A Superior Covenant (Part 1 of 2)

In the book of Hebrews we're shown how the Old Covenant which was administered by the priesthood was a shadow of something better. God's people needed a great high priest who would come and permanently deal with their sins. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches from Hebrews chapter 8.

He's titled his message, The Superior Covenant. And it is therefore very important for us in studying in this way to keep in the forefronts of our minds the unity of the Bible. The very fact that the Bible is split into the Old and the New Testament has contributed in the thinking of some people to a very truncated view of Scripture, so that some tend to read only in the New Testament and thereby miss the foundations on which later truth has been built, and others have become stuck in the Old Testament and have never made their journey across. Perhaps the most helpful analogy is one that was delivered years ago by an Old Testament scholar by the name of John Bright. And he, picking up on the two Testaments of the Bible, described the Bible in terms of a two-act play.

And he pointed out that in a two-act play, without either act, the play is incomplete, each act has something individual to say, and neither act can stand on its own without the other act. And when you think about the Bible in the Old and New Testaments in that way, I think you'll find it to unfold very helpfully for you. Act 1 unfolds, and as it does so, tensions begin to appear. Because, for example, there are all these references to the sacrificial system. But there are also sins which the sacrificial system does not explicitly cover.

And then, as further threads unfold, it becomes apparent—for example, in the prophecy of Isaiah—that in the ultimate sense, only a person can substitute for the sins of the people. And this is all in act 1. And as you read act 1 and you realize that the sacrificial system is not covering all of sin, and then you realize that only in a person can sin finally be dealt with, you find yourself saying, Well, I wonder where the answer to this question lies. And so act 1 is waiting for act 2. And the testimony, however, of act 1 is valid in and of itself. And then act 2 comes in on the flood tide of act 1 and says, Here is the human perfection of a willing substitute. And all of the questions and bits and pieces of the first act in terms of the sacrificial system are necessary, otherwise there would be no significance in the arrival of a lamb who was without blemish.

And people say, Who cares about that? Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! You just come in, you're forty-five minutes late, you miss the whole of act 1. And you walk in in act 2, and it goes, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! You immediately grab for the program, you're going, There must be significance in that.

I'm not sure what it is. And that's exactly the point. Because when you go back into the Old Testament, into act 1, to the first act in the drama, you see that it is unfolding towards this great conclusion in the one who will be a provision for sin. And then, again, act 2 distinctively speaks on its own, making clear that when the ultimate substitution for sin was made, it was God himself who came and stood in our place.

Now, I say all of that by way of background to try and crystallize this for some of us who are having real difficulty with it. But the whole of the Bible centers on the personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Testament predicts it. In the Gospels, we have it revealed. In the Acts, we have it preached.

In the Epistles, explained. And in Revelation, we have Jesus expected. Now, you will note that chapter 8 begins very helpfully to many of us. The point of what we're seeing is this.

Some of us last time were saying, Is there any point to this at all? And the writer, almost anticipating that response, says, Well, just in case you were wondering, let me tell you that the point of what we're saying is this. Now, this reaches back into the concluding verses of chapter 7 and on into 8, 9, and indeed, halfway through chapter 10. In verse 26, if your Bible is open, of chapter 7, you will note that the writer had said that the high priest that was needed was one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. And many of the readers would be saying to one another, Now, do we really have such a high priest?

And the writer says, The point of what I'm telling you is this. We do have such a high priest. And this high priest is none other than the Lord Jesus himself. And as you read through chapter 8 and on into chapter 9, the same recurring emphasis is there.

The ministry of this high priest is better, the covenant which he establishes is better, and the promises which are inculcated with the establishing of this covenant are also better. Now, clearly, loved ones, this is of very great importance. And I'll show you before we're finished just how important it is.

But for now, understand, at least up here, except what I'm telling you, to be true. Otherwise, the writer would not continue to reinforce again and again and again one essential fact—namely, the superiority of Jesus Christ. He, he has told us, is greater than the angels. He is more significant. He is greater than Moses. He is a greater figure than Abraham.

He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. It is to Jesus, as Paul will later say, that the Father has given a name which is above every other name, and at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And that is of pressing import. And so he comes to it with renewed emphasis. Now, if you think about it, many of his readers were struggling. They were struggling with the idea that in the opposition that they were receiving, there was perhaps validity to the claims of the people. Because the people were coming to them and saying, you know, you have given up on Act 1.

And Act 1 was terrific, they were saying. We had all the priestly functions, we had the sacrificial system, we had a ton of stuff going on. When we came together for our worship, we knew what day it was, we knew what we were doing, and there was just tremendous significance to it all. But now what are you poor souls doing? You've reduced it all to one day, you call it the Lord's Day or Resurrection Day, and we've come to some of your services, and there's nothing there! You don't have any robes, you don't have any tables, you don't have any altars, you don't have any bells or smells—you've got nothing going on!

Are you sure you even have a high priest, you see, they would be saying? Are you sure you've got anybody at the front of this parade? After all, you've given up on your past, you've joined with a group of people, you're heading in a certain direction, but have you ever run up to the front to see if anyone's there? Have you ever been caught up with a crowd of people?

You say to yourself, well, how did I get caught up in this? And their friends were saying, I don't think anybody's at the front. That's what our friends say to us. At least they say to me, you know what?

You just bought a bag of tricks. You just go together, and you sing kind of Christian mantras, and you pump one another up, and it's true because you believe it, your belief makes it true, and you all psych one another up for a couple of hours on a Sunday, and then you go out and march in your parade. But there's no one at the front of your parade. There's nobody there.

If you ever go up front, you'll find it's an empty place. There may be a chariot, but there's no one in it. And that's exactly what was being said to these people. And so they're looking at one another, and they're saying, Is there any truth in this? And the writer, recognizing that, says to them, Listen, I want you to understand that there is in the Lord Jesus the antidote to all of your struggling and all of your discouragement and all of your fearfulness. Now, it may take him till chapter 12 and verse 3 to say it succinctly, but he says it clearly. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. And as they grew weary and as they began to become faint-hearted, the antidote was always the same—a consideration of Jesus, who is the author and perfecter of their faith. You have come to worship this morning as a believer, and you are struggling, and you're feeling beleaguered and weary and pressed down and put upon and opposed and all these other things. There is one sure antidote, and that is to fix your gaze humbly and believingly on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Indeed, every other solution will be of secondary impact in comparison to that simple approach. Now, you see, these other priests, to whom they had been referring, had been prevented by death from continuing in office. That's verse 23 of chapter 7.

Now, there have been many of these priests since death prevented them from continuing in office. But I want you to know, he says, that Jesus lives forever, and he has a permanent priesthood. Now, what does this mean?

Well, he unpacks it in chapter 8. He points to the setup there in verse 2. The setup. Speaking of Jesus, who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle, set up by the Lord, not by man.

Now, people use that phrase all the time. They say, What's the setup? Well, how did this get set up? Or who set this up? They come around to an experience of worship, and they say, Now, what's the setup here? Who did this? Who's behind this?

What's the deal? And in the same way, they had had something that had been set up, and now something has been set up in its place. And the writer says, I want you to understand that this was set up by the Lord and not by man. Now, what he is doing is he is contrasting the old with the new. He is contrasting the shadow with the reality.

He is contrasting the promise with the fulfillment, which you find always between act one and act two. In the Old Testament, the people set up an earthly tabernacle. It simply means a tent. And they used it for worship in their wilderness wanderings. For example, in Exodus—and in chapter 27, you needn't turn to it, but I'll just quote you from it—Exodus 27, verse 20, Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light, so that the lamps may be kept burning. In the tent of meeting, outside the curtain, that is in front of the testimony, Aaron and his sons are to keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening until morning, and this is to be a lasting ordinance among Israelites for the generations to come.

And that is why, growing up as a child in Scotland with many Jewish friends in my class, not only did they have the Shemai symbolically represented on the lintels of their door when I walked into their house, but also they discharged me on a Friday afternoon around 3.30 so that they could set up for the Sabbath preparations, and they also, in the orthodox framework of their worship, paid attention to Exodus chapter 27 and verse 21, because it was important. And that's why God said to Moses, back in Hebrews 8 here, I want you to do everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. Because the tent in the wilderness corresponded to a heavenly reality.

It pointed from itself to a fulfillment that the people in the wilderness wanderings could not fully grasp. And it is in the heavenly reality that the exercise of Christ's ministry takes place. And that's why where Christ ministers is described as the true tabernacle—that doesn't mean that the previous tent of meeting was false, but it distinguishes, again, the reality from the shadow. Back here, he said, we had the tent of meeting, we had the ark, and so on, and that was symbolic of a heavenly reality. These priests exercised their ministry within this covenantal procedure.

They died. There is obsolescence marked in this, and now we have in the person of the Lord Jesus a great high priest who is not dealing with the shadow but is dealing in the realm of the reality. That's why in verse 5 he described the priests serving at a sanctuary that is a copy and a shadow of what is in heaven. It was invested with significance, it had meaning—that's why God speaks to Moses in that way in verse 5—but in the end it was only a pale reflection of what the reality really was. If you turn over a page in your Bible to Hebrews 9 and verse 24, it says it very clearly. For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one. He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence.

These people were so concerned to have a priest. They wanted to know how they could draw near to God. They had become totally befuddled by the framework which was pointing them in a direction but giving them no ultimate solution—in the same way that some who were worshipping here this morning find your experience of religion to be doing exactly that to you. It is all external, it's all pointing somewhere, but you could not in all honesty say that you have closed the loop, as it were, and you have come to an understanding of the reality to which the shadow points.

You're still dealing in the realm of the cardboard cutout, as it were—the poster, but not the person. The setup, then, he says, has been set up by the Lord according to his purpose. Also, I want you to notice, that the high priest—our high priest—sat down.

Now, you say to yourself, well, is there really any significance in this? Well, again, this all has to do with knowing Act 1. If you know Act 1, then this phrase will strike you when you see it in Act 2. Because in Act 1, it was patently obvious that the priest never sat down. And the reason that the priest never sat down was on account of fact that his work was never done.

It would be silly to sit down, because there still was stuff to do. And when, on the day of atonement, once a year, he offered first for the sins of himself and then for the sins of the people, having entered and stood, he then exited and in a sense took his place at the end of the line so that it might happen all over again. The guys went around, and they came in procession, and it was Monday, and they offered up the sacrifice. And then they went out, and everyone was sinning like crazy all over again. They took their place at the end of the line, and then they came back down, and they did another sacrifice. So we got the seven o'clock sacrifice, the eight o'clock sacrifice, the ten o'clock sacrifice, the three-thirty sacrifice, and the seven p.m. sacrifice. And we better have another one first thing in the morning! Unless, of course, there was someone who made a once-and-for-all sacrifice, thereby nullifying, making obsolete, all of that previous preoccupation with a sacrificial system which was a copy and a shadow but not the reality.

How could it ever be that once an individual had understood the reality that he would still live with the shadow? People tell me all the time, you say, Well, I… No, no! Oh, I believe unreservedly in Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for my sins. I need no other sacrifice. I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died for me.

But I still continue to go to the seven o'clock, the eight o'clock, the ten o'clock, and the two-thirty. Well, I'm sorry, you just haven't grasped it, madam. You have not understood. If you understood, you wouldn't need anybody to offer up sacrifices on your behalf day after day. Christ's absence from earth—which was what they were concerned about, his absence from earth—is the necessary result of him being what he is, and of his having done what he has done. When the Lord Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins, he sat down. And he sat down on the throne of the majesty in heaven.

Why? Because the work was done. The finished work of Christ. And then, as the person lays hold upon this, and as the opposition and the tempting and the challenge comes, and some poor beleaguered soul is confronted by their friend who meets them in the bazaar and says to them, You know, I feel sorry for you, Simeon. I feel really sorry for you, because you don't have a high priest on earth.

You've got nothing. In fact, I was just talking with some people in the coffee shop up the street, and they were saying that you guys, with this Jesus of Nazareth thing, you're into cannibalism. We hear that you're eating his body and drinking his blood. That's not good, Simeon. And you've got no high priest on earth. What do you have to say to that, Simeon? Now, if Simeon has understood not only the foundation of act one but the reality into which he has been brought in act two, he would have said, No, we do not have a high priest on earth. And it is far better that we don't.

Because if we had, he would not be the high priest that we need. Even the disciples had difficulty with this when Jesus said to them, as he approaches the time immediately prior to his death, he said, I'm going to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I'll come back. And the disciples are all up in arms. They say, Oh Jesus, you mustn't go away from us. You can't go away from us. If you go away from us, we'll be stuck.

And Jesus gathers them around him, and he tells them about the Holy Spirit. He says, It's necessary for me to go away. If I'm here, I'm just here.

But when I go, I'm everywhere. When I send the Holy Spirit and all of his fullness, he will not only be in you, but he will be with you. And he will take the things that are mine, and he will make them precious to you. And he will take the pages of the Bible, and he will make it ring in your hearts and transform your lives. And he will manifest God to you.

Indeed, he says, If a man loves me, he will keep my commandments, and I will come, and my Father will come, and we will live within him. And the disciples are going, Man, I can't understand this! That's why the Gospels, we have Jesus revealed, and then in the epistles, we have Jesus explained. And the same chaps that couldn't get a hold of it in John 14 are explaining it within forty or fifty years.

Because the Holy Spirit has come and done exactly what Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do. There are many people who've got an external religion, an interest in a cosmic principle, a God who's way up there somewhere, and they've got into all kinds of things about this God. But if you ask them, Do they know God? You ever met a Buddhist who said he knew Buddha? I never met a Buddhist who said he knew Buddha. It doesn't matter whether a Buddhist knows Buddha. Did you ever meet a Muhammad who said he knew Muhammad since I came to know Muhammad personally?

They never said that, because it isn't possible to do it! See, the distinctiveness of this great high priest—this is not some arm's-length theology. This is the crux of life!

This is the issue of humanity. This is the apex of what it means for God to make himself known, and for sinful men and women to be able to draw near to God. It is a radical distinctive in Christian living. It's terrific!

Even if I say so myself. The superior covenant of God is a relevant topic. For the past five days we've been listening to a series from Alistair Begg called Fix Our Eyes on Jesus. If you missed any of the earlier programs, or if you'd like to share a particular study with a friend, you can access all of Alistair's teaching for free at truthforlife.org or through the Truth for Life mobile app.

The free sermon downloads are reaching historic numbers and we're delighted that a growing number of people from all over the world are downloading content due in part to the generous people who give to Truth for Life to make free access to all of Alistair's teaching available. Today we'd like to thank you when you give a donation by providing you with a helpful bundle of books. We've selected these particular books because they will better equip you with information and motivation designed to help you share the gospel with friends and family. The first book is called Have No Fear and it contains a brief guide to help you overcome any hesitation to give you a simple template for using scripture as the basis of your conversation. The second book is called The Word One to One. We'll actually send you two copies of this book, one for you and one to give away to a friend. This book is laid out in a way that helps you take a friend through the first chapter of the Gospel of John.

There are engaging questions to help stimulate discussion. You can take a look at the format of this book on our website. We've included page samples for you at truthforlife.org. Request all three books in the three book bundle when you give today at truthforlife.org slash donate or call 888-588-7884.

The three pack includes Have No Fear and two copies of the book The Word One to One. Now if you're looking for a way to supplement the teaching you receive from your local church this weekend, don't forget that Alistair's teaching at Parkside Church is streamed live most weekends. To find out if Alistair is teaching this weekend, check the schedule at truthforlife.org slash live. I'm Bob Lapine for Alistair Begg and all of us at Truth for Life. Hope you have a restful weekend and hope you can join us Monday as Alistair continues our series rooted in the book of Hebrews titled Fix Our Eyes on Jesus. Today's program was furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.