The New Covenant, Part 1

The food in the refrigerator has an expiration date.

I am not sure what your understanding is about expiration dates on food. Our daughters stick to that date. When it arrives, what is left is thrown away. Susan, on the other hand, keeps it until it is clearly expired. My idea is more of a look, smell, taste approach. If it doesn’t pass all of those, it is time to go.

But no matter which method you use to determine the expiration of the food in your refrigerator, all the food will expire at some date.

Some things are intended to last only for a time. That does not mean they were useless. It means they served their purpose, and then the time came for them to give way to what followed.

That is where Hebrews brings us today. The first covenant had an appointed purpose and an appointed season. But Hebrews 8:13 says, ‘By saying a new covenant, he has declared that the first is obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old is about to pass away.’

Now we need to be careful with the comparison. The old covenant did not become obsolete because it had spoiled, because God had made a mistake, or because His Word had failed. It became obsolete because it had completed the temporary purpose for which God gave it.

Over the past two messages, Hebrews has shown us that Jesus opens the way to God and that He is the Priest who never needs to be replaced. Last week we ended with Jesus seated at the right hand of God because His sacrifice was complete.

Hebrews 8 begins at that same throne and moves the argument forward with a new question: What has this seated Priest secured for His people?

Verse 6 gives the answer: ‘But Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry, and to that degree he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been established on better promises.’

The better Priest has secured a better covenant.

A covenant tells us how God relates to His people—what He promises, what He provides, and where our hope rests.

The better covenant is necessary because our deepest problem is not a lack of information. We often know what is right and still choose what is wrong. The command may be clear while the heart remains resistant.

That is the glory of the new covenant. God does not merely command change from the outside. By sovereign grace, He works within His people and makes them His own.

With that in mind, follow along as I read Hebrews 8:1–13 from the Christian Standard Bible.

Hebrews 8:1–13 CSB

1 Now the main point of what is being said is this: We have this kind of high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, 2 a minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and not man. 3 For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; therefore, it was necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. 4 Now if he were on earth, he wouldn’t be a priest, since there are those offering the gifts prescribed by the law. 5 These serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was warned when he was about to complete the tabernacle. For God said, Be careful that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain. 6 But Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry, and to that degree he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been established on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second one. 8 But finding fault with his people, he says: See, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 9 not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. I showed no concern for them, says the Lord, because they did not continue in my covenant. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 And each person will not teach his fellow citizen, and each his brother or sister, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them. 12 For I will forgive their wrongdoing, and I will never again remember their sins. 13 By saying a new covenant, he has declared that the first is obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old is about to pass away.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Here is the big idea of this passage: The new covenant is God’s promise to do within His people what the law, by itself, could never do for them.

Hebrews 8 leads us through three connected truths: why a better covenant was needed, what its better promises provide, and why Jesus makes every promise secure.

I. THE NEED FOR A BETTER COVENANT

To appreciate why the new covenant is better, we must first understand what the first covenant could reveal but could never accomplish.

Verses 1–5 remind us that Jesus is seated at God’s right hand and serves in the true heavenly sanctuary.

Verse 7 says, ‘For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second one.’ Then verse 8 tells us that God found fault with the people.

The law was not the failure. The people were.

God’s law was holy, righteous, and good. It revealed His character. It defined obedience. It exposed sin. The ceremonies and sacrifices taught that guilty people could approach a holy God only through a substitute.

But the covenant made at Sinai also exposed a terrible weakness—not a weakness in God’s command, but a weakness in the human heart. Israel heard God’s law, promised obedience, and then repeatedly turned away.

Israel’s story is also ours.

We have said, ‘I will do better,’ only to return to the same sin. Determination alone cannot change the heart.

The law can point to the path, but it cannot make unwilling feet walk it. It can identify rebellion, but it cannot create love for God. It can pronounce the righteous requirement, but it cannot supply the righteousness it requires.

Romans 8 says that what the law could not do, because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son. The answer was never that God needed a lower standard. The answer was that sinners needed a new heart and a perfect representative.

So God promised something better.

Not a covenant that ignores holiness. Not a covenant that excuses rebellion. Not a covenant in which sin no longer matters. God promised a covenant in which He would deal with guilt and transform the guilty.

We need more than commands outside us. We need grace at work within us. That is the need for a better covenant. And that need carries us from the failure of human promises to the certainty of God’s promise.

II. THE PROMISES OF A BETTER COVENANT

Having shown us the weakness of the human heart, Hebrews now turns us from promises people could not keep to promises God Himself will fulfill.

Beginning in verse 8, Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31. Judah had broken covenant with God, Jerusalem would fall, and exile was approaching.

Into those dark days God said, ‘Look, the days are coming … when I will make a new covenant.’

The hope of the passage rests in two words: ‘I will.’

Listen to God’s action: ‘I will make.’ ‘I will put.’ ‘I will write.’ ‘I will be their God.’ ‘I will forgive.’ ‘I will never again remember.’

The new covenant does not begin with the strength of our promise to God. It begins with the certainty of God’s promise to His people.

In verses 10–12, God unfolds that promise in four closely connected blessings.

1. God promises an inward work.

Verse 10 says, ‘I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts.’ At Sinai, God wrote His law on tablets of stone. In the new covenant, He writes upon the human heart.

God is not discarding His moral law. He is changing our relationship to it. The command that once only confronted us from outside now finds an answering desire within the believer.

Ezekiel described the same work when God promised to remove the heart of stone, give a heart of flesh, and place His Spirit within His people.

Ezekiel 36:26–27 CSB

26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.

This is regeneration—the new birth. God does not merely tell the sinner to produce a better heart. He removes the heart that resists Him, gives spiritual life, and places His Spirit within His people so that obedience begins to grow from the inside out.

This work is necessary because the natural heart is not neutral; Scripture says we are dead in sin. Nothing less than resurrection will do.

The Spirit opens blind eyes, gives new affections, and makes the unwilling willing to come to Christ.

That is sovereign grace: God changes the heart so that the sinner freely and gladly comes.

Grace changes why we obey. Legalism says, ‘I must obey so God will receive me.’ The gospel says, ‘In Christ, God has received me; therefore I want to obey.’

The change is real, though not yet complete. Believers still struggle with sin, but the Spirit convicts, restores, and produces repentance.

But God does not give us a new heart and then leave us to walk alone. The inward work of grace brings us into a new relationship.

2. God promises a covenant relationship.

Verse 10 continues, ‘I will be their God, and they will be my people.’ That sentence runs through the whole Bible. It is the language of belonging.

God gives us Himself. He claims us as His people, and we belong to Him.

In Christ, the Son brings us to the Father, the Spirit lives within us, and we are received as sons and daughters.

Christian, do not define yourself by failure, grief, or the past. God says, ‘They will be my people.’ You belong to Him.

To belong to God is more than bearing His name; it is to know Him.

3. God promises that all His covenant people will know Him.

Verse 11 says, ‘They will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them.’ This does not mean preaching and teaching are no longer necessary. The New Testament repeatedly commands both. It means every true member of the new covenant personally knows the Lord.

Under the old covenant, a person could belong outwardly to Israel while remaining inwardly without saving faith.

The new covenant creates a people who do not merely know about God; they know Him.

This knowledge is not reserved for the educated or impressive. From the least to the greatest, all come through the same Christ.

You can know Bible stories and still not know the God of the Bible. You can know church customs and still not know Christ. So the question is not simply, ‘Are you familiar with Christianity?’ The question is, ‘Do you know the Lord?’

But how can guilty people belong to a holy God and truly know Him? The fourth promise provides the foundation beneath all the others.

4. God promises complete forgiveness.

Verse 12 says, ‘For I will forgive their wrongdoing, and I will never again remember their sins.’

God does not lose knowledge; He promises never again to charge our sins to our account because they were charged to Christ.

At the cross, God did not overlook sin. He judged it in the substitute. Jesus bore the guilt of His people, satisfied divine justice, and provided the righteousness God requires.

That is why God can be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Forgiveness is free to us, but it was purchased at immeasurable cost by Christ.

Forgiveness is not offered in fractions, and God does not keep His people on probation.

When an old sin accuses you, do not pretend it was small. The sin and guilt were real, but Christ’s blood is sufficient and God’s verdict is final.

An inward work. A covenant relationship. A saving knowledge of God. Complete forgiveness. These are the better promises. Yet promises this great immediately raise another question: What makes them certain?

III. THE MEDIATOR WHO MAKES THE COVENANT SECURE

Hebrews answers by directing our attention to Jesus, the Mediator who makes every promise secure.

Verse 6 says Jesus is ‘the mediator of a better covenant.’

Picture a great divide. On one side stand guilty people in the darkness of sin. The broken tablets at their feet speak of God’s law violated. The open ledger speaks of a debt they cannot pay. The chains around them speak of sin’s bondage. This is our side of the covenant: disobedience, guilt, debt, and helplessness.

Across that divide is the radiant holiness of God. His light does not hide sin; it exposes it. The balanced scales remind us that His justice never wavers. God cannot deny His holiness or pretend that rebellion does not matter. Yet from that same holy presence comes the promise of mercy.

No sinner can cross that chasm by morality, religion, promises, or good intentions. Sin has separated us from God, and the debt must be paid.

But Jesus Christ stands between. He is not merely a messenger passing words from one side to the other. He is the God-man—the One who perfectly reveals God to us and perfectly represents His people before God.

As the second Adam, He obeyed where Adam failed. As the true Israel, He remained faithful where Israel rebelled. As our substitute, He stepped into the place of the guilty and bore the curse our covenant-breaking deserved.

Behind Him stands the cross, and beneath Him the blood-marked way opens toward the mercy of God. The risen Christ reaches toward His people, breaks sin’s chains, and brings them near. Then, by His Spirit, He does not merely change their standing before God; He changes their hearts, writing God’s law within them and creating a willing desire to obey.

The Father planned redemption. The Son accomplished redemption. The Holy Spirit applies redemption. Salvation is the work of the triune God from beginning to end.

That is why the covenant does not finally depend upon our unstable will or inconsistent performance. Its security rests upon Christ.

Faith, repentance, and obedience are necessary fruits, not foundations beneath Christ. We persevere because Christ preserves His people.

Promised to Israel and Judah, the covenant was established by Israel’s Messiah. At the Last Supper Jesus declared, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood.’

Through union with Christ, believing Jews and Gentiles receive these blessings and are made one body in Him.

Verse 13 says that by calling this covenant new, God made the first obsolete. The shadows had completed their assignment. The final sacrifice had come. The true Priest had entered the true sanctuary. The ceremonies could give way because Christ had fulfilled what they promised.

So we do not return to the shadows, and we do not build a new system of human performance. We rest in the Mediator God has provided. The need was ours, the promises are God’s, and the security is Christ Himself.

CONCLUSION

Hebrews 8 announces God’s saving action for people whose hearts are rebellious and whose record is guilty.

Religion tells sinners to repair themselves and then approach God. The gospel announces that God has acted in Christ: forgiving sinners, giving new hearts, and making a people for Himself.

If you are not in Christ, you cannot negotiate your way into this covenant, erase your guilt, or awaken your dead heart.

But if you see your sin and your need, come to Christ. The call of the gospel is not to make yourself new and then come. It is to repent and believe, trusting the Savior who makes all things new.

Christian, do not measure God’s faithfulness by your feelings. Your heart may tremble, but His ‘I will’ does not. Your past may accuse you, but the Spirit has not abandoned His work.

Pursue holiness—not to become His, but because in Christ you are His. Confess quickly, forgive freely, worship gratefully, and walk by the Spirit.

Remember the better promises: a new heart, belonging to God, knowing Him personally, and complete forgiveness.

And every promise is secure because Jesus Christ is the Mediator of the better covenant. But Hebrews has not yet finished explaining how these promises become ours. If our guilt is real and God is holy, how does the Mediator open the way and cleanse the conscience? In Part 2, Hebrews 9 will take us inside the tabernacle and show us why only the blood of Christ can do what the old sacrifices never could.