If you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Hebrews 8. We said a few weeks ago that verse 6 outlines the chapter. Perhaps as you're turning there, you'll notice again verse 6, as it is Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old. As the covenant, he mediates his better since it's enacted on better promises.
So Jesus has a more excellent ministry than the priests of the Old Testament. He mediates a better covenant, which is based on better promises, and that's the point of Hebrews 8. The better promises in Jesus, a better covenant in Jesus, a more excellent ministry in Jesus. So last time we were together, we looked at verses 1 through 5 actually a couple of times, so we saw there this better ministry of Jesus.
It's better because he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. That is, whereas every priest of the Old Testament stood and didn't sit because their work was never done. Jesus finished the work of a tournament, and so he sat down. So we can have great confidence that all things necessary for our pardon and reconciliation were accomplished by him.
We also saw that his ministry is better because he serves in the true tent of the Lord, not a tent made by men like those Old Testament priests, the tabernacle tent of course later the temple, all of it built by human hands. But Jesus serves not there, but in the heavenly throne room of God, in the very presence of God on our behalf. And so he mediates God's blessing to us from that throne. We have access to the throne of grace in him because that's where our priest is and we're encouraged to draw near with confidence.
And thirdly, we saw the ministry of Jesus is better because his ministry is the substance of which the Old Testament priesthood, sacrifices, and tabernacle were but a shadow and a copy. He's the real deal, the reality to which those things point him. They were just a copy of it and a foreshadowing of him. And so we have a much more excellent ministry in him now tonight.
We consider the better covenant. And what there's so much here, I decided to split our look at the better covenant in the two parts and hope that doesn't wear you out. And then the week after we'll look at the better promises. So we'll do two weeks on the better covenant and a week on the better promises.
Covenant tonight then is the idea. Covenant. Covenant is important. That language is vital.
It helps us understand, well for one reason, it helps us understand the whole unfolding of the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It helps us understand the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament and the relationship between the people of God under the Old Covenant given to Moses and the people of God under the New Covenant fulfilled in Christ. And these are not small matters. God wants us to understand.
He relates to us by way of covenant. And God thinks we need to understand the better covenant. And so let's pay attention and hear what the author has to say to us. I'll read Hebrews chapter 8 verses 6 through 13.
This is the word of God. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the Old is. The covenant immediately 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 to clear 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 to clear the Lord.
For this is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after those days to clear the Lord. I will go into their minds and 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, No 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 obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. Amen.
This is God's word. Let's look to him. Father, teach us. Bless us.
Help me. Speak to our minds and to our hearts that we might better understand you and your plan and the goodness of it. In Jesus name, I ask. Amen.
In 1903, somebody noticed that a Russian century was standing guard at a post with no apparent reason for his being there. And when asked why he was standing guard, he answered, I'm just following orders. And the question was asked of the captain of the guard, but he didn't know why that century was posted there. The inquiry eventually went up the chain of command to the czar, but he didn't know either.
He commanded someone to track down the answer. And finally it was discovered that in 1776, Catherine the Great had pointed a rose bush there and posted a century to guard it. The bush had been dead for over 80 years, but the century was still standing guard. Traditions are hard to change.
Religious traditions are especially hard to change. The Jews, think of them. They had rightly believed that God had ordained the traditions and practices of the Mosaic law given to Moses nearly 2,000 years before the coming of Christ. They organized their lives and community and religion around the laws of priesthood and tabernacle and sacrifices.
And to challenge the validity of those practices, the continuing validity of those was in some cases to risk your life. We know that Stephen risked his life for this, the first Christian martyr. They said this man never ceases to speak against this holy place and the law for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses handed down to us. And so I write where they stoned him to death.
So a change concerning the law of Moses, the Mosaic covenant to a new covenant needed explanation, especially for its early years, but for all of us who read the old and new. If believers in Jesus are going to enjoy our new freedom and have courage to stand up for Jesus and even will be persecuted for his sake, we need to understand these things. And in this chapter, the writer brings forward some of the continuities and discontinuities of the old covenant and the new covenant. And so we highlight some of these continuities and some of these discontinuities, some ways that things are alike and some ways that they are very different under Moses and Jesus.
And along the way, we're also going to need to distinguish between not only the old covenant from the new covenant, which is biblical language, but I think will be helpful for us to also distinguish the theological language of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. These things are different and it can get confusing. We use words like covenant according to their use in the Bible. We also use words like covenant in theological categories, kind of like how we use the word trinity.
Trinity actually is not a word found in the Bible. It's theological language, but it's faithful and true to the biblical language of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, one God of three persons. I mean, it'll blow your mind, but the word trinity is theological language to help us understand biblical language. So it is with the language of covenant across the ages of the church in Reformed Theology, certainly sometimes called Covenant Theology.
We have biblical uses of the word and we have theological uses of the word. And we'll need to think about some of those things to help us understand all of this. Let's start with some of the continuities between the old covenant and the new covenant. Notice here in verse seven, the writer speaks of a first covenant and a second covenant.
Verse seven, for if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. Then having spoken of a first covenant, notice in verse eight, he speaks of a new covenant. Behold, the days are coming, he says, declares the Lord when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. So God will establish a new covenant that's not like the prior covenant he made with Israel when he rescued them from Egypt.
So there's a first covenant and a second covenant also spoken of as an old covenant and a new covenant. Those are biblical categories. What is a covenant? A covenant is a binding relationship with life and death significance and various blessings and responsibilities like the covenant of marriage.
We talk about this a lot. He binds you as a couple into a more intimate and abiding relationship. It's life or death in that death is the thing that should part you, ideally. And there are oodles of blessings and responsibilities each to the other.
Well God has always related to his people by way of covenant. And he does so because he knows that we in our sinful condition lack confidence in his love for us if he doesn't condescend to stoop down and relate to us by way of covenant. Yeah, some of the cross something interesting, I found it interesting anyway recently, about the TV show Friends. I know I take myself here.
Some of you know this show. The famous movie actress Julia Roberts told the Friends producers she would death star on the TV show Friends under one condition that she be included in Chandler Bing's story line. What are the characters? So hearing about that Matthew Perry the man who actor who plays Chandler Bing sent Julia Roberts quoting him, three dozen roses and a card that read.
The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers. I was responded to him by sending him quote lots and lots of bagels. And then the two of them embarked on what Matthew Perry calls a three month courtship through daily faxes. So three or four times a day he says I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly reveal her next missive.
And I was so excited that some nights I would find myself out at some party sharing a flirtatious exchange with an interactive woman and cut the conversation short so I could race home and see if I had a new fax nine times out of ten one had arrived. And so then by the time they actually shot the episode for Friends on which she guest stars, they were already a couple in real life. But two months into the romance Matthew Perry broke up with Julia Roberts. And here's his explanation.
Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough.
I could never be enough. I was broken bent unlovable. Here I is. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.
Isn't that the tragedy of the human condition? We're insecure. You could be a rich famous Hollywood TV star but long ago the rich famous Hollywood movie star and you feel inadequate. Unlovable.
You think to yourself, certainly this love is too good to be true. It can't possibly last. And that's the way we are towards God so often. We doubt his love.
We like assurance. We convince ourselves he can't possibly love the unlovable us. Or if he did love us once, he can't possibly continue to love us still. Not now that he's really figured out who we are.
And God says, look, I know all about you. I know all about your insecurities and all about your fears. Let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to establish a unique kind of relationship with you, a covenantal relationship with you, a binding relationship.
One where you can be sure of me. You can count on me to be faithful to whatever it is I promise you. That's what a covenant relationship is and what God commits to. So then when he says to that here in verse seven, he speaks of a first covenant, the second covenant, the first covenant, verse eight and a new covenant.
What's going on? The first covenant is the old covenant and the second covenant is the new covenant. What specific are these? Well, the first covenant mentioned here is the covenant with God's chosen people, Israel, through the mediation of Moses.
That's what we call the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant. It's not the whole Old Testament. It's not Genesis, Noah and Abraham, but it's Moses and Israel. The second covenant is the new covenant.
It's the covenant God makes with all these chosen people, Jew and Gentile, through the mediation of Jesus. It's the covenant depicted here quoting Jeremiah 31, where it is introduced to us. Now the language of first covenant, second covenant, old covenant, new covenant could be really confusing and at the risk of making it more confusing. If you remember that God also uses the language of covenant for his relationship with Adam, with Noah, I mean very famously you have the sign of the covenant with Noah the rainbow.
You have God's covenant in Genesis 17 with Abraham. All that before you get to Moses and later you're going to hear about the covenant with King David. And so that can make you wonder what's going on here. I mean there's a covenant with Adam and with Noah and with Abraham and with David and a new covenant and then he says the covenant with Moses is the first covenant.
What's happening there? Well, maybe strange to our ears to hear that it's the first covenant. But what he's doing is he's emphasizing how distinct the new is from the old, how the second is better than the first. And so that's why he uses that language because that covenant with Moses dominated so much of the religious life of the people for more than a thousand years.
So there's theological language and then again there's biblical language, theologically, the theological language that the Bible teaches us, there are a lot of different ways to have a relationship with God. There's really just two ways to have a relationship with God. And this is theological language. Either you have a relationship with God by way of a covenant of works or you have a relationship with God by way of a covenant of grace.
That is the covenant of works is that covenant relationship God made with Adam in the garden before saying that through the world where he said, basically, believe me and obey me about the tree. Don't eat of it or die, you will die. Actually, will you obey me, Adam? And if you will continue to obey me, you will continue to have life under my blessing in this garden of paradise.
It's called the covenant of works because as long as Adam and Eve continued in the work of obedience, they would have continued to have an enjoyable relationship with God. But of course they didn't. They rebelled as we know and later the prophet Hosea will indict Israel for the same problem of rebellion when he says of Israel in Hosea chapter 6 verse 7, but like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. Like Adam, they transgressed the covenant.
Which is interesting because if you read Genesis 1 to 3, the word covenant is never actually used to describe that relationship. But Hosea says that is what it was. It was a covenant and they transgressed it. They broke it.
And you and I have the same problem as Adam. We all have in covenantal union with Adam, in Adam, and also then like Adam, we disobeyed God too. So we can't have life and a blessed relationship with God established and sustained by our obedience or our works because we've already failed at that. We've already broken the covenant of works and made liable to its penalties.
So what did God do? God looked at Adam and Eve in rebellion against him and instituted another covenant of grace, theologically, the covenant of grace. It began immediately after their rebellion even before he banished them from the garden. When he promised them in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15, one of the most famous promises of the Old Testament about Jesus, though his name won't appear there.
When in Genesis 3 verse 15, God said to Adam and Eve, well, he said to the serpent who had deceived them, Satan, the enemy of their souls, God said, I will put enmity between you and the woman. In other words, God says, you're the enemy and you have established an enticing hurry to rebellion, Lord rebellion. You have put her in a position of enmity against me, a state of war, a state of hatred, a state of rebellion. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to reverse it and I'm going to put a state of enmity between you and the woman.
She's not going to be on your side. This is Eve's salvation. But then he promises not only that, not only I will put enmity between you and the woman, but I will put enmity between your offspring and her offspring, your seed and her seed. God will perpetuate this state of affairs in those that come afterwards within humanity.
And he goes on to say, and he, the seed of all seeds of the woman, he will bruise your head. That is a singular male child will come, the seed of the woman, who will crush the head of Satan standing as it were in victory upon his head as a triumphant king. But also you, Satan, shall bruise his heel. He'll deliver a mortal blow and stand in victory upon your head.
But you'll get your lick in. He'll bruise his heel. I think there we, we just have to see what happened upon the cross when the devil has got the crowd crying crucified him and he thinks he's getting rid of the son of God. And yet the cross itself is the very means by which Christ triops over the devil and all his hosts, putting them to open shame and saving and rescuing his people.
So this then is grace. It's undeserved favor. When you don't deserve this, they did everything to not deserve it. But it's a covenant of grace, the first promise of the gospel.
Now, both of these covenants continue across the course of the Bible. The covenant of works continues in the sense that, not because they're still in the garden or anything like that, but in the sense that God still does say, you know, obey me perfectly from the heart in every way and you will have life. But disobey me and you will die. And of course we all disobey it in the wages of sin, death and separation from the benevolent lessons of God.
But the covenant of grace continues as God did send the seed of the woman, his son, through the womb of the Virgin Mary to obey God for our righteousness and to suffer from God what our sins deserve so that we can have a free gift of salvation through faith in Christ. And so as you look at the Bible, the only way that Adam and Eve, Noah and Abraham, King David and John the Baptist, including Moses and the Israelites, could ever be saved or ever were saved was the same way that you and I are saved. Not by our fulfilling the covenant of works, which we've already broken, but through Jesus who fulfilled the covenant of works in perfect obedience on our behalf that he might give a gift of salvation. All, any who've ever been saved are saved only through Jesus through his priestly work and sacrifice.
Now, is that clear as mine? Or are you saying that your son? I really said I've had coffee as dark as mine before this turned into a lecture and I understand, pardon me for this. But what I hope that you can see is this, that what Jeremiah then calls the new covenant here and he wrote it in Hebrews 8.
And what from Jeremiah 31 is the renewal of the covenant of grace and its fullest consummated expression. That is the coming of Jesus in fulfillment of all those gracious promises is new and not new. Yes, it's new in that he's finally come. And the blessings abound incredibly, but it's not new in the sense that it had long been promised and hinted at and pictured in the sacrifices and in the priesthood and in the tabernacle and so on and so forth.
So in terms of the biblical language, the hope of salvation through a redeemer wasn't interrupted by the institution of the Mosaic Covenant in the days when God brought them out of Egypt, out of bondage and gave them his law. Nor was the tabernacle worship mediated by priests offering sacrifices contrary ultimately to God's grace. But in fact, those priests and sacrifices were copies and shadows of the true reality. And the giving of that covenant was in its own way a furthering of God's promises of grace.
This is what the Bible here in Hebrews 8 calls the first covenant, the old covenant. It was an external administration of God's gracious covenant first announced in Adam, more fully as represented to Abraham, perpetuated through King David, prophesied in Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel and fulfilled in Christ. The first covenant, the old covenant given through Moses was good in its own way. This is why the writer says Jesus is better not because what the Jews had was ultimately bad, it was good what God did.
It just never was the finality of what God had always planned and it's better when completion comes in Christ. The old covenant law was a tutor to leave the people of Christ. The moral law given in the time of commandments was meant to impress upon their desperate need for a Savior from their sins. And so all of this further God's purposes of grace.
But what we haven't in Christ actually coming is better by far. So that the new covenant promised in the prophets to Israel and fulfilled in the coming of Jesus is new, but not completely new. It's the renewal of the covenant of grace first made to Adam and Eve, given to Abraham, advanced through Moses and David until it came to fruition in Jesus. And it was promised in Jeremiah as the writer is saying and Ezekiel in other places.
So that there's an overarching continuity. This is what I'm trying to emphasize. There is a continuity across the Old Testament and into the new. And even in terms of the old covenant and the new.
And now if I have confused you too badly, let me mention another point of continuity between the old and the new. In God's old and new, there's a mediator. There's a mediator in both. Verse 6 says, in the covenant he that is Christ mediates, the covenant he mediates is better.
There's a go between. He acts on behalf of both parties. He represents both parties. Who was the mediator of the old covenant?
Moses. Moses went up on the mountain to receive from God that which he then gave to the people. Moses interceded on their behalf. But Christ is the mediator of the new covenant.
He's better by far. This was our point as we look at Hebrews chapter 3 verse 5. Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant to testify to the things that were to be spoken later. But Christ is faithful over God's house as a son.
Moses was faithful. Christ is faithful. Moses was faithful in the house. Christ is faithful over the house.
Moses was a servant in the house that Christ is building. Moses was the mediator between God and the Israelites on Mount Sinai. Jesus is the one true and final saving mediator between God and man. So there are these continuities.
But now the writer of course is seeking to emphasize some of the discontinuities so that we'll see why it's better that Jesus has now come. And there are a bunch of discontinuities and I'm holding some for next week. You'll be glad to know. Let me just mention some of them and point you to them.
Notice first that the old covenant was faulty and the new covenant isn't. This is the language of verse 7. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. The first covenant he says wasn't faultless, the covenant given under Moses.
First what that doesn't mean. It was not faultless in the sense that it failed to do what God intended it to do. It wasn't flawed in that sense. It did faithfully do what God intended it to do and that it delivered the moral law of God to the people and it graciously gave them the ceremony of laws about sacrifices and priests to give them hope of forgiveness.
The point is that not never, however, intended for this old covenant rituals to be the ultimate thing upon which is people trusted. They were designed to point away from themselves to the true Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And now that the finished work has come, it's not only useless, but it's actually blasphemous to go back to the old covenant rituals. To go back would call him to question the very finished work of Christ, his adequacy, his sufficiency, the effectiveness of his work for us.
This is what the authors tried to say to them. Don't go back to being merely Jewish. Stick with the Messiah. Second notice that the old covenant had faults that invited the longing for a second covenant and verse seven, if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
What's he saying? Well, if an eight broke, don't fix it. And Jeremiah says, yeah, it means fixing. And the writer of Hebrew says, look, look at what your own scriptures told you about the advantages of the new covenant.
They had Jeremiah 31 before the coming of Christ. They should have been expecting a new covenant to come, and they should have known it would be superior to the old. One of your greatest prophets, Jeremiah, told you about this, he says to them, hundreds of years before Jesus came. And of course, some did long for the new covenant.
You remember Simeon, perhaps, waiting in the temple for the consolation of Israel, rejoicing at the sight of baby Jesus when he was brought. The old made him long for the new. Notice also the old covenant was faulty because the people were faulty. But in the new covenant provision is made to correct that.
The fault here, the writer is emphasizing, wasn't so much with the covenant itself, but with the people, verse eight, for he finds fault with them. And in verse nine, for they did not continue in the covenant. The faultiness that is of the first covenant was saying, well, I was not that God gave bad commands, he didn't. But the people had bad hearts.
And the problem was their infidelity and their faithlessness and their idolatry and they were spiritual adulterers who were always running away from God, always seeking satisfaction elsewhere, always looking to help from somebody else other than God. And the people kept abandoning God because of the evil of their hearts. And the writer is saying, and he's going to make this point, that the Mosaic covenant didn't write the law of God on the heart. He wrote it on tablets of stone.
And what's needed, of course, is that the law actually getting written on the heart, impressed upon the heart, that we might be transformed from the heart. So that now our hope is, as no one's hope has ever been ever since Adam fell, our hope is not that we've loved the Lord, our God, with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength, and so kept the law of God, or that we've loved our neighbors, we've loved ourselves, which is also the summary of the law of God. Our hope is in the law and what it commands. Our hope is that Jesus has loved God and neighbor perfectly to fulfill the covenant of works given to Adam, and also in fulfillment of the Mosaic 10 commandments given to Israel so that he could freely give to us that which we don't have in ourselves, a perfect righteousness.
Grounded on his perfect obedience, and you have it in Christ. And that's good news. Let's pray. Father, thank you.
Thank you for the finished work of Christ and all that he's done for us, and now as the priests who intercede always for us continues to do, as he holds us and never lets us go. Thank you for this steadfast, immovable, always and forever covenant love of God in Christ in his name we pray. Amen. Amen, let's take a minute to sing.