Hebrews 9:15-22

Appetiser

Let us put tonight’s message in a bit of a historical context, through the following readings: Exodus 3:1-12, 15-17, 19:1-8, 24:1-8.

Here is a people who were a bunch of nobodies in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of Egypt. But God took them for Himself, and made them into a nation for Himself. He promised to bless them and give them a land flowing with milk and honey, where He would live with them. That is their inheritance, by virtue of being Abraham’s children, to whom God promised all this.

So they are rescued and come to the mountain where God sent Moses from originally. They have heard God’s promise, and they have heard the stipulations of that promise being made a reality. They have pledged to be faithful to the covenant of God. And they have ratified it with blood: may our lives be forfeit if we depart from You, O God of our Fathers!

But, of course, eventually they did break that covenant. And so God promised that He would make a new covenant with them, Hebrews 8:7-12. As it is made clear, that first covenant through Moses, the old covenant, was always preparatory. It pointed forward to the new covenant, through which God is definitely going to make sure His people get what He promised them: “the promised eternal inheritance”, Hebrews 9:15. In fact, Hebrews 9:15-22 teaches that it is Christ through Whom all this became a reality.

Whether you’re in the position of the Egyptians of the day: powerful, recognised; or Israel: weak and cast aside by others as inferior—ultimately, none of this counts. What matters is whether you are in covenant with God: whether you enjoy His favour. For God promises graciously to bless those who are His people.

Main Course

Christ’s people will receive God’s promise, v15a

“Christ is the mediator of a new covenant”, as Moses was the mediator of the old. The Jews came to God via Moses, and we go to God via Jesus Christ. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

“that hose who are called”, that is to say into a covenant relationship with God. God chose Israel, Abraham’s descendants, out of all the nations of the world, to be His people; just as it was God that took Abraham and called him to worship Him. It was with them that He entered into a covenant to give them an “inheritance”: a land to live with them in, not with anybody else. And even today, “it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants”, and He is in the business of “bringing many sons and daughters to glory”, freeing not those in the slavery of Egypt, but “those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:16, 10, 15)

“may receive the promised eternal inheritance”: so God’s promise is not ultimately about a strip of land in the Middle East, but about something “eternal”; “the first covenant” dealt with temporary, outward things; it was pointing forward to what God would do through Jesus Christ, the Mediator Moses himself was pointing forward to. The One greater than Moses is here. And He assures that those who have been called by God to eternal life, will receive eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

So that’s the first thing you need to answer tonight, my Friend: are you in covenant with God? Have you come to Him through Jesus? Is His favour on you? Do you believe in Him as Abraham did: ready to leave everything behind to follow Him?

This is because Christ died as our “ransom”, v15b-20

It is through blood that a covenant is put into effect, v16-17

“will” in v16-17 is the same word as “covenant” in v15 and v18. You may wonder why it has been translated differently in the verses that explain v15, and to which v18 points back to… So do I, though there are good reasons, of course; especially strong is the one that speaks of “the death of the one who made it”—but I don’t think it helps to start talking about a will here. The writer is explaining how covenants (not wills) work by and large.

A death is necessary for the covenant to be legally binding

“it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it”. When you made a covenant, you promised to keep it under pain of death. You slaughtered an animal, and that animal represented you, his fate foreshadowing your fate, should you fail to keep your end of the promise.

“because a will [covenant] is in force only when somebody has died”: “when somebody has died” could be better translated something like “on the basis of dead ones”—notice the plural. It refers to the animals slaughtered in representation of the covenant makers.

Therefore I understand “it never takes effect while the one who made it is living” in this representative sense. Until the slaughtering of the representative animals took place, a covenant was not binding; it would probably not go too far to say, “it’s just words”. That’s how covenants work: they are ratified by something tangible, something public that everybody can point back to.

“the first covenant” was put into effect by blood, v18-20

These verses allude to what we read in Exodus 24. God graciously entered into a covenant with His people, who promised obedience. Moses took the blood of the slaughtered animals, and sprinkled it on “the scroll and all the people”: the scroll representing God through His Word that the people said “we will do”. And if they didn’t, they would be cut off from the covenant.

Which they eventually broke. This is what we also saw earlier, Hebrews 8:9. The people were unfaithful, and the covenant blessings were not given to them: certainly not “the promised eternal inheritance”: God forever dwelling with them.

Jesus: the ransom for God’s covenant-breaking people

But remember, this was all pointing forward to Christ, “the mediator of a new covenant” (v15)—how? The clue is given in the beginning of v15: “For this reason” points back to the sacrifices offered by the priests under Moses’s law, as we see Jesus’s role in this regard in v12 in particular. Here we are told that this death was “a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” And this is the death that sets us free, God’s disobedient children today, as well. All our hope of gaining our eternal redemption is on Christ.

Jesus was faithful on behalf of His people. We have already been told in Hebrews that “Jesus the Son of God … has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:14-15) “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:8-9) By being born into God’s people, born under the law as a man, He was obligated to keep the law fully—the very law Moses’ people pledged to keep, but couldn’t. He did.

Christ’s death was accepted as their ransom, cf. v15b. Here is the perfectly righteous, perfectly obedience Jesus—“who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God” (Hebrews 9:14). The sacrifices in Exodus 24, as well as all the other blood sacrifices under the covenant through Moses pointed forward to this death; the death that secures God’s favour for me in Christ forever.

In fact, does not v20 recall Luke 2:20 to our mind? “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are reminded that we are in a covenant with God, through Jesus Christ, Who “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28) In 1 Peter 1:17-21 we read:

1 Peter 1:17–21 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

My Friend, let me ask again: are your sins also covered by Jesus’s sacrifice? Are you in covenant with God? Have you answered His call for you to repent of your sin, and cast yourself believing on Jesus Christ alone?

And do you live this life “as foreigners here in reverent fear”? Are you looking forward to “the promised eternal inheritance”? Does this comfort you when the comforts of this life grow weak? I pray it does.

Because of Christ, God accepts our worship, v21-22 cf. v14

Hebrews (Exposition of v21 in Spurgeon Commentary: Hebrews)

I like to come up to God’s house and say, “Well, I shall worship God today in the power and through the merit of the precious blood. My praises will be poor, feeble things, but then the sweet perfume will go up out of the golden censer, and my praises will be accepted through Jesus Christ. My preaching—oh! How full of faults; how covered over with sins! But then the blood is on it, and because of that, God will not see sin in my ministry, but will accept it because of the sweetness of His Son’s blood.”