A Greater Covenant
Jesus is Greater: An Exposition of Hebrews October 20, 2024 Hebrews 8:1-13 Notes
Everything in life seems to eventually become obsolete. Everything eventually gets old, runs down, stops working… everything loses its new car smell. Don’t wish some things would last? We all long for something better, something more permanent, something we can always depend on and trust. That’s what the New Covenant in Christ offers. It will never become obsolete. It is permanent, empowering, and perfect. It is greater than the old covenant in every way!
In Hebrews 8, the author explained to Jewish background believers that the new covenant in Christ Jesus is greater than the old. We can understand that the new covenant in Christ Jesus is greater than the old.
Audio
Good morning, church. It's good to be back together with you. We are continuing our series through the book of Hebrews. And we're in chapter eight. Today we're in a series we've entitled Jesus is greater.
And that's what this book is about. It's about showing us how Jesus is greater than anything you're facing today. Any problem, any trouble, anything that has you concerned today, Jesus is greater. And the key to this passage, or to this whole book, rather, is found in Hebrews. Chapter one, as we've been studying every week, it says this.
This shows that the Son is far greater than the angels, just as the name God gave him is greater than their names. And so that's what this book is about. It was written to hebrew background believers, showing them how Jesus is greater, that he is greater. Over these past few weeks, we've had these message titles, if you will, greater goal in life. Jesus is a greater goal.
He has a greater goal for us. He offers a greater hope for the future, a greater priesthood, to intercede for us with the father. Last week, we talked about how he offers a greater guarantee of eternal life. And now today we're in chapter eight. We've entitled this message a greater covenant.
It's greater because the old covenant has become obsolete. Now, this is what we have read in the scripture, or we will read in chapter eight that the Old Testament has been fulfilled and replaced by the new. Now, have you ever heard of this phrase partial or planned obsolescence? Have you heard of this? Planned obsolescence.
Have you heard of this? It's something that many manufacturers have been accused of, that they make a product, maybe an automobile or a smartphone or something like that, and they make it in such a fashion that it's planned to go out of date. Now, they might do this by making it hard to work on. It's hard to repair, so it's hard to get under the hood or hard to get at it. So it's really, it's hard to repair.
It might be because they continually offer upgrades that make you want to buy the next version of it every year. It might be for other reasons, like maybe you can't buy the parts for it anymore. So. But planned obsolescence is basically a manufacturing idea of how to get you to keep buying new products from them. Now, Apple has been accused of this.
The Apple corporation has been accused of this with the iPhone, that if you had an iPhone, that when the next upgrade would come out, maybe you had one that was two years old, new upgrade comes out and all of a sudden, your phone slows down. Well, customers started complaining about that, like, I don't want to take and do the new upgrade because my phone keeps slowing down. And Apple was accused of doing this on purpose. And they finally admitted, they finally said, well, actually we did, because we recognized that the older phones batteries were getting bad. And so we, we actually did slow those phones down so that they would last longer.
Well, many people suspected they had different motivations for that. Well, regardless, the term is meaningful to us today as we look at our text today. What if God had always had planned obsolescence for the old covenant, that the mosaic law was good, but it was always designed to be temporary, that it would be replaced with a superior upgrade? And that's what we were going to be looking at in chapter eight today. Now, here's the thing about us.
The book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon says that God has set eternity in our hearts, and so we want something permanent. It's in this world where everything's running down, everything's getting old, things break down. You look in the mirror and you go, uh oh. Things are running down.
Right. And we long for something that would be lasting, something permanent, something that wouldn't become obsolete. And so that's what we read in the book of Hebrews, chapter eight, that God offers a greater covenant, a better covenant. Through Jesus, when everything seems to be running down, he offers us something permanent and empowering, a blessing that would last for eternity. And in the book of Hebrews, remember, he's writing.
It's called Hebrews because he's writing to jewish background believers, helping them understand how the Old Testament fits in with the New testament, how the old covenant is the undergirding the foundation for the fulfillment in Christ. And as we look at the text today, I think we'll see three reasons why the new covenant is greater than the old. So let's read. We'll be reading these 13 verses, and then we'll unpack them together. Now, the point in what we are saying is we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.
For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus, it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all. Since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law, they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.
But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second, for he finds fault with them when he says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant. And so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.
And in those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. This is God's word.
Amen. We're looking for three reasons that the new covenant in Christ is greater. Here's the first, because it is obtained by a better ministry. Because it is obtained by a better ministry. Now we're going to look at verse six as the lever, if you will, to lift this whole chapter.
It's the key to the chapter. And we'll find all three reasons in verse six. And we'll look at that as a way of understanding all 13 verses. So first look at verse six, and then take note of this idea of ministry. We see in verse six.
It says, but as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old. So he says here that this ministry that he has is much more excellent than the old. Now the old covenant was excellent, but the new covenant that he ministers according to is much more excellent. It's greater. This is what we're pointing out.
Now, that word covenant, you'll notice that it's in the text seven times. Four of the times it refers to the new covenant. Three of the times it refers to the old covenant. It's important when you're reading to tell the difference, as we'll do, as we work through it together. The word covenant could be translated testament.
And so we have the Old Testament and the New Testament, the old covenant and the new covenant. The idea of a covenant is an agreement between two parties. And so you'll often refer to a covenant at a wedding, that there's a wedding or a marriage covenant between a husband and a wife. And so here we have this word covenant that we're working on. Sometimes when someone's getting older, they'll go to an attorney and they'll make their last will and testament, and that's a covenant of an inheritance that they're going to offer and that they'll name.
And so we see the word covenant in here seven times now as we look at verse one, as we begin to unpack it together, he starts like this. He says, now, the point in what we are saying is this. He's picking up an earlier point. In chapter seven, he introduced the idea of a better covenant, but then he didn't talk about it yet. He kept on talking about how Christ had a forever eternal priesthood and how he was a better guarantor.
Remember how he said this back in chapter seven, verse 22? This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. This is kind of his habit. The author of Hebrews, he'll introduce an idea, but then he'll finish the idea he was already working on and then pick it up in the next chapter. Well, that's what's going on here.
Now. The point is this. And now he's going to talk a whole lot about how we have a better covenant in Jesus. Many have called the book of Hebrews the Book of betters. It's filled with betters.
There's so many betters in the book of Hebrews. And this new covenant is better than the old. He keeps working on this. He says, we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. He seems to be referring once again, as he did in previous chapters, to one of his favorite psalms, and that's psalm 110.
He preached on that a whole lot. In chapter seven, he introduced to us that mysterious figure Melchizedek. He talked about that preaching from psalm 110, verse four. Here he alludes to psalm 110, verse one, which we read, the lord says to my lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And so here he's mentioning that this high priest that will come will be seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven.
Then he calls him a minister. See that in verse two? We'd already seen that in verse six. So we see that word twice. He's a servant.
The word minister could be translated servant. What's his ministry? He's serving in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. Now, what's that? The true tent, it rightfully should be translated, probably a way we would understand it better from the Old Testament.
The true tabernacle, which is speaking of that which Moses built in the wilderness, and that was a portable tent that they would break down and move to the next campsite where they could worship the Lord. But he's saying that this messiah that would come would serve in the true tabernacle. So there is one in the heavenly places. Even now, that is the true one, the genuine one. It doesn't mean that the one that Moses had was false, but it means something else.
As we read here, it means that it was a copy and a shadow of the true one. Okay, this is what he's teaching. He's teaching the old testament, hebrew believers that have come to Christ, how this all fits together. And he's also teaching us, as modern day believers, why we have the Old Testament and what it accomplished and how it sets the foundation for the New Testament. He says he's a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.
In other words, he sits on a superior seat, and he serves in a superior sanctuary. That's this minister called Jesus. And then it says, for every high priest, verse three is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus, it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. What does he offer?
What is this priest that is to come? What does he offer? He offers his own body and blood as a sacrifice. He offers a superior sacrifice. He sits in a superior seat, and he serves in a superior sanctuary.
He's more better, he's much more excellent than that which came before him. Now, verse four gives us kind of an aside here. It says, now, if he were still on earth, this messiah that was to come, if he were still on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. And what's this a reference to? He's already explained that in chapter seven.
And it's this idea that Jesus didn't qualify for the levitical priesthood because he was not from the tribe of Levi, he was instead from the tribe of Judah. That qualifies him to sit on the throne of David, but it does not qualify him to be a levitical priest, which was the point he made back in chapter seven, was he didn't come in the order of the priests of Levi. He came instead of in the order of Melchizedek, which predates the mosaic law. This is the point he was making back in chapter seven. Now, if you haven't been with us on this journey, I would encourage you to go back and study those chapters.
Going through the book of Hebrews is kind of like going through math in school. They teach you addition and subtraction, and then they teach you multiplication and division, and then they keep on. Then they teach you algebra and trigonometry and calculus. And by the time you get to calculus, if you're still working on addition and subtraction, you're in big trouble. And so the Book of Hebrews, as we learned back in chapter six, if you're slow of hearing, if you've been lazy in your studies of following the word of God, he basically said, you're going to have a hard time understanding what I'm trying to teach you.
But that's what the Book of Hebrews is like. It's really trying to help us unpack how the Old Testament lays the foundation for its fulfillment in Christ through the New Testament, the New covenant. Well, this is what's going on here, he says, now, remember, he couldn't qualify for that. But that's not really that important because guess what? Verse five says it was always a copy anyway.
It was always a shadow anyway, of the real thing that Moses and Aaron and none of the priests could have ever attained to anyway. We needed one who could actually step into the heavenly place and bring his own perfect offering once for all. And they couldn't do it. He says, they were a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tabernacle, the tent, he was instructed by God, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.
What's he talking about? Remember when Moses went up on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights and how God gave him the ten commandments? Well, he also showed him how to build the tabernacle. How did he show him? By showing him the real thing.
Now, we have a record in the book of Isaiah, chapter six. We have a record in the book of Revelation. Isaiah got to see the real thing. He had a vision. John got caught up and saw the real thing.
Moses must have two. We don't have a record other than the record of the blueprints that he turned out in the Book of Leviticus. And he goes, okay, now, here's how we're going to make the tabernacle. If you're reading through the Bible with me, I do the one year Bible every year with you. And if you're on the Bible bus, a lot of you, you go, I can't make it.
Now, I got in there where this is that many cubits and that many, you know, and you get all wore out when Moses is. Is bringing the pattern, the blueprint, of building it to heavenly instruction. And that's what he's talking about here in verse five. He says, the one that Moses built, it was a good ministry. It was a good copy, but it was always a foreshadowing of the real thing that would come in a greater ministry, who would have a greater seat, who would serve in a greater sanctuary and offer a greater sacrifice.
I could stop right there. That's a good three point sermon, you got to admit. But I got to keep going. I got more verses here. This is what we're looking at together.
It says in the book of John, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Moses brought the law. He was a good minister. It was a good ministry. It was a good word, but it had no power for us to keep it.
And so grace and truth was brought through Jesus, and he brings a greater sacrifice. It says in Hebrews, chapter nine. He entered the most holy place once for all, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood. Having obtained eternal redemption, what does Jesus offer? He offers his own body and his own blood.
It's the perfect sacrifice. Now, have you ever heard the phrase, you get what you pay for? You ever heard that? You get what you pay for. Now, last week, I told you a story about how my dad always bought craftsman tools because they have a lifetime guarantee, and they did cost a little more than the kind of tools you could just pick up anywhere.
But he had another philosophy. This is another one of my daddy's sayings that he taught little Gary when I was growing up, and that was, boy, you get what you pay for. If you pay a little bit more for something, you get something that'll last and actually do the job you expected it to do, right? Good advice. You get what you pay for.
Well, the truth is that the blood of Jesus was superior. The body of Christ was superior. It was perfect. All those goats, all those rams, all of those lambs, all of those bulls, they were all foreshadowings. They were all copies of that which foreshadowed the perfect payment.
You get what you pay for. None of those were substantial enough, but the blood of Jesus was substantial enough. Now, my dad, he always drove Buicks. He would say this. He would say, you know, I'm a GM man.
He like. He likes general Motors vehicles. And in those days, Cadillac, you know, it's like the prestige premier, top of the line. But if you got a Buick, he would say it's basically a Cadillac that cost a little less, but it was just a better car. And I have photos of him when he was a single man standing next to his Buicks.
And, like, these 1940 something Buicks, 1950s. And the last Buick he bought was a 1964 Buick electra. This is a big. This was. This was a boat.
This was a huge vehicle. 1964. My father passed away in 1966. He was only 39 years old. He left my mom and all of us little kids.
I'm the oldest. But that Buick became, like, our connection to my dad. This thing just kept running. It was a great car. And my mom, she just didn't want to replace it.
It was the last vehicle my dad bought, and I actually, my mom finally got another car, so I took the Buick to college, this 1964 Buick, elector. I took it to college, and my wife, she can confirm it. We could get four people in the front and four people in the back. We could put eight people in this car, plus their luggage in the trunk. This thing was awesome.
And we, man, we did it, and we used this Buick. It was true what my dad said. You get what you pay for. This old Buick just kept on running. This is what we have in Jesus.
It will never be obsolete. It's perfect. His ministry is perfect. Even now, he's in the heavenly place, interceding for me and you. Oh, oh.
When you don't know how to pray, when you don't know what to ask for, he intercedes for you. His ministry is superior, and it's unconditional. Whereas the old covenant was conditional, the old covenant was obey and be blessed, disobey, and come under God's curse. That was the old covenant. And all you got to do is read the Old Testament, and you can see it.
But the new covenant is about grace and truth in Jesus. It's not about obedience. It's about faith in the one who was obedient in my place and in your place, he kept the whole law and then took my death so that I might have his eternal life. He offers a better ministry. Here's the second reason why the new covenant is better than the old.
The first is because he obtained it by a better ministry. The second is because he enabled it by a better mediator. He's a better mediator. We're back at verse six again, and we're going to read the second part of verse six. We've readdez verse six.
It says, but as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant. He mediates is better. So we're on that part that he's a better mediator. In fact, if you read in the King James, instead of saying he mediates, it says he is the mediator of a better covenant. Christ is a better mediator.
Last week in chapter seven, we were studying this, and this is from the new living version, it says, but God put the law of Moses aside. It was weak and could not be used for the law of Moses could not make men right with God. In other words, it couldn't make them perfect with God. Now there is a better hope through which we can come near to God. And so he's saying, now he's saying this mediator is superior, so his ministry is better, his mediation is better.
Now, what is a mediator? Literally, it's a go between. Someone who goes between two parties in order to make them unified and agree with one another. So that he's the go between. He goes back and forth between the two to make them at one with something.
He's the medium of communication, so he communicates to this party and then back to the first party. So he's carrying this communication back and forth. He's the arbiter, the reconciler, the intercessor. And that's who Jesus is. He's the one who helps ratify the covenant we have between us and God.
As we've said, he serves from a better seat and a better sanctuary and offers a better sacrifice. And not only that, he's a better mediator. Moses was a mediator of the old covenant. Jesus is the mediator of the new Covenant. He's a better mediator.
Now, if you're going to make a claim like this, it's important to talk about what do you do with the old one? And that's where that planned obsolescence comes in. It was always a temporary covenant. It was always meant to be upgraded with a new and greater covenant. And so if you're going to make these kind of claims and you're talking to a hebrew audience, you'd be like, what?
You're telling me that the Old Testament has been replaced? They're going to be mad when they hear this. And so the author of Hebrews, guess what he does for the next few verses. He's quoting directly from Jeremiah, chapter 31. In fact, from our verse eight through verse twelve.
He's doing almost verbatim, chapter 31 of Jeremiah 31 through 34. Why is he doing this? Here's what he's doing. He's going to say this. He's going to say this.
700 years ago, God was already telling you through the prophet Jeremiah that the old Covenant was going to be replaced by a new covenant. This should not come as a surprise to you because the Old Testament already told you it was going to be replaced by a new one. See, this is the point he's making. Go back and like, if you're a hebrew believer, if you're a believer in Jesus, but now you're still struggling with what to do with the Old Testament. And listen, you don't have to be a hebrew believer to try to struggle.
You know, a lot of us struggle with the Old Testament. I have people come to me all the time and say, pastor, I've been reading through the Bible like you told me to, man, that Old Testament scared me a little bit. And it's because you haven't understood how the, to read the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament, because we have a whole book. And so they were like trying to figure this out. And he's like, go back and read your Bible, hebrew believers.
Go back and read the Hebrew Bible, Jeremiah, chapter 31. And he begins to work this out with them and see how he's a better mediator. This is what he's talking to them about. Look at what it says here in verse seven. For if that first covenant, what covenant's that?
The old covenant. The Old Testament had been thoughtless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. What's the second? The New Testament. Oh, if the Old Testament, if the old covenant had been without fault, there would be no reason to replace it.
Now that would really make a jewish person upset. And you can understand why you'd be saying there are faults in the Old Testament. What does that mean? Don't we say that all of God's word is perfect? Yes, we do.
How can it have a fault? Here's what it means. Here's what it means, and here's what it doesn't mean, first of all, that it has a fault doesn't mean it has error. It doesn't mean that it's sinful. It means that it's insufficient.
Okay? The fault that it has actually is not even in itself, but it's in those who try to follow it. Well, Gary, were you making that point? I need to hear some scripture on that. Well, good.
Let's read the next verse. For he finds fault with them when he says, who's them? Well, it's not the old covenant. The old covenant is good. The problem is with the people trying to follow it, they couldn't.
In fact, the minute the flesh sees a law, it wants to break it. It's the old sin nature. All you have to do is tell a little toddler, don't touch that now. The child must touch it. The child must touch it because there's something in them called the sin nature that says, I got to touch it.
Now I have to touch it. Many of you have been coming to our church for a while. You've heard the stories of my family, my three little kids. My middle child, Jonathan, he loved to mess with the VCR. Older people tell the younger people what I'm talking about.
They don't know what a VCR is, but it had a door in it where you'd put a tape in. And he loved to stick things in there that didn't go in there. One time he comes in with this old floppy peanut butter and jelly sandwich that he'd already been biting on. And he comes in, he toddles in, and he looks at me. I'm sitting watching tv, and he looks at me because he knows he's not supposed to touch the VCR.
And he goes up to the VCR, he starts closing one eye and batting like, I know I'm in trouble, but I have to do it. And he put that peanut butter and jelly sandwich right in that door. Right in that door. Do you know how hard that is to get that cleaned out? That's hard.
And the whole time he's like, I know I'm getting a spanking, but I gotta do it because I've told him so many times, do not touch the VCR. It's human nature. And so the them refers to the Israelites. And he says, for he finds fault with them when he says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers.
Verse nine. On the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did nothing, not continue in my old covenant. And so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. They couldn't keep the them was the Israelites.
The problem wasn't the law. It was that the law was insufficient to help them keep it. That was the problem with it. It wasn't that it was, was bad. It was that it could not empower them to do it.
And this is what it speaks of now as we look here, it says the, this new covenant that's coming will be for Israel and for Judah. And I would remind all of you that we as gentiles that don't have a jewish background, that we were grafted into the tree to this abrahamic covenant, that we've all become part of this new covenant, we've been grafted in through Jesus. Well, as we continue here looking at the book of Romans, it really explains this tension between why the old law, the old covenant, did not work, and why the new covenant does. It says in Romans chapter eight, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. You see that God has done what the law could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And for sin. He condemns sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Praise the Lord.
Thank you, Jesus, for that, that you came and you kept the old covenant. You're the only one who ever did. And because we've placed our faith in you now, because you kept it, and then you offered your life, a perfect, sinless life as a sacrifice for our sins by faith. Now you have fulfilled the law for us so that we are made complete through you. And you're a better mediator.
This is why Paul writes to Timothy, there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus. He is a superior mediator. And this is why the new covenant is greater than the old. Now, I've been on a lot of mission trips.
I've been going on mission trips since 1995, and I've had the privilege to serve in many countries. Whenever I go, I almost always have to preach through an interpreter, through a mediator, someone who understands English and also the local language. And so you want a good one. You want one that can accurately translate what you're saying, but also translate your tone. If it's humor or if it's serious or whatever.
You want them to translate all of that accurately. Now, my first trip in 1995 is I went to Indonesia and we were visiting several islands, and I'd only been there like 24 hours. I was seriously jet lagged when I was asked to preach at a house church. And this house church was on the island of Bali. And there were people there that spoke different languages.
Some of them spoke the national language of Indonesian. Some of them spoke Javanese because they were from the island of Java, but many of them spoke Balinese because they were from Bali. Here's what happened. I was told I had to preach through three interpreters. And I said, well, so what's that going to look like?
I'd never preached through an interpreter ever. And so, well, first you'll say what you're going to say, and then one will say Indonesia, and then this one will say Javanese and this one will say Balinese, and then you'll be back up again. Oh, my goodness. I would forget what I said by the time the third guy went. And they would talk longer than me and I'd be like, I think they're saying stuff I didn't say.
And so then I got to one part that was really serious, and I was like, man, I thought that this is going to move the people. You know, I had planned what I was going to say right here. I really felt the holy spirit working. And I said something really serious, and he said something, and then the next guy said something, then the guy with Balinese said something, and everybody started laughing. And I turned to the guy next to me and I said, what did he say?
And he asked the guy something, and this guy asked him something. And then they came back to me. He said the people were getting sleepy, and he told them a joke. And I'm like, okay, I need a better mediator. I need a better translator.
Now, one of the countries I go to regularly is Uganda, and I have found two translators there that are perfect translators for me. It's like I feel like I'm preaching through them. One of those, Pastor George Mabone, who I love dearly, and when I preach to his congregation, I started not even looking at them. I preach at George. I turn myself and here's George, and he'll be looking at me and he'll start getting his eyes this big.
He starts vibrating all over, like, you need to slow down because I got to preach now and I'll be I have my hand on his shoulder and I'll be preaching to him and it'll get so good. He'll be like. He'll look at me like. And when I take my hand off, it's like releasing someone that you threw gasoline on a fire. He just, wow.
He blasts off. He always starts off with the same word now and then. He starts preaching in the local Rufimbira dialect there in Uganda. And when I want to come back in, because now, look, if I say a sentence, he's going to say a paragraph. And sometimes I want to come back in and we've worked it out, I'll put my hand back on his shoulder and he'll look at me and it means I'm back.
I'm back in. But he matches me perfectly. My tone, everything. It's so much of joy to have someone who's a great mediator, a great translator, who perfectly matches what you want to say and your tone. And so we have this Jesus who mediates to the father for us.
And as the word of God says that the spirit of Christ speaks in groanings too deep for words, when we don't even know how to pray. Wow, we've got a better mediator. We have it in Jesus. And now, here is the third reason that the book of Hebrews gives us that the new Covenant is greater. It's because it's enacted on better promises.
It's enacted on better promises. We're still using verse six as our pivot point, but now we're unpacking verses ten through 13. But let's look at six again. We had one little sentence we hadn't completed there in verse six. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant.
He mediates us better since what? It is enacted on better promises. This is our third reason, better promises. This new covenant has better promises. There are four promises I see in the text here.
There are four ways that it's better. And they all come from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 31. That's the text of the preacher in Hebrews. He's preaching this text from Jeremiah 31, and he goes on like this. We'll pick it up at verse ten.
For this is the covenant that I will make. So now we're talking about the new covenant, aren't we? This is the new covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. Now, listen, he says, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. He didn't do that with the old covenant.
The old covenant couldn't do that. It was external. It was written on stone tablets. But this new covenant will be written in our minds so that it transforms our thinking, will be written in our hearts so that we have a new heart. This is what he's saying here.
The new covenant will transform us. The old covenant couldn't do that. Here's what he goes on to say in verse ten. He says, I will be their God and they shall be my people. In other words, now we'll be adopted into the family as his children.
This is a change of status, that we will be his. He will be ours and we will be his. And then in verse eleven it says, and they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. So now he's saying, I'm going to give them the Holy Spirit to teach them. Well, Gary, how did you see that?
How did you get that? Well, the book of John. Jesus says after I'm gone, the Father will send another comforter and he's going to remind you of everything I have taught. He's going to teach you the book of John one. John talks about how the spirit will teach us.
It doesn't mean that we won't need human teachers, but we'll have the Holy Spirit living within us to discern what's true and what's right. Right to teach us. So we have this, so we have. It transforms our minds and hearts. It changes our relationship to God.
It gives us the spirit within us so that we can know God personally. And then finally verse twelve says this, for I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more. This new covenant will bring forgiveness. The old covenant brought law. But the new covenant will bring forgiveness and mercy.
That's the new covenant and that's the superiority of this new covenant. I will remember their sins no more. The scripture says, I will separate their sins as far as the east is from the west. And so I will plunge it into the deepest ocean and I will remember it no more. And then we come to verse 13.
And it would be startling to read verse 13 if we had not read the previous twelve. But here he summarizes, in speaking of a new covenant, he speaking of God makes the first one obsolete. Remember we were talking about planned obsolescence. God had always planned for this new covenant to come. He actually revealed it to Abraham when he said, through your seed, singular, all nations will be blessed.
That abrahamic covenant was unconditional, and it preceded the mosaic covenant. And so the mosaic covenant is like a parentheses in the timeline of the Bible. It was always planned to be obsolete. It was only there to guide the Israelites for a season until the messiah came. It provided a mirror so they could see their own sinfulness.
It provided a guardrail to restrain them from sin, and it provided a guardian to teach them, but it could not save them. That's why the new covenant comes. And so he says it very boldly here. He's able to now because he's explained how he got here. And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete.
And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. There'll be no further need now because of Jesus of the sacrificial system. And indeed, we believe that the book of Hebrews was probably written around 64, 65 AD. We think it was written before the fall of the temple of Jerusalem because of all the temple references. But we know in a short time after its writing that in 70 AD, the Romans destroyed the temple.
And there has never been temple sacrifice since. It has faded away. It has been replaced by a permanent and superior ministry mediator built on better promises named Jesus. And so we see the author of Hebrews helping us understand the placement and importance of the Old Testament, but also that the time for following it has been replaced by the new. Jeremiah is not the only one who talked about this.
The prophet Ezekiel did. He says in Ezekiel 36, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. So we see the prophets talking about what God is going to do, but the Jews seem to miss it.
This is why Jesus says to them, you say you believe in Moses. You say you believe in the prophets. If you believed in them, you should believe in me. The better promise of the new covenant is in Christ. Two Corinthians says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
The old has passed away, and behold, the new has come. He gives us a better covenant built on better promises. The book of Hebrews is the book of betters because it's about Jesus. Now, in the early days of our church, we were portable. We didn't have a home of our own.
We used to rent schools and other churches and all kinds of buildings around town for our church. And because we were portable, we had to have something to carry our sound equipment and nursery equipment and other items in. And so when we first planned the church, we didn't have a lot of money. The church didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have a lot of money, but I had a boat.
So I sold my boat for 34, and I found a van for $3,400. God matched it perfectly. I sold my boat, and I bought a 1984 Chevy boville. What color was it, you ask? Rust.
Not the color. That's just what the body was. It was rusty, but it ran pretty good, and it had a lot of room in it. We named it Bertha. It was an affectionate name for our big church van, if you will.
And we would fill it up with all the equipment and back it up to Forest Hills Middle school back in those days and unload it and have church. And then, because it was my personal vehicle, during the week, we would unload all that stuff when we got home, back into the garage. It was an interesting van. Old Bertha was. Had a problem with the starter, and I couldn't afford to fix it.
But I found out if I hit it with a hammer, it would start. And so I would get up in the mornings, and I would already have my clothes on that I was going to wear to, and I didn't want to get them dirty. And I figured out how I could sling my body under Bertha, hang on to the bottom step of the driver's door, and I could hit that starter with a hammer and have nine year old Stephen crank it, and it would start. And so that's how we started it every day that it wouldn't start. I kept a hammer right there next to me to start.
Bertha. Bertha. It had problems. It would backfire on call. Sometimes it would backfire when you didn't want to.
But if I goosed it and let off and hit it again, it would definitely backfire. My daughter, who loved Bertha not, and I would take her to school. She would say to her mama, she'd say, mama, is daddy taking me to school today? And Robin would say, well, yeah, honey, I've got to do such and such. And she'd go, please, mama, don't let daddy take me to school today.
She was ashamed of Bertha. We loved Bertha. Except Robin and Aaron did not love Bertha. The boys and I loved it Bertha. But we would pull up at the school she was at, and she would.
She would jump out like she was a spy leaving some kind of plane. Like, she would parachute out and run up towards her school with her little backpack on. And I would roll the window down and go, hey, Aaron, I love you like that. And then she would be like. Like that.
Because now everybody's going to know what vehicle she pulled up in. And then I would goose it and backfire out of the parking lot. Right? That's the kind of daddy she had. I'm sorry.
In fact, one time I goosed, it was. We were driving down the road and blew the tailpipe off, and it was hanging on by like something, and we were dragging it down the road, throwing sparks for 20 yards behind us. Some car pulled up beside us going like this. You know. You know, why is Gary telling us this story about Bertha?
It was a temporary fix. It got us from a to b. It got us here. But you know what's better? Not having Bertha being in a place where we're not sitting up and tearing down anymore, where we have a home.
You know? I mean, you know, it's not. It's. It's not your normal church building, but we love it. That's where we've been having church for the past 1213 years.
And a lot of people getting saved here and baptized, kids growing up and following Jesus. It's better. It's greater. It's better than Bertha. And that's what the old covenant is.
We needed it. It got us from a to b, but it was temporary. But now we have a greater covenant in Jesus. Amen. That's what we have today.
It's obtained by better ministry in Jesus, and it's enabled by a better mediator in Christ. And it has better promises because he's the one who said yes and kept all those promises for us. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. But most of all, thank you for Jesus.
And, Lord, I pray for that one that's here today that's never given their life to you. Is it you, my friend? You've never repented of your sin and said, lord, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for my sin, and I believe you died on the cross for me. I believe you were raised from the grave and that you live today.
Would you come and live in me? You can pray like that right now, right where you're at. Maybe you're watching online or you're seated listening with us this morning, but right where you are, he's listening. Would you come into my life, forgive me my sins, make me a child of God. I want to follow you all the days of my life.
If you're praying like that, believing the Bible says he'll save you, he'll make you a child of God. Others are here, and you're a Christ follower. You're a follower of Jesus. But you needed the reminder today. Would you just say, Lord, thank you.
Thank you that you offer eternal life. Thank you that you offer something permanent. Thank you that you intercede for me, Lord Jesus, when I don't know how to pray you.
Thank you, Lord. In Jesus name, amen.
Audio
All right. Good morning, church. So good to see all of you this morning. I'm very thankful you're here. Very thankful to get back into the Book of Hebrews with you this morning.
We've got just a handful more weeks of this together, and then we'll, we'll move into another season of, of messages with you. We've been in this series for, this is our second year. I mean, not, not continuous. Obviously, you, most of you know this, but we're in the Book of Hebrews, chapter eight today, and we entitled this whole series Jesus is greater. And that is such a great title for this, such a perfect title.
In fact, I heard this week from another pastor. He says, anytime you're struggling, just go to the Book of Betters. Go to the Book of Betters, he said, which is really true. The greater is in here a ton. You know what's in here?
Even more better. The word better is in here a absolute ton. And so Jesus is greater. And we're going to be digging in this morning to the idea that Jesus is a greater covenant. He's a greater covenant to us.
This all comes out of our theme verse, Hebrews one, where it says, this shows that the Son is far greater than the angels, just as the name God gave him is greater than their names. Now, over the last few weeks, we've talked about a greater goal, a greater hope, a greater priesthood, a greater guarantee. Last week, a guarantee of eternal life, a guarantee of something better in Christ Jesus. And this week, the writer of Hebrews goes really into something specific about how the new covenant is just better in every way. The new covenant in Christ Jesus is better.
It's greater. In fact, the old covenant has become obsolete. And this leads us to a conversation that is really kind of important for us, and that is we're really often looking for something that'll last. That's generally something. Marriages, relationships, things we buy, things we do.
We're hoping things will last, right? That's almost anything in this life. You're hoping it'll have some life to it, something eternal even, although most things in this world aren't eternal. Now, I don't know if you've heard of this term. I mentioned it many years ago in another sermon, and that's when I first learned about it.
And that's the term planned obsolescence. Anybody ever heard this term before? If you've been with us for a while, I mentioned it some time ago, but it's the idea that manufacturers, companies purposely make things break. Did you know this? Did you know that the cars you buy, the phones you buy, they could make them last a lot longer.
They don't want them to last a lot longer because then their sales will go down. And so planned obsolescence is kind of a pretty common thing in almost anything that you buy. It refers to this strategy of designing things to have a limited lifespan so that we will buy more. I think Apple actually recently went through some, I don't know if they went through some litigation about this, but I know they were criticized at one point for actually making the updates that you get kill your phone. And some of you may have experienced this, that if you got one of the past updates, it would actually make your battery just stop, start dying quickly.
Those of you who have shoddy batteries on your iPhone just know they might have done that on purpose because they want you to get the. I think we're on like 107. I don't know what iPhone we're on now, but this seems to be part of the author's intent today is that we would realize something, that if we're staying with the old stuff, it's become obsolete. It's time for the new thing. And the new thing is Christ Jesus.
The new covenant is in his blood, is in his sacrifice. And so if we continue to live as if we live under the old covenant, we're really missing the peace and the joy and the wonder that is in our walk with Christ Jesus. If you're looking like me, like everyone else, like everything runs down, everything gets old, everything stops working, everything loses its new car smell, perhaps there's some things in this life that ought to last, that ought to be permanent and empowering and perfect. That's where we're going to be today. And I really, I pray more than anything, this encourages you.
The author here in Hebrews eight explained that the new covenant in Christ Jesus is greater than the old in every way. In every way. And we can understand this, too. I believe the text is going to give us three really clear reasons why the new covenant is greater. This is an argument, really that he's making for that.
So I'm giving you three reasons. Let's dig in. We're in Hebrews chapter eight, verse one through 13. The whole chapter, verse of chapter eight. It's not super long.
Here we go. Now, the point and what we are saying is this. So what we talked about last week, he's now telling us the point. The point is this. We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the high places, in the true tent that the Lord set up not man.
For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus it's necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all. Since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law, they serve a copy, a shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, the tabernacle, he was instructed by God, saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.
But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent. This is our key verse right here. Church as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old. As the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
Now, if you got your bibles with you, you'll notice verses eight through twelve are in prose. They're in like poetry. That's because he's directly quoting Jeremiah 31 here, where he says, for he finds fault with them when he writes. When he says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant. And so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds. I will write them on their hearts.
I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one. You hear it obsolete.
I didn't make this word up. It's right here in the text. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. God bless the reading of his word. Amen.
I pray this encourages you as we dig into this, because verse six tells us some things that are just so important to our walk with Christ. This isn't something just for first century believers. I really pray more than anything, as you show up, week in and week out, that you see how this impacts your current present life. This isn't just for some people trying to figure out the details of a faith that's really new to them. It's so much more than that.
That's why God has protected his word for us to dig into today. So why is the new covenant important to us? Why is it, in fact, greater than what was before it? It's because it was obtained. It was obtained by a better ministry.
That's all. These points are coming out of verse six. I felt like verse six really was the keys under the door. He says it is obtained by a better ministry. In fact, that's what he writes in verse six, that Christ obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old.
Now, what does he mean by that? I think that's where he leads off. He says some stuff in verses one through six that are, you got to kind of know your old Testament a little bit. Try to follow him here. Where is he going with this?
He leads off at verse one with the word. This is the point. So I'm about to tell you what I meant when I wrote, and we talked about this last week, when he wrote in Hebrews 722, this makes God the guarantor of a better covenant. What does that mean? Now he's about to tell us.
Here's chapter eight. Let me get to the point of what I mean, that there's a better covenant. Now, this covenant word is going to appear countless times, not only in chapter eight, but in nine and ten. This is what he's on about for a little while, and it's super important for them. It's super important for us.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of pose a question to you that I'm gonna dig into more towards the end. And that is, in what ways do I need to be, like, reassured and do I need to be encouraged to follow the new covenant and not the old? You might be thinking, and I imagine most of you are, I haven't followed the old covenant at all in my life, and most of us haven't. We didn't grow up in the jewish faith. Most of us.
Most of us haven't at all tried to wrestle with those old covenant laws. But I would argue to you that is irrelevant, because christians everywhere focus more on obedience to Christ than faith in Christ. And there's a big difference, that if you were asked, hey, what does it mean to be a Christian? You would say, these are the things that you do. And that's not it?
Your faith produces works. Yes, because of who you are in Christ, you will do. But don't make the mistake like most of us make, and I make all the time, that my obedience is what God desires. No, my obedience is merely the outward projection of what I already am in Christ, in my faith. And so this is why this still matters.
Here's the point I'm making, Christians. We're still living like old covenant believers when we think it's all about rules and regulations, when obedience should be from the spring of the heart's love for Christ Jesus. There's a big, big difference. This is why sometimes people look at the church and go, wow, they're super legalistic. There's this and that, and you'll hear these complaints, and sometimes they're right.
It's not that people are lying. This is how they truly feel. It's all about what I can't do. The church is more about what it's against than what it's for. I think that's an accusation we should consider.
So here the writer is certainly talking to believers, saying, hey, you're really wrestling with old covenant. But nothing's changed church. We're still wrestling with stuff like this. And he's telling us in verse six, guess what? The ministry in Christ Jesus is way better.
And then he gives us some details as to why this is true. Verse one tells us that he's seated at the right hand. He's a better priest. He's doing a better ministry because of where he is positionally. He never died or he didn't stay dead.
I should say he resurrected. And unlike the other priests who died and moved on and they had to get a new one, this isn't the case with Christ Jesus. No, he is a priest forever and sits where? At the right hand of God. Now, once again, the writer of Hebrews is doing one more quotation of psalm 110, where he's been for weeks.
Psalm 110. One says, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies, your footstool. What has happened in Christ Jesus is he's got a more excellent ministry because he's right there at the right hand of God saying, that's my boy. That's my daughter. I've paid for that.
And I have access to God because of who he is. It's a better ministry. But then he goes on to give us some more details. And this one, I don't know how you are in the way that you study the word or how things jump off the page to you. But sometimes when I'm reading, I go, wait a second.
Let me pause for just a minute and think about what he's just argued for. He brings up this tent tabernacle illustration in verses two through five. Where's he, what's he on about here? What is this about? He, in fact, says that the temple or the tent, the tabernacle that Moses erected was a copy and a shadow.
Did you read that there in verse five? Did you notice that? That means, and I don't know if you've ever pondered this, that the things that God showed Moses on the mountain when he was giving him the commandments, when he was setting up the tabernacle worship, that perhaps, and I think this is likely, Moses saw at least a glimpse of the heavenly tabernacle. This person is, this writer here in Hebrews, is making the argument that there is a real set up divine tabernacle of God where Christ is now, almost all of the articles. He's the mercy seat.
He's sitting on it. I mean, so much is pointing to Jesus, but what he told Moses, look what he writes there in verse five and six. He says, make everything according to the pattern that you were shown on the Mount Moses. Go. Everything you notice there, set it up for the people.
That means the tent, the tabernacle that we grew up with reading here in the old covenant that they grew up with, literally was merely a copy, a reflection of something that really is. So Christ, then, he's making the argument. His ministry is in the real place. He's the real deal. He's the authentic one.
That's the point of the argument he's making here. What we've been having was meant to be a reflection of what really is in God's kingdom. So that means when the priest would make sacrifice, the priest would deal with the people. He was doing something as a reflection of something that is actually happening there. And that they're, the sacrifices they're making are like.
I've often heard it this way. They're like ious. They're debts to be paid by someone who can pay them. And Christ does that. He does that for the saints of old, for the present, and for the future saints.
That's what Christ has done and is doing. So the ministry is just far better. It's the real thing and not a copy. Jesus, he's greater in the ministry than Moses. Look at John, chapter one.
It says, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The ministry is superior because he's fulfilled the law. He's done the thing we couldn't do, and now offers us what he closes with here, which is this idea of mercy and remembrance of sins. No more. True, true mercy.
Hebrews nine there in another where we'll be next week, Hebrews 912 says, he entered the most holy place once for all, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. It's a better ministry. The sacrifice is complete and not an iou.
He makes this argument in the center of this about things to offer, and that the priests had to continuously offer sacrifice, not only for themselves and their sins, but also for the sins of the people. But the thing that Christ has now offered is complete. It's perfect. It's fully redeeming. You've all heard the phrase, I know you've heard the phrase, you get what you pay for.
I hear this all the time. It's a phrase I think will never die. It's such a good, memorable snippet. You get what you pay for. It continues to be true.
And this is, I think, the argument that the writer is making in these first few genesis. He says, look what they had to offer. What you're getting there out of that is something temporary. What the priests had to offer, they couldn't help it. They did the best that they could with what God had commanded and what he'd given, but it was incomplete.
In fact, the law, you know, what it's done for us. It's told us what right looks like, but it couldn't help us to do it at all. It had no power in and of itself. It's merely a tutor, it's a guard. It's like putting up the guardrails and bowling, but you still got to roll the ball.
And if you've ever been with some wild people, go to a bowling alley with the pen, with the walls up, with some youth, they'll find a way. They'll find a way to throw it in another lane. This is what the law has done. It's put up the rails, but we still got to roll the ball. No.
Something new has happened in Christ Jesus. Now we have power to bowl, to keep with that illustration. Now we have actual power to follow Christ and follow the Lord. You get what you paid for. I think arcades are terrible for this, you know, this idea of, you get what you pay for.
If you ever take little children to an arcade, they're less interested in actually playing the games and what they can win from the tokens of the tickets. And I have to remind them all the time. Do you know that the stuff that's behind there is some of the cheapest junk you can find on earth? Like dollar tree is better stuff. All right?
If you want a little frog that you can press on his back and make it high, I can get you a thousand of those for a dollar at dollar tree, rather than you turn in ten tickets for that. Why are we at the arcade? We're here to play these games, but try to convince a kid of this, you know, they can't get over it. I'm playing skeeball because it's going to give me the most rewards. But you can't actually hit any of the.
You're just rolling it into kingdom come. Play a game you like, you get what you pay for. You get what you pay for. And these priests had very little to offer. This is the argument he's making.
Christ is so much better because his ministry is better. Why? Because the ministry, the covenant itself, has moved from something that's conditional, that's a glorified IOU, to something permanent, effective, and eternal and powerful.
Which is why when we go back, even in our thinking, when we go back, christians hear me. When we go back and think God's not listening to me because I've been bad, I want you to understand that is not new covenant thinking. Now, does God discipline his sons and daughters? The scripture seems to indicate such. But what does that mean?
There are times, in fact, I think, where God will, will let you know his displeasure for things like a good father or a good mother. But is God saying, hey, you know what? Time out. I don't want to spend time with you for weeks, for months. Some of you haven't spent time with God for weeks, months, even years, because you feel like you screwed up too bad.
I want you to know that's not the God of the new covenant at all. He loves you. He wants to spend time with you. He made you for himself. And when you say, oh, but I'm too bad to be in his presence, he never wanted you to be good, to be in his presence.
In fact, you can't do it. You get good in his presence. You don't get well and try to enter his presence. So you get well in his presence. So that old covenant thinking church, I know it's true because it happens to me.
I think, man, God is distant. And it's because I'm not good. It's cause something's wrong. I made a big error. I've not done something he expected me to do.
I dare you, church. If that's been your thinking, I dare you to go spend some time with him today, see what happens and find out, like all of us who have done that have found out. Wait a minute. He wasn't far. I was.
I thought I had to be clean before I could come into his presence. That's old covenant thinking. And I want you to know the new covenant is better. It's full of mercy, it's full of grace, and he wants to help you in your holiness. Don't hear me say that.
And twist those words and say, oh, you don't have to be holy anymore. Oh, you can sin and let your sins abound. Paul deals with that, says, absolutely not. That's not the case. Just get the information in correct priorities.
What I'm arguing for don't come in thinking, I've got to be holy to be made right. No, you've got to be made right in the blood of Christ, and then he'll make you holy. Here's the second reason he gives. Certainly it's a better ministry, and then it's enabled by a better mediator. A better mediator.
Verse six. And the ESV says, the verb mediates. It's more. In truth, it's more of a noun here, in fact, that he is mediator. Most of the other translations use that.
I like the new king James on it, where it says, he is mediator of a better covenant. In fact, that's what's being argued for here, that the Christ that we serve now, this priest, is a better mediator than the priests of old Hebrews seven, in fact, says this in the new living. And we talked about this last week, that God put the law of Moses aside. Why? Because it was weak and could not be used for.
The law of Moses could not make men right with Goddesse. Now there's a better hope through which we can come near to God. He's a better mediator. This word is not something we use a ton, but I think most of you have an awareness of it. You could literally translate it.
Go between. Go between. He's a medium of communication. He's an intercessor, an arbiter. An arbitrator, I should say a reconciler.
This is one who comes in between two parties and makes it work. I've been in that situation on a couple of occasions. I could tell you that is a hoot. If the two people are at odds, that'll be the most fun you've ever had in your life. If you ever get to mediate between two people who might hate each other?
And as a pastor, you just get the joy of that a lot. It's really fun. But Christ is doing something not between two people who hate one another, but two people who are at odds. And why is this? Our sin has fully separated us from a holy God.
That's a fact. And God is fully holy. And just so, he is our now mediator. He comes between the two parties and said, you can keep being holy and just, you don't have to change your character at all, God, because I have paid to. And I can come to this person and say, hey, that distance, you couldn't cover it.
But I covered it. It was about this wide. I covered it. This is great news. This is what he's saying.
He's the great mediator. And he's telling us why in the first few verses. It's because he has a better seat. These are great. I didn't come up with these, but two s's for you.
Why? He's the better mediator. First, he has a better seat. He's sitting at the right hand of the throne. And he also has a better sanctuary.
He's in the real thing, not some earthly tabernacle. He's in the divine throne room. He's got a better seat, a better sanctuary, and he's faultless. This is where he goes on in verse seven to say that the old covenant was not faultless. Now what in the world does that mean?
Does that mean the law itself was, like, at fault? He goes to clarify this more in verses eight through twelve. But what he means by that, I think Chuck Swindoll, pastor Chuck puts very well. He says in this context, the term faultless does not imply that the old covenant was sinful, but that it was insufficient. It could not accomplish eternal salvation nor bring about perfect righteousness.
It was adequate for what it was meant to do. Understand this church. The old covenant was meant to hold you by the hand and lead you to the savior and go, okay, I can't take you any farther. That's what it, that was all it was ever meant to do. He goes on to say, in fact, that however, as a means of bringing everlasting righteousness, it was insufficient.
Now, the claim he's making here, the writer of Hebrews, is brilliant. It's God's word, inspired by the Holy spirit. It's not shocking at all to me that this passage of Jeremiah comes to light. I love this. This is how I preach.
This is how I try to preach church. I don't get this right all the time, but I really want you, when you walk away, to say, I heard the word of God today. I didn't hear the opinion of a man. Sometimes you'll hear my illustrations and things, but I'm really trying to avoid saying, hey, this is what Jonathan thinks. I love that.
Even the authors of the scriptures often do this, too. He gives citation. He says, how do I know this is correct? Because Jeremiah had already prophesied it. I know that the new covenant is better because we've been reading about this for centuries, but you haven't quite gotten it.
I know you know this passage, but look at it again. And so he cites, he says, look at Jeremiah 31 once more. This is the evidence that what we had in Moses, the mosaic law, was a temporary covenant, planned obsolescence. I think God did this. I know God did this on purpose.
It was meant to show them their need for a savior. It was meant to hand them off to the messiah, who is Christ Jesus. Now, he goes on in verse eight to say something here that clarifies it. He says he finds fault with them when he says that. Notice that.
It doesn't say that he finds fault with it. No, it says it finds fault with them who are the theme we're about to find out. That's where he digs into next. The them are those in verse nine who did not continue. He tells us in verse eight that the days of coming are coming.
Look, Jeremiah 31 says, I will establish a new covenant, which means the people, when they hear about the new covenant and the blood of Christ should have gone. Huh? I wonder if that's what Jeremiah was talking about. I wonder. Now I could understand them saying, I'm not so sure that's it.
But for them to continue in the old covenant, having believed in the new covenant, they've really missed the mark. And that's the help that the writer is bringing to them. Look, you should have already known a new covenant was coming and pushing out the old because it's been fulfilled. But then he goes on in verse nine to tell us those in which he finds fault with. You see it there in verse nine, it says, I.
They did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them. Now, that sounds harsh, but it makes a lot of sense in that context there in verse nine, do you notice what God is saying of his people? He's saying, I held their hands and walked them out of Egypt. I would encourage you believers to find a better place in scripture where God shows himself more clearly than in the exodus. I can't really think of one Christ.
The life of Jesus Christ is amazing. The miracles, the miraculous, all of that stuff is fantastic. But it's so located in little towns and little cities. Do you realize that God freed a people from the most powerful nation on earth with ten plagues and walks them by the hand out of slavery, by a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud, and moves oceans and moves seas and dumps them on chariots and gives them food from the sky? Find me a more miraculous zone than this.
And there's a section where they go into war, and all that they have to do is just continue while Moses arms are held up. That makes no sense. Somebody tell me the military strategy there, that your leader has to do this and we win. There's no strategy there. It's about faith and trust.
They marched around a city and blew trumpets. This is insanity.
Which is why I think God says, I walked them by the. I held their hands. How could they have nothing? You couldn't miss God. I mean, we pray sometimes.
Like, God, I want to see you. I want to know you and you always. Sometimes it's hard to know where you're moving and hard to know your will. No, they couldn't say that he was a pillar of fire guiding their path. How could they say, well, God, I just wish we knew where we were supposed to go.
What about that thing, that giant scary thing? What about that? They couldn't make that argument to which God says, hey, I showed no concern for them when they just ran from me. I couldn't have made myself more obvious to them. And they just ran to foreign gods and foreign kings with all their heart.
They ran from me. That's the Old Testament. But now this is what's so crazy now in Christ Jesus, this new covenant, you can run your whole life. And verse twelve is still true. I will remember their sins no more.
I will forgive their iniquities. How is that possible? And yet that's what the blood of Christ has done.
You can be an absolute mess most of your life and then finally say, you know what? I see Jesus, and I get it, and I want to walk with you. And that stuff is not only wiped away, it's not even remembered. That's incredible. This new mediator is something.
He's something else. He's something else. He's so much better. He's so much greater.
This is why Paul writes to the Romans in chapter eight, that there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, the condemnation is gone because it's already fallen on the person. It's already fallen on the son of God. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
Wow. And now this one mediator, which Paul puts plainly to Timothy one, Timothy two, he says, there's one God, one mediator between God and man, and that man is Christ Jesus. He's the one. Now we don't have to spend time anywhere else going to earthly priests or praying to saints. We don't have to do any of that.
We come straight to the mediator who is Christ Jesus. This new covenant in the blood of Christ is greater than the priests of old. And this leads us to the third and final reason, which, I'll be honest, is just. It's just the most obvious of them all. It's enacted on better promises.
The promises are just superior in every way.
And he lays those out for us in verses ten and eleven. Really? Jeremiah laid them out for us first. The writer of Hebrews picks up on that. He says, what are these better promises?
Look at this in verse ten. Verse ten says, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. That's new. You know this holy spirit thing we talk about sometimes? You know, that thing's real.
That person, I shouldn't say thing, that person is real. That voice in your head that says, come back to me, my boy. That's not you. That's not you. Your internal voice is saying, I'm hungry, I'm sleepy, I'm in a bad mood.
I'm happy. Why am I happy? I'm not saying that's your internal voice. That voice in there that says, you should reconcile to your spouse, you should come spend time with your savior. That's the spirit.
The spirit is within, transforming you in a way like the old covenant believers would have never known. This is why David and several other writers, they'll pray these really strange things. They sound strange to us, but they make a lot of sense to them. They'll say, God, don't let your spirit depart from me. Look at the psalmist countless times.
Don't let your spirit. But that's not how it works. In the new covenant, the Holy Spirit, indwells, abides in the believer. Wow. And becomes the thing in which.
And this, I would encourage you believers, and the more you spend time in this, the more you'll find that it just comes to. It just wells up in you at times when you most need it, that there are times where I'm in conversation or I'm trying to. Maybe it's a counseling moment, but maybe it's just in my internal thoughts where maybe my mind goes astray all of a sudden. A thought just comes up all of a sudden. Well, what about psalm 110?
And maybe it's not as clear as that to you all the time. Maybe it's just. Wait a minute. Doesn't the Bible say that, oh, wow. Okay, so now I've got this well, this well that just comes up in me, that the spirit brings to the surface, that I will put my laws in your minds.
I'll write them in your hearts. I'm gonna be with you. That's verse ten. Then he goes on in verse ten to say, I will be their God and they shall be my people. Do you realize, believers in the room, this is a great thing.
I'm thankful for this because I don't think there's even a percentage of jew in me. This is good to find out because this super gentile right here was going to have a hard time finding God. He says, they will be my people based on this new covenant that's in the blood of Christ. That has nothing to do anymore with race.
He goes on in verse eleven to say some stuff that I had to really, really ponder this week. And let me ask you why you think I might have had to ponder verse eleven. He says, they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know the Lord. They all shall all know me. And which made me go, am I not supposed to be doing what I'm doing?
I had to get some help on that because my initial thought was, what does he mean, they shall all know me and we shouldn't have to teach know the Lord? I think in the midst of this, he's telling us all of these details about what the spirit is doing, putting his law in our hearts and being our God, and we're being his people. And I like what John Gill writes on the matter. He says, this idea is that men should not only teach, but the spirit of God should teach in them and through them that no longer are we teaching from a human perspective, if you will that now the indwelling spirit, I think there's some evidence for this idea in one John two, which is also a very strange passage, but it says in one John, chapter two, the anointing that you receive from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you abide in.
So this new thing is occurring, the anointing in the Holy Spirit, if you will, that causes us to be taught by him and to abide in him. I think this is why the preaching of the word is pretty amazing, because it wouldn't work at all without the spirit's help. This is, I think, partially what he's saying, is that no longer we're speaking man's wisdom, but we're speaking the word of God. And what happens in you, I pray, is that your faith is moved, that the spirit of God within you tells you what to do with it. This is why sometimes after service, you'll come up to me and say, when you said this, it meant this to me and it moved me to make this decision.
And I get this sometimes, and I'll go, I don't know how you got from point a to point z. I said this and you thought, I need to go make things right with my dad, like I wasn't talking at all about that. How did that happen? Because the spirit of God is moving in you. You heard me say this.
And somehow it spurred you to good obedience to good. Good living. It had nothing hardly to do with what I. This has happened. This has probably happened today.
Some of you are going to come up to me later and say, I don't really remember what you said. Hebrews, chapter eight. But God said this like, cool. I don't want to get in the way of what he's already doing. I'm just trying to be a cheerleader for Christ with you.
The fourth promise that he gives in verse twelve is amazing. And I've been citing it again and again, that I will be merciful towards their iniquities. I will remember their sins no more. This is new. Christ is doing something new here.
No longer is it an IOU based on a sacrifice that we don't know when it's going to get paid. I know that I'm going to have to keep doing this over and over and over again, rather than in Christ Jesus. Now I go to the person. I go to the one who's paid it, and it's done. Now, believers don't hear me say this.
There are some things you're struggling with in your life, some sin areas, some thoughts, some things that you get into that you've been struggling with for a long time. I think that's every believer. I do think as we mature and we walk with Christ, those things shift. I think they get deeper. You go from what was, I have a hard time controlling my tongue, or I have a hard time coveting everything.
You go from something that's very close to the surface, and you could see it to go way deeper and deeper and deeper in your spiritual maturity to go, okay, what was at the heart of that? Why was it that I lash out in anger? Okay. And that's what's new in Christ Jesus, is we come to him in repentance of those things, but we're coming seeking that he would cleanse us, that he would make us holy, that we would walk with him, that there's now power in faith, not just merely a sacrifice that I know I will have to continue in. And then he makes it all plain.
And I probably wouldn't have written it this way in verse 13. This, the way the writer writes it here, would have scared me to death to write to y'all. I'm often concerned that I would hurt your feelings, and it's cause I care. It's cause I love you. It's not cause I'm trying to be a people placer.
It's really not. I could care less generally about what people think, but I don't want you to walk away disliking the church or the pastorate, or I want you to say, you know, if I'm offended by anything, let it be the offense of the cross is what Paul said, and I'm trying to live that way. But this writer does not mince words, and I'd be scared to write it this way. But I think by the power of the Holy Spirit, he said, hey, I want y'all to know something. The old covenant is obsolete.
Stop doing it. Cut it out. Because it's not only obsolete, it has grown old. The word there in the Greek is gerasco. It's where we get the word geriatric.
It has become an old man, and it's withering, and it's ready to vanish away. It says, this thing is about to disappear. This is, I think, good evidence for why this book is probably written before 70 AD, because they're about to find out. In 70 AD, the temple is about to get destroyed. They're going to find out real soon.
We can't even worship at all like we've been doing. Maybe the spirit of God tells this writer, hey, it's ready to vanish away. Y'all don't know how soon that's coming.
Jeremiah wasn't the only prophet to foretell of these better promises that we should have been expecting. Jeremiah says it. Ezekiel says it. Chapter 36. It says, I will give you a new heart.
I'll put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit in you. Listen to that. And move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. This better promise.
And Christ has made us new. Not only are we in a new covenant, but we are a new people with a new heart, a new heart of flesh. Paul writes to the church in Corinth. Therefore, if anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has passed away.
Behold, the new has come. I hope as we close right now, you could experience these better promises. A lot of us, a lot of us are christians here, but we're still living old covenant. I would encourage you to think about this, that most of the people you interact with in this life are living old covenant. It's just true.
Engage anybody, your neighbor, your coworker, non believer and believer alike. You'll find a series of answers that are very similar to one another. You'll go to your neighbor, and if you were bold enough to ask, why should God let you into heaven? Which was a question we used to ask people on the beaches in campus crusade and blow their minds. It's like, I'm just trying to chill in the sand.
I mean, that got deep fast. That was like, question two. Hey, my name is Jonathan. If you died and went to heaven or went to God today, why would he let you into heaven? Okay, we didn't break into this at all, but that was how we would do it.
And people generally will say the same kinds of things. They'll say, I've tried to be a good person. I've done. I've tried to do good in my life. That is generally what people will say to which Jesus would respond as he did respond in the gospels, why do you call me good?
None are good, but goddess, none are good. You can try to do good. And then you ask christians a similar thing, hey, how do I get saved? What does it mean to follow God? What does it mean to follow?
And you might hear people say, well, you got to go to church. You know, some believers think this way. You got to be serving. You got to be doing these things. Now, you ought to.
You ought to be in fellowship with believers. That's not the requirements. The requirement is faith, which is why we will say, even the most faithful believers in the room will say things like, why is God punishing me for my disobedience? Why is God giving this person better? Is it because they've done better?
Why is it raining on their field and not mine? I hear this all the time from believers. I think this. Sometimes the promises in the new covenant are better. They're better.
That stuff you're wrestling with, why does God feel distant? Why don't you check in with him today, see if he's feeling distant? I wonder. Just most of the time for me, I can't speak for you, my friend, but most of the time when God feels distant, it's cause I've not picked up the phone. Look, God doesn't speak really.
You know, my wife doesn't really speak to me either, if I avoid her. It's funny how that works.
I found that God speaks in the most unusual times. There's this, like, conversational kind of thing. God really wants, I think, from us more than anything. It's not. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
That was a model prayer to help you engage and help you think it out. But I think he's more interested in these moments where I'm just walking, trying to, you know, get my 10,000 steps or whatever. Like I ain't got nothing else to do. God, what you up to? What you trying to do in my life?
Why'd this happen today? God, those are some. Those are some amazing moments where God isn't distant. If he's distant, it's me. It's what I'm trying to argue for.
And when I live out this old covenant thinking, and I gotta be cleaned up before I can come into his presence, boy, I miss the mark. I pray that you will experience the better promises in the new covenant. Some of you have really been wrestling with this lately. You've been trying to get your life right. I just want to live better.
And you're missing the mark. The mark is spend time with the savior. He'll do the work. This is true for your friends and family, too. You've been thinking, boy, I've really got to get the gospel into those knuckleheads.
That's not how it works. Be the gospel. Live it out. Let them see your love. But just help them to.
If they could just access God. I'm not interested in you cleaning up. Some of you got some drug dealers for family. I mean, good grief. Some.
Some of us have got that crazy uncle that's into nothing good. He's in and out of jail. You've got that one aunt that's been married ten times. I mean, that's. Most of us have family like that.
And you're thinking, boy, I wish they'd clean up their act. That's the old covenant. Be prayerful and looking for opportunities. Hey, what would it look like for you to meet Jesus? And guess what he'll do?
He'll do that stuff that we have no power to do. We don't have it for ourselves. They don't have it either. There's better promises in the new covenant. You hearing this?
I pray you are. Let's pray now. Together. Church. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that you are a God who has truly wiped away all of our iniquities.
That is a fascinating thought. That you are perfectly holy, perfectly just, and yet at the same time, did everything necessary to pay our sin debt, that you yourself took that on so that you could look at us and say what you said to Jeremiah and now to us. I will remember your sins no more.
I'm praying that over your people, God. I'm praying that over myself. There are things in my past, things I've done, things I've thought that sometimes cause me to think, I can't do this. I can't do this job you've called me to because of how broken I am. And a lot of us think that way.
I probably don't deserve a happy marriage because of this. No wonder I have kids that are difficult, because I was this.
No wonder everything is going so poorly in my life. It's because I did this, God. That's not us believing. I pray for us. I pray for your church, that you would encourage us, remind us that you have washed away the iniquities and remember our sins no more in Christ Jesus.
So when things are sideways, you have purposes in those, but they're often not what we think. They're often not as a result of us making mistakes. Oh, sure, you're trying to draw us to yourself. You want to spend time there. You want to make us holy.
You want to cleanse us and purify us from all unrighteousness. That's all true. But you're not expecting us, God, to do that by our willpower. You're calling us into your presence that you would do that. God, I pray for your people today, for that person who's come in today that feels a distance from you, God, would you tap them on the shoulder right now, remind them right in this moment?
Hey, friend. Hey, son. Hey, daughter. I'm right here. I didn't move.
You did. Come home. Let's spend some time together today don't wait till tomorrow. Spend some time together today. Take a walk with me.
God, would you do this in us? Help us to be new covenant christians, not just in belief, not just in word, but in deed, in the way we act, that people would know, wow, that is a church that is serious about the mercy and grace of God. They really believe that God has cleansed them and has set them free for the ministry, that it's a better ministry in Christ Jesus. We have a better mediator in these promises, all these promises that we would be the kind of church that just is way too excited because of those promises. Yeah, there's tough stuff going on.
The whole world is in suffering. There's sickness, there's death, there's brokenness. All of that's true for every single person because creation yearns and aches for the return of the son of God. Yeah, we're all wrestling with that stuff. But, man, church, what about those promises, God?
Would you remind us of those every day? That we would be a people with a certain kind of joy, with a certain kind of peace, with a certain kind of approach to this life that is so foreign that people would go, man, I want that. I don't know what you got going, but I want this. I want this thing that's happening in you and that, man, we get the joy that you would do this in your church this week, that your people would have stories this coming week of simply saying, hey, have you met Jesus? Let me just introduce you.
You don't have to get all this stuff right and fix all this. Come meet the savior. Give us those opportunities this week, Lord, and give us boldness to glorify you in them. We pray all of these things in Jesus name. Amen.