Hebrews 8:10-12 Jesus is the New Covenant

Introduction

The writer of Hebrews wants us to understand one thing: The all surpassing sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

And we have seen that in a number of ways. Jesus is the Son, He is God, Jesus is the forgiveness of Sins, He mediates between us and God, meaning that He incarnated Himself, He came to us. over and over again the book of Hebrews takes the jewel that is Christ and looks at Him from different facets

Hebrews makes strong claims but he doesn’t just tell us, he shows us how this is the case, and why it is so.

He shows us by telling us that our own reaching to God, our own desires can neither make us God, make us like God or get us close enough to God, not for lack of trying.

And he gives examples of how these attempts have been put into place and how they have never been enough but how Christ is.

This is good news for any who have reached but maybe just haven’t been able to reach far enough. God has created us for the very thing we long and hope for and try to solve it through various ways.

The book of Hebrews uses Old Testament examples because that is what the original audience would have understood. They would have placed all their hope and all their trust in the reliability of the law and the ability for them to attempt to keep the law.

So we have been hearing these maybe unfamiliar terms like high priest. This morning we are going to look at a guy, an OT high priest named Melchizedek. This audience had trusted in the law to reach God. But the scriptures tell us that God had to reach us.

And while we maybe don’t use the Old Testament law we do use other ways to attempt to be a “god” or be like God or reach Him.

We will see that every other role has been a patch job, something temporary, something that just gets by.

Do you ever get sick of just getting by? Or just patching up what ultimately needs to be replaced?

My relationship with my house is basically one giant patch job. When something goes wonky in the house, which is often, I look to just get by. Case in point, our house was built in 1961 and has all the original cabinets and original hinges. Well they have started breaking. And the ones that broke were on the corner and they had this strange hinge on it that I couldn’t find any kind of replacement for. So I began a series of patch jobs.

I used wire, screws, zip ties even (which worked well but very temporary). I didn’t think an actual hinge would work in the area of the cabinet because they abutted a corner and it was a bit tight.

So after months of frustrations I found some smaller hinges that I thought would work and ordered them. Took the old ones entirely off and replaces them. Guess what I haven’t touched in months? The new hinges. they work great.

We have this strange preference for temporary fixes that don’t ultimately pan out. When we actually get to the replacement, we recognize how much better it is to have gone that route.

This is what we will explore today.

Jesus is the New Covenent. He is permanent what we have tried to do temporarily. We see in the Old Testament that when someone sinned they had to make a sacrifice to cover it up right away. The entire people had to have their brokenness covered on the day of atonement by the high priest.

And while we don’t live in a sacrificial system explicitely, we live in the same kind of temporary ways. We try to cover over what is insufficient or broken. We work harder, we numb ourselves. We glue, tape and velcro things to our lives all the time that we think will be enough.

But they always end up being what they are: temporary. Christ came to permanently deal with what we have tried to deal with temporarily in being our new covenent, our new promise with God.

What we can do temporarily, Christ has done permanently

We are constantly shuffling things around, moving somethign from here to there, covering other things up. We see this in the OT law, the old Covenant with God, was intended to deal with those things but had to do so ongoing. Whatever humans would cover up, would shuffle around, would come back around.

Nothing ever was completely dealt with. Things would get covered up, removed, but then it would just come screaming back

On my last day of high school, my senior year a friend of mine, and I took all of our papers from our locker and from our binders and from our backpack and we dumped them into the bed of a friend’s truck who is also graduating. We thought it was hilarious and a great way to spend our time on the last day of school. It filled his the bed of his truck up entirely and we left the parking lot. I was out for a while hanging out for a few hours after school and I finally got home and pulled up to my garage and there were five garbage bags filled with my name on them. My friend had filled all of the papers and returned them back to me where I rightfully needed to receive them.

Our stuff just has a tendency to keep revisiting us. When we experience sin and brokenness it is hard to shake. You know this if you have ever tried to get out of addiction. It is hard work! Endless work. And in the temporary old Covenant we had a way to deal with it but not advocate, no one who would constantly walk with us, minister to us, forgive us, intercede for us, strengthen us.

On our own temporary way, we had to muster up our own strength. But in Christ, in His new promise to connect us to God permanently and eternally, He does endlessly what we hoped to do for a moment.

We see this when Jesus is compared to a high priest in the ot. Mel. Mentioned 8 times in Hebrews

Jesus is placed as a high priest, (remember someone who mediates between God and God’s people. He represents God to people and people to God) in the same line as Mel.

We don’t know a lot about Mel. He shows up in Genesis 14 and blesses Abraham. This reveals that Mel is prior to the temporary system that is set up but is still a priest of God, blessing on God’s behalf.

He was a legitimate high priest but didn’t act like the other high priests who would have to keep offering sacrifices in ongoing ways. What high priests in the OT had to keep doing (temporary) Melchizedek shows up and does once.

Let’s look at this description

Hebrews 7:1–3 ESV

For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever.

We are told that Jesus comes from this line.

That there are former things that used to work but never great that have been replaced by a superior order that has a "full and abiding efficacy." 

Melchizidek is a picture of what is reliable, and is stable.

Jesus becomes what we could not in providing what lasts, what continues, what is stable.

Hebrews 7:15–17 ESV

This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. For it is witnessed of him, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”

Christ has become our high priest by the “power of an idesctructable life.” What we try to do temporarily Christ has accomplished permanently. Or as the scripture puts it

Hebrews 7:22 ESV

This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

Jesus is the one who takes responsibility for our nature. He forgives and seals and does permanently what we can only do temporarily. Jesus is the permanent solution to our ongoing issue of brokenness. He is the good news to every pothole in our lives. When we face the things that cause us to patch up our lives and recognize there is not enough duct tape in the world, we can recognize that Christ is the guarantor of a better covenant.

Look at how Paul shows us Christs permanence in our hardships.

Romans 8:33–39 ESV

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There is no one in heaven or on earth who has stooped so low as to engage us in our own temporary nature in such a way to eternally restore us to God.

What is your patch job this morning? Maybe you mustered up just enough o get here and used up all your reserves of hope to walk through the doors. Maybe you are just holding on to some kind of cliff. Maybe everything is patched up but you are hoping it holds. Christ will make new what you have held together temporarily

Who we are temporary have been transformed to be united to God eternally

Christ is the permanent and real thing.

What is important to remember is that God has come close in order to take what is temporary and make it permanent. He binds up our wounds, He walks with us in our shortcomings. He strengthens us when we are weak.

Every effort we have made to rise up to God has come up short. Every effort we have made to become like gods has come up short. But where we left off Christ makes up for.

We are left with a promise through the reliable Christ. What had to be completed over and over again in the sacrificial system, what we try to do by either covering over or working harder, Christ has solved for us once for all through His death and resurrection.

And in doing that we are left changed. Our temporary fixations are transformed into eternal occupations

When we trust Christ we are changed. We are given life, enough for this one and leftover for eternity.

Look at the promises of Christ the new covenenant

Hebrews 8:10–12 ESV

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: 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. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

This is the result of God’s work in Christ that is available to everyone. Christ speaks into our hearts and minds by His Holy Spirit. He empowers us to know Him and to live with Him. We are empowered to live Christ like lives. If you’ve ever been frustrated with the temporary nature of trying to live well in the world, Christ has solved this in being raised from the dead.

We are called His. We are embraced as His own people. If you have ever felt lonely or isolated or rejected, Christ calls us His own together.

If you have ever felt the weight of sin and brokenness and have not known what to do with it, Christ has a solution. He doesn’t rub it in our faces, He doesn’t yell or take on our anxiety at not knowing what to do with it, He is merciful and according to the Scripture remembers “their sins no more.”

Do you know God’s solution to sin? It is to chuck it as far as the east is from the west and to draw us to Himself and to give us everything we need to live for Him. There is life enough for this life and the one to come.

Whatever you feel is temporary right now, cast off for Christ’s permanence.