go back to the copies. Back to the tent. Back to the shadows. The writer is warning them: do not forsake what is true for what is only a reproduction.
Here is the whole sermon in one line. The copy is temporary. The pattern is eternal. And Christ fulfills it.
We will see that in three ways: the true sanctuary, the true sacrifice, and the true standard.
1. The True Sanctuary (Verses 1-2)
The writer says it plainly. The true tabernacle “was set up by the Lord and not man.” God truly dwelt with his people in that tent. But he did not fully dwell in that tent. He was in the heavens. People ask, where is heaven and what is heaven? There are many speculations. But here is the truth: heaven is wherever God is. The true sanctuary is wherever Christ is seated.
Think about everything in that tent. The outer court. The bronze altar. The bronze basin. The lampstand. The table of the bread of the presence. The altar of incense. The ark and the mercy seat. The high priest going in once a year on the Day of Atonement. Every utensil, every candlestick, every offering was pointing to Christ. Not just the sacrifice. Not just the priest. All of it.
And the priests knew it. They did not think they were walking into heaven when they walked into the tent of meeting. They knew it was a place where God dwelt with his people for a time. Our God is not like the pagan gods who were thought to live inside their temples. Our God is in the heavens, and he does whatever he pleases.
A copy came, and the copy went. But the palace is eternal. That is where Christ is seated right now. Hebrews 12:22-24 tells us that we have come to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.
You do not have to outsource your prayer
Because Christ is the true sanctuary, we are not stuck on a location. We do not have to wait for a sign. We do not have to wait for a temple to be rebuilt. We do not have to wait for anything. Right here, right now, even in your own home, you can come before the Lord and make your requests known to God. You have access to the Father right now.
You do not have to go to a priest anymore. We have one great high priest, and he is making intercession on our behalf. It is good to ask others to pray for you. We should pray for one another. But in the priesthood of believers, not one believer has greater access to God than another. I am a pastor, and I do not have better access to God than you do.
We still suffer from sin. We still suffer from doubt, from frustration, from insecurity, from unbelief. But in all of it, do not lose sight of the one who is secure. Christ himself.
Robert Rayburn said it well: contemporary believers should abandon “ritualistic religion for relational reality.” The first readers of Hebrews were in danger of preferring the copy to the genuine article. We can be in the same danger.
So ask yourself honestly: are you accepting an imitation of Christ? It is easy to make up a Jesus we like better. One that suits us. One that is easier to grasp. But a Jesus we make up is an idol, and serving him is idolatry. We must read the Scriptures, understand what they say, and be conformed to the image of the real Christ, the one who hears our prayers and has opened the way into the holy place by his own sacrifice.
2. The True Sacrifice (Verses 3-4)
Every high priest had to offer something. Jesus was from the tribe of Judah, not Levi, so on earth he could not serve as a priest under the law. That does not take anything away from him. As the writer already showed us, his priesthood is not the Levitical one. It is after the order of Melchizedek. It is eternal.
And here is the difference. Every other high priest offered something else. This high priest offered himself.
The old sacrifices never perfected anybody. “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). They had to be offered over and over and over again. The Levitical priests could never sit down. They had to keep standing. They had to keep offering. Their work was never finished.
But Christ’s work is finished. “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3). His sacrifice was offered. His sacrifice was accepted. “For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).
If you are in Christ, you have been perfected forever. You do not have to go get re-perfected. You do not have to work to prove you are perfected. Christ perfected you by the offering of himself alone. Salvation was freely given. You did not earn it.
Repent today
We can be on a spiritual high, doing all things well, and then stumble and fall flat on our face. God does not look at you as the one who fell on his face. He looks at you as the one who has believed on the perfect sacrifice of his Son. You are made righteous because of Christ’s work, not your own.
So don’t wait until next Sunday to repent. Repent today. If you sin tomorrow, repent tomorrow. You will never be good enough on your own. But Christ is good enough. His sacrifice was good enough.
And true repentance is not just “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry I got caught. I’m sorry I got a ticket. I’m sorry I got angry. And then you go right back and do it again with no remorse. True repentance is acknowledging your sin to the Father and striving not to commit it again. It is doing what is necessary to keep yourself from going back. Jesus said if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. We are supposed to be drastic about removing what causes us to sin.
How drastic are you? Jesus was drastic in forgiving your sin. He truly laid his life down. He truly was beaten. He truly was whipped. The Creator of all, for your sake and for his glory, laid his life down. And yet we can’t lay the controller down. We can’t pick a Bible up. We can’t get on our knees and pray.
3. The True Standard (Verse 5)
“Be careful that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.” What does that mean? It means it did not matter if you thought the lampstand would look better another way. It did not matter if you preferred a black curtain to a purple one, or silver rings instead of gold. God had prescribed it. It is not up to you and me to decide how to approach God. He has told us.
Moses did not look around the desert and say, we only have a few sheep this year, so let’s sacrifice the camels. Scripture shows us over and over what happens when people bring God what they prefer. Nadab and Abihu offered unauthorized fire (Leviticus 10). Saul made an unlawful offering (1 Samuel 13). Uzzah reached out to steady the ark. He thought he was helping. But God had commanded that no one touch it. His preference was not what God commanded.
We do the same thing. We come to church thinking we know better than God. You prefer seats and not pews. Books and not screens. A dark room instead of a bright one. Not one of those things is prescribed in Scripture. God has laid out the pattern not only for the Old Testament saints, but for the New Testament church.
Sam Waldron makes this point in How Then Should We Worship? God himself decided how he is to be worshiped. Not by our imaginations, not by our preferences, not by whatever seems creative. If he hasn’t prescribed it in his Word, we don’t bring it to him. Our confession says the same thing. The 1689 London Baptist Confession (22.1) teaches that the acceptable way of worshiping the true God “is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men.”
That is what we try to do at The Valley Remnant Church. It is called the regulative principle of worship. Our worship is regulated by the commands of God:
- Scripture reading (1 Timothy 4:13)
- Singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:19)
- The ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 11)
- Preaching the Word (2 Timothy 4:2)
- Prayer (1 Timothy 2:1)
- Giving (1 Corinthians 16:2)
- Gathering on the Lord’s Day (Acts 20:7; Hebrews 10:25)
God is the audience
People need to stop saying, “I didn’t get anything out of worship.” Worship is not about what we get. It is about giving God what is due his name. Some days the Word will encourage you. Some days it will convict you. Every day you should receive what God has for you.
Søren Kierkegaard used a picture from the theater. We tend to treat the pastor as the actor and ourselves as the audience. But it is the other way around. The congregation is the actor. The preacher is the prompter. God is the audience. So when you sing, you are not singing so I can hear you. You are not singing so the people online can hear you or so your neighbor can hear you. You are singing so God can hear you.
So we should not measure God’s presence by the atmosphere. Christ is the true sanctuary whether the room feels a certain way or not. When you evaluate a worship service, or a church you are thinking about joining, the first question is not, “Did I like it?” The first question is, “Was it shaped by God’s Word?” Whether you liked it is secondary.
The Copy Will Give Way
Our worship on Sunday is imperfect. We are imperfect people in an imperfect place. This is still a copy, and the copy is temporary. But it is perfected by Christ. And one day we will be in the presence of our Savior, and the worship will be perfect. Nobody will ask you then whether you liked it. Christ has fulfilled everything Scripture says about him. He is the true sanctuary. He is the true sacrifice. So let us worship by the true standard God has set forth in his Word, because Christ fulfills it all.
Watch the full sermon on YouTube or listen on SermonAudio. If you are in the Belle Vernon area, we would love to have you with us. Sunday School begins at 10:15 AM and worship at 11:00 AM. You can plan your visit any time.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Phil Pagliari
Frequently asked questions
What is the “copy and shadow” in Hebrews 8:5?
It is the earthly tabernacle and its priesthood. Moses built the tent according to a pattern God showed him on the mountain. That pattern was the heavenly sanctuary, where Christ is seated. The tent was a temporary copy that pointed to him.
Why couldn’t Jesus serve as a priest on earth?
Under the law, priests came from the tribe of Levi. Jesus was from the tribe of Judah. Hebrews shows that his priesthood is of a different and better order, the order of Melchizedek, and that he ministers in the true sanctuary in heaven.
What is the regulative principle of worship?
It is the conviction that God alone decides how he is to be worshiped. In public worship we bring only what he has commanded in Scripture: reading the Word, preaching, prayer, singing, the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, giving, and gathering on the Lord’s Day. The 1689 London Baptist Confession teaches this in chapter 22.
Do I need a priest or pastor to pray for me to reach God?
No. Christ is our one great high priest, and every believer has access to the Father through him. It is good to pray for one another, but no believer has greater access to God than another, pastors included.
