The book of Hebrews, as we have been learning, contains many biblical concepts that are not very well known by the people of God. I once heard a well-known Bible teacher who is now with the Lord say that if he were going to be put into prison and were only allowed to take one book of the Bible with him, he would take the book of Hebrews.
I understand why he would choose that one. I'm certainly finding it to be a rich and informational and inspirational portion of God's eternal word. For example, the wonderful truth that Jesus Christ is the high priest of every new covenant believer is found basically only in the book of Hebrews.
We would not realize that without this particular book. The book of Hebrews gives us the most detailed explanation of the old covenant and the new covenant and compares them and teaches us more about them. More than any other book in the New Testament that I have found, some of the strongest meat in the Bible is found in the book of Hebrews. I've heard some of you making comments about this series through Hebrews that we're getting into the deep things of God.
Well, in a sense, that's correct. But remember, the writer of Hebrews told us that many chapters ago. He said, I need to tell you about some things that you won't understand because you're still babes and you aren't really ready for the meat of the word. But anyway, here we go. We're going into it in spite of the fact that you're not as well prepared to receive it as you ought to be. But the only way to get you to be able to chew and digest the meat of the word is to give you the meat of the word.
So here he goes. And we find a great deal of that here in the book of Hebrews. And many of the concepts that we find in Hebrews that are not emphasized elsewhere in the scriptures is because of the unique nature of the book, namely that it is written with Jewish Christians in view.
Almost all the other epistles are either written to individuals, Timothy, Titus, and so forth, or they are written to mixed congregations of Jewish and Gentile believers. But this book focuses upon Jewish believers. And Jewish believers had a larger understanding of the Old Testament and a larger affection for the Old Testament than Gentile believers. All Christians have been caused by the Spirit of God to love the Word of God, all of it, Old Testament as well as New Testament. But if you didn't grow up in a Jewish background and didn't grow up immersed in the Old Testament scriptures, then that is what you come to second. You start with the New Testament and then you dip back into the Old, but the writer of Hebrews is writing to people who have spent their lives immersed in the Old Testament and now they are being brought into New Testament truth. And some of them are struggling with that, but because of that we are finding things and emphases in this book that you don't find anyplace else. And of course part of the problem that the epistle is addressing is that many of these Jewish Christians were being pulled back to the Old Covenant, the one that they were so familiar with.
The one that had brought them some degree of satisfaction. And now they are noticing the differences between the Old and the New Covenant and they are being pulled back in some respects to the Old. And the book of Hebrews says, no, no, no, don't go there.
You can't go there. And here's why. And nearly the entire book explains in great detail why it is a fatal mistake to leave the New Covenant and go back to the Old. And so today we are taking up verses 8 through 14 and we learn why we must not allow allurement to ceremonialism to pull us away from the gospel.
And we shall divide this into three parts. First of all, the establishment of the New Covenant in verses 8 and 9. Secondly, the accomplishments of the New Covenant in verse 10. And third, the superiority of the New Covenant in verses 11 through 14. The establishment of the New Covenant and the question is why should this be established?
And we're picking up at verse 8 right in the middle of what has gone before it but you have to divide it somewhere if you've got long sections that have to be broken up and so we've done it this way. And so starting in verse 8 we read previously saying, sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings and offerings for sin you did not desire nor had pleasure in them which are offered according to the law. Then he said, behold I have come to do your will O God. He takes away the first that he may establish the second. This is talking about the establishment of the New Covenant. He takes away the first covenant so that he may establish the second covenant. Now what is he telling us about this here, this establishment of the New Covenant?
Why is that necessary? And what does he offer as evidence for that? And here he draws what we might call a proof text from the Old Testament.
We looked at it last week. It's drawn from Psalm 40 and we find the essence of it there in verses 5, 6 and 7. Where we read therefore when he, the Messiah, came into the world he said sacrifice and offering you did not desire but a body you have prepared for me. You see this old covenant revelation of a promised Messiah, one who comes in a body, a necessary body, a body you have prepared for me, in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure. Says the Messiah to God the Father in Psalm 40. Then I, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the greater son of David said, behold I have come. In the volume of the book it is written of me to do your will O God. That is such a rich passage. And so we've come here now to a second extended Old Testament passage that the writer of Hebrews declares and then explains.
That's what exposition is. It's the declaration and then explanation of the word of God. And that's exactly what the writer of Hebrews is doing here. Earlier he declared a portion from Jeremiah 31 about the coming of a new covenant and he explained that portion. Now he comes to this prophecy about the coming Messiah in Psalm 40 and he explains that portion and that is the evidence for the establishment of the new covenant.
That is the reason why the new covenant must be established. And so what exactly is being said in these two verses? It begins with what to me is somewhat of a puzzling statement in verse 8. Previously saying, that is in Psalm 40. Previously saying, and now quoting again what he's already quoted in verse 5 and 6, sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings and offerings for sin you did not desire nor had pleasure in them.
That is a puzzling statement. Weren't these sacrifices and offerings prescribed by God himself? Didn't he give them to the people of Israel? Isn't this something that God himself established in the law? The last phrase of verse 8 says which are offered according to the law, the law that God gave.
So why would Messiah say that in these offerings which God gave and prescribed, commanded, required the people of God to perform that in those he had no desire, no pleasure. That's a puzzling statement. It forces us to think. We need to understand that Christianity is a thinking religion. People who don't want to think about anything more than just very surface ideas. People who don't want to have to study their Bible. People who don't want to hear expository explanations of the Scriptures but just want to be carried along by surface concepts and by emotional persuasion are in trouble because they're never going to truly understand the Christian religion which is a thinking person's religion.
You've got to engage your mind. Yes, we aren't saved by simply acknowledging and embracing knowledge but we must of course yield our heart, our emotions are involved in that, our will is involved in that but we must engage our mind. We love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and we've got to give our minds to understand the Bible as well as we possibly can. And this makes us think, why didn't God desire the old covenant sacrifices, those blood sacrifices? He commanded them. He must have desired them.
He commanded them. But the problem is that many of those old covenant people failed to understand God's purpose for the old covenant. Many viewed the old covenant as a way of salvation and it never was. As this writer of the book of Hebrews makes clear over and over and over again, God didn't give it for that purpose. It was never intended for that purpose. Nobody was ever saved by the terms of the old covenant.
That's not why God gave it. And so if people are looking to it as a way of salvation, then they are certainly not fulfilling God's will and the giving of the old covenant. They certainly are not fulfilling God's desire in the offering of these sacrifices. In the offering of the sacrifices, when they view them as something that is earning them salvation, God is not pleased.
How can he be pleased? They are misusing the scripture that God has given, fatally misusing it. And so that's the explanation. Many viewed these requirements of the old covenant as the way of salvation. You say, how do you know that? By reading my Bible carefully. Christ makes that clear as he deals with the Pharisees of his day who were trusting in their law keeping in order to save them. Paul deals with the same issue as he deals with the Jewish people of his day who refused to come to Christ who are still trying to earn salvation by means of the law. Check it out in the book of Romans. Check it out in the book of Galatians.
That's obviously what was going on. And so when we read this in Psalm 40, we realize that if God's own word is misunderstood and misused, then no matter how much we lean upon it, no matter how much we study it, no matter how much we quote it, no matter how much we declare it, we are not pleasing God. And this is one example of that. And so this puzzling statement is understood when we realize that yes, God did desire the old covenant for various reasons.
We've dealt with some of these. He gave it to separate the nation of Israel, the physical seed of Abraham, from the rest of the world in order to have a preserved line to bring Jesus Christ, the Messiah, into the world. He gave it to illustrate important truths.
These were object lessons. They were to demonstrate the sinfulness of man, the wages of sin. The wages of sin is what? Death. And so animals were killed, slain, slain, slain. Blood was shed, shed, shed. Because without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. But not the shedding of those animals' blood.
No remission there. It's all pointing forward to Christ and the shedding of his blood. So God had a very wise and gracious purpose in the giving of the old covenant. But if it is misunderstood and misused, it cannot please God. And it certainly did not bring anyone into a saving relationship with God. Yes, God gave the old covenant for his purposes. God desired the old covenant and its practices for his purposes. But not as a way or the way of salvation.
And when you take it that way, you have missed it all. And so following this puzzling statement of verse 8, how can it be that something God gave, he did not desire? We realize that when it's misused for salvation, he doesn't desire that.
We come then to a biblical explanation of all of this in verse 9. Then he, that is the promised Messiah, who of course has by the time this is written come and his name is Jesus Christ, then he said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. Only Christ could accomplish what was necessary for the salvation of sinners.
The old covenant couldn't accomplish that. And therefore Christ came. Behold, I have come to do your will. The will that removes sin from believing sinners. The will that redeems to God a people for his own name's sake. The incarnate Son of God must come to fulfill the purpose of salvation that was pointed to by the old covenant, but was not accomplished by its ceremonies. He will accomplish perfect obedience to the law. The old covenant was given according to the law, but the old covenant was not kept perfectly by anybody under the law. Every Israelite who lived under the law sinned against the law.
But the Bible tells us, Paul tells us, that when Jesus Christ came, he came, he was born what? Under the law. He came under the law, the law that nobody else kept, and he kept it. I came to do thy will.
He did. He came to do God's will perfectly. And that's what's required. And so the incarnate Son of God must come to do God's will. The incarnate Son of God must accomplish the perfect obedience of the law that nobody else has done. The incarnate Son of God must accomplish God's ultimate purposes in salvation, which the old covenant ceremonies could not achieve. The incarnate Son of God must offer the only effective sacrifice for sin, because no sacrifice under the old covenant was effective for the removal of sin. And so for the Son of God to come and to fulfill the purposes of the law, the real purposes, the underlying purposes of pointing men to salvation in Christ, but for Christ to be able to save sinners, he had to remove the old covenant and establish the new one, because nobody saved under the old covenant. Those provisions did not save.
Those provisions cannot save. And so it had to be removed and a different covenant put in its place. Then he said, again, verse 9, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first covenant, that he may establish the second. The essential requirement, namely the salvation of sinners, which was God's purpose and plan all along, requires a different covenant than the one that was given to Moses. The old covenant could not save sinners. A new covenant was required that is able to save sinners. The Son of God came for this purpose, to establish the new covenant and to fulfill the terms of the new covenant by his sinless life and his substitutionary death.
And therefore, the writer of Hebrews is saying to these Jewish Christians, why would you return to the old covenant knowing this? Why would anyone trust in any form of empty ceremonialism when it's clear that there is no ceremonial package that is able to save? Neither this one, which would probably be the closest one, if any ceremonial package of religion could save people, this would have to be the one that's first on the list, but it couldn't do it. So no other form of religion that is bound up in rituals and ceremonies, do this, do that, accomplish this, accomplish that, perform this, perform that, and you'll be right with God. There is no such religion anywhere, whether it be a form of the Christian religion corrupted, or whether it be some other religion that points to doing this and doing that. That will not save you.
That will not save anyone. I saw a statement online this week by the Pope, the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Boy, hasn't he gotten ecumenical. And he was saying something like this, it doesn't matter which religion you follow, whether it be the Christian religion or the Muslim religion or Buddhism or whatever it is, there's many ways to God, as long as you sincerely follow the way that is laid before you, you'll be saved, you'll go to heaven. That is a blasphemous lie. I can't hardly believe that I'm hearing a proponent, a leader in Christianity saying such a thing.
But of course, the Roman Catholic religion strayed from the word of God years ago, and it's just getting farther and farther and farther and farther away. Who are you going to believe? Pope, what's his name, Francis? Are you going to believe, Pope Francis or King Jesus who said I'm the way, the truth, and the life? No one comes to the Father but by me. You can't get to the Father in salvation, in a right relationship with God Almighty, through Buddha, through Hinduism, through Mohammed or Islam, through Allah, the God of Islam, nor through corrupted ceremonial Christianity. You can't get to God through any of these ways.
You have to come through faith in Jesus Christ and him alone. He's the only one who can take you there. You better grab onto him. You better hold onto his garments and not let go. You better let him take you into the presence of the Father.
Because that's the only way that you're going to get there. And so that's number one, the establishment of the New Covenant. Secondly, let's consider for a few minutes the accomplishments of the New Covenant in verse 10. Which says, by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. This is saying in different words, in essence, what I've just said.
But let's look at it. The accomplishments of the New Covenant, what are they? Number one, the New Covenant fulfills the Father's will. The Old Covenant didn't when it comes to salvation. Sacrifice and offering you did not desire. Burn offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure.
That did not satisfy or fulfill the Father's will. But by that will, the Father's will, we read in verse 10, we who trust in Jesus have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The Old Covenant served a temporal purpose. Primarily in forming a separate nation and keeping them separate until the Messiah could be brought into the world through that particular nation of people. The Old Covenant served a temporal purpose. The New Covenant fulfills an eternal purpose. The New Covenant fulfills the Father's will, which was his will from the beginning.
To save a people, to redeem a people, to give to his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Covenant was preparation for the New Covenant. And the New Covenant is God's perfect and only way of salvation. By that will, the will of God, we who enter into a relationship with God through the terms of the New Covenant shall be saved. And so the New Covenant fulfills the Father's will. The New Covenant, number two, accomplishes the Father's purpose, which is a sanctifying purpose. By that will, we have been sanctified. Now we're getting into a complex doctrine when we get into the doctrine of sanctification. Usually when we talk about sanctification, we talk about it in terms of what we call progressive sanctification. But the emphasis in this verse is on what we might call positional sanctification. Though, because of the complexity of the Greek, which I have read several explanations of, I have a partial understanding of it, and I don't think I even understand it fully. And I certainly can't explain it to you, but it's a perfect participle.
Never mind. But anyway, the idea of the verb is that this is something which has happened, past, with a continuing effect. And so in a sense, it wraps up in one package both aspects of sanctification. Both the positional aspect, that those who trust in Jesus are sanctified, past tense.
But also the present tense, because it has this continuous effect upon us. But the primary emphasis in this verse is upon the positional sanctification, which has already occurred within the lives of all who trust in Christ. And what does sanctification mean? What is this word, sanctified? It means to set apart. It means to make holy.
It means to be removed from sin and self and removed into the domain of Jesus Christ. And in this way that it's used, it becomes a handmaiden to the term justified. We are justified once for all, past tense, when we trust in Jesus. We are also sanctified, past tense, once for all, when we trust in Jesus.
However, justification has no ongoing corollary. But sanctification does, because we have been declared perfectly holy, perfectly righteous, as righteous as Jesus Christ. Because we have been made children of God, we have been made holy in order to become children of God. Because that's the only way we can become children of God, is if God can receive us as holy, sanctified ones. But because that is true, then now the Holy Spirit of God, using the Word of God, goes to work upon our lives here in this world and cleanses and improves and draws us closer to Christ.
And we are, as Paul says in Romans chapter 8, being made into the likeness, into the image of Jesus Christ, which work will be fully completed when we arrive in heaven. But it's that initial aspect of sanctification that the writer of Hebrews is talking about here. It accomplishes the Father's purpose, namely to have a sanctified people. And the New Covenant, inaugurated by Christ, and fulfilled by Christ, because He's the only one who could fulfill the terms of it, is what accomplishes this. To redeem a people unto God.
We have been sanctified. The Father's purpose in redeeming a sanctified people unto Himself is accomplished under the terms of the New Covenant. And so it fulfills the Father's will. It accomplishes the Father's purpose. It satisfies divine justice, because this is the only way that the Father's purpose can be fulfilled, because God is not like man, and God on the one hand is perfectly holy, perfectly just.
He can't just wink at sin like we do. He can't be like an earthly judge that says, yes, I know you committed murder and robbery on the street, but you have an unfortunate background, so I'm going to let you go. Aren't I a merciful judge? Where's the justice?
Where's the justice? But God never does that. He must have perfect justice satisfied in order to be able to show mercy.
He doesn't show mercy apart from justice. He doesn't grant forgiveness apart from a payment for sin. But if we're required to pay it, we've got no hope because we can't. We don't have what it takes to pay the debt of sin we owe. But that's the beauty of the New Covenant. Jesus Christ did that on behalf of those who trust in Him. And so the accomplishments of the New Covenant are that it fulfills the Father's will, it accomplishes the Father's purpose, it satisfied divine justice, as we're told in verse 10, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. One offering for sin forever. Because justice demands full payment, a payment that's equal to the debt of sin. How much do I owe?
A lot. I don't think any of us probably fully understand how much we owe. That's why we sang that today. We'll have to wait until we get to heaven to fully understand how much we have been forgiven, how much we did owe to God, how great our debt was. And if we had to pay it, we couldn't.
It's like somebody foolishly granting me a 10 million dollar loan and say I'll trust you for it, you can pay me back in your own good time. Yeah, good luck on that one. That's too great. I'll never do it.
I can't do it. But my debt of sin is bigger than that. It's bigger than 10 million dollars.
It's bigger than 100 million dollars. It's not only too great for me to pay, it's too great for anybody to pay. There are a few people in this world that could pay a million dollar debt, a 10 million dollar debt, a 100 million dollar debt.
Not many, but a few. But there's nobody that can pay this debt except the sinless Son of God. Justice demands full payment equal to the debt that was incurred by sin. Animal sacrifices were vastly insufficient to do that. That should have been obvious to old covenant worshipers.
That's what they were supposed to see. I am a sinner. I need a payment. I need a sacrifice.
Without the shedding of blood there's no remission. But these animals, they're not valuable enough to pay the great debt that I owe. How can I be acquitted? How can I have my sins remitted? How can I be made righteous before God? And Jesus Christ says, behold, I came, I have taken a body, I have entered into the world, I came according to the book of the law, I came to do this. Christ fulfilled the demands of justice. In regard to the worth of the sacrifice, he's the infinite one.
You can't calculate how great, how valuable is his worth. If we think in terms of life, he became a man to live under the law perfectly. If we think in terms of death, he became a man to sacrifice his life in payment for sins.
If we think of the term substitution, we realize that he did all of this on behalf of others. And in this way divine justice was fully satisfied and thereby God is able to extend copious mercy. A mercy which is greater than all our sins. A mercy that exceeds any sin, debt, that could be accumulated by everyone in all the world. His mercy is great enough to cover it all because the payment was great enough to pay for it all. I'm not saying that Christ did pay for the sins of those who are not his people and who have not and never will trust in him, but I'm saying the value of his life was great enough to cover that. If every person in the world, in the history of the world, believed on Jesus Christ, his death on the cross is great enough to satisfy the justice of God for all those people. And the mercy of God is great enough to be extended to all the people for whom justice has now been paid. The debt's gone. It's been satisfied. Somebody paid that hundred million dollar debt to the bank for me. I couldn't do it, but somebody did. Thank you, Elon Musk.
Well, it's greater than that. Thank you for Jesus Christ for paying a sin debt that I could never pay. And that brings us finally to the superiority of the new covenant in verses 11 through 14. What have we seen? We have seen, number one, the establishment of the new covenant in verses 8 and 9. Number two, the accomplishments of the new covenant in verse 10. And now the superiority of the new covenant in verses 11 through 14. And here we have a series of comparisons and contrasts.
I'll read it and then I'll try to point those out to you. This isn't quite as laid out quite as neatly as some of the others because you pick up one concept in this verse and then the contrast in another verse and back and forth and back and forth. But here it is, verse 11. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifice which can never take away sin. But this man, here's a contrast, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.
From that time waiting till his enemies are made his footstool. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. What have we got here? The superiority of the new covenant can be seen at least in these three areas and probably even a couple more that I won't mention from these verses. But the superiority is seen, number one, in a better priesthood. The new covenant has a better priesthood than the old covenant. Number two, in a better sacrifice, the new covenant has a better sacrifice than the old covenant.
And number three, in better results. First of all, a better priesthood. The old covenant is characterized as many priests. Every priest, verse 11, which means many priests, priest after priest after priest after priest after priest.
Without end. Many priests versus one priest, verse 12. By contrast, but this man, after he had offered, he's doing the work of a priest, he's offering a sacrifice for sin. But in the case of the new covenant, it's not many priests, it's only one, and it only takes one of this caliber. A better priesthood. Many priests versus one priest. Temporary priests, they all die.
That's why we have to have many. Every priest, every priest, every priest, generation after generation after generation. But this priest is an eternal priest.
He lives forever. The old covenant priests were limited priests. They had certain authority and ability delegated to them in the terms of the old covenant. But the new covenant priest is supreme royalty. After he offered his sacrifice, he sat down where?
At the right hand of the throne of God in heaven. And now our writer of Hebrews dips into another text in the Old Testament, which is Psalm 110, verse 1, which says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. That is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament.
I've lost track of how many times. It's quoted or alluded to four or five or six times in the book of Hebrews, and it's quoted other times as well. That's the one that Jesus used to confound the religious leaders of his day, remember? He said, David's, let's see if I can get this right, the Messiah, whose son is he?
Whose son is he? The promised Messiah. And they said David's.
And of course, that's right. He is in the line of David. He is in the bloodline of David, David's greater son, he's often called. But Jesus said, well, if he's David's son, how come David called him Lord? You don't call your son or your grandson or your great-grandson Lord. But David called Messiah Lord when he said in Psalm 110 verse 1, the Lord, Jehovah, said to my Lord, Adonai, David's Lord, sit at my right hand.
If he called him Lord, said Jesus, then in what way was he his son? That tangled them up. They were baffled. They had no answer for that.
They could not answer it. But that is now quoted here and used in another way. A better priest, because he is a supreme priest, he is supreme loyalty. What a priest. This is a priest who is God. This is a priest who sits on the throne of God. This is a priest who rules the universe. Does the new covenant have a better priest than the old covenant?
You bet. Far better. A better priesthood. Number two, better sacrifice. How many sacrifices did they have in the old covenant?
Well, many. Well, doesn't that make them better? They had more. No, the fact that they had more and never could get it done, no matter how many sacrifices they made, demonstrated the inferiority of their sacrifices. So they were just keeping piling on sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice, which never accomplished the remission of sins because it's impossible, as we have read here, for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. But Jesus Christ just offered one sacrifice and one.
The sins of all who trusted in him are gone forever. Is that a better sacrifice? Amen. It's better in its number. Many versus one.
It's better in its duration. Their sacrifices continued daily and endlessly and never were finished, but his sacrifice was finished so that he got done and sat down. It's over. It's done.
It's finished. The high priest or the priest of high priest and all the other priests of the old covenant never sat down. The tabernacle had a lot of nice, very expensive furniture, but no place to sit. That's why it says the priest standing daily, every priest ministering daily. But this man, after he'd offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down. They couldn't do that, but he did. Better sacrifice.
Number three, better results. We're told in verse 11 that what the priest stood could never take away sins. They stood ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices over and over and over again, but it doesn't matter how many they offered. They can never take away sins, we read in verse 11. But this man, after he offered one sacrifice for sin forever, sat down at the right hand of God, verse 14, for by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
Better results. So what do we say? Well, we say that the new covenant is clearly superior to the old. The simplicity, we might say, of the activities that are given to new covenant believers compared to the complexity that was given to old covenant believers is a clear indication of the superiority of the new covenant. And for people who aren't satisfied with that, who just can't seem to understand, I've got to see a priest.
I've got to see a ceremony. I've got to hear certain words for me to be satisfied. No, no, no, the words that you need to hear in the Word of God, the priest you need to trust in, you'll never see. He's in the heavens.
You'll see him when he returns or when you go to be with him, but you'll never see him with your eyes. Isn't that good enough for you? You've been given, if you're born again, you've been given the eyes of faith to see the invisible, to see the beautiful complexity in that which unregenerate eyes can't see at all, so they gravitate to ceremonialism, but you gravitate to the simplicity of the new covenant. And this text tells us again, I keep going back to this and I'll probably return to it again in the future, but scripture itself is the best commentary on scripture. In fact, it's the only perfect commentary. And I don't mean by that we don't study other commentaries. I spend hours every week studying commentaries to get, try to make sure I have a correct understanding of God's Word. But when it comes down to it, the only perfect commentary on scripture is scripture. And when we learn to view the old through the lens of the new, it's going to help us clear away a lot of the cobwebs of our thinking when we aren't doing it that way. And this book shows us that's the way it needs to be done. The new covenant is superior to the old covenant. The new covenant scriptures are the ones that can accurately interpret the old covenant scriptures.
Let them do that for your edification. Shall we pray? Father, how we thank you for your Word, how we thank you for your Son, how we thank you for such great salvation, O Lord. May we feel in some measure how much we owe and demonstrate our gratitude accordingly. In Christ's name, amen.
