SERMON MANUSCRIPT
Hebrews 8 begins a three-chapter-long discussion on the New Covenant, that efficacious oath sworn by God the Father, ratified by God the Son, and applied by God the Spirit. It’s the cumulative covenant in which all believers are united, forgiven, and kept. It’s the covenant we remember when we take the bread and drink the cup, commemorating and anticipating he who is both its sacrificial lamb and its mediating priest.
The importance of the New Covenant cannot be overstated. The more we understand its necessity, capacity, and practicality, the more we will enjoy the hope it gives, the peace it brings, and the freedom it offers. And our passage this morning provides an introduction to this beautiful and powerful new covenant and a reminder of the old covenant that it replaced.
IN WITH THE NEW
The author of Hebrews uses the opening six verses of this chapter to transition from one topic to another; from what he has been discussing—the priesthood of Christ—to what he wants to discuss—the new covenant connected to the priesthood of Christ. “The main point in what has been said” (8:1) is that something fresh and needed has arrived—in with the new—and it’s better than all that came before it.
God’s people are now represented by a better high priest, one greater than all others in that, for one reason, he occupies a better seat. [8:1b] In a sense, this allusion to Psalm 110 summarizes the first seven chapters of Hebrews (Osborne, 159–160). Our high priest, unlike any other high priest, finished his work and sat down.
David did something similar when, after years of waiting and trusting and fighting, he became king over God’s people, uniting the nation of Israel in peace.“So David lived [that is, seated himself, set up residence] in the stronghold and called it the city of David” (2 Sam 5:9). He laboured and endured and, when it was done, he sat down, punctuating the accomplishment.
Jesus, after suffering, dying, resurrecting, ascending, and becoming priest over God’s people, and sat down, took up residence with finality in the most lofty place imaginable: “the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” Our high priest shares the glory of God, the power of God, the honour of God, the authority of God because he is God. He’s better!
Your high priest, the one who represents you right now before your God, does not live over on Litchfield Road (that’s where I live, by the way), or in Vatican City, or anywhere else on this earth. If you belong to God through Christ, your high priest—the only high priest you need—is at God’s right hand.
We may be law-breaking criminals, but we don’t have a discount-bin lawyer representing us. We have one that no amount of money can buy, an Advocate who wrote the law and has done his homework. We have a better high priest who occupies a better seat.
And our better high priest has a better ministry than any other priest. In fact, the author says so in [8:6a]. And what makes it “more excellent”? For one, he ministers in a better tabernacle, being [8:2].
The old priests worked non-stop in buildings built by humans, places that needed upkeep and represented a greater reality than themselves. [8:5] Jesus ministers in that greater reality, the “true tabernacle,” the better tabernacle, designed, built, and inhabited by God himself. Our high priest is not pleading our case in some backwoods courthouse but in the Supreme Court of the Universe.
And in this better tabernacle he performs his better ministry by offering a better sacrifice. He brings better evidence, presents better exhibits, and posits better arguments for our justification.
Verse 3: “For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices [that’s part of the priestly job description]; so it is necessary that this high priest [Jesus] also have something to offer. Now if He were on earth [which he’s not—remember, he’s got a better seat—but if he was], He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law.” It seems the temple was still standing when the author wrote this so he could point to it and say, “If Jesus was on earth, he wouldn’t need to be a sacrifice-offering priest because those guys have it covered.”
But as he’ll later point out, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (10:4). Instead, our high priest “offered one sacrifice for sins for all time” (10:12), and that one sacrifice was himself. [10:14] Our high priest has a better ministry, serving in a better tabernacle and having offered a better sacrifice.
The reason this room isn’t full of bleating goats, nervous calves, and desperate pigeons is because of the wholly sufficient and heavenly location of Jesus’s ministry. Because of his blood, our worship is far less bloody. He’s a better priest with a better ministry.
And a huge part of that ministry is that he mediates a better covenant. Verse 6: “But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant.”
A lawyer functions as a mediator between the authorities and the people, guided by and beholden to the laws of the land. You cannot separate a lawyer from the law. They go together. Similarly, a priest mediates between God and people according to the laws of the Lord. There are rules for acceptance by and fellowship with God and priests are products of those rules and empower the keeping of those rules. You cannot separate a priest from the covenant. They go together.
For the old priests it was the Mosaic covenant. But for our new priest, Jesus, it’s the new covenant, one that’s better in its very essence. [8:7–9] The first covenant—the one cut with Israel after being led “out of the land of Egypt”—was not “faultless” because it was incapable of making God’s people faultless. Even with the law and priesthood in place God was still “finding fault with them” (v. 8). Why? Because that first covenant didn’t solve the sin problem. It couldn’t.
And, because of its incompetence, a second covenant, a new covenant was needed, one that could bring unholy people before a holy God; one that could deal with the sin of God’s people; one that was better in its very essence.
And what makes this covenant fundamentally better is that it’s founded on better promises. [8:6] And what are those better promises? The author uses Jeremiah 31 to highlight a few.
First, there will be a better effect. [8:10] With the first covenant the law was external to the person, written on tablets of stone. God’s people could remain ignorant, unconvinced, and disobedience to God’s laws—and they did. But not with the new covenant. It will have a better effect, the needed effect, on God’s people. God’s desires will reside internally, written on their hearts by the Holy Spirit (Ezek 36:25–27; Joel 2:28–29), shaping their actions to mirror God’s will.
And because of that effect, there will be better intimacy with God. [8:11] God’s people will all know their God to such an extent that there will be no need for evangelism. Widespread intimacy will be the norm.
And, climactically and foundationally, this new covenant will bring better redemption. [8:12] Forgiveness of sins is the crux of the matter. Without it, nothing else really matters. No other biblical covenant—Noahic, Abrahamic, Priestly, Davidic, or, as we’ve seen today, Mosaic—solved this problem. What good is a preserved earth if it’s full of sinners? What good is huge nation if they’re all rebels? How enjoyable will an eternal kingdom be if its citizens are cursed?
Sin is the problem. Forgiveness is needed. Redemption is required. And that’s what the New Covenant offers, a covenant mediated by Jesus Christ. He’s our better high priest with a better ministry, mediating a better covenant founded on better promises.
The author of Hebrews says, “in with the new.” It’s so much better! So why would you shrink back? How can you take it for granted? Why would you supplement it? Why would you not run after such beauty and power with all your might? Why would you not offer he who has given you everything, everything? How can you withhold any part of your life from him who, for your sake, laid down his life?
OUT WITH THE OLD
And, while in one breath we say “in with the new,” with the next we declare “out with the old.” With a better priest in a better seat, why lean on lesser ones? With his better ministry in a better tabernacle having offered a better sacrifice, why rely on an insufficient ministry in a temporary tabernacle covered in the blood of impotent offerings? With a better covenant founded on better promises, why cling to a deficient covenant built on powerless promises? Out with the old.
This is how the chapter ends. [8:13] When I buy a new toothbrush I don’t keep the old one to use on weekends. That would not only be redundant but counterproductive. The old one has been replaced because, having become worn out, it is no longer useful.
When God, through Jeremiah and other prophets, announced the future arrival of a new covenant, God’s people were put on notice: there will come a time when the Old Covenant, the Mosaic Law, will be worn-out and need to be replaced.
And the author of Hebrews says, that time has come. Don’t try and marry the two. Don’t keep the old one around for nostalgic purposes, practical purposes, false-piety purposes, or any other set of purposes. It did what it was supposed to do and has now been replaced. In with the new. Out with the old.
Now, we can (and should!) read books like Exodus and Deuteronomy for revelatory purposes. They tell us much about who God is, who we are, and how God’s plans to rescue his creation. But we don’t need to read them for regulatory purposes, learning how our church should operate, how our country should be organized, and how our lives should be ordered.
We are not under the Mosaic Law—any part of it. That covenant was given to a particular people at a particular time and has since been made obsolete, supplanted by a better covenant, founded on better promises, and mediated by a better high priest.
Don’t Use What Doesn’t Work!
Essentially, this introduction to Christ’s New Covenant ministry is telling us: Don’t use what doesn’t work! The old covenant was deficient. Don’t go back to that. Throw the old toothbrush out and move on to that which is clean, effective, and worthwhile. Don’t use what doesn’t work! The old law didn’t work for justification and it won’t work for sanctification. The Mosaic covenant couldn’t save anyone and doesn’t mature anyone.
If you want to grow up in the faith—which is the call of Hebrews—if you want to mature in Christ, growing in certainty and stability, usefulness and hope, strength and wisdom; if you want to lay up for yourself treasures in heaven and bring the absolute most glory to your Saviour as you can, don’t use what doesn’t work.
And the Mosaic law doesn’t work. Religiosity doesn’t work. Morality doesn’t work. Vicarious faith doesn’t work. Political affiliation doesn’t work. Social contribution doesn’t work. Your educational resume doesn’t work. Your theological acumen. Your sweet disposition doesn’t work. A curated set of feelings and experiences doesn’t work.
None of these things and no combination of these things is faultless because they can’t make us faultless nor can they move us toward faultlessness. Out with all the powerless attempts to know, please, grow, and serve the Lord. Out with the old.
Praise God, in with the new. It’s all be done for us. We have all we need. Perfect and eternal representation who offered a perfect and eternal sacrifice for our total and eternal justification. We have an Advocate in the highest position who promises total forgiveness and guidance, security and worth. Why would we use what doesn’t work when we access to the only thing—the only one—who actually does?
Please take the communion emblems as we prepare to celebrate the New Covenant freedom we’ve been given. You may have noticed when we read that quote from Jeremiah that the new covenant was promised, not to the church, but to “the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” In fact, when the prophet spoke those ancient words, the church didn’t yet exist.
We want to let the Bible say what it says and, here, it clearly reveals that you and I are not the primary recipients of the New Covenant and, because God cannot lie and always keeps his word, it means that there will come a future day when Israel will walk in these New Covenant realities; when Christ returns and his chosen people, with repentant hearts, shout, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
But that day is not now and with Israel’s rejection of their Messiah at his first coming, the doors of access to God were swung wide open to the Gentiles. The blood Jesus shed on the cross was New Covenant blood, blood that ratified the terms and promises of that oath. [Luke 22:19–20] Years later, the Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, instructed them to follow this same pattern, commemorating the forgiveness-providing covenant to which we now have access.
Brothers and sisters, as we take these elements together, unified by the Spirit of God and the blood of the Lamb of God, let’s thank him for the freedom we enjoy. Freedom from the bondage of the law. Freedom from the burden of the Old Covenant. Freedom from ignorance. Freedom from apathy. Freedom from inability. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from shame. Freedom from insecurity. Freedom from fear. Freedom from death.
As we take these elements together, let’s remember: in with the new, out with the old.
Josiah has served the Oakridge Bible Chapel family as one of its elders and one of its pastoral staff members since September 2018, before which he ministered as an associate pastor to a local congregation in the Canadian prairies. Josiah's desire is to be used by God to help equip the church for ministry, both while gathered (edification) and while scattered (evangelization). He is married to Patricia, and together they have five children—Jonah, Henry, Nathaniel, Josephine, and Benjamin.
