Transcript

You have probably watched children on Christmas morning opening their gifts, tearing off the paper in their excitement. It’s not long before the floor is covered with wrapping paper and empty boxes. Somewhere in all that clutter children are enjoying their new gifts.

Maybe you have noticed as well that later on those same children might be playing with the boxes instead of the gifts—especially those big boxes they can crawl into. It makes you wonder if you should have just gotten them some empty boxes for Christmas.

We never quite outgrow that, by the way. We often take for granted the gifts God has given us and focus on something far less important in life.

Some of the first-century readers of the book of Hebrews were becoming a little like that. These Jewish believers had come to faith in Christ. They had experienced the joy of complete salvation in Him. But now, with persecution growing, they are forgetting their earlier excitement and joy over what Christ gave them. They are being tempted to draw away from gifts of grace through Christ and go back into the tenets of the law in Judaism.

The Old Testament priests, that earthly temple in Jerusalem, and the old covenant were the cardboard boxes that were starting to appeal to some of them at this point.

The solution is to remind them of the gifts they have been given in Christ Jesus.

In our Wisdom Journey, the author of Hebrews has been talking about how Jesus is a greater high priest than Aaron. Jesus was not limited with sinful weaknesses and a temporary ministry. Jesus is an interceding, eternal high priest.

Now in chapter 8, the writer continues to expand on this subject in verse 1:

Now the point in what we are saying in this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated [note that—seated] at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven.

He is seated at the throne of God.

Do you realize that Old Testament priests never sat down while in service? In fact, there were no chairs in the temple. And that is because their work was never finished. They did everything standing up.

But Jesus is seated here to communicate that His sacrificial work is finished. And He is not seated just anywhere; He is seated at the Father’s right hand. The right hand signifies the place of divine authority and power.

Verse 2 adds another contrast. Jesus, our High Priest, is “a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.” Jesus never performed a priestly ministry in the Jerusalem temple. His ministry is in the heavenly temple. No human has had any hand in constructing that tent; it was crafted by God Himself.

The contrast is made clearer as the author adds that the earthly temple and its features are “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (verse 5). This verse goes on to tell us that Moses “was instructed by God, saying ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’”

This is a fascinating thought. Revelation 21:22 tells us that in the final re-creation of heaven and earth, there will be no temple because, John writes, “its temple is the Lord God.” However, through human history on earth, there is a temple pattern in heaven. In his tour of heaven, the apostle John saw the altar (Revelation 6:9-11); he saw an altar of incense (Revelation 8:3-5) and more.[1]

So, the tabernacle of Moses and later the temple in Jerusalem were following the pattern of a heavenly sanctuary. The point the author of Hebrews is making is this: Why would anybody want to cling to an earthly imitation that is going to wear out and rust out—and, in fact, a few years later be destroyed by the Roman army—when the heavenly temple will endure?

In other words, why would you want a cardboard box, when something far more significant remains?

This leads to the writer’s second point: Not only is Jesus Christ a superior high priest, representing a better temple, but the covenant Jesus Christ offers is also a better covenant.

Here is verse 6:

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 “old” covenant is the one God made with Israel at Mount Sinai—the covenant of the law. But now Christ is the Mediator—the go-between—who has brought to us a new and better covenant.

The writer explains in verse 7: “If that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.” That statement naturally makes you wonder what it was about the old covenant that was faulty.

Well, for starters, the problem was not on God’s side of the equation. It was a conditional covenant, dependent on the nation of Israel’s obedience. And if you read the Old Testament, it is very clear the people of Israel were consistently disobedient.

But God has not given up on them. In fact, here in verses 8-12, which is a quote from Jeremiah 31, God clearly promises a coming, new covenant. Verse 8 quotes Jeremiah 31:31:

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.

This was another way of reminding these Jewish believers that the new covenant was not something the apostles cooked up—something they created. This new covenant had been foretold long ago by the prophet Jeremiah, hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth to fulfill it.

This was not a surprise. Israel failed to keep the tenets of the old covenant. Verse 9 says, “They did not continue in my covenant.”

The truth is, they could not keep it fully because no human, apart from Christ, can keep all the commandments of God. So, this old covenant revealed their sin; it revealed the inability of the law and ceremony and tradition to save anybody. There was the need for something new—and that would be the final sacrifice for sin through the death of Jesus.

Still quoting Jeremiah, the writer spells out God’s solution in verse 10:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel . . . I will put my laws

into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be

my people.

This new covenant is not a list of commandments chiseled in stone; it is the grace of God written in the minds and hearts of people who trust God’s word. The Old Testament believer looked forward to the fulfillment of this new covenant, when, as prophesied in Isaiah 53:5, the Messiah would be “pierced for our transgressions . . . crushed for our iniquities.” We today look back at the fulfillment of this covenant, completed by Christ Himself.

Perhaps you remember that in the upper room Jesus took the cup and said to His disciples, “This cup . . . is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). This is the new covenant for all who place their faith in the blood of Christ, shed for their forgiveness. This new covenant is for both Jews and Gentiles alike.

We find the third point in verse 13, where the author writes, “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete.”

Why would his readers want to cling to a covenant that is now obsolete, fulfilled in the far more valuable, eternal new covenant in Christ? That would be like discarding your new Christmas gifts and choosing to keep old cardboard boxes instead.

Have you accepted the gift of forgiveness through Christ today? If you have not, what are you waiting for? Accept Him today.