have your Bibles with you this morning, I invite you to open and turn with me again to the book of Hebrews, to the book of Hebrews chapter 8. We'll read all 13 verses, though our sermon will just concentrate on verses 6 through 13 today. So Hebrews chapter 8. Hebrews chapter 8, verses 1 through 13. Please hear the word of our God this morning. Now the point in what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, There would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. where I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. As far as the reading of the Lord's Word, may he bless it to us this morning. Please join me again in prayer. Jehovah, our God, We thank you that you have lighted our path in this pilgrim journey by your word. And we thank you that your word holds out to us all the blessings of the covenant of grace of Jesus Christ and everything that he stands to offer sinners. We pray that again, as we look into this book of Hebrews, you would firmly fix in our minds the need that we have to push on to know you and to know you as you have revealed yourself in Jesus Christ. We pray that you would grant us your spirit in this time. And we ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen. For over a century now, the story of Peter Pan has absolutely captivated audiences. Most of you have likely grown up hearing this story, hearing about this boy who never grows up, who seems to always be in a playground, who is very carefree, who has very few responsibilities all throughout life, And for over a century, this has dazzled audiences, and many of us have often felt like if we could just be Peter Pan, living amongst these lost boys and having food fights and jumping around and playing in such a carefree spirit. I think if we look at the church and perhaps our own hearts, we see that all too often Christians suffer from a Peter Pan syndrome. that is that we don't want to grow up in our faith. We don't want to become mature and strong children, but we want to remain as children. And you remember several chapters back in Hebrews 6, this is what the writer is trying to curb in our heads. He's trying to get this point across that we need to push on to maturity. We need to grow up as Christians. We need to grow up in our faith. We can't continue to be children. And isn't it true, those of you who have children, that if you left them to themselves to decide how they would mature, most child or most children would mature through eating candy and drinking soda. Our children have no idea how it is that they make this journey from childhood into adulthood. They need to be guided and directed. And it's very true when it comes to Christians maturing in the faith as well. We are not so clever as Christians to know how it is that we ought to mature, but the Lord himself has to teach us. The Lord has to lay it out for us. And that's what Hebrews is doing. Hebrews is teaching us how do we grow in our faith. And hopefully what you've been hearing week after week after week, as we've been going through these chapters, is that the way in which the Christian matures is to meditate on Christ. Seems to be a very simple answer and yet it is terribly profound. The way in which we grow up is by meditating upon Christ. And this is why the writer of Hebrews and Lord willing my sermons week after week essentially do nothing but commend Christ to all of us. Because this is how we grow, this is how we're nurtured, this is how we mature. And as we come to chapter 8, as we introduced last week, the writer of Hebrews now wants us to mature by thinking of the glories of the covenant. Now it has been said that the covenant, the way in which we understand it, lies at the very heart of all true theology. Matthew Henry, the Puritan commentator, once said that the man who can distinguish the difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, and understand the distinctions in the covenant of grace, proves himself to be a true master of divinity. And J.I. Packer in his very well-known book or his very well-known introduction to a book says that the covenant is like a vast ocean. And here in the covenant, God's character and God's promises and God's blessings and his threats and his truths and the way of all salvation rests here in this ocean of a word, covenant. What ought to hit us is that growing up is difficult. And the writer of Hebrews understands that. That's why we had all of chapter six. This is going to require exertion. This is going to require mental difficulty. But no child grows up and matures in his arithmetic if he's not putting good, hard, mental effort into it. And so the writer of Hebrews comes here and he commends to us to meditate upon the glories of this great and deep word covenant. We introduced last week that as we look at verses 6 through 13, we just want to answer, hopefully, two simple questions. In order to understand the greatness of the covenant, we just want to answer two simple questions. And the question we looked at last week is, what is a covenant? What's the big deal about a covenant? Why do we need to think about this and meditate on this? And last week we saw that from all of scripture, what a covenant is, is that it is an agreement that binds two people together and gives assurance of what is promised. Covenant is, this is the way that God has chosen to relate with His sinful creation. God enters into agreement where He binds Himself by duties and obligations, and we, as His people, come and we are bound by duties and obligations, and there's this assurance that this promise is going to be true. Now the first covenant that God made with humanity is all the way back in the Garden of Eden, and this was the covenant of works. This is when God commanded Adam and told Adam, you're not going to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and right. From the day that you eat of that tree, Adam, you are going to die. And God, in those words, entered into this covenant with Adam. And the inherent promise there is that Adam, if you remain faithful and you don't eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you're going to earn, you're going to merit, you're going to deserve eternal life for yourself and for all of your posterity who descend from you. This was the first covenant that God made with humanity, the covenant of works. But as we all know from reading Genesis, Adam did not remain faithful to this covenant, but he broke it, and therefore he cast all of humanity into sin and misery. And as our catechism rightly asks, did God leave all men to perish in a state of sin and misery, and our catechism biblically and rightfully answers this, no. because God then formed a second covenant with his people. And that covenant, and what we refer to it, is the covenant of grace. The covenant of works that God formed with Adam, the command in that was do this and you will live. But the promise of the covenant of grace is God will do this by Christ in order that you might live. So we have two very opposing ways of salvation. One is that we were to merit it through our works, and the other, this side of the fall, is that it only comes through this covenant of grace, what God will do in Christ, in order to redeem a people to himself. Now, this covenant of grace extends from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22. This is the overarching covenant that helps us understand what God is going to do, how we receive salvation. But this covenant of grace, as we understand it, is administered differently throughout the Bible. So now we're getting into some technical terms here. Covenant of grace, different administrations. Perhaps this illustration will help you think of this rightly. In the United States, we have an overarching law. We have the Constitution. This is something that has spanned the width and the breadth and the length of America's life here. The overarching law of the land is the Constitution. This is what gives America our stability and our consistency. When a new leader comes up, the law of the land remains the same, or it's supposed to remain the same. This was unlike the days of a monarchy that when one king died and another king rose, all of the laws may have been changed and what was technically civilly legally yesterday may now be illegal today. Well, America isn't founded like that. We have this overarching law. We have this constitution. And yet every four years, voters go into the voter box and we elect a new president. Now this president is bound to keep this constitution, but often as you look at the presidencies of different American presidents, they do it in different ways. They emphasize different aspects of the constitution. They perhaps see things a little differently. They shed light on this area of civil law that maybe we hadn't thought of before. And as we speak of these presidents, what terminology do we use? administrations. You have the Bush administration, and the Bush administration is different than the Obama administration, was different than the Clinton administration, was different than the Lincoln administration, but the one thing that all these administrations have in common is the Constitution of the United States of America. And so it is when we come and we look at the Bible, the covenant of grace, God's promise to save sinful human beings by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. This is the overarching covenant of grace. but it has different administrations. It was administered differently in the time of Abraham in Genesis chapters 12 and 15 and 17. It was administered differently in the time of Moses on Sinai in Israel there in Exodus 20. It was administered differently in the time of David in 2 Samuel 7 when God made the covenant with him. And it's administered differently under the new covenant that Christ formed in his blood and gave to his church there at the Last Supper. Right. What's the point of all this? As we come to Hebrews chapter 8 verses 6 through 13, I want you to know very clearly that what's being contrasted here is the administration of the covenant of grace. The promise that God will save sinners by Jesus Christ is not being contrasted. The law of the land is not being contrasted. What's being contrasted here are the presidencies of Washington and Lincoln or Bush and Obama. It is not a contrast of democracy or theocracy. It is not a contrast of the way in which people were saved in the Old Testament as opposed to the way in which we are saved in the New Testament. It's a contrast of administrations. And I hope by the end of our sermon this morning that will become clear why that is so important. So this morning we want to ask our second very basic, very simple question. What makes the New Covenant new? What makes the New Covenant in Christ's blood a better administration of the Covenant of Grace than the Mosaic Covenant? What makes the Second Covenant better than the First Covenant that the writer of Hebrew speaks of here? Well, let's be very pointed this morning. What makes the new covenant better than the old covenant? At first glance, this seems to be very, very simple. You look there in verse six, and the writer of Hebrews seems to hold it out for us in all clarity when he says, as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. So it appears that what makes the New Covenant better than this Mosaic Covenant, than this Old Covenant, is these better promises. And then the writer, in order to prove this, he gives that lengthy quotation from Jeremiah 31, which was a prophecy of the New Testament. We discern in those verses at least four promises that Jeremiah speaks about. We read their first down in verse 10, halfway through it. God says, I will put my laws into their hearts and write them on their hearts and on their minds. We have the second promise, that I will be their God, and they shall be my people. The third promise, that they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. And the fourth promise is, for I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. These, to be sure, they're glorious promises. They are sovereign, glorious promises. You see the repeated use here of God saying, I will, I will, I will, I will, I'm going to do this for you. And so at least at a surface glance, it appears that what makes the old covenant better than the new covenant are these better promises. But I do say appear. So I think it's fair to ask this question. Are these promises new to the New Testament? In other words, do the Old Testament saints not have these four promises that are listed here in Jeremiah 31 and quoted here in Hebrews chapter 8? Does new promises mean that there are new things that God's people have? Well, you just take that first promise that God has, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. Is that not a promise to Old Testament Israel? What do you do with God in Deuteronomy 30 verse 6 telling Israel, I will circumcise your heart? What do you do with David in Psalm 119 who says, I have hidden the word of the Lord in my heart that I might not depart from it? Is this a new promise that we under the New Testament have that Old Testament saints don't? If you think of the second promise that's listed here, that I will be their God and they shall be my people. This is repeated in the Old Testament at least 35 different times. Does this new promise mean that Old Testament saints didn't have God as their father and they weren't his people? How could God say in Exodus chapter 6 verse 7, as he's calling the people of Israel out of the house of slavery, I'm going to bring you forth, you will be my people and I will be your God. You look at the third promise there, this better promise, right? That they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest. Does this mean that Old Testament saints didn't know God? That's ridiculous, right? Hosea in Hosea chapter six, verse three, commands the people, let us know and let us press on to know the Lord. Or you think of Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 45 verse 19, I did not speak in secret or in darkness. I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, seek me in vain. I, the Lord, speak the truth. I declare what is right. The people in the Old Testament, they knew who God was. Look at that fourth promise. I will be merciful toward their iniquities and will remember their sins no more. Isn't forgiveness in the Old Testament? You think again of David in Psalm 32.2, that very well-known verse, blessed is the man whom the Lord counts no iniquity against. You think of the psalmist again, David, in Psalm 52, according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Or again, the psalmist in Psalm 103, verse 12, as far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. This leaves us asking, what does the writer mean here? by better promises. These aren't new promises. These are promises that belong to Abraham and to Moses and to David and to faithful Israelites. So what does the writer mean when he says that the new covenant is better than the old covenant because it's enacted on better promises? They're not different promises. Rather, as we've already noted, the difference lies in the administration of these promises. You see, in the Old Testament, as you look at these different promises that God gave to his people under the Old Covenant, these promises, they were obscure. They were difficult to grasp. They were not as clear as they are today. You see Moses coming down the mountain with these two tablets of stone that are external to the people, and they see that law. It's difficult for them to grasp that this law is engraven upon my heart. And when you hear the promises that God is going to be a God to you and a people, and the Lord lives with his people, but in the Old Testament that was primarily signified in God dwelling in the tabernacle in the temple they didn't have as clear of an understanding that God dwells in the hearts of his people by his spirit when it comes to knowing the Lord these These people throughout the Old Testament, they were so dependent upon these prophets, upon Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Elijah, and Elisha, who came at various times and in various ways. You read through the prophets, they're speaking very obscurely at times, and you scratch your head and you think, I don't know what this means. How dependent they were on these prophets and this mediated, if you will, knowledge of God. Well, this hits, doesn't it, at something for those of you who were in Sunday school several weeks ago. He asked a question, do the Old Testament saints understand what regeneration is? As Jesus rebukes Nicodemus. Well, undoubtedly, he ought to have known what regeneration is, that is, that God saves, but we have such a clearer picture of it today. In these Israelites, forgiveness of sins was seen in the sacrifice of these goats and these bulls upon the altar. The administration, it was obscure and it was dark, but they were the same promises. And under the new covenant, these promises are held forth in far more clarity and certainty. We needed to compare it with something in creation. Think of it this way, that the old covenant was like the morning sun that was just cresting the distant horizon. The light was sufficient to show you that there was something rising and there was sunshine coming and I can see things, but you know that right there at the break of dawn, things are still dark and clouded and obscure and how different. When the noonday sun is shining there brilliantly and majestically in the sky and you can see everything perfectly clear. So the writer of Hebrews means here about better promises. Christ has come and these promises are confirmed. They're not shown in types and shadows, but in their reality in the full light of day. And this is why the writer of Hebrews here says that the second covenant surpasses that first covenant. It's far more glorious. It's far more clear. We can understand it and perceive it far better than these Old Testament Israelites could ever hope for. And this is why the writer actually goes to the extent to say that first covenant is at fault. And we see that there in verses six and seven, for if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. But know what the writer says here, the covenant, the first covenant wasn't faulty, meaning wrong. Don't think when you see fault here that the writer is saying it's a wrong covenant, God screwed up. No, fault means it was insufficient. It wasn't the whole picture for us to see. It wasn't wrong, but it was faulty and that it was insufficient to note where the writer points the finger. He says, for he finds fault with them. The fault of the old covenant being obscure and difficult is no fault of God. It is the fault of sinners who failed to understand this. And he says you should have expected the second covenant. because you're at fault. How is it that these Israelites were at fault? I think we can give a two-fold answer to this. What does he mean that he finds fault with them? The first answer to this is that these Jews, they rested in this external administration of the covenant. These false teachers, as they rose up here in Hebrews, were trying to tell this young and fledgling church, go back to Moses, go back to the sacrifices, go back to the temple, go back to the Ten Commandments that are scrawled there in stone upon the two tables that Moses brought down from heaven and from Sinai. They were trying to direct their attention backwards to all these external things, to these sacrifices, to these to this temple, to this tabernacle, and they were thinking, this is where we're saved, this is where you ought to rest, this is what communicates these truths to you. They thought, in a word, that these sacrifices were an end in themselves. And they failed to see that everything was meant to point them to Christ. And that's what we read, didn't we, as we went through that very tongue twister section of the confession of faith this morning. We read that under the old covenant, the covenant of grace was administered by promises and prophecies and sacrifices and circumcision and the paschal lamb and the other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, which were for that time sufficient and efficacious to instruct and build up the elect in the faith in the promised Messiah. These false teachers, and still today, among so many Jews, this veil of blindness rests over their eyes. They failed to see that the point of the temple and the priests and the sacrifices was to point them to Christ. It wasn't about remaining there, it wasn't about offering these sacrifices to a world without end, but it served this point of directing their attention to Christ, and these false teachers have failed to understand that. And they think this is an end in itself. Moses has given you everything that you need. The second way in which these people failed, and so too these false teachers, is they failed to see that these externals in which they were trusting, these priests and these sacrifices in this temple, they were now done away with. This is double fault. Perhaps to help think, think of that individual who all their lives they trust in their health. They trust in the fact that they have the body of a Greek god. They trust in the fact that they can run a mile in under four minutes. They have so much confidence resting in their health. And that terrible day when their health is snatched away from them. Not only have they been resting in something they ought not to be resting in, but now what they were resting in is gone. Or you think of the individual, put all their stock, and all their effort, and all of their life, and their vocation, and their job. And this is who defined them. This is how I want to be known, that I'm the CEO of such and such a company, or I started my own company, or I made billions of dollars, and suddenly a recession hits, and the next thing, this guy is out on the street. Not only should he not have been resting in his job, but his job is now taken away. It's a crisis. That's why so many people who lose their jobs when they've spent their entire lives putting so much stock into it are driven mad and at times even to taking their own lives because it's a crisis and they don't know how to cope with it. The writer of Hebrews is saying you should never have trusted in these sacrifices. And now that they're gone, what do you have to rest in? Where is your hope, and where is your faith, and where is your assurance? So we can hear the debate that's going on here in Hebrews, can't we, with these false teachers. They've risen against these young Christians, and they think they have Moses on their side. And they're saying, go back to Moses. Moses gave you everything you needed. The answer of Hebrews is not, and listen to me carefully, Hebrews does not respond to these false teachers who are saying, go back to Moses, he gave you everything you needed. Hebrews does not say, go to Christ because Christ now gives you everything you needed. But the response that Hebrews is giving to these false teachers, Christ is the only one. whoever gave you anything you needed. Moses never gave you what you needed. The tabernacle never gave you what you needed. These sacrifices never gave you what these need. Your priests never gave you what you needed. Moses is not on your side. Moses is on my side. And it's very similar to the debate that Jesus had with those Pharisees. You remember in John 5, rebukes them and he says these Pharisees you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life but you search them in vain because if you believed Moses you would have believed me because Moses wrote of me The contrast that Hebrews is laying out for us here is not a, here was a way of salvation in the Old Testament, and now here is the way of salvation today. And today's salvation is a little better than what it used to be. But the writer of Hebrews is saying, salvation has always and only been by faith alone in Christ alone. See over arching promise, Moses didn't give you these things. And so there's this twofold fault, if you will. All these sacrifices, and the tabernacle, and later the temple, and the priests, and the ceremonies, and the furnishings, and the utensils, and the feast days that they all held. The writer of Hebrews is saying that this should have led you to Christ, and you weren't led to Christ. And so you're at fault, because you thought that it terminated, and you thought they were an end in themselves. And the second thing that he finds fault with is these things are now done away with. They're now obsolete, they're vanishing, and so where does your faith rest today? So what the writer of Hebrews is doing here is he quotes Jeremiah 31. To bring it home this morning, we would remind ourselves that we so often fall into the exact same sin. This isn't Israel's fault, this is all of our fault. And unlike these Old Testament Israelites, we have a clearer light. And even though today this covenant of grace isn't administered as our confession speaks of through these bowls or goats or tabernacles or priests or sacrifices and blood offerings, covenant of grace is administered today as we read through the preaching of the word, through the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism. That's how God is communicating this covenant to us. I want to be very clear, we need these external things. We need the preaching of the word, we need the sacraments, we need baptism in the Lord's Supper. You think of Romans chapter 10 verse 17, that faith comes by what? By hearing the word of God. We're about to get to that very well-known and very neglected verse in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 25, where we are commanded, do not give up gathering together as some are in the habit of doing. We need the church, we need the preaching of the word, we need these sacraments. Ordinarily, there's no hope without these things. We often fail like these Israelites because we put our stock in the externals themselves. And we think that as long as I go to church on Sunday morning, have the Lord's Supper once a month, and I'm there when the occasional baby gets baptized, I'm good. You walk around and you ask people to share their testimony of faith with you, and they say, I'm a Christian because I go to church. I'm a Christian because I like to give money to people. I'm a Christian because I'm in a Christian rock band. We have all of these externals and we fail to see that these exist. They're meant to point us to Jesus. You're not saved because you hear the preaching of God's Word. Any more than a Jew was saved when he heard the law read from Mount Sinai. And you're not saved because you were baptized any more than a Jew was saved because they went through this ceremonial washing or cleansing in the wash basins. And you're not saved because you ate the Lord's Supper a couple weeks ago any more than an Israelite was saved when he ate the meat of the Passover lamb that was sacrificed. So we so often put our faith in these externals. We think that because we have the form of godliness that we have its power. And Paul rebukes that, and he says, so many people have this form of godliness, but they deny its power. These externals aren't to be rested in. They are necessary and important for our faith, but they are not meant to be rested in as an end in themselves, but they are meant to direct us to Jesus Christ, who alone saves sinners and saves people. This is the testimony of the Bible a thousand times over. And it's a message that we need to hear over and over and over and over again, because so quickly our hearts are taken by these external forms of religion, and we think we're saved because we have done this, or I have done that, or I sit under the preaching of the Word, or so-and-so is my pastor, or I grew up in the church, and therefore I am saved. This is epidemic among Christians, and so we need to hear over and over and over and over again that we are not to trust in these, but in Christ. And if we need to make it very simple, I don't think that any honest Christian, on that day of judgment, when they stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and Christ looks at us, And he says, why should I let you into my heaven? And no honest Christian is going to respond, because I. Because I go to church. Because I had parents who raised me in the faith, because I was an elder, a deacon. Because I read a bunch of theology. Because I asked Jesus into my heart. because I have faith. But I think that the honest answer of every Christian on that day is going to be, because you saved me. And that's what the writer of Hebrews is doing here, dear church. The very center of our religion and the very center of our worship and the very center of the covenant is this promise. You, oh Christ, have saved me. Amen. Please join me in prayer. Oh, our gracious and merciful Lord, We rejoice this morning how kind you have been to us to feed us by your word and to gather us and to minister to us. Lord, we would repent even now of our gross sins that so often we put stock in so many external forms of religion. Our hearts greatly rejoice that we can hear the preaching of the word, that we can watch and observe the administration of baptism, that we can partake of the Lord's Supper. We would confess that too often our faith rests in these things and not in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. We would repent of this sin and pray that you would forgive us. You would cause these things not to be an end in themselves, but to direct us to the God who saves and to the blood of Jesus Christ that has been spilled out for the remission of sins for many. We pray that you would continue to deal with us in grace as we are often weary pilgrim wanderers in this life. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.