HeBrews: A Better Blend
Welcome back to HeBrews: A Better Blend. As we continue our study in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 8: 6-13 will be our focus for today. Consider them:
6 But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises. 7 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 But God found fault with the people and said: “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 9 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. 10 This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12 For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” 13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.
Here is where it seems that Scripture doesn’t gee-haw, as my Daddy used to say. That is Southern slang for ‘make sense or line up’. If you have studied the Old Testament you know that every jot and tittle of it points forward to Jesus Christ and the salvation He would offer on the cross. Even the Old Testament law, which includes the Ten Commandments. So is the writer of Hebrews saying that God made a mistake with the Old Covenant?
What we find here is that the purpose of the law was really to show the Jewish people that they could not keep the law in its totality. God instituted the law knowing this. His purpose was to use the Law to point mankind to a BETTER way….the New Covenant way.
So, what about this talk in Hebrews of rendering the Old Covenant obsolete? Recall with me that the Old Covenant was made by God with the Israelites. In the latter half of Exodus 23, God tells the Israelites all He will do for them if they keep His commandments and his Law. In Exodus 24, the Covenant is affirmed and all the Israelites promise to be obedient to all that the Lord had commanded. By the time we read Exodus 32, Aaron and the Israelites have broken their promise to God and they are worshipping a golden calf. This would not be the last time the Israelites failed to keep their end of the covenant bargain. Over and over throughout the rest of the Old Testament the Israelites cycle in and out of rebellion toward God. Finally, God’s patience wore thin. He allowed the Israelites to be taken into captivity because of their rebellion and disobedience.
Then, in the fullness of time, God sent His Son, Jesus, to institute a New Covenant. Not a covenant written on tablets of stone, but a covenant written on the hearts of men.
Consider this from Word Biblical Commentary – Hebrews concerning this matter of the Old Covenant becoming obsolete in the presence of the New Covenant: “The supersession of the Old Covenant was not due simply to the unfaithfulness of the people to the stipulations of the covenant. It occurred because a new unfolding of God’s redemptive purpose had taken place, which called for new covenant action on the part of God. That God took the initiative in announcing his intention to establish a new covenant with Israel indicates that he fully intended the fist covenant to be provisional. Thus God finds fault with the Mosaic covenant, and not simply with the people.” (WBC 1-8. P.209)
Everything about the Old Covenant law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Once He came to earth, died on the cross and rose again, there was no more need for the tabernacle or the daily sacrifice, because the perfect sacrifice had been made once for all. There was no need for a human priest to act as an intercessor between man and God, because the way into the throne room of God was opened. There was no need for a law written on tablets of stone, because now the law of God would be written on the hearts of man. The New Covenant accomplished what the Old Covenant never could.
MEDITATION MOMENT: I’m so thankful that I don’t have to keep all of the Old Testament laws. Paul said, “It is for freedom that Christ as set you free.” That doesn’t give us a license to go out and sin to our heart’s content. Rather it should make us want to enjoy the freedom we have in Jesus.
