Clough Hebrews Lesson 40

Christ’s Priestly Work Involves a New Covenant – 8:1-13

In Hebrews 8 we begin a new section. Last time we finished with chapter 7 and from 1:1-2:18 we have the introductory section. That had, remember, it had one warning passage in it; that was that passage in 2:1-4, “What shall we do if we neglect so great a salvation.” Then from 3:1-7:28 we had a long section on Jesus Christ as the faithful, sympathetic and everlasting priest. By the way, what Psalm was quoted so often? Psalm 110, and Psalm 110 formed the whole background for at least one third of that area of Scripture.

Now tonight we start a new section, it begins in 8:1 through 10:18. And for these two chapters we shift from Christ’s person which we’ve dealt with a lot up to this point, we’ve dealt with, of course, what He’s done but it’s been mostly trying to show His character, the character of Christ shown by what He is doing. Now in chapter 8, 9 and 10 the emphasis of Hebrews starts to move from the person of Christ to the work of Christ and so we could entitle this section Jesus Christ’s priestly work; it involves a better covenant, a better tabernacle and a better sacrifice. There are three parts to this. The theme is always the word “better,” better than the old covenant or the dispensation of the Law, better covenant, a better tabernacle and a better sacrifice. These three themes were used historically, particularly the last one to undermine Roman Catholicism. It’s a very important passage, an important part of the New Testament.

Christ’s priestly work, and tonight we’re going to try to finish chapter 8, we’re going to take all 13 verses and deal with Christ’s priestly work is founded upon a better covenant. And we’ll be discussing what this covenant is and we’ll get involved in a little dispensational controversy so let’s start with verse 1 and look at the word “sum.”

Hebrews 8:1, “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum;” says the author, “We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; [2] A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Now the word “sum” is a review word so the author here is summarizing and reviewing and he’s saying if you haven’t followed me and if you fell asleep somewhere in chapter 4 and 5 don’t let it bother you because at least the sum of what we’ve said is this. He says what I’ve tried to get through to you by numerous references to various parts of the Old Testament, to details of Psalm 11:4 is nothing more than we have such an high priest, who is set down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty, that is the sum of what he’s trying to get across, Jesus Christ in His priestly location.

“We have such an high priest, who is set at the right hand,” does anyone recognize that clause, sitting at the right hand of God. Know where that comes from? It’s used several times here; you’ll be safe if you just guess the passage which we’ve seen the most, Psalm 110 except not verse 4 but verse 1; Psalm 110:1, that’s the one where David, in the Spirit, says “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand,” that’s when that phase got started. That is where this business of the Son sitting at the Father’s right hand that you see in liturgy and you see in the great church creeds, all came out of Psalm 110. “We have such an high priest, who is set at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,” this is just another word for God. Notice is it “in the heavens,” notice the word “throne,” notice the combination in verse 1 of priest and throne, or the two officers, the priest plus king. That’s the difference between the Melchizedekian priesthood and the Aaronic priesthood. The Aaronic priesthood in the Old Testament was strictly a priestly office, it did not include kingly office. Now the Melchizedekian priesthood includes both, so it means a ruler as well as a priest.

Verse 2, “A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Now the tabernacle first, and then we’ll deal with the true tabernacle. When our tabernacle group gets through their construction we will have, hopefully, a very detailed scale model of that tabernacle so you can see it, look inside and so on; don’t look for the Shekinah glory but at least on the inside you’ll be able to see the arrangement of the furniture and how that tabernacle spoke about Christ’s work. The tabernacle is an oblong thing, had the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. In the Holy Place you have various pieces of furniture, speaking of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross on earth. We have the altar of incense that represents the release of prayers coming up from earth into heaven. Then in the Holy of Holies you have the ark with the cherubim and that represents the work of Christ in heaven. So you have two places, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies.

Now I want to correct something which I told you; I speculated one night when were in Hebrews 4:14-16 that Christ passed into the heavens, it was an analogy between the Holy Place as this universe, the second heavens and the first heavens, and the Holy of Holies is the third heaven. This chapter forces me to drop that speculation because of the word in Hebrews 8:2, “which the Lord pitched, and not man.” In other words, the entire… it’s true what I said, that the Jews at the time of the writing of this epistle looked upon the universe as a macrocosm of the microcosm in the temple, but unfortunately, they apparently didn’t… this author isn’t going along with all of those speculations. He sees the entire tabernacle as made of God; in particular he looks at several places in this epistle, in Hebrews 9:24, he says, “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are figures of the true, but into heaven itself,” and this again, the dichotomy of that which is down in the area where man lives, but most powerful is Hebrews 9:11, “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation.” The word “building” is the word “creation.” And so that clearly defines when he’s talking about something not being made with hand he’s not just talking about something not being made with hands he’s not just talking about something people build, but the entire old creation. So this teaches that this true tabernacle, the whole thing, is the new creation; it’s not part of the old, it’s a complete dichotomy between the two. So correction to speculation.

Back to Hebrews 8:2, “the sanctuary or the true tabernacle” which the Lord pitched,” that refers to the tabernacle which has been established in the eternal state and this tabernacle, this true tabernacle lines up with three other terms used in this epistle. All these terms are used for the eternal state but they are all different terms that speak of part of that. Here’s the one, “the true tabernacle,” that’s the one we see in this passages. Then the other term is “the rest,” that was in chapters 3 and 4. Then we have another term, “the city without foundations, whose builder is God,” that’s in chapter 11, and then we have “a kingdom that cannot be moved,” that’s in chapter 12. So these are all synonymous terms referring not to something that exists in present day history but something that will one day exist, and that in fact exists in seed from or germinal form today at some place, wherever Jesus in His humanity is located tonight, that is where this true tabernacle is also located. That is the place where God’s rest is. Remember when we went over the concept of the rest, what did we say that rest was? The rest had always been available to all men from creation. God rested on the seventh day. God wants man, He wants all of us to enjoy that rest with Him. But you don’t rest until the work is finished. Therefore, this eternal rest has been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for mankind corporately to finish its’ job, although you may say okay, when I die my job’s finished, that’s true, your job’s finished but your job still really isn’t finished until the human race’s job is finished because we’re all part of the sons of Adam. So until we as a human race finish our job of subduing creation, now through the Lordship of Christ, this rest remains elusive, it remains separate from it. But the rest is there and it’s promised and we will enjoy it. The same thing with the city and the kingdom; this is the New Jerusalem that comes in the last chapter of the book of Revelation; it’s all something in the eternal state; all these terms emphasize the end of history.

So when he talks in verse 2 about “the true tabernacle” that is also part of this eternal state, there will be a true tabernacle there where the entire universe will come to worship God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Now exactly what that tabernacle will look like, how it will be different from the tabernacle in the Old Testament we don’t know, but the tabernacle will be there. Hints are given in the book of Ephesians that the Church basically forms the pillars of the tabernacle. You see the tabernacle, when the model is done you’ll see how there are boards on this, you can’t believe the calculations, we used the density of silver and solved two simultaneous equations to find out how big the sockets are in this thing, it’s a real engineering problem. But these are the pillars of this tabernacle and in Revelation the word is used that believers become the pillars of this tabernacle which apparently hints that wherever the Lord’s throne is, the body of Christ is all around it, of all the believers of all the ages, the believers in this dispensation have an exalted place in eternity.

So this is about all we know about that true tabernacle, we just know it’s in God’s plan, apparently it partially exists today. All the details we don’t know, we just know there’s a true tabernacle that He’s going to expound on now beginning in verse 3. He’s talking about the priest that does the work in this tabernacle; maybe you want to think of it as a tabernacle room or something in heaven, all right, that’s where the Lord Jesus is, that’s His present day office, that’s His workshop, where He in His humanity is living. Remember Jesus Christ is undiminished deity and true humanity so His humanity has to be some place.

Hebrews 8:3, “For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices; wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer.” Now for about the fifth time in this epistle what is the argument in verse 3? Note the method of argument because the method this man uses in argument in 8:3 has profound implications philosophically, in fact, this whole chapter has one of the most profound philosophical refutations of Greek Platonism in all of God’s Word. Now in verse 3 this mode of argument is very, very simple; in fact it’s so simple it’ll elude you. The argument is basically that a word that means something to you in every day usage has also validity in eternity. In other words, we’re down here in our limited finite little box; here’s all our knowledge and we sit in the middle of the finite limitations. Out of our finite knowledge we have a vocabulary, in this case we have a word called “priests.” Now we have that word and in the Old Testament everybody knew what a priest was; they knew what he wore, they knew what he did, he followed a schedule of work, they had their ties to him, the priest was something concrete. This word in the Jewish vocabulary meant something to everybody; they could go see the priest. So people knew what a priest was, no problem about that.

Now if you look at the logic and the argument in verse 3, he is saying if Christ is going to be called a priest, He has got to look something like the priest we know in every day experience. It can’t be some ethereal priest some place that’s totally different from the word priest in our every day sense of the word. Now why is this important? It means over and against the claims of liberal theology and oriental religion that now dominate American thought, it means that when you talk about God the Father loving you, that word “Father” and that word “love” as you would pick it up in your daily experience in the home, that would has the same meaning when it’s applied to God. Vocabulary in every day experience applies also to God, not in the sense we can perfectly exhaust what God’s like, but words do have meaning when they’re applied to God.

Now that may sound like it’s very theoretical but if you’re in any oriental religion or if you’re in any Christian group that’s being influenced by oriental thought, you should be aware that words mean nothing when they are applied to the infinite God, in all other religions. They are basically emotive terms that someone has an experience of God, they call it… and they emote, and while they’re emoting they spew out vocabulary words. The vocabulary words have no more significance than if you vomited and there is no difference between vomit and words on a non-Christian basis.

Now on the Christian base and on a Biblical Christian base words are important because words describe what God really is like. So when we talk about God as Father, we don’t know all of what that means, but we know at least one thing: His relationship to us is just like a relationship of an earthly father; there’s a relationship of authority and so on. So the kind of argument in verse 3, the methodology of the man’s argument is very, very important and if you’ll master this it just cuts across the grain of all the liberal theology that’s coming in and so on. This is why if you ever heard of a man by the name of Paul Tillich, Tillich was, until he died, one of the outstanding American theologians and his fond definition of God was that God was the ground of all being. Well, that’s nice, in that sense it’s not really false, but it’s just vacuous statement. Tillich was convinced the word “Father” and the word “Son” were just emotive labels tacked onto God, but God, if you really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really knew Him He wouldn’t be like Father, that’s just the way the naïve person refers to God as father.

So the argument of verse 3 is important because these terms are not naïve; God is a Father and Jesus Christ is a Son, and this means something. So he says, if He’s a priest, the word must mean something and He must be doing something that we are familiar with.

So he goes to Hebrews 8:4, “For if He were on earth, He should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law,” now does anybody notice something in verse 4 that goes all the way back to when we started the Hebrews series and tells you something when this book was written. There’s a hint in there about the date of the writing. You should be able to infer something about the time of the writing of this epistle, from what you’re reading in verse 4. [someone says something] Before the temple was destroyed, notice in verse 4, “if He were on earth now, He would not be a priest, seeing that there are,” present tense, “priests offering gifts,” so the priesthood was still functioning when this epistle was written. The system was still in operation and this would tend to argue that it must be before 70 AD because in 70 AD you have the destruction of the temple. This is one of those little points about this epistle, pay attention to it because it’ll clue you to the historical thing.

Those of you in Greek, someone asked me the other day about “if” clauses; the if clause in verse 4 is a second class condition, “if and it isn’t so,” if you take Greek you’ll notice, it’ll be a plus imperfect and then usually in the apodosis you have an on, sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t, in this case it isn’t but verse 4 is a second class. “If, but it isn’t so, if He were on earth, then He wouldn’t be a priest. In other words, He wouldn’t be a priest. Why? Why, if the Old Testament process were still going on and Jesus Christ in His humanity walked around, why wouldn’t he qualify to be a priest? [someone answers] All right, He destroyed the necessity of it but if the Jews didn’t accept the fact that He destroyed the necessity of it and kept on with their priesthood, Christ still couldn’t qualify as one of their priests. Why? Wrong tribe, remember, Christ is the wrong tribe.

Seems like a little point but remember our first century brethren who fought the first battle of Christianity, this was embarrassing; two things they had to fight, the first century Christians had two embarrassing things about the person of Christ; they were very defensive about it, and you see it all through the New Testament; one thing that they were defensive about was that the Jewish carpenter wasn’t of the tribe of Levi. And this kind of galled people, because like I pointed out in the evening service the Qumran community was quite clear that only the sons of Zadok of the tribe of Levi would be in that future priesthood. And so you have these Christians going about talking about Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Messiah, hey, what tribe was He in…oh, He’s in the tribe of Judah, wrong tribe. And so the early Christians had a problem here that they had to work with and they had to be articulate to defend their position.

The second problem, does anybody know what the second problem connected with the life of Christ, besides the obvious thing that He didn’t bring in the millennium, I don’t mean that. What was particular about the method of death? [someone answers] All right, He died according to the Mosaic Law as a criminal who was genuinely guilty before God. Even the fact that His body was left hanging was under the Mosaic Law a sign that He was a criminal and that He had genuinely broken the Law. So these two positions in the first century were very, very sensitive little positions but the Christians took them and instead of being embarrassed about it, and we can learn a lesson from this, take your weakness and transform it into a point of strength. What did the Christians do with the idea that Christ died a criminal death and under the Mosaic Law He had apparently sinned? What was that, that was so important, it was one of the most central doctrines of soteriology, or how we are saved.

[someone answers] Well, He was crucified because that was the Roman method of death but the point about the crucifixion that was embarrassing to the first century Christians wasn’t that He died on the cross but after He died His body hung there and in the Mosaic Law after they were stoned to death, I mean, it’d one bloody pulp, they would be tacked onto a post and hung by the side of the road and the display of the body on a post after death was tantamount to saying observe this person, He has received Yahweh’s judgment, and because the Christians would go around and they’d say Christ died on the cross, Christ died on the cross, the problem wasn’t the fact that He died there so much as that after He died there His body was suspended like a common criminal and you can read first century literature and the Christians got really up tight about this and the non-Christian too. Galatians is one epistle where this is argued extensively, but the point is the Christians said wait a minute, instead of getting so defensive about this aspect of Christ’s person let’s think about it a minute. Christ’s body was suspended on a post in public as a man who had genuinely experienced the wrath of Jehovah; in other words, it was just like [can’t understand words] and then suddenly it dawned, of course, because He had experienced the wrath of Jehovah, not because of His personal sins but because He had our sin credited to Him and so therefore just as a common criminal would be displayed by the side of the road, take warning Jews, this is what happens to one who violates God’s Law, so Christ was displayed publicly. Take warning, this is One who received Yahweh’s judgment. So the Christians, you see, instead of fighting these embarrassments, actually, just like Judah, they just took it one step further than their opponent was willing to take it, and what had become formerly an embarrassment was now the most precious example of Substitutionary atonement.

The same thing with this author of Hebrews; he has dealt extensively with the other problem of Christ, wait a minute, a Jewish carpenter of the tribe of Judah, your Messiah, you’re crazy, you’ve got to be kidding. No, he said, this goes back to Psalm 110, to a superior priesthood. So he didn’t back up, apologizing, well gee, you know it’s true, He’s of the tribe of Judah, He’s in the wrong tribe. Instead of backing up he just went one step further and said not only is Christ a priest, He’s a better one than the Levites. So watch how this was done. It took the Christians about fifty or sixty years to really get the skill. I mean, the Holy Spirit gave them the skill but it took them fifty or sixty years to develop it.

So let’s look then at this high priest who should offer gifts. Why should He. Well, in verse 5 he’s going to go on to the kind of gifts that are going to be dealt with. Hebrews 8:5, “Who serve,” and by the way, notice they’re still serving, “Who are serving,” before 70 AD, “unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle;” now this is pretty dense so let’s go through verse 5 slow and if you have questions on it stop me. We’ll go through it real slow so you can pick up the points. The priests are serving unto the example and shadow of heavenly things. First, where are “the heavenly things?” The “heavenly things” are the things future in God’s program. These are things that God will one day bring about but the only place they exist are in the mind of God and in the blueprints in heaven, so to speak. So these priests, verse 5, “are now serving as an example and a shadow” of those things, not the object, but the shadow from them. So you have this object casting a big long shadow, the shadow is the Old Testament, the shadow is an adumbration of the future thing. You can see the Old Testament is a shadow of the Lord Jesus Christ, He cast His shadow over all the writings of the Old Testament. So as they developed this shadow concept, this was the early, the first century Christians argument against Judaism, that is was only a shadow type religion, it was temporary, it wasn’t the real thing.

Now it says, after the comma, after “heavenly things,” you wonder, well how did Moses get into this. Because after the word “as Moses” there’s an example given of one of these “heavenly things, “as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle;” if you’ll turn to Exodus 25:40. Moses had been told to build this tabernacle, [can’t understand words] and after he had been told to do this God closed off the instructions. He gave him a conference, told him how to build it, the silver, the gold, the acacia wood and so on, the dimensions, everything, in fact if you just glance quickly at 25, skim those verses real quick, you’ll see all the details, it’s a very detailed description. But notice how it ends in verse 40. God says, “Look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shown you in the mount.” Now the word “pattern” means that Moses had two sources of information about how to build the tabernacle. This is why our group here only has one source, we only have what’s written in the Old Testament, we have those words, such as chapter 25, that says do this, do this, do this, do this, but Moses had something in addition to all that, he had the pattern that was shown him.

Now what this pattern was is not clear, it could be one of two things. It could have been a model, a scale model that God actually brought down on top of Mount Sinai and sat there, God the Son, and went over the model with Moses because the word means to really into the details of it. So apparently on Mount Sinai God spent considerable time, along with all these other instructions, on giving him an actual three dimensional picture. Some of you interested in photography, maybe he had a super hologram here, may it was something like this where he was able to give a multidimensional picture of this. So besides being a possibility of a model like you and I would think of, sort of like a small scale model that we’re building here in the church, it could be that or it could simply be some sort of a spectacular audio visual type thing where God projected this thing down so Moses could see it. And then Moses could ask questions, well how do you make this, how do you make this, how do you make this. The pattern God showed on Mount Sinai and then He took it away, but that explains why they were able to build a tabernacle, we can’t. [someone says something] No, because it says “a pattern,” I showed you a pattern, he didn’t see the real thing, he only saw a vision of some sort in a model sense of the word, He did not see the real thing himself ever. He only saw a pattern of it.

All right, so this shows you ... notice how God concludes, it’s very mildly word, at least in my translation it’s very mildly word, but in verse 40 that’s a divine command that God is summarizing His instruction by saying boy, when you supervise those carpenters and those craftsman, I want that letter perfect to what I showed you on the mountain. And Moses is saying “Yes Sir.” God couldn’t have that pattern differ because the pattern was how those people were going to learn their doctrine. If Moses had made a mistake in the dimensions, or had made a mistake in the construction, conceivable an entire generation of believers could have learned false doctrine, a theological heresy could have gotten started. So this is why in verse 40 God insists that the real thing be made exactly according to the pattern.

Now come back to Hebrews 8 I’ll throw out a question; some of you who have done a little reading in Greek though, what strikes your mind that you’ve read about, this business of a pattern and casting shadows? Plato’s cave, in the book, The Republic. Plato was one of the most influential thinkers of the ancient world; and Plato developed something which I want to show you just a moment because I want to show you what the Bible says and it’s not what Plato said, and out of this you’re going to see the difference again between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint. Plato had one of the most beautiful systems of human viewpoint that man has ever come up with. Plato had what he called the realm of the ideals. And this realm no one ever really touched, you don’t touch the ideal. The ideal was something that you never really get with; the ideal was… later on a man by the name of Kant called it the ideal of limit but you have, say goodness, or you have love and these are just ideals, nobody really concretely manifests this, this is just kind of an ideal that you approach but you never reach. And he developed this cave concept with these shadows and it all looks very much similar to this and liberal critics have gone into this chapter of God’s Word and said ah, the author of Hebrew is a Platonist. The author of Hebrews is not a Platonist; in fact, this whole argument is exactly opposite to that. What is it about Hebrews that argues against Platonism. Just think now, Plato is concerned with ideals that are never reached, that are never attained, they’re there, but because of our finiteness we never can really get there.

[someone says something] Well, it’s more powerful than that, more powerful than that. [someone else] The whole point of the author of Hebrews is that the ideal exists historically. Now that is exactly opposite. This man is saying… let’s draw two pictures of history, here’s Plato’s picture of history, history goes on like this and the ideals are up here. Here’s this author’s view of history, the ideals are up here in the Old Testament but they’re starting to phase into history beginning with the person of Jesus Christ and continue until the eternal state. The ideal is history, so this author is totally anti-Platonic at this point. Jesus Christ is the ideal, and when He talks here of this shadow of heavenly things, who serve under this thing, and notice he quotes in the last part of verse 4 the passage I just showed you, Exodus 25:40, he said “see that he make all things to the pattern showed thee in the Mount,” he is talking about that wherever this true tabernacle is, where Christ is, in His real humanity, that is the ideal after which that little model in the Old Testament was made. Jesus Christ is the ideal priest and He’s serving in the ideal tabernacle and that ideal tabernacle is one day going to be part of the mainstream history. History moves toward and envelops the ideal. The ideal never perpetually remains divorced from every day experience.

Now this is very, very powerful, we can’t go into all the philosophic ramifications of this except if you grasp what we have just said in the last five minutes you now understand why all modern theology is basically at total odds with the New Testament. Modern theology sides very much with Plato, and we as fundamentalists side very much with, obviously, the historic Hebrew way of looking at things. Ideals are part of the world, they’re not abstraction.

So in Hebrews 8:6, “But now hath He obtained” perfect tense, results which continue, Jesus Christ has obtained, “a more excellent ministry,” now that’s comparative, “more excellent” than what? More excellent than the priests mentioned in verse 3 and 4. Jesus Christ has obtained a more excellent ministry than those Old Testament priests “by how much also” in other words by this degree, and this tells you the degree of Christ’s superiority, the degree of Christ’s superiority is the degree of the better covenant, verse 6b or the last half of 6b if you underline your Bibles ought to be underlined, it is one of the key passages of the whole argument of the epistle to the Hebrews, “He is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.”

Now at this juncture we’re right smack into it theologically, so we can kind of test ourselves, let’s try to back this around a little bit. Why are the promises associated with the person of Christ that this man’s talking about better than the promises under the Mosaic Law? Remember, not the promises of Abraham, not the promises of David, huh-un, the promises of Moses. Why do the promises associated with Christ come out to be better than the promises associated with Moses? [someone answers] Yes, but what was the central weakness, think back the key point of the Mosaic Law. If you could summarize the whole Mosaic Law, you know there’s lot of little details, forget those, you don’t have to know those, just the simply thrust of the Mosaic Law. Visualize that awesome day when God comes down to Mount Sinai and He assumes kingship over the nation and He says to the people what? If…then, do you know what the gist of it was? If you obey Me, then I’ll give you a kingdom. So the Mosaic promise if you want to call it that, was always conditioned and what was it conditioned upon? It was conditioned upon human obedience. So the Mosaic promise is conditioned upon positive volition or human obedience. “If you obey,” then I’ll give you your kingdom. Why are the promises of Christ better than these? Let’s see if anybody can guess and don’t sweat it if you can’t, we’re going to cover it when we go to verses 8 through the end, but just see if anybody picks out why Christ circumvents this.

[someone says something] Okay, that’s true that we are sealed in Christ for eternity but so were the regenerate believers in Moses day. Moses himself was sealed into God’s plan of salvation and so the saved believers of all ages have basically enjoyed that privilege. But what was it, remember, think the difference between the covenant to Moses and the covenant to Abraham; the covenant to Abraham was given to a what? Of the divine institutions? Given to one, two, three or four? It was given to three, it was given to a family, wasn’t it. What was the Mosaic Covenant given to? One, two, three or four? It was given to a nation. The Mosaic Covenant was a national covenant, it wasn’t addressed to individuals, except in so far as they were part of the nation. So this was conditioned upon positive volition of the group. It wouldn’t do any good to have a Jeremiah or a Josiah or a Hezekiah around, you had remnants all the time but God said I am not going to bring My kingdom if that’s all there’s going to be is a remnant. For Israel to enjoy the kingdom, all Israel must believe or else I’m not going to bring in my kingdom. That was the term of the Mosaic Law. Now watch the covenant.

This is a quotation of what we now call the New Covenant, we haven’t studied this before so this looks like the first time most of you have come across this. The New Covenant, this is taken from Jeremiah 31:31-34. It is called the New Covenant because this knocks out and replaces entirely the Mosaic Law Codes. It is future to Jeremiah’s day; it did not phase in in Jeremiah’s day; Jeremiah just prophesied of it. Notice the prophecy now, Hebrews 8:8-12, I’ll read it through and you follow.

Hebrews 8:8, “For finding fault with them,” in other words, the fact the old covenant didn’t work, “he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; [9] Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in My covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. [10] For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; [11] And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. [12] For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”

Now that is a summary of the prophesied New Covenant. Now we have to understand this, go back in history, let’s draw a timeline here to get perspective. Here’s the cross of Christ, here’s 518 when the Jews came back from captivity, here’s 586 when the Jews went into captivity, and here’s Jeremiah. Jeremiah is ministering as the nation is going down into the fifth cycle of discipline. If you’ll turn to one spot in Jeremiah, Jeremiah 3:10, this is a verse that should strike one, if he has a command of history a little bit.

Start with Jeremiah 3:6, there was a king by the name of Josiah; Josiah engineered one of the great Biblical revivals in the history of the nation to stave off final collapse. The nation was doomed but because of Josiah and many believers in high places in that day, they were able to attack human viewpoint, somewhat, restore Bible teaching, somewhat, and have somewhat of a revival. But right in the middle of this revival and in this era that you would certainly think, why this is great, this is wonderful, people are coming to know the Lord, hear are the words being taught and so on, this nation is going to reverse history, it’s been going down, down, down, down, now we’re in the middle of a revival, we’re going to come up, up, up. You would think that would have been the response; you would have thought that Jeremiah would be clapping, yeah for the revival. But Jeremiah responds to this era of history in 3:6.

“The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah, the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She is gone up unto every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot. [7] And I said, after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto Me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister, Judah, saw it. [8] And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce, yet her treacherous sister, Judah, feared not, but also went and played the harlot also. [9] And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with trees. [10] And yet for this her treacherous sister, Judah, has not turned unto Me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD. [11] And the LORD said unto me, The backsliding Israel has justified herself more than treacherous Judah.”

Now in verse 10 you have the counterpoint to Josiah’s revival. Jeremiah gives the long range view of those kinds of revivals when he says basically they don’t swing it. Those kinds of revivals peter out, they’re good for a time and as far as they go that’s grand, but they do not hack it. And I’m not talking about a revival where some church has a revival where a speaker comes. I’m not talking about that, you don’t start revivals, the Holy Spirit starts them. But even these kinds of revivals Jeremiah does not consider sufficient to reverse history. They are not deep enough. The only revival in the history of the Christian church for 19 centuries that has reversed history was the Reformation. That’s the only one. Now we’ve had lots of other revivals and many people have trusted the Lord and been saved. That’s true. But we have never, apart from the Reformation in Switzerland and Germany, have we ever had a reversal of culture and that shows you that that was apparently the only real revival we’ve had in church history.

Now Jeremiah looked at Josiah’s revival and he says the nation is still basically sick. And if the Mosaic Law promise, if the nation obey Me, then they get their kingdom, if this constantly is going to be conditioned on positive volition over the whole nation and we can’t even get positive volition in Josiah’s day, this would doom the kingdom forever. Under the terms of the Mosaic Covenant God could never bring the kingdom about so what, therefore, must be promised? And this is the introduction to the New Covenant. See, the old covenant promised that the kingdom had to come. Let’s go back through the logic again. The old covenant said here Israel, I got this tremendous kingdom for you, I want to give you this kingdom, all you have to do is obey Me. So the prerequisite of the kingdom, here’s the kingdom promise under the Old Testament Law, the prerequisite for that would be national obedience. Okay, you can’t have the kingdom without national obedience, not just obedience of a remnant but national obedience. Okay. So the Mosaic Covenant, and this is why, by the way, the Mosaic Law is a favorite with Arminian theologians because it leaves volition out of the picture in the sense that the people choose or not choose.

But now notice what the New Covenant is going to do. What does it promise? Just think back from what we just read in Hebrews. In the New Covenant what is going to happen? God is going to guarantee the kingdom, but the guarantee to the kingdom is dependent on national obedience which in turn must therefore be guaranteed. So the New Covenant is not only going to say I’m going to give you a kingdom, but I’m going to give you the national obedience. That’s the New Covenant and that’s the difference between it and the old covenant. In the old covenant God promised the kingdom, if you’d obey. The New Covenant is I promise you the obedience that will fulfill My righteousness so then the kingdom will come in. Obviously the New Covenant is very much for the Calvinist side of the discussion because the New Covenant is distinctly prophesying that there will come a time in history when Israel nationally will believe, not just a remnant in it, but nationally Israel will believe. Now that’s the New Covenant.

This is why, if you turn back to Hebrews 8, let’s look at the wording, the fine print. Notice what it says, verse 8, “I will make this covenant,” please don’t get the Church in here, the Church is not in this covenant… yet. The kingdom, national obedience and this will be a promise, regeneration and sanctification on a national scale. That’s what God’s promising. Regeneration and sanctification on a national scale. Then He will fulfill this righteousness and then the kingdom will come in. Now let’s see, it’s made in verse 8 with two groups; “the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” Test on your geography; which kingdom is the northern kingdom? The house of Israel; okay, the house of Judah is south. [9] “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers” why? Because that was a conditional covenant that had to wait, wait, wait, wait, wait on national obedience. And then he says why, verse 9, notice the end of verse 9, “because they didn’t continue in My covenant. I wanted them to but Israel didn’t continue in My covenant.

So therefore verse 10, now what is God going to do. “I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts;” that’s the first thing He’s going to do, and let’s go through what that means. Writing the Word of God on the human heart is this business of the circumcised heart found back in the Old Testament and equals regeneration. Please notice, this shows you there is no false dichotomy between grace and Law; in the Old Testament regeneration meant not that you were lawless but that you now had the capacity to obey the Law. The Law wasn’t gone, what was gone was that impediment of obedience, that’s what was gone. “I will write My laws in their hears,” I’ll give you the desire to do it is the way we’d put it. “and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people;” it shows you it’s national in scope, not individual; national! They will be a nation. Verse 11, “And they shall not teach every man his neighbor,” in other words, evangelism will stop, there will be no need for evangelism under the New Covenant, “Know the Lord; for all shall know me,” every person in the nation will be a saved individual, [12] For I will be merciful to” them and so on and so on. Now these are what was future to Jeremiah’s day.

Now comes the great problem. All this is very nice, but the big debate is where does the Church fit into this, because this covenant doesn’t anywhere mention the Church, yet obviously it’s mentioned in the New Testament epistles so the Church has got to fit in here somehow. All right, let’s see how the Church fits in.

The first great salvation covenant was the Abrahamic Covenant, wasn’t it. What were the three promises of the Abrahamic Covenant? Land, sea, worldwide blessing. Ah, so if the Abrahamic Covenant is pulled off, then is the world going to be blessed? Yes it is. All right, in a nutshell the New Covenant is an amplification of the worldwide blessing clause of the Abrahamic Covenant. When the New Covenant is made with Israel, Israel will then be rolling on the rails, will be in her position doing her job and the worlds will be blessed. It is holding and marking time until the New Covenant is made with Israel. Therefore, today the New Covenant has not been made with Israel. Israel is not in her place, she’s not all believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore the New Covenant has not yet been made with Israel.

Well, that may be true but turn to Matthew 26. Things thicken up as you would expect with this author of Hebrews. In Matthew 26:28, Jesus Christ at communion, He’s in the middle of the Passover, He lifts up the cup of redemption, which is the third cup in the Jewish Passover, and as He holds it up in front of the disciples during the last supper He says, “This is [My] Blood of the New Testament” or the New Covenant… “this is the blood of the New Covenant.” So it sounds like the New Covenant is phasing in with the person of Christ, doesn’t it.

If you turn to 1 Corinthians 11:25 there’s another passage which your familiar with from communion but I want you to compare these two a moment. Matthew 26:28 on one hand and 1 Corinthians 11:25 on the other. Matthew said “this is the blood of the New Covenant,” so some people have said well, see, it wasn’t really a New Covenant, it was just the blood of the covenant. But then in 1 Corinthians 11:25, which is our passage we read every month when we have our communion, what does it say there: “This cup is the New Covenant in My blood,” so it looks as though the covenant has been phased in.

Well how are we going to pull all this together, the covenant’s here, the covenant isn’t, the covenant hasn’t been made with Israel but it’s been made with the Church but the Church isn’t in the covenant, where do we pull all this together. The best way I know of visualizing this thing is to go back to Israel’s calendar and we’re going to look at two parts of her calendar, the spring part and the fall part. In the spring Israel had three main dates; had more but these are the three main ones. Passover, Firstfruits and Pentecost. These dates happened by decree of the calendar. You didn’t wait and arbitrarily decide what day of the month these were on, these were given: Passover, Firstfruits Pentecost. In the fall you have the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. The blowing of the trumpet, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Israel’s calendar had at least these six elements to it.

Now it’s Israel’s calendar, not ours, it’s not the Churches. The Church hasn’t got into any of these covenants, always has been to Israel. But if you keep back in your mind, the first covenant ever made with Israel had a little clause called “the worldwide blessing” clause in it. Israel was never created to be something in herself. She was always created to pass the blessing on to the world. If Israel functions, the world is blessed; if the world is damned internationally it’s because Israel’s not functioning properly in history. On the day of Passover in the year the Lord died He died exactly to the hour of the Jewish Passover; He rose from the dead on exactly the day of Firstfruits. And what happened exactly on the day of Pentecost? The Holy Spirit came. Now this is why the disciples were asked to wait in Jerusalem, not to tarry in the Holy Spirit as though they would just get in a room and the Holy Spirit would come. The Holy Spirit would have come if no one was there. The reason is the Holy Spirit was scheduled by sovereign decree to come on that day of the Jewish calendar: Pentecost.

All right, so the spring part of the calendar was fulfilled. But what happened? Something went wrong. When the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost had all Israel accepted her Messiah? Negative. So therefore the Holy Spirit came on schedule but the nation hadn’t believed. So, the qualification, then, was broken in the sense that the nation was not believing, so the Holy Spirit was not poured out on all flesh. And therefore on the day of Pentecost there was one phenomenon, basically, that occurred and none of those prophesied in the book of Joel. The prophecies it said with the Holy Spirit comes the sun is going to turn dark, the moon is going to turn red, there’s going to be astronomical phenomenon, geophysical phenomenon, all sorts of phenomena, catastrophic phenomena involving planet earth and all around, the local universe round about planet earth. And none of these came to pass except one, tongues. Well, tongues wasn’t even predicted in Joel. So why do you take all these things of Joel, none of them occur in Pentecost, and something that was never predicted in Joel does occur? Because tongues was a sign of cursing, Isaiah 28:11. Tongues occurred instead of the other phenomena to show Israel you just blew it, the Holy Spirit has come to pass and now you people are going to be evangelized through Gentile languages. So tongues is a sign, not of blessing, it is a sign of cursing upon the nation Israel.

Now when the Holy Spirit came the, if you want to call them this, it’s kind of un-theological but the mechanics for the New Covenant were operating. The mechanics for the New Covenant were operating, that is, the regeneration, the Holy Spirit was ready to regenerate the whole nation, everything, except the nation rejected Messiah. So God in His wonderful omniscience and in His sovereignty designed a fantastic plan that also has a fall part of the calendar. Now these three dates have never been fulfilled in history. Never! This means that Israel’s calendar has part yet to be played out. The blowing of the trumpets will occur in some October and the ultimate fulfillment of the day of the trumpets will be in the day that the word goes out to Israel, Messiah is coming back; we know the month, we don’t know the year. But just as Christ died literally on Passover, so His announcement will go through the nation literally at the blowing of the trumpet. The Day of Atonement, which we will study in the book of Hosea, and the Feast of Tabernacles that begins the millennium, all those will happen exactly to the hour of the Jewish calendar.

[someone says something] That’s not this trumpet, this is a different set, that’s the trumpet blown for the Church strictly; this trumpet here and all this stuff has nothing to do with the Church. I’ll tie it to the Church in a little bit but to keep this straight in your mind don’t strain right now to tie this to the Church. Pretend we’re just believers hanging out here in limbo some place, we have no connection; okay. So you’re just looking at Israel now and Israel’s calendar. Just like the woman, the Gentile woman, the Syrophenician woman in the Gospels, Lord, we eat the crumbs off your table, now that’s our position right here. [someone else] The day of atonement is the day when Israel makes a national confession, “They shall look upon Him whom they have pierced” and their national leaders will bow their knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that will happen in one day, and it will be a fulfillment, just like Christ died on that right day, this confession is coming up in the future and will happen exactly on the day. How these calendars are going to get all straightened out I don’t know because they’re lunar, it’s a lunar calendar, I don’t know it’s going to straighten out but it’ll work out so that will be the Day of Atonement for that year.

Now, when that happens, then the potential developed back here on Pentecost will be poured out on all flesh, because you’ll have the beginning of the millennium. You’ll have the removal of the unbelievers, there’ll be nobody left except believers so the Holy Spirit pours out on all flesh. And then you have the beginning of the millennium. Now there’s then a marked time, this is why the New Covenant becomes so hairy and there’s no easy way of teaching this. The New Covenant is the most hairy theological problem in the whole New Testament because it looks like part of it’s [can’t understand word] and part of it isn’t, and the reason is because we’re in between the two parts of Israel’s calendar. If they had gone ahead and trusted the Messiah everything would have been neat, but now it’s kind of screwed up and it’s postponed. Of course, in the larger wisdom of God this is a necessity. But this is what’s so fouled up here.

So let’s try to see now how the New Covenant applies to the Church. The Church came into existence on the day of Pentecost, by the sovereign will of God, but keep in mind that the Church is not predicted in the Old Testament, it’s a mystery that comes into being. So on Pentecost God had plan B, if you want to put it that way. Men don’t even realize this for many years, but the believers that come after Pentecost, from Pentecost forward, the machinery for that New Covenant is here. That is, the Holy Spirit is doing this work that’s described in Hebrews 8. He’s writing the Word of God on the hearts of men. The only one problem is, He can’t write it on the hearts of all Israel because all Israel doesn’t believe in the Messiah.

So what is He doing? Part of the New Covenant, the benefits, pour out on all people who believe. So now we have the Church and every person who is in the Church is regenerated. We don’t have a covenant community in which some are regenerate and some aren’t, like they did in the Old Testament. If you are here, for example, and you may have joined a church, you’re still not part of God’s covenant until you’ve been born again. And if you’ve trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and you’ve been born again, then you’re part of the covenant, but there’s no way you can be a part of this covenant today in this era of history and not be born again; the two go together. In the Old Testament you could have gotten away with it. You could have been a Jew, could have enjoyed the agricultural benefits as an unsaved person, simply because you were part of a covenant community. You could have been unsaved and part of the Mosaic Covenant. Now you can’t because the New Covenant is with saved only.

So that part of the covenant spills over and becomes the basis for the Church. But keep in mind originally it wasn’t so. Originally the New Covenant was there for strictly the house of Israel and strictly the house of Judah, that was the original intent and it turns out we benefit from it.

To conclude this turn to Romans 11:15, here’s the principle involved. Don’t worry if this is complicated, it is complicated. So don’t think you’re not getting it because you’re stupid or something, don’t feel that way, it is a complicated and difficult portion of the New Testament. You might have known the author of Hebrews would get into it. Romans 11:15, “If the casting away of them” that’s the day of Pentecost, when they didn’t qualify and the Holy Spirit came on schedule, “if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world,” Paul says, that means that every Gentile that accepts Christ is locked into many of the benefits of the New Covenant, “what then shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” What’s Paul’s argument is is simply this, look, if blessing like the gospel came out, spilled out all over the world on every continent in every language, if that blessing came when Israel went negative toward God, what do you suppose is going to happen when that nation gets with God. Then what kind of a massive blessing is going to pour out on every continent.

See, that’s the argument. This nation can’t lose. When they screw up we get blessed. Now if we got this much blessing, your whole position in Christ came about because the Jews rejected Messiah, if all that blessing came to your account, what is it going to be when Israel comes back and they too believe in Messiah, the New Covenant becomes totally and completely fulfilled in the nation and the millennium begins; that’s what it’s going to be like. There won’t be any need for non-stop diplomacy or anything, the Lord Jesus Christ will be personally here and if you can imagine an inaugural parade, like we saw in Samuel, you can imagine what it’s going to be like when Jesus Christ returns to the earth again; there’s going to be a parade to beat all parades. And the world will be crying for it, and he will be the only man who can bring peace, true peace, and it will be very obvious, everybody will welcome Him.

[someone says something] That’s right, the wild olive branch can never say I originally was part of the tree, I was grafted in; that’s Paul’s argument. The benefits, yes; the benefits we distinctly get through these covenants but the covenants themselves don’t really belong to us, they belong to Israel. And we partake because we’re kind of plugged into them. If you want a modern day illustration and you don’t have much experience in botany, then think of your electric house wiring; your 110 volt line in your house is Israel and you’re the appliance with the plug. And you get juice when you’re plugged in. The wiring, then, is the covenantal structure.

Father, we thank Thee…..