Hebrews 8 - Jesus Set Up A Better Covenant

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are journeying through the Book of Hebrews together, and we are in Hebrews chapter 8.

The author really had like a big thing that he wanted, that these Jewish, some Jewish believers, some Jewish behaviors, as we learned about back in chapter 6, and he wanted to like let him know, here's why you should follow Jesus.

It's not easy during this particular day and age there in the first century to follow Jesus, and it can be pretty unpopular, and you've got some people that have abandoned Jesus and gone back to Judaism, but here's why you should stay.

And so he's been now in an extended discourse on the fact that the like core element of Judaism, which is the priesthood, the offering of sacrifices, all of that.

He says Jesus is the absolute fulfillment of everything that we learned about in the Old Testament as it relates to the priesthood, and he does a better job of it than those that are currently priests in Israel.

So don't abandon Jesus to go back to what is inferior. Chapter eight in verse number one says this. Now, the main point of what is being said is this.

We have this kind of high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary. That is, he is the one that takes care of it. He serves in it.

That word, I'm going to do a very, very quick word search because if it's the word that I think it is, this is diakonos and I just want to make sure so I don't lie to you guys. Nope, it is the it's the word we get the word liturgy from.

It is a public minister, servant of the state or a servant of the temple. It speaks of a priest or one busied with holy things.

I had just enough doubt in my mind to question if that was diakonos and I'm glad I did because that helped me not lie to you guys. He's one that is a priest in the sanctuary. He deals with what's going on there in the presence of God.

Continuing in verse number two, and the true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and not man. So I think we addressed this a little bit when we were in Leviticus. I don't know why I always use the royal we.

I think I went over it when we together went through the Book of Leviticus, that the tabernacle, how it was set up, it's dealt with in more detail as to like the materials and what all was in there. All that stuff was dealt with more in Exodus.

It was patterned after what God showed Moses about what it's like in God's presence, which is super crazy to me that he gave Moses a glimpse into like where God is, heaven, like his throne room.

And in that heavenly throne room slash temple, into that heavenly court, he said, this is what it looks like where I am. And I want you to make it so that the Israelite tabernacle and later the temple looks like what it looks like in my presence.

Now, obviously, it will be an imperfect picture, but what a cool thought. And that has prompted many people over the years within their like church design or design of sanctuaries or cathedrals to put intentionality into what goes where and why.

Because frankly, it's just a very, very cool thought. So that true tabernacle, the tabernacle in heaven, was set up by the Lord. That to me is such an interesting thought too.

That God set up something in heaven.

Like the kind of popular thought when it comes to heaven is that there's just like clouds and maybe some people with harps sitting on them and you get like one random gigantic throne and maybe like a couple gates somewhere.

And that's everything that's in heaven. But it shocks me a little bit, but it also makes sense to me. That the one who came to this earth and was a carpenter, a tecton is the Greek word or tecnon.

It's either tecton or tecnon. That he who worked with his hands and crafting things all throughout his earthly life was also one that created things in heaven. It was certainly by the word of his power as he did with all things.

But that he created furniture. Like he put the different things where they were and the mercy seat and all of the wonderful things that we would read about in the Book of Revelation and the glassy sea that you have all of the angels hovering over.

Just what a cool thought that our God is endlessly creative and amazing in all of his ways and he set up that sanctuary in the true Tabernacle which is in his presence.

Verse number three, for every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. They say, God, these people brought this to you to thank you, and these people brought this to you to say, sorry.

And so he says, every high priest brings those two things. Therefore, it was necessary for this priest also to have something to offer.

That if Jesus is going to be a priest, then that means he's got to bring some gifts and he's got to bring some sacrifices. Now if he were on earth, he wouldn't be a priest since there are those offering the gifts prescribed by the law.

He says, right now with the physical temple that was still existing at that time in Jerusalem before AD 70 and the destruction of Jerusalem, he says he couldn't do this in the regular temple that you guys are questioning if you should go back to that

kind of Judaism. He says he couldn't do that. There's already people who that's their whole job, but he does this in heaven. He does this in the true Tabernacle.

He says, these, the earthly gifts, they serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things as Moses was warned when he was about to complete the Tabernacle.

For God said, be careful that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain. He says all of the gifts that you bring, it's a copy, it's a shadow, it's kind of sort of like what's going on in heaven.

Which certainly for my curious mind makes me go, okay, well then what in the world is being offered in heaven if like the gifts and we went through all of like the ingredients that had to go into the, you know, Thanksgiving offerings and we know

about the sacrifices of the, you know, goats and bulls and sheep and doves or pigeons, all that kind of stuff. So it does make me wonder like, okay, well, what were those copies? What were those shadows of?

And certainly God's word doesn't make that super explicit to us. And so there's something to be said for not having too much speculation. So I'll continue on here.

Verse number six, but Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry. And to that degree, he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been established on better promises.

The promises of the Old Covenant were, keep this, fall along with this law, and you will enjoy the land, you'll enjoy all of the promises. If you keep these things, then all this good will come.

And if you do not keep it, all of these curses will come. And Jesus, with his better covenant, it is God promises to make us new. God promises to give us the Holy Spirit.

God promises that once he has sealed us with that Holy Spirit of promise, we are his all the way until the day that either he returns or he calls us home. And what a wonderful thought there.

Verse number 7, For if that first covenant had been faultless, if the Mosaic Law had been perfect, no notes, great, this is what God wants in its totality, he says there would have been no occasion for a second one.

If the first one worked, there would be no point for a second covenant. He says, but finding fault with his people, he says C, and here he's doing a kind of larger quote from Jeremiah 31.

He says C, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors.

On the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, I showed no concern for them, says the Lord, because they did not continue in my covenant.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.

And each person will not teach his fellow citizens, saying, and each his brother or sister, saying, know the Lord because they will all know me from the least to the greatest of them, for I will forgive their wrongdoing and I will never again

remember their sins. By saying a new covenant, he is declared that the first is obsolete and what is obsolete and growing old is about to pass away.

Here a slight statement indicating at least some passing familiarity with Jesus' teachings in Matthew 24 among other places that the Jewish Temple and kind of their whole way of life was going to drastically change after 8070 when, oh, what was his

name, General Titus, I believe, destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. So what do we take from this? This superior covenant. This is the promise that God made to us.

Well, first, oftentimes we can be tempted to go back to the Old Testament law to find our relationship with God.

Or sometimes what people will do is they'll say, okay, well, God doesn't say this anywhere in the New Testament, but I really think it would be a good thing for people to bring back from the Old Testament.

Well, we got to remember, that Old Covenant, it's dead and gone. And anything that was truly important from that covenant, God brought now into the New Covenant.

Anything that wasn't just like a cultural thing, but that was genuine sin, God brought over to the New Testament.

So if the New Testament doesn't call it sin, then we don't really have a leg to stand on to be like, hey, you know the old, dead, passed away, obsolete covenant? That's to use what the words that scripture uses.

That actually is alive and well today, and Jesus' New Covenant, the New Testament, is incomplete without this portion. So I think it informs how we think about the Bible, how we read through the Bible.

Certainly we find absolute value in the Old Testament in reading it and understanding it and understanding like, hey, God, why did you say this for this time period?

Or this seems to like interact in kind of an odd way with your character, what you're normally like. So why is it different here? We ought to value the Old Testament even as the author of Hebrews does.

That the entire book is going through saying, hey, remember this Old Testament prophecy and this psalm and this person. Remember all of these things from the Old Testament. It all points to Jesus.

The point of the Old Covenant is to point us to the greatness of the New Covenant, which we find in Jesus. That the, as the Apostle Paul would put it in Galatians 4, that the law was our schoolmaster, it was our taskmaster to bring us to Christ.

That the, this taskmaster, the steward would take the Roman or Greek children from the house to school where they could actually learn. The schoolmaster wasn't the one that was like teaching them, you know, reading, writing, arithmetic, whatever.

He was just the one getting them from where they were to where they needed to go. And that is what the Apostle Paul says, the Old Testament was for the believer, that it took us from where we were blind and dead in our sin.

It let us know that we were sinners. It let us know that God created the world. It let us know that God loves us with an everlasting love.

And he puts up with knuckleheads like me and like you. And it brought us to Jesus to say Jesus is the solution for all of it. He is the ultimate expression of God's love for us.

And so we ought to value the Old Testament. And as you get to know the Old Testament better and better, then that informs your understanding of the New Testament.

That you get to see Jesus better because there's no part of the Old Testament that is bereft of the influence and work of Jesus Christ. That all of it points to Jesus. And I'd go on, but I'll save a little bit of that for another time.

Tomorrow's episode, we are going over Hebrews chapter 9. I closed my Bible just a smidge too early. And I'm looking forward to that.

Then chapter 10, I think we're splitting up into like three or four. I did the royal we again. Chapter 10, I am splitting up into like three or four different sections because it's just chocked rich and I'm so excited for it.

Thank you again for tuning in. Hope you have a wonderful day following the Lord, who is the bringer of a new, better covenant, one that's not reliant on like our external righteousness, but on the righteousness that God puts in us.

It's that law that he's written in our heads and on our hearts. He's the one that transforms us so that we know the Lord and follow him because his Holy Spirit lives in us. Thanks for tuning in.

Have a great day.