Forefeast of Nativity

The Holy Spirit is indicating this, that the way into the Holy Place wasn’t yet revealed while the first tabernacle was still standing. ⁹This is a symbol of the present age, where gifts and sacrifices are offered that are incapable, concerning the conscience, of making the worshiper perfect, ¹⁰being only (with foods and drinks and various washings) fleshly ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation.

¹¹But Christ having come as a high priest of the coming good things, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, ¹²nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption. ¹³For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh, ¹⁴how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? ¹⁵For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, since a death has occurred for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, that those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. ¹⁶For where a last will and testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him who made it. ¹⁷For a will is in force where there has been death, for it is never in force while he who made it lives. ¹⁸Therefore even the first covenant has not been dedicated without blood. ¹⁹For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, ²⁰saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.”

²¹He sprinkled the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry in the same way with the blood. ²²According to the law, nearly everything is cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.

²³It was necessary therefore that the copies of the things in the heavens should be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

Pharisees came to him testing him, and asked him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

³He answered, “What did Moses command you?”

⁴They said, “Moses allowed a certificate of divorce to be written, and to divorce her.”

⁵But Jesus said to them, “For your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. ⁶But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. ⁷For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will join to his wife, ⁸and the two will become one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. ⁹What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

¹⁰In the house, his disciples asked him again about the same matter. ¹¹He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. ¹²If a woman herself divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”