Celebrating the New Covenant

In Christ and to celebrate the covenant meal that Christ instituted and gave for us as Christ followers to celebrate. The bread symbolizes His body. He says, "Take, eat, this is My body which is broken for you." It shows that Christ was our perfect sacrifice, was He not? The perfect Lamb of God who came down here for one reason — that's to die, to purchase our salvation. That whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. And then He says of the wine, He says, "This is the new covenant in My blood which is shed for you." When we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we're really celebrating the new covenant. The new covenant that was instituted and brought about by our Lord Jesus Christ. And so today I want you to turn in your Bibles to Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 8, and we're going to look at eight blessings of the new covenant.

Hebrews chapter 8, verses 1 through 5, I'm not going to read, but I'm going to explain to you. In Hebrews chapter 7, the prior chapter, the writer of Hebrews extols Christ and he says, "He is a superior high priest. He is the one who was not appointed by the law, but he was the one who was appointed by oath by God Himself, that he's the everlasting priest, and that he is the priest who offers better sacrifices, and he's an eternal priest, and he's superior in every way to the priests that were appointed by the Mosaic law." And so when we get to chapter 8, verses 1 through 5, we see this republished and reviewed — that Christ is superior, that everything before him, all the Levitical priesthood, and all the sacrifices were shadows. But Christ is the substance that those shadows were pointing to, right? They were the types, and Christ is the antitype. He is the ultimate high priest. He is the perfect priest who sits at the right hand of God, who has offered the sacrifice once and for all, and he's a priest who lives forevermore to make intercession for his people.

So we're going to look at verses 6 through 13, and we're going to look at eight blessings of the new covenant. Starting in verse 6, it says, "But now he," speaking of Christ, "has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises." Here he's talking about Christ. He says, first of all, that he has a more excellent ministry. Who does he have a better ministry than? He's referring to the Mosaic priests, right? The Aaronic priesthood. He has a far better ministry than the priests of Israel had, because remember, at best the high priest would be able to go once a year into the Holy of Holies, right? And he had to make sacrifices for himself to cleanse, and there in the Holy of Holies he would make an atoning sacrifice — blood shed for the children of Israel. He had to do that every year because people continued to sin, right? Christ has a far better, a more excellent — which means a surpassing — ministry. It says that he "has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as he is also the mediator of a better covenant." A mediator simply means a go-between. It's someone who comes between two parties and brings them together. One time we had the misfortune of being in a car accident many years ago, and a gentleman that we were in the accident with was very litigious, and we went to mediation, and we had a mediator that mediated between the two parties and came to a settlement. Well, Jesus is the one mediator between God and man. We read about this in 1 Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." Christ came to bring peace between God and man, right? It says he is the mediator of a better covenant, and it's established on better promises.

What is a covenant?

A covenant is an agreement, right? For example, an agreement among equals — we have what we call a kinship covenant, a marriage, right? Where a husband and wife come together and they become one, right? We also have in the Bible examples of what we call a royal grant covenant, where land is given to you by a king or by a wealthy landowner. But most of the covenants — what we see mainly pictured in the Old Covenant — is what we'd call a sovereign vassal covenant, or suzerainty vassal covenant. In ancient times, kings were called suzerains. That was a term, a Middle Eastern term for a sovereign. And what would happen, a king would come into a land and he would conquer that land, and he'd say, "Look, you may not like me, but I'm better than all the other guys, and I'm going to be good to you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure that your fields aren't raided, that you have the things that you need for your crops. And in turn, you're going to be good to me. You're going to give me 10% of your produce. You're going to give me X amount of your wages, and you're going to honor me because I'm the one who is your sovereign."

And after those stipulations were made, there were blessings and cursings that were spelled out. If you kept the covenant, it's going to be good for you. "I'm going to be your king. I'm going to treat you well. We will be happy." But if you don't keep the covenant, it's going to be terrible for you, right? And these covenants were sealed in blood. The word covenant actually means to cut. They would take an animal to seal the covenant, and they would cut that animal in half, lay half of the carcass on one side, and half the carcass on the other side. The blood would be dripping down, and the representative of the people and the representative of the king — like the king himself — would walk between those two animals, signifying that if either one of us breaks this covenant, what happened to that animal happens to us, right?

And so Christ is the mediator of a better covenant. And look what it says in verse 6: mediator of a better covenant "that was established on better promises." The word "established" there means sanctioned by law. It means unchangeably put in place. The new covenant is also called in the book of Hebrews the Everlasting Covenant. It is a covenant that is put in place by Jesus Christ and shall not be moved. It cannot be abrogated. It cannot be overturned. It is forever. And that's why it's a more excellent covenant than any other covenant. This is established on better promises. The Old Testament had lots of promises, did it not? And many different covenants in the Old Testament. But when it's speaking of the Old Covenant, it's typically speaking of the Mosaic covenant as representative of all the covenants. But most of the blessings were temporal blessings, right? But Christ's blessings are far better. They encompass all those temporal blessings, but they also give a whole bounty of blessings that we weren't even able to conceive of in the Old Testament, much less actually produce in the new covenant. Only Christ can do that. The old covenant could not.

All the old covenants — all the covenants from the Mosaic covenant to the Davidic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant — every single one of them is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is the key to all the promises of God. What does the New Testament tell us? 1 Corinthians 1:20, "For all the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him, amen, to the glory of God through us." So Christ is the ultimate one who fulfills the covenants. He's the fulfillment of all the Old Testament covenants, and He brings us the new covenant, which is established on better promises.

The application is simple for this point. Is Christ your mediator?

Is Christ the one who has brought you peace between you and God? Is He the one who has established the right relationship between you and God? Or are you trying to establish that on your own terms? Are you trying to come to God in the way that you want to come to Him?

In your own manner and in your own ways, you'll never receive blessing outside of Christ. He is the mediator of the new covenant, the fount of all blessing.

Number two, we find in verses 7 and 8. Let me read this: "For if the first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been found for a second, because finding fault with them," he says. Let's stop right there. So I'm just reading the first half of verse 8: "If the first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been found for a second, because finding fault with them." Second point is simply this: Christ perfectly fulfilled the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, in order to offer us the new covenant.

The new covenant supplants the old covenant. When it says that the old covenant, if it had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second covenant — it doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship God was establishing was wrong. The problem was, sinful man cannot keep the Mosaic covenant. God demanded us to be holy as He is holy. And which among us is holy? Which among us is perfect? Which among us is able to stand upon the holy hill of the Lord? Neither the people of Israel nor even their priests were able to do so. The priest had to make sacrifices for himself. He had to get himself ritually pure before offering any sacrifices under the Mosaic system, the Levitical system.

He — Christ — perfectly obeyed. He perfectly fulfilled the old covenant to offer us the new covenant.

The old covenant was designed to be temporary. That's why it's surpassed by the new covenant. It was designed for one purpose, and that was to show us the need for salvation, and to show us the need of a sacrifice. To show us that we needed a Savior, that we could not save ourselves. It would be impossible for us to keep the Old Testament law. The old covenant was dependent upon the faithfulness of Israel.

Let me read to you when the old covenant was established. When Moses led the children out of Egypt, we find in Exodus 19 — this precedes the giving of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. In Exodus 19:3–6, it says, "And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, 'Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: "You have seen what I have done to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice, and keep My covenant,"'" — do you hear that? It's conditional — "'then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all the people, for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.'" He gives the Ten Commandments following that. We find that in Exodus 20. In Exodus 21 all the way through 23, He gives the rest of the 600 laws that make up the Old Testament canon of commandments, the Levitical system of laws under the Mosaic covenant.

And then in chapter 24, this is all written down by Moses, and he reads it to the people, and the people consent. They say, "Yes, we will obey." And they take an animal, they slaughter the animal, and the priest sprinkles it on the altar, and then he sprinkles it on the people, ratifying that covenant in blood, right? Because again, a covenant is a blood bond between a superior and an inferior. It's established by God.

Did Israel keep that old covenant? No. None of us could. Who can stand, again, in God's holy place? Not one of us could. But look at the new covenant. The new covenant does not depend on the faithfulness of you and me. The new covenant depends on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, and that's why it's superior. That's why He is the better mediator. In Hebrews chapter 7, the prior chapter, verses 26 through 27, it says, "For such a high priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless" — which means innocent — "undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens, who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the people's, for this He did once and for all when He offered up Himself." Christ is the fulfillment of the old covenant so He can offer us the new covenant.

The application for this point is this: are you trying to merit salvation through keeping the law? Is that the way you operate? Instinctively it is for many people. If you asked them — if you were facing the Lord and He says, "Why should I let you into My heaven?" — people say, "Because I'm a good person.

I'm pretty good. I'm not as bad as that guy or this lady. I brush my teeth every night. I floss. I don't have any speeding tickets. I voted. I'm a good citizen. I'm all right."

Is that being harmless? Is that being undefiled? No. Only Christ is holy, harmless, undefiled. He is our perfect mediator. So do not trust your own righteousness for your salvation. Trust Christ, the mediator of the new covenant.

Number three, we find in verse 8. Let me read the whole of verse 8: "Because finding fault with them, He says: 'Behold, 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.'"

For number three, we're saying Christ inaugurated the new covenant

as Jeremiah promised 600 years earlier. He's about to quote to us a passage from Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah was a prophet of the Old Testament and he operated during the time when Israel was under judgment. Israel was being brought into exile. He lived during the time where he actually saw Jerusalem and the city burn, and he was actually carted off himself into Egyptian exile as a prisoner. So he saw his beloved country fall during this time. But during the midst of that,

even during the hardship of seeing his countrymen and his country being destroyed, he prophesied that God would offer a new and better covenant. And we see that in verse 8, He says, "Because finding fault with them, He says: 'Behold, 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.'" This new covenant that He promised 600 years before Christ was inaugurated at the Lord's Supper.

Isn't that what Jesus says? "This is the new covenant in My blood which is shed for you." Just as an animal had to be sacrificed under the old covenant — blood had to be shed to make that covenant binding — Christ Himself is the spotless Lamb who was shed for us in the new covenant. He inaugurated this with just a few people, just 12 Jewish men in the upper room. There never has been a large group of faithful Israelites all throughout the Old Testament. God always dealt with the remnant. Remember Elijah? He thought he was the only one. He says, "God, go ahead and kill me." And God says, "No, I've got 7,000" — which was still very small — "who haven't bowed the knee." So He makes and institutes the new covenant, just as He promised, with Israel and with Judah there with His 12 disciples in the upper room.

We read about Jesus in Galatians 4:4–5, that Jesus was born under the law to redeem those who were under the law — He came to redeem Israel. And He answered and said — this is from Matthew 15:24, when a Canaanite woman asked for Him to heal her daughter — He says, "I was not sent except for the lost sheep of the house of Israel." So Christ came first of all for the Jews. And as we read today

in the book of Romans 1, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek." From that core of 12 disciples, we see in the upper room 120 Jewish believers, right, on the day of Pentecost. Peter preaches a fiery sermon on the day of Pentecost when Jews from all over Israel came to Jerusalem to celebrate the day of Pentecost, and God pours out His Spirit, and 3,000 are saved. In fact, it says in Acts 2:36–37, Peter preaches, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this," speaking of the house of Israel, "they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles," — and "men and brethren," because the apostles were Jews — "what shall we do?" And what did Peter tell them to do? To repent, to trust the Lord Jesus Christ, right?

It has always been God's plan to save the world, to bless the world through Israel. We find that in Genesis 12:3. It tells Abraham that through him all the earth, all the nations would be blessed, right? We find that in the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all" — what? — "nations." That includes not just Israel but the Gentiles too, right? And in the New Covenant, all are welcome, right?

At the end of Luke, where Jesus is appearing to His disciples and He's telling them how to interpret the Scriptures, and He opens their minds that they can understand the Scriptures, He says in Luke 24:46–47, "Then He said to them, 'Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day'" — He's saying this is written in the Old Testament, this is the gospel He's saying — "'and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem,'" right? And then in Acts chapter 1, when we see the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, what does He tell them? He says in verse 8, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And if you know the book of Acts, that's exactly how the book of Acts is framed, right? We see four different outpourings of the Spirit, four different groups of people coming to know the Lord, and that follows Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Gentiles, the uttermost parts of the world. We don't even see the Gentiles really coming into the church until Acts chapter 10, right?

So what I'm getting at is, God keeps His promises, right? Even promises that seem like they may not be able to be kept. It's 600 years, Israel's in exile, they're coming back to the land, and now they're subjugated by Rome. God keeps His promises. The application is this: do you look to Christ for all of God's promises? There is no blessing outside of Christ. There are no eternal promises outside of union with the blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. Look to Him for every good thing.

Bible point number four, we're going to find this in verses 8 and 9. Christ gave the new covenant a truly new character. Let's look in verses 8 and 9: "Because finding fault with them, He says: 'Behold, 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, 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 did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them.'" He's quoting here Jeremiah. Jeremiah actually says, "Though I was a husband to them." The quote is from the Septuagint here, and the Septuagint has a variant reading that says, "Though I disregarded them." It's the same idea — it would be as if your wife had left you and gone astray from you; you would be irate, you'd be disappointed, and that's how God saw Israel in their apostasy.

He promises that He would make a new covenant with them that would not be like the old covenant. When he uses the word "new," there are two different words in the Greek that can be used for new. The first is neos, which means new in time, but not new in substance. Let's say my burrito got cold and I got a new burrito that was hot, right? Still a burrito. One's cold, one's hot. The other one's just fresher, if you will. But that's not the word that he uses here. The word that he uses is kainos, which means new in character, superior to the old. And the new covenant would not be like the old covenant. It would truly be new. The old covenant was temporary, right? It was there to be a pedagogy — one that would lead us safely to Christ. The old covenant was something that was external. The law was external, and you had to keep it, and the people didn't have the power to keep it, because they didn't have transformed hearts as a whole. Some did, but most did not.

When we look at the old covenant, we find that it was conditional, that it required a priest to go in routinely to make sacrifices again and again. We find that it was typological in that it was pointing towards Christ, but as a result, it wasn't all that revealing, right? There was some opaqueness to it, some mystery. It wasn't fully revealed until we get to the New Testament. But the new covenant is far better in every aspect. It is superior in that it offers us Christ Himself, whereas the old covenant offered us just another priest — another sinful priest — trying to make atonement for our sins that could never fully be made.

The application for us is this: do you look to Christ, not only for blessing, but do you look to Him for fulfillment? You'll never find fulfillment outside of Christ, whether it's your job, Christians, even your families. We do put a high priority on families, but you know what? Family is great. God ordained us to have families, but don't make an idol of that. Ultimately, even your own family — your husband, your wife, your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter — they can let you down. But in Christ, you will only find true fulfillment and true satisfaction.

And we're going to look at four different blessings that Christ, the one who brings us satisfaction, gives us. First, we'll see in verse 10. Verse 10 says, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." — and this again is Jeremiah speaking; it's quoting Jeremiah.

In the new covenant, Christ gives us a new heart. The laws were not written on stone in the new covenant — they were in the old covenant. Christ takes His holy character and He writes it on your heart. He does this in the new birth, right? Remember John chapter 3, Nicodemus comes to Christ at night and Jesus tells him, "You will never see the kingdom of God unless you're born again." Born again means to be born also from above, right? It's the rebirth, it's regeneration. The Old Testament law could not regenerate you. Keeping the law could not change your heart. It was only an external thing. But when the Holy Spirit unites the Lord Jesus Christ to your heart, He changes your heart, He gives you a new heart. Ezekiel talks about this in Ezekiel chapter 36, that He will give them a new heart — not a heart of stone, but a heart of flesh, a heart that's set on Him, right? If you want to be able to keep God's laws, you have to love God, and you have to love His ways. That's only possible in the new birth, and Christ alone can make you do that. Christ alone can give you the new heart, the new will, the new mind that desires Him, that wants to seek Him.

Every member of the new covenant is regenerate. The only way that you become a member of the new covenant is by bowing your knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, repenting of your sins and believing, trusting on Him fully for your salvation. In the Old Covenant, if you were a male and you were circumcised, you were considered part of Israel. There were many people in Israel's day who were circumcised, who observed all the religious observances, but they were far from God. They weren't saved. We do have folks who were, like David we read, right? Hannah, people who had faith, who believed — because God's grace doesn't come through the law, it comes through promises, right? Through His offer of salvation. So the application is this: have you been born again?

Has Christ's character been written on your heart? You will know, because He gives you a peace that passes all understanding. His Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you are truly His. If you have unease about that, if you're not certain that you're His children, don't take the cup at the Lord's table today — pass on that. But come talk to me, come talk to any of the elders, any of the deacons that you're going to see up here distributing the Lord's Supper. We'll be glad to tell you the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. His promises are to all who will believe. It doesn't matter if you're old, doesn't matter if you're young, doesn't matter if you're male, doesn't matter if you're female, whether you're Jew or Greek — Christ's promises are for everyone.

Christ also, in the new covenant, gives the blessing of Himself to us in spiritual union. We find this in verse 11.

It says, "None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them." In the old covenant, that wasn't true. Let me read to you from 1 Samuel 2:12. If you remember, Eli was a priest in 1 Samuel chapter 2, and were his sons good or evil? Evil, right? It says, "Now the sons of Eli were corrupt. They did not know the Lord." They were Israelites. They were born in Israel. They were circumcised. They were of the right tribe, the right pedigree. They were priests. And yet they did not know the Lord.

In the new covenant, though, every believer in Christ is united to Him through the Holy Spirit. We have a spiritual union with God, whereby God lives within us through the Holy Spirit — Christ in you, the hope of glory. And you are said to be in Christ. Every believer knows the Lord. Doesn't matter how educated you are,

doesn't matter if you can't read. I had a gentleman who teaches a Sunday school class in a rural community, and he was preaching in a Sunday school class about the significance of God's Word, how you need to hide it in your heart. And one gentleman says, "Well, I've got the Ten Commandments — I don't know much beyond that." And the Sunday school teacher told him, "Well, you should really try harder, you know, memorize." He says, "Well, I can't read." So he only knew what he heard, but that man knows Christ. That man walks with Christ. He has committed his life to Christ, and you see it in the fruit in his life, right? Every believer knows the Lord. That's a blessing of the new covenant.

Question is this: are you united to Christ? Does Christ live in you? Let me read to you John 17:3, "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." And then verse 23, Jesus says, "I in them" — meaning I in those who believe — "and You, God, in Me, that they may be made perfect, or completed, in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me." Isn't that amazing? Christ says the love of God abides in us and the world will know it when you're united to Christ. And that's the blessing of the new covenant. Everyone in the new covenant knows the Lord, right?

Then verse 12 says, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more." In the new covenant, Christ gives us complete and full forgiveness of our sins. Under the old covenant, were your sins ever — no. If you were basing it just upon the works of the law, you had to continuously be offering up sacrifices. Sacrifices were made daily by the priests, the morning sacrifice and the evening sacrifice on behalf of the people of God. The priests would go in and would pray before the altar of incense. And once a year he'd go into the Holy of Holies. And that had to be done continually, right? But Christ is our perfect sacrifice. Once He made that sacrifice, He sat down. All priests here on earth stand ministering, right, in the temple. But He sat down because His work was complete. He says, "It is finished. It is done. No more sacrifice needs to be made, for the true Lamb of God has been slain."

Let me read to you verse 12, which says, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness." The word "merciful" is the word propitiation. Propitiation simply means a covering, a shield from God's wrath. As you know, on the Ark of the Covenant on top of it there is a mercy seat, right? And the mercy seat is where the presence of God dwelt. The mercy seat was above, shielding the Ark below, right? It was in between. Christ Himself is our propitiation. He's the one who brings us mercy. He's the only one who can reconcile us to God. He's the only one who can make us at one with Him, to bring us atonement. And that's literally the word that's used there — propitiation — when he says in verse 12, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more."

Hebrews 2:17 says, "Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." Hebrews 9:15 says, "And for this reason He, Christ, is the mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance." Christ has satisfied God's righteous requirements, and in satisfying God's righteous requirements, He gives us all of God's favor. He shares His inheritance with us, as it tells us in Hebrews 9:15.

Hebrews 12:24 says, "To Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel." Abel's blood cried out, did it not? And what did it cry out for? It cried out for justice, cried out for retribution, because his blood was spilled — so another blood must be spilled, right? Christ's blood cries out, but what does it cry? Mercy, grace, propitiation. Come to Me, ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

That's the Savior that we have. The application is this: are your garments spotless?

Are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Only Christ can make you clean. Only Christ can be the propitiation to satisfy the holy requirements of our holy God.

Last point, number eight. Christ gives us the new covenant that fulfills and surpasses the old covenant. We're going to see this in verse 13. "In that He says, 'A new covenant,' He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."

This is still quoting Jeremiah. As soon as Jeremiah announced the new covenant, in effect the old covenant was already obsolete, because he was announcing that a new covenant was necessary. A new covenant was necessary because the people could not keep the old covenant, right?

Now, fast forward 600 years later, at the time of Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection —

it truly is obsolete. What happened at Christ's death? What happened to the veil in the temple?

It was ripped, split. The presence of God was no longer in the Holy of Holies. By this time, the ark of the covenant was no longer even there — it had been lost. So anything that went on from this time forth was a charade, a sick charade, because the sacrifice of Christ had rendered it obsolete, right? "What is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."

When he says that, first of all in verse 13, "A new covenant that He has made the first obsolete" — in grammatical terms, not to be too nerdy, that's present active indicative, and what it means is simply this, that it's the present result of a past action. It is already obsolete, and yet in a sense, it was still passing away before their eyes. When this was written to the Hebrews — which we think was perhaps written to Roman believers; we don't know for certain, but we know that this was written to believers in Rome — there were still sacrifices being made in the temple at that time. This was probably written, we think, around AD 64, 65. Soon thereafter, in AD 70, we know that the whole temple would be destroyed. All the priests would be no more. There would be no more Levites. There would be no more Pharisees.

That would all be destroyed in AD 70. So it was passing away — it was growing old — and those leftover vestiges, if you will, those relics of the old covenant, were soon to pass away.

In their passing, no one was impoverished, but all were made rich, because the new covenant surpasses the old covenant. It takes all the blessings of the old covenant and amplifies them to an even greater extent in the new covenant, right? Let me read to you Hebrews 10:19–23: "Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus."

You know what that means? In the new covenant, we enter into the Holy of Holies in our relationship with God because of Jesus Christ. No longer is it one man for the nation of Israel once a year, but we live in Christ, and Christ lives in us. Verse 20: "By a new and living way which He consecrated for us through the veil, that is His flesh" — it is through Christ that we come to the Father — "and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful."

Every member of the new covenant, everyone who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation — as pastor has read as we've been going through the book of Ephesians — is seated now in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Full access to the Father, with the full favor and love of God that He has for His Son, is poured and shed upon us. We become co-inheritors with God in Christ. What more blessing could we ever ask?

The application is simply this: boldly approach the throne of grace. Don't hold back — you have such privilege. You can pour out your hearts before God, you can go before the arbiter and supreme ruler of the universe and you have His full attention and you have His unmerited favor, and it's yours. It's been given to you because of Christ, right? Christ merited it and He pours out His favor, He pours out His love on us even though we are wretched sinners, poor and needy.

So the application is simply this: come to Jesus for a new heart.

Come to Jesus to have union with Christ, to know Him, to know God. Come to Jesus to have your sins forgiven, to have them blotted out.

Come boldly before Him to find grace and help in time of need. I'm going to lead us in prayer and I'm going to ask that Mr. Colson is going to lead us in the Lord's Supper and also that the deacons come forward to help us serve, okay? Let's bow our heads. O God, we are so unworthy of You, but I praise You that You loved us and You gave Yourself for me,

and I praise You, Lord, that we can come boldly before Your throne of grace to find help in time of need. Draw us nearer to You. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.