through chapter 8, this will be our last run three verses six through thirteen focusing on the better promises of the new covenant. The writer's been telling us that Jesus has a more excellent ministry, that the covenant he mediates is better than the old covenant under Moses and it's enacted on better promises than the promises given in the old covenant in the days of Moses. So what are these better promises of the new covenant? That the old covenant didn't promise.
And so let's hear the word of God from Hebrews 8 verses 6 through 13. 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 should 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 law 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 the word of God. Let's pray together. Father and heaven help us be our teacher, help us to glory in the promises we have in Christ and in you in Jesus' name. Amen.
A little context and then right to the four promises. The first covenant mentioned in verse 9 is the covenant God made with the fathers through Israel and Judah in the days of Moses when God took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt out of captivity, out of delt graciously with them and had rescued them and brought them to himself. And in that covenant God constituted them as a people even a nation state giving them his law. You remember at Mount Sinai and all the attendant instructions about temple and prophets or temple and priests and sacrifices and so forth.
But the law was given on tablets of stone. Yet the chief problem was the people so that at the end of verse 9 we've seen this. It says they did not continue in my covenant. That is the people continually rebelled against God and his law.
They continually went astray. They continually committed idolatry and spiritual adultery. But now the writer says God will do a new thing. He will establish a new covenant for us.
With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. And I was struck by it in the scripture reading that you catch that in Isaiah that it says and the lost in Assyria will be found. And Jeremiah in this prophecy in saying that the house of Israel and the house of Judah will be brought together in a new covenant. Well Jeremiah is preaching when the house of Israel, the ten northern tribes has been scattered into the Assyrian empire, exiled, deported and are basically lost into history as the identifiable people of God.
And yet God says the lost among the Assyrians in that great day of salvation. I will well glean each one one by one for and out of the harvest field. So it's a glorious promise and thing that God is going to do. It's all going to be better.
But here the author then particularly notes four better promises of the new covenant in Jesus for all who trusted Jesus and we'll take them one at a time. The first is in the middle of verse 10 where we have the promise of inner transformation and we'll add by the Holy Spirit. So notice this language. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts.
This is the covenant God will make. So what he's driving at is this in the old covenant. God gave his people his law. It was a defining feature of the Mosaic covenant.
Here Moses got brought them to Mount Sinai and spoke the ten commandments and then wrote them by his own finger in tablets of stone and gave them to the people. But the law was given externally. It was spoken and it was written on stone. But now the author says God will write it on our heart and in our mind.
What did that law do? The author isn't criticizing the giving of the law. What did it do? It did a good thing.
It showed you your sin. There's a scene in the Hothack of Notre Dame, not the Disney version but the book. Gause mode it was with this beautiful woman that is captured and she's crying and says to her why are you crying? She says to him, well you're crying.
He says, well yes I'm crying. She says, well why are you crying? He says to her because I never knew how ugly I was until I saw how beautiful you are. And that is the law.
You never know how ugly you are until you see the beauty of God in the giving of his holy and perfect and just law. The law shows you his beauty and glory, his honor and holiness. And it does what? It humbles us because we are not like him.
The law says you're not like God and you never knew you were such a mess before the law showed you that. And so the law was good in that respect because it humbled them in order to be attuned or to take them by the hand to lead them to their savior. I saw a mean young boy maybe eight years older so he's lying face down on the floor of the kitchen on the tile floor, propped up on his elbows next to him on the tile are a bowl of pretzels and an ice cream sundae. In front of his face on the living room carpet he's reading an electronic tablet.
And the caption from the parents perspective is this food isn't allowed in the living room, his tablet isn't allowed in the kitchen. He beat the system. I quit. We're always trying to figure out aren't we how we can get around the rules?
You know how can I do what I want? What I want is it what my folks want or is it what God wants. And here the law we're bringing reminded well you know it tells us what to do but it exposes our failures that we haven't actually figured out how to beat the system. Now we have broken the law and the law commands us but the law doesn't empower us to fulfill it.
It tells us what to do but it doesn't enable us to do it. And so when the old covenant or what the old covenant didn't do is give the people the ability to actually receive the law into their heart and love the law and keep the law. But in the new covenant the writer is saying God makes provision for human weakness by writing his law where on our hearts, on our minds. So he not only gives us his holy law but we might say because this is the work of the Spirit of God by the Spirit of God who puts the law into our heart and mind.
So as the old saying when run John run the law commands but gives us neither feet nor hands. But sweeter news the gospel brings it bids us fly and gives us wings in the neighbors what the law does. So every true Christian has this personal transformation. It's one of the promises of the new covenant.
God has written his law on your heart and on your mind. Now granted it has not been consummated. We haven't arrived at final glory of the wholeness of the perfection of our obedience to that law or even of our understanding of all the ins and outs of every implication of it. But we have been changed in principle and we are being changed more and more.
We have haven't you? Has this not been the experience of you who believe in Jesus? Have you not begun to do things you never wanted to do before? Have you begun to love things you never loved before?
And haven't your old sinful ways begun to disturb you? We don't want to be what we want to do. We want to be more like Jesus. And so we have begun to do things like attend public worship that we might meet with God and receive his grace and to be strengthened by his word to pray and to hear the Bible and to be to the light and the good news about our Savior.
We have begun to serve Jesus in our marriage, our family, our work and community. We have begun to say no to what is evil and we have begun to say yes to what is true and good and beautiful. Notice here the writer is saying that God will write on our minds as well as our hearts. It's not one or the other.
It's both and genuine Christianity affects not only your heart but your mind. We're being transformed by the renewing of the mind. When I was a very new Christian and dung ho about reading the Bible and going to church and I got involved in a college campus ministry just weeks after my conversion and going off to college as a freshman. Well my older sister caught wind of my involvement in now in this New Zealand I had and my involvement in a particular campus ministry and my older sister who is not converted told my parents she thought I was being brainwashed and my mom very delicately asked me about that and used that language.
You know your sister thinks maybe you're being brainwashed and honestly I didn't know what to say at the time but here's what I've come to understand that my brain was being washed not by a cult as they feared as people often associate with brain washing not into some kind of mindlessness or really strangeness but that my whole life up to then had been one of having my mind influenced and my heart shaped by my education by my experiences by things being written by the culture and not all of them good right. Some of them were very perverse and wicked in my own perverse and wicked heart embraced them and for the first time in my life is what I wish I could go back and say but you know how it is would be to say you know for the first time in my life I've begun to actually choose to have the the goodness of the Word of God and it's truth you know educate my mind and wash away my filth that's what God does with his word and that word doesn't stop at the mind it reaches the heart and so it's not all up here right but it gets down here to our will our affections our loves so that we begin to love what God loves so we begin to hate what God hates and the love righteousness and hate wickedness the promise here then is of this inward work by the Spirit of God taking the Word of God even the law of God and changing us now we have to with each of these promises let's pause here we have to be careful that we're we're contrasting the proper things hebers a quoting Jeremiah 31 isn't contrasting true genuine believers since the coming of Christ with true genuine believers in the Messiah before the coming of Christ that is it's not that there was no transformation of mind and heart for the people of God in the Old Testament there was but it was ultimately not on the basis of the giving of the covenant law to Israel and outside on and those who only received that external reality of the law written on the stone without the inward work of the Spirit of God they were only Jews externally but not inwardly but from the beginning we do have to see that God has always done this work in believers by his Spirit why were able sacrifices acceptable in Cain's work because able had genuine saving faith the writer he was a chapter 11 will tell us and he was transformed by that he offered his in faith that's a heart change a mind change Cain did not and he was not well why does the soul missed in Psalm 119 97 say oh how I love your law because of the work of this Spirit of God on the heart he begun to love the law of God and so the new covenant isn't better than the old covenant because it is better because it did what the old covenant could not do being merely external but the new covenant is the renewal of the covenant of grace God has always and first made with Adam and even ever since to his people who look to the Messiah that is the covenant of grace whereby God has ever saved anybody by grace alone through faith alone in the Messiah alone so the promise here of transformation then should encourage every struggling Christian right God holds out to us the hope of final perfection after the likeness of Christ we are very at we who are sitting here we feel it and we know it and we grieve it but one day we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is we shall all be changed and so in the meantime Romans 12 to says do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind God changes us by his word by the work of the Spirit as we give our hearts and minds to his word that inter transformation is already and not yet it has begun but dear brothers and sisters there is more to come for we are being transformed from one degree of glory into another as we behold the glory of God in the face of Christ so it's a glorious promise inter transformation but secondly there's this second promise at the end of chapter 10 covenantal union with God God says and I will be their God and they will be my people God promises to be ours and he promises to take us to be his this is the crowning blessing of the new covenant it is in fact the heart of all the covenant administrations across the entirety of the Bible it's the sealing of a marriage one that had been broken by man but rests on the unbreakable promise of God. O. Colmar Robertson calls this this the Emmanuel principle because he notes that the promise is essentially the promise of Jesus because Jesus is God with us which is what Emmanuel means God with us I will be with you you will be with me Jesus is God with us and Jesus as the mediator our great high priest reconciles us to God and so once again this is there's something better about the new covenant but it is not an altogether new promise for this is a theme of the Old Testament even if it's not a theme highlighted in the Old Covenant I mean this is what Adam and Eve were created for to be God's and for God to be theirs but they rejected it it's also the promise given to Abraham in the covenant of grace we saw in Genesis 17 7 and read this morning in that covenant promise when God said I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offering after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your offspring after you this promise of covenant union with sinners and God is also the promise not made to the enslaved Israelites in Exodus 6 when God told Moses to tell the people I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will deliver you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment I will take you to be my people and I will be your God it's a running theme inscription was was that given before the law or after before Exodus 6 before the plagues before the rescue but before the the Passover lamb before the law at Mount Sinai the promise that very promise you can find it in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Zechariah and of course in the Apostles writings of the New Testament and so this new covenant is better than the Mosaic covenant and it's new but not completely or wholly new it's a renewal again of what has always been promised to God's redeemed people and it is fulfilled in Christ in him we have the yet greater culmination and in that future final day it will fully come to pass even face to face when in Revelation 21 2 and 3 we read of the holy city the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God he prepared as a bride for her husband this is the people of God the bride of Christ the new Jerusalem and it says with a loud voice from the throne we hear these words behold the dwelling place of God is with man he will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God this is the heart of the whole Bible salvation doesn't just get you heaven and all its glories it doesn't just get you the grand reunion with loved ones on that distant shore which we long for it doesn't just get you forgiveness and release of guilt it gets you God and it gets God for you third promise of the new covenant personal knowledge then of God covenantal union with him and personal knowledge of him verse 11 and they shall not teach each one his neighbor each one his brother saying know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest this of course is the implication of the previous promise what does it mean that God is our God and we are his people it means we belong to him and we have the privilege to genuinely know him in fact Jesus describes salvation this way in john 17 3 and this is eternal life he says that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have said what is eternal life it's knowing the true God through Jesus though now we see as through a glass darkly yet one day face to face but we do know him is your heart sing have you begun to know God and have you begun to know that you are as Paul puts in Galatians known by God now what this promise is not doing it is not denying our need for teachers in the church to help us I mean it's not denying the role of pastor teaching which Paul says God gave to his church in in Ephesians 4 verse 11 God gives to his church apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastor teachers it's not denying that we need to be taught if it was denying that we need to be taught it would not even be written down it was written down because we need to be instructed so don't get out ahead of this promise imagining we have the consummation of the knowledge that is promised here but we do have real genuine knowledge of God and God isn't hiding it from us in one day we will know so much more and better the PBS ran an exposé of the church of Scientology as with other systems of religion the key to progress in the church of Scientology is you're making your way into different levels of knowledge now this is an old exposé but it costs you a lot of money and they noted if you started the street level it's going to cost you about 50 bucks to walk in and learn a little bit about yourself you go to the next stage you pay about 150 for stage two and then stage three may cost you 1500 bucks and if you graduate to the level where you have the privilege of the church of Scientology explaining to you their theory for the origin of the universe it may cost you as much as a hundred thousand dollars for the initiation to that information one young couple confessed I should have said it might have cost you 10,000 but one young couple confessed that over the course of four or five years they had spent over a hundred thousand dollars trying to gain the necessary knowledge to try within the church it's the same kind of thing with the Masonic ritual there are stages stage one gets you in stage two there's a little handshake and more to do with a little more money from you and they're something that 23 stages before you get to the point where you have the knowledge that they think you really need it's the same with Mormonism you progress through certain stages of knowledge until you get to the priestly functions that allow you to know the real truth and here's the point by contrast Christianity is utterly different Christianity is for every boy and girl it's for every man off the street and it's the whole deal covered a cover with no price of admission as another pudding it's here for the youngest and the oldest to read the bible and understand that you might actually know god there are no hidden passages no you know secret rooms no special places it's all found in the Lord Jesus for the least to the greatest for the dumbest to the brightest for the youngest to the oldest we will all know god we do we have to be done to know god in Jesus and we can of course then grow in maturity we can grow in our understanding of him our knowledge of him and so it's very unlike the cults so that's the third thing in the fourth is the fourth promises in verse 12 it is the forgiveness of sins notice that language for I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more now of course this promise is in a way foundational to all the others I mean without the forgiveness of our sins you couldn't enjoy god and you wouldn't want to be with god I mean you would you would like I don't want to cower in fear seeking to hide yourself from the face of your holy creator without the knowledge of the forgiveness of your sins you'd be like Adam and Eve covering yourself with fig leaves hiding in the garden and we would continue the pattern of Adam and Eve not taking responsibility for our own sin because who wants to own up to it if you have no hope of relief from it and then uh blame shifting to others well it's not my fault it's your fault you made me like this mom and dad you're the real problem I'm not the problem oh dear wife or husband you're the problem here I'm not the problem here accusing others shifting the blame away from ourselves it's the knowledge of our of our full pardon that allows us not to buck up and justify ourselves in every instance but to but to own it and so therefore also to be gracious to other sinners to be pardoning of those who sin against us when you are convinced you are forgiven you can run to your Savior and Lord even with your sins what a blessing then that god is merciful to us he doesn't give us what our sins deserve and instead of justice we get mercy he remembers our sins no more it's not that he becomes forgetful as if god could forget anything but he doesn't hold them against us because he held them against Jesus on the cross and there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus the word here for mercy he'll be merciful toward our iniquities is the Greek word hilios it's the root of the word that's used in the description of the mercy seat that sat atop the ark of the covenant in the most holy place in the temple it was called the hilasterion it was the place where the blood of the sacrifice was brought by the high priest on the day of atonement the high priest entered the most holy place the holy of holies where the golden cherubum sat atop the ark of the covenant of the mercy seat was between them and it was as it were god's throne where he met with his people and the ten commandments were in that ark below the mercy seat and before him came the high priest representing all the sinful and wicked people and according to god's law he must be struck down immediately unless he has brought before god the blood of a sacrifice shed for the sins of the people and that blood was poured out upon the mercy seat so that god looked down and no longer saw the law that was transgressed but the blood that paid the debt of sin and the promise of verse 12 then is that god says i will be mercy seated toward your iniquities this is how god forgives our sins by the blood of a spotless sacrifice and god didn't have to cover my is justice in order to show mercy because his justice came against Christ upon the cross that we might be freed from receiving what we deserve and so god remembers our sins no more people ask what happened god forget i mean he's the god if if he's if he's truly god he knows all things and he knows all things all at once all the time right he's perfect in knowledge how could he forget the wicked that we have the wickedness we have done and as another put it because his forgetting is based on his forgiving think of it this way if you owe a debt to someone and you haven't paid it you can pretty well be sure they haven't forgotten it but if somebody else comes along and pays the debt for you they're no longer bothered about what you owe them the debt is satisfied and they can forget the debt so to speak because they've received full payment and that's what we have in the gospel Jesus fully satisfied that the justice of god fully paid the debt of our sins fully rendered to god satisfaction for a broken law fully rendered to god a life of perfect obedience in accordance with the commands of god that he might declare i remember your sins no more and that makes such a difference in our relationship with god as this kind of forgiveness makes such a difference interpersonally and relationally something may have happened a long time ago between spouses and if we keep on holding it before the other person's face if we keep saying you know i haven't forgotten about what you did to me and i would never forget about what you did to me and let me remind you again about what you did to me or what you didn't do for me that you ought to have done well then it's always there and like a kind of poison in the well of a relationship it makes everything better and dead but we will never hear that from god is the point he has put away our sin forgotten all the dreadful things we do and as far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our transgressions from us and this promise that makes the new covenant so much better than the old why because the mosaic law the covenant god made didn't bring this forgiveness and forgetting it it called for the sacrifice of bulls and goats sin after sin sacrifice after sacrifice year after year after year and these were as the writer will eventually say later in the book a constant reminder of sins a constant reminder that your sins hadn't been adequately dealt with so you needed another sacrifice but with the one final sacrifice of christ they have been adequately dealt with so what are we saying are we saying that then nobody before the coming of jesus was ever forgiven not at all i mean that would be a strange thing to say when we have Psalm 103 which i just read as far as the east is from the west he's removed but it would be also a strange thing in line of Psalm 32 blessed is the one who's transgression is forgiven who sin is covered i acknowledge my sin to you i did not cover up my iniquity i said i will confess my transgressions to the lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin so it's not that there wasn't forgiveness in the days of the old testament or for the people under the old covenant but the basis of their forgiveness was not the mosaic law and its covenant it wasn't based on the blood of bulls and goats their forgiveness like ours has always been based on the finished work of christ for them that finished work was prospective yet in the future he had not yet come but the effects of his coming and cross work work backwards in by god's design and god treated his people in prospect of the finished work of the messiah on their behalf just as that finished work works forward to we who have sinned our entire lives since his coming and yet we are forgiven in him and so god dealt with believers his elect not based on the old covenant law but based on the covenant of grace the mediation of our great high priest and his final sacrifice once for all over and done it is finished he says so the new is better than the old by it we have inner transformation by the work of the holy spirit in accord with god's law by it we have covenantal union with god through christ by it we have the personal knowledge of god and the complete forgiveness of sins this is a glorious new covenant let's glory in its mediator jesus let's pray thank you for all the good we have in christ and thank you for the privilege we have on this side of his coming to know with greater confidence the depth of your love and mercy pardon and power by the holy spirit so then help us to glory and boast in jesus and then by his spirit walk with him in his name we pray amen amen let's stand together and sing