Hebrews 8

We're going to read through chapter 8, the whole chapter here this morning. So follow along with me as I read, and then we will pray and dig into it. It goes like this.

Stop there, let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you so much for each and every opportunity that we get to get into the scriptures. And we pray today that as we do, that your Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth, for we confess to you, Lord, our utter dependence upon you to make sense of this word and to also bring it into an application to our lives. So we pray that you would speak to us today and that we would hear your voice. We ask it in Jesus precious name, amen. Amen. I really love this chapter, I got to tell you. I like it a lot because it talks about the new covenant and talking about the new covenant is one of my favorite things to talk about in the Bible. And, I think that this is what the author of Hebrews has kind of been leading up to this whole time. He's been making point after point after point after point about the superiority of Jesus to the Old Testament prophets and so on and so on, in order that he might be, he might bring us to this discussion of the new covenant. And the reason this is also such an important thing for us to look at in the word of God is because there's so much confusion in the body of Christ about the covenants, and the old covenant, and the new covenant, and where does the old covenant stop, and where does the new covenant begin? And are there any elements of the old covenant in the new covenant, and so on, and so on. And so, and there's been a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of challenges along the way. So you'll notice as he begins to talk about this new covenant, he first starts in the first 6 verses or so by just summarizing what he's been saying before. And he begins by saying, the point of what we're saying is this, and this all points back to our previous studies, the fact that Jesus is now our new High Priest. And he talks about the fact that He is doing His ministry of priesthood, not in a man-made tabernacle or temple, but in heaven itself, right? Where He brings a sacrifice of blood, just like the Old Testament priest did, but His sacrifice is of course, His own blood. And he makes all these points and he goes into verse 3, he talks about the fact that it was necessary for our high priest also to have something to offer and of course, that's His own blood. He makes the point in verses 4 and 5 that if Jesus were a high priest on earth, He would be disqualified from being a priest, by virtue of the fact that His earthly lineage comes through the tribe of Judah, and no one from the tribe of Judah could be a priest, you had to be from the tribe of Levi.

And so he is making all of these points, but he's doing it just to lead up to a point, his main point, which he begins in verse 6. So let's look at verse 6 together in the Bible. He says, “6But 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.” This is the meat of our study and what we're going to be talking about. The superiority of the covenant that Jesus inaugurated at the Last Supper versus the covenant that was inaugurated through Moses in the wilderness with the people of Israel. And Jesus, excuse me, the writer of Hebrews is making just a very blunt point. He says, guys, the new covenant is way better, so if you want to sit and compare covenants, there's no comparison, the new is just far and away better. And then at you'll notice at the end of verse 6, he cites one of the reasons why the new covenant is superior. Did you notice it, what it said right there? Look at the very end of verse 6, he says, “6…it is enacted on better promises.” It is enacted on better, it has better promises that are connected to it, all right? Now, so what are we talking about here? Well, we dealt with some of this stuff in our past study. What were the promises of the old covenant? The mosaic covenant. We call it Mosaic because it came through Moses. What were those promises? Well, you go through and you read the Old Testament like Deuteronomy is a great book to read to remind yourselves of all the promises. God promised them that they would be blessed in the land, that their enemies would not be able to stand against them, that the rains would fall in season, the sun would shine, their crops would grow, their children would be strong and free, and there'd be peace in the land, etc. etc. And you look at all those promises and you think those are nice promises, yeah, good, nothing wrong with them at all. But you'll also notice something else about all the promises that are given to the Jews in the Old Testament and under the old covenant. They're all for this life, they're all just for this life. They're for life on earth, right? A lot of Christians don't realize that the old covenant made no provision for eternity. The old covenant made no provision for heaven. They're all here right on earth, therefore, this life. Now the Jews got that mixed up. They started, by the time Jesus came on the scene, they were fully convinced that heaven was attainable by keeping the law.

God never promised that. He never told them they'd go to heaven if they kept the law, that wasn't one of the covenant promises. Go back to Deuteronomy and read it for yourself. He never said, keep this, be obedient to me and you'll go to heaven. So the old covenant doesn't even deal with it, it doesn't make any provision for it. And that is why the writer of Hebrews goes on to say in verse 7, he says, “7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, (in other words, without any fault) there would have been no occasion to look for a second.” one, and that tells us that the old covenant was never meant to last forever. And it never was meant to cover all the bases. It doesn't cover all the bases, it wasn't meant to. And how do we know? We know that because through Jeremiah, which he goes on to quote here, we'll talk about that in a minute. God begins to speak of a new covenant, that there's coming a new covenant. Well, that tells you right there, if God starts talking about a new covenant, that means He's planning on replacing the old and that the old didn't get the job done fully. It was meant to do what it was meant to do, but it wasn't meant to do everything, it was lacking. And that is why he says here in verse 8, look with me in your Bible, “8For 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.” From this point forward, on through verse 12 or so, he is going to quote a prophecy that is given in the book of Jeremiah. And what's interesting about this, it's just kind of a coincidence, but we're actually in the book of Jeremiah on Wednesday nights, but we're not as far as, we haven't gotten to this quote yet. For those of you taking notes, this appears, I’ll put it on the screen for you in Jeremiah, chapter 31 verses 31 through 34. (slide) Jeremiah 31:31-34 That's what the author of Hebrews is quoting a he's talking about the new covenant because he wanted them to know God foretold of this new covenant, years before. He wanted them to know this was always part of God's plan. So what we're going to do here is we're going to kind of look at what he has to say about the old covenant and the new covenant, and what makes the new covenant so much better. I want you to look again in verse 8. He says, “8 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.” Now that's the first thing we notice other than the fact that He's got a new covenant coming, He says it's going to be with the house of Israel and the house of Judah and that's basically just means the whole, the two kingdoms. So this kind of tweaks some Christians, and they read this and they say, well, wait a minute, we're not included here. God said here, He foretold, He was going to make a new covenant with Israel. Well, why doesn't He say in here He's going to make a new covenant with the church? And the reason is that the church doesn't appear in the Old Testament. By inference only, but there is nowhere specifically mentioned in the Old Testament anything about the church. The church is a mystery, okay. So the next logical question is, how do we know this new covenant applies to us? I mean, maybe we're accepting something that was never intended for us to accept. I mean, I'm a Gentile, I don't know about you. Actually, I’m a mongrel. I don't know what I am, there. I've never done one of those DNA tests, but my parents did and that was bad enough. Let me tell you, I mean, we come from like all over the place and we are a hot mess, let me tell you, right? Anyway, but either way you look at it, I'm a Gentile and I embrace the New Testament, but I'm kind of asking the question, is it mine to embrace? Well, yes it is and there are many Bible passages that outline this, let me show you. The first one is a wonderful prophecy given by our Lord and Savior Himself in John chapter 10, up on the screen, Jesus said, (slide)

In that one flock, by the way, will be made up of Jews and Gentiles, Paul makes that very clear. But the Apostle Paul, who was the apostle to the Gentiles, actually taught this same thing. Let me show you from Galatians chapter 3. He says, (slide) Galatians 3:13-14 (ESV) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham (passed down to the Jews of course) might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. And then Paul went on to write about it in Romans chapter 11 by saying, (slide)

So, Paul's using the language of the arborist to help us to understand that we Gentiles, have been grafted into the root. The root is Jesus, but we've been grafted in alongside the natural branches, which were lopped off and we've been grafted in, all right. So these are verses and there are many more, which make reference to the fact that we as Gentiles are able to enjoy the blessings of this this new covenant. Now, look with me in verse 9 as we go on. He's going to begin to define this new covenant. And again, he's still quoting Jeremiah chapter 31 here. He says here, concerning the new covenant, it will not be like, “9 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,…” So, he's telling us very clearly here that the new covenant is not going to be like, the old covenant, and that is, you've heard me say this many times, such an important thing for us to see in the word of God. The new covenant's not going to be like the old covenant. The new covenant's not going to be like the old covenant. (Pastor Paul repeated this statement). This is really important, because I've told you guys this many times, you're probably tired of hearing it, but for like over 2,000 years, Christians have misunderstood this idea and they've tried to cram the Old Testament and the old covenant into the new covenant and try to make it work. And all along, God prophesied, hundreds of years before the time of Christ that the new covenant wouldn't be like the old covenant. And so we have to ask ourselves the question. How is the new covenant different from the old covenant? Well, I've already made the mention of the fact, that the old covenant was made and given by physically. It was a physical covenant with physical promises, okay. Do you remember the old covenant even had a physical sign? What was the sign of the covenant? It was circumcision. And so, a physical covenant with a physical sign, with physical promises; the land, your enemies, your food, your safety, right? Your world. That's not the new covenant, that's not the covenant that we have with God. Do you know that God never promised we'd have great crops? He never promised us that our enemies wouldn't overwhelm us, from the standpoint of physical enemies. Never gave that promise, not to the church. Our promises are different than the old covenant promises. Paul outlines them in Ephesians chapter 1 when he says, (slide) Ephesians 1:3 (ESV)

(physical blessing, oh wait a minute, doesn’t say that, does it. What does it say? It says, we've been blessed with every)

(where are they, on earth? Are they on earth? You guys, do you see it there? No. They're)

Aren't they? We have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. That's the difference. I mean, that's one of the differences, but it's an enormous difference. And if we don't get it, we're going to give into things like this health and prosperity doctrine that sweeps through the church every few decades and makes it all about me and what I have in this life, and how much money I'm making and what kind of a car I drive and what kind of a house I live in and all that kind of junk. That's not the blessing that God promised us under the new covenant. Secondly, the terms of the 2 covenants are very different. Let me just tell you what I mean by, what I'm what I mean when I'm talking about terms. When you, if you go to buy a car and you end up getting a loan or you're buying a house or something like that, you know that you have to go through this long process of signing documents.

Your hand just aches when you're done signing all these documents because you're agreeing to the terms of the contract. And the terms of the contract usually say, you're buying this, we're loaning you this much money, if you make payments in installments of this amount for this long, then, and pay this amount of interest, at the end of the term, you'll then own this and you, you'll receive the title to this, whether it's property or a car or whatever the case might be. And these are the terms, you do this, we'll do that. So when you think of terms, think of you, do this, we'll do that, okay. So, now let's think about the terms of the old covenant. What were the terms? God said, keep my law, you be obedient, walk in obedience, worship me and no other God, and here's what I'll do. You do this, I'll do that. You do you, you walk in obedience, I'll bless you in the land, you walk in obedience, your enemies won't stand. You walk in obedience, I'll give you great crops, you walk in obedience, you'll be in peace, okay? Those are the terms: obedience, promises, okay? But the new covenant, remember what it says about the new covenant, it's not like the old covenant. It is not a covenant of obedience and the new covenant is expressed in this way. John 3:16. (slide) John 3:16 (ESV)

(here comes the terms, you with me? here's the terms)

(that’s what you do)

(what does He do? He says, that person will not)

Those are good terms. By the way, I'm glad I'm not under the old covenant because the new covenant is not like the old covenant. The new covenant, the terms of the new covenant is, “believe.” Now, please understand Christians, American Christians, we think believe means something like, I believe that Jesus is really real. So we hear people say, whoever believes, we go, I believe, I believe in God. No, no, no, no. The word believe from the biblical perspective means to put your complete and total confidence in, to hope in, okay. To hope in him completely, and that means to put your faith in what Jesus did on the cross as enough to save you from your sin.

Whoever does that, He says, “will not perish, but will have eternal life.” Those are the terms, and they're good terms. Paul actually writes about these same terms when he writes his letter to the church in Ephesus, check this one out. (slide) Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV)

He's expressing the terms, the terms are “faith”, you put your faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross and you will be saved. He goes, and then he says, in case you didn't get this. Let me say it again. (slide) Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV)

There's no boasting in heaven. Nobody's ever going to be in heaven and say, I got here because I did it right. Nobody's going to be able to say that. All of us, in fact, are going to say, I did it wrong, completely wrong, and He saved me because I put my faith in what Jesus did because He did it right. And I received Him as my Savior, right? So that takes the way boasting, there's no boasting. I can't point to Paul and go, yay. No, no, no. I point to Jesus and I say, yay, it's all about what He did, all right. So you can see here that when we talk about the terms of the covenant, one covenant is based on obedience, what you do, and the other one is based on what Jesus did. And putting your faith and hope and confidence in what He did. It's not a, it's not a covenant of obedience. I know that really plays with some people's minds when I say that. In fact, some people get upset and I fully expect to get some nasty grams from people who probably are watching on the internet. Every time I say this, people get upset with me and they go, you know…, they said the same thing to the Apostle Paul. They said, Paul, you can't say that, you can't tell people that it's, the obedience isn't necessary, it isn't required. You can't do that. They're just going to go off and live however they want to live. If you tell them that salvation is free, it's a gift. Well, they're just going to go bananas. They're going to live however they want. They're going to live however I want, I'm saved. Do you know that's the criticism Paul came under? That's why he answered that criticism by saying, so what are we saying here? Shall I sin so that grace will abound even more? Of course not, absolutely not.

See, Paul understood something, and we'll talk about this in a minute, but one of the other great blessings of the new covenant is that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we receive the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit comes and starts to rearrange furniture and He starts to change how we think and how we feel and how we act. And He begins to do a work of transformation in our lives from the inside. And Paul knew that, but the legalists will never understand it because they have to have exterior rules and they're not comfortable living life without rules. And there's a gravitational pull some people have toward rules and they gravitate toward legalism because of that. They're intimidated, they feel out of control when they are living life without exterior rules. We're going to talk more about this in just a little bit. I want you to understand something. I want you to understand when I say that we're not under a covenant of obedience. I want you to understand. I'm not saying obedience isn't important. I'm not saying that at all. I believe we, we do need to obey God's voice, and I believe obedience is important for the believer. All I'm saying is, it's not a term of the covenant, okay? I'm saying, you should be obedient, but you're not saved by your obedience, you're saved by your faith in Jesus. He wants you to obey, but it's not going to save you. It's going to make life better for you. You're not going to be miserable like you would if you were just flying off the handle being disobedient all the time. So it's still important, it's just not going to save you, right? All right. Now as we move on, the author gets into a little bit more detail about the new covenant. He's still quoting Jeremiah 31, look at verse 10. Verse 10 in your Bible. He says, “10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. …”

All right, stop there because this needs a little bit of explanation. You'll notice there's a time reference in the quotation of this statement from Jeremiah. He says that I will make this covenant with Israel after those days. Now we look at that phrase, we go, what's that mean? What does he mean by “after those days,” after what days? Well, I'll just tell you right now without getting into a whole lot of explanation after those days refers to the Great Tribulation. So this hasn't come to pass yet for the Nation of Israel as a whole. God says here, “after those days,” Israel will come under the New Covenant, but they're not as a nation under the new covenant now. The church is under the new covenant, but Israel won't come under the new covenant as a complete nation until Jesus returns in his second coming, fights on their behalf, puts down their enemies, and it tells us there, that the nation will come to Jesus as a nation and they will give their hearts to him at that time. And that is what this time reference is all about. And, you're kind of like, why did God put this time reference in here just for the Jews? Because this was spoken to the Jews. The prophecy of Jeremiah was written to the Jews, to Israel. Again, the church doesn't appear in the Old Testament, we can learn a lot from these prophecies, but the pinpoint target is the Jews. And so, as a nation, they will enter into the new covenant when Jesus returns. But for those of us who have received Jesus as our Savior now, we're already in the new covenant. We've come and we know that the new covenant has already begun for us because Jesus inaugurated it at the last supper. You guys remember? Paul actually is the one who records this for us in first Corinthians, that at the last supper, Jesus said this cup is the new covenant in my blood. (slide) 1 Corinthians 11:25 (ESV)

So Jesus inaugurated the new covenant at the last supper, and we who through faith in His finished work on the cross enter into it, now. We don't wait until after those days, we're in the new covenant right here, right now, and it's a wonderful, glorious thing. He goes on to speak of some of the other benefits. We're in the middle of verse 10. He says, “10… I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, …” And I love this phrase because this is a prophetic foretelling of the coming of the Holy Spirit, which is a great blessing for us as believers. Do you guys know that in the Old Testament, nobody ever received the Holy Spirit to live inside of them like we get to have. Nobody. The spirit was with people, the Spirit came upon people to empower them, the Spirit did not indwell people. That's a different preposition altogether. You've got with, you've got upon, and you've got in. There are no references of the Spirit coming in to indwell. And, the Spirit's presence in someone's life could even be affected by their obedience. God would remove His Spirit under the old covenant at times. Remember when David prayed that poignant prayer of repentance after he committed adultery with Bathsheba? He's crying out for forgiveness, but he says something that's very interesting, but it's old covenant related. He says, “take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” (Psalm 51:11) We even made a song about it. What's David doing? Speaking an old covenant reality. And he knew and understood that the Spirit of God could be removed because of disobedience, not the case today. You see the gift of the Holy Spirit is just that, a gift, and the Bible tells us that the gifts of God are irrevocable, or your Bible may say without repentance, He doesn't remove his Spirit because we mess up because the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing us by faith. So it's a different covenant that we're under. I get notes from people all the time, fearful that God's going to take away His Holy Spirit from them because they had a mess up. And I have to tell them, dude, you're talking about the old covenant that can't happen into the new covenant, with your faith in Jesus Christ and your confidence in his finished work, this is an ongoing thing. You don't need to worry about that. But now we have the Holy Spirit living in us and what is the purpose of the Holy Spirit living in us? Well, the promise there is, I'll put my law in their minds, and I'm going to write it on their hearts. And what He's saying here is that as Christians, we are not to be directed by external rules out here because He's taken His law and put it in here (Pastor Paul points to his heart) and in here, (Pastor Paul points to his head) right? So there's a, it's a completely different dynamic and it's so much better than the old dynamic. Let me show you what Paul said to the Galatians in chapter 5. He said, (slide) Galatians 5:18 (ESV)

And what he means by that is if you have the law of God written on your heart, you have no need of external rules. But do you know how many Christians are looking for external rules and they're ignoring what God has done in their hearts? I get people asking me all the time, pastor Paul, what do I need to do about this? And they want me to give them a rule. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. That, belies this precious gift that you've been given, which is the leading of the Holy Spirit. I understand that it's hard to be led by the Holy Spirit. I get that, because it requires you pressing in on Him and hearing His voice. And that's not easy. We want to just kind of go through the drive up window of God's wisdom. Give it to me, give it to me now, and we, I don't want to sit and pray for a few hours, right. I want to know, and I want to know now, so Paul, would you give me a rule that I can just kind of go by. Pastor Paul, do you think I should marry this man? I don't know, pray about it, because you'll, you might have noticed in the Bible it doesn't say, and thou should marry Greg or something. You’re not going to find that there. So, there's a lot of things in the word about marriage. But the specifics of who you're supposed to marry and so forth, you got to walk by the Spirit. You got to listen to God's voice. You got to press in to know Him, to pray, to understand, to hear Him. And it's possible, because the Spirit has now been given to us under the new covenant to live in our hearts, to illuminate our hearts and minds with understanding and insight that we couldn't have any other way. Guys, this is a better covenant enacted on better promises, it's way better. And another benefit here, He says, and this is interesting, He, at the end of verse 10, He says, “10… and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” The Jews under the old Covenant were called the people of God too, so really this statement is just given to us to affirm the fact that there's not going to be a change under the new covenant. From that perspective will still be the people of God and He will be our God. And then the Lord describes one of the most incredible blessings of the new covenant. Look at verse 11, and this is an underlined in your Bible, it should be whether here or in Jeremiah, it says,

Now, I want you to be careful here because if you read this verse and don't think about it, you're going to get confused because it sounds like we don't need teachers under the new covenant, doesn't it? That's what it sounds like. It says right there, you're not going to have to teach, you're not going to have to teach your neighbor or your brother saying, know the Lord, because they'll just all know me. And so you say, well, we don't see, we don't need teachers under the new covenant. Well, that's a problem you see, because when Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians in chapter 4, he said, Christ gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, and then pastors and teachers. (Ephesians 4:11) Oh wait, so, Jesus gave some to be teachers, I thought it says here, we aren't going to need teachers. Here's the misunderstanding, He's not talking here about intellectual knowing, that's what teachers do, that's what I do. I help you intellectually to break down and understand the word of God. This is experiential knowing, I can't pass that along as a teacher, I can't give you an experiential understanding of God. You have to get that from God himself. And what this promise is saying is, under the new covenant, you will experience God yourself, and no one will have to say, here's what it's like, because you'll all be able to experience God. In fact, let me give you a paraphrase of this promise. I don't do this very often, but here's my paraphrase. (slide) (My Paraphrase) No one under the new covenant will have any need to explain to anyone else what it means to have a personal, intimate, and familiar relationship with me, because regardless of who they are from the least to the greatest, they will all know me intimately. (Paraphrase of Hebrews 8:11, Jeremiah 31:34) And that's my paraphrase of Hebrews 8:11 and Jeremiah 31:34. Because knowing the Lord is the hallmark of who we are in Christ. Knowing the Lord and Him knowing us. Having that knowing experiential relationship with God, we can do that now in a very powerful, powerful way. And then he finishes outlining the benefits of the new covenant. Look at verse 12, we have just two verses left. He says,

Guys, don't rush past that one too quickly. Let's just kind of breathe that one in for a second. Especially where he says, “I will remember their sins no more.” I like that. “I will remember their sins no more.” How's that different from the old covenant? Remember what he said earlier in this letter about sins under the old covenant? Let me show you, Hebrews 2. (slide)

Doesn't that make you just want to jump up and cheer? Basically you're saying every sin got punished. Yay! Now you got the new covenant. This is what's behind door number 2. I will remember their sins no more, gee Bob, I'll take what's behind door number 2, thank you very much, right? Yeah, this is better. That's the point of what he's saying, it's a better covenant, it's a better covenant. All right, so, and then finally, verse 13, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete, and the word obsolete means outdated. And so he says, “13 …And what is becoming obsolete (or outdated) and growing old is ready to vanish away.”