Remember the homework assignment I gave you? Matt already confirmed he did. Do any of the rest of you remember? Shame on you. No, I'm only joking. I ask you to read carefully both chapter seven and eight. They're important chapters and contain a wealth of riches, as it relates to the law, the Mosaic Code, and the new covenant, which Christ announced that evening before he died to his disciples at the, what we commonly call the Last Supper, when he instituted that new covenant. And so that's what these chapters are about. We're not gonna focus on chapter seven much. The reason I wanted you to read it carefully is because it has so much to do by way of introduction to chapter eight. Chapter eight begins with these words. Now this is the main point of the things we are saying. This is the main point. And in the Greek, that's accurate interpretation. He says, this is the main point, colon, my version has a colon, appropriately so. And then these words, we have such, such a high priest that chapter seven outlines. the Melchizedekian priest, high priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. You will remember chapter one of the book of Hebrews. I'll read it again. The first four verses. If you want to read, go there. God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, now get this, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he had by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. That theme has carried through the book of Hebrews, including chapter eight, as we begin there, he almost quotes it again, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. Let's continue reading eight. Verse two, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord erected and not man. In reference to the tabernacle that was mandated for the children of Israel in the desert, But this is the true tabernacle in heaven for every, verse three, for every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this one also have something to offer. For if he were on earth, he would not be a priest. Let me read that again. That's been a theme too, that he did not come through the Levitical priesthood, through the priesthood of the law as set forth in the Old Testament. If he were on earth, verse four, he would not be a priest. He didn't qualify. Since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law, who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things. copy, and shadow. If you want to highlight words, highlight those. Of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle, that is the holy place, in the desert, for he said, see that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. copy, shadow, pattern. Three words that appear in a single verse, which instructs us about what the law was. But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry in as much as he is also mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Get it? The conclusion, the obvious conclusion is that the first covenant had fault. The first covenant, the law covenant, the one with Moses given to the children of Israel in the desert had faults. because finding fault with them, he says, behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord, that 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, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws, which laws? My laws, in their mind and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, he just described you. What a privilege, eh? It's wonderful. And he says, I will be their God and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother saying, know the Lord, for we all shall know me. How? By the Holy Spirit of God. That's something different from the Old Testament and the old law, the Mosaic law. The Holy Spirit did not enable them to follow it. "'Know the Lord, for all shall know me "'from the least of them to the greatest of them. "'For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness "'and their sins and their lawless deeds. "'I will remember no more, thanks be unto God.'" What a prayer, what a wonderful thing to say. And then this, in that he says, a new covenant, notice in my text at least, The he is capitalized, God. In that God says a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. That pretty much states the purpose and the scope of the book of Hebrews to show that Christ is greater than the old covenant and the new covenant with Christ as the mediator of that is far superior to the old and that the old is obsolete and we are under a new covenant. And that's what this text says. Remember our standard? What does the text say? The text says, 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. Now I need to say a few things. He's talking about covenants. What was the first covenant in the context of this? It is obvious, both from the book of Corinthians, both from Romans, and from Galatians, and also from the entire book of Hebrews, that the first covenant that he's speaking of is the Mosaic covenant, including the law. The law in chapter three of 2 Corinthians, we find that the first covenant was that one written in stone. Dare I ask again, what covenant was written in stone? The Mosaic covenant. And those tablets were put where? in that most holy place, in that box, covered over by gold top, a gold box, and angels. And they were put in there. He's talking about that which was the original covenant, what he calls the first covenant. And he's saying that it has fault. What's the fault? Does God's stuff have faults? In this instance, yes. One designed exactly by him. He did not, for whatever reason, heavenly reason or what, He did not enable, He gave them no enablement to keep those original laws, and of course, they didn't. There were times of, if you will, revival in Israel and so forth, but it was only just a short time before they fall back into sin. There's something missing here. It is the Holy Spirit of God, put bluntly. The first covenant was weak and faulty in that it did not enable Israel or anyone else to keep it. It was a ministry of death and condemnation, as the Apostle Paul affirms, several places. That does not mean I need to spend a little time. Am I dissing the law? No, the Apostle Paul would say, the law is holy and righteous. designed by God, and then I would add the words, to accomplish what he exactly wanted to, to show their inability to keep the law. They could not rise to the righteousness of God. They can't. We can't either. then how will we obtain the righteousness that is needed? Who gets into heaven save the righteous? In my earthly body, I am not righteous. I sin. I continue to sin, I am not gonna list them here for you. Just not, just not. Gonna own up to them in your presence. I tell the Lord about my sins. Then how in the world do I get into heaven? The whole story of the Bible is a vicarious and a faith, a righteousness that has been imputed to me by faith. I approach the throne of God through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not my own. That's the gospel. That's the new covenant. We now have been empowered to be able to quote Keep the law, but I do not mean the Mosaic law. Just as the Apostle Paul says, I'm not under law, but it is not as though I'm not under any law. I'm under the law of Christ. That's different from the Mosaic code. Righteousness comes by faith in Jesus Christ. It is imputed. It is vicarious. You don't have any. You need some to enter into the presence of God, and it comes one way, and one way only, through faith in Jesus Christ. And the moment, the day, The very moment you confess your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ who hung on that cross for you, you are awarded the righteousness of Christ. Perfection. And so you know the old thing about when you come into the presence of heaven and you come to the entrance of heaven, whatever that is. I'm just communicating old things that I've heard over the years of my Christian life. And Saint Peter meets you at the gate, right? Saint Peter. I guess he guards the gate. And he asks, why should I let you into this heaven? What will be your answer? Here's what I tell him. Oh, it's not about me, it's about him. And I point to Jesus Christ. And I say, because I have his righteousness. And Peter will say, come on in. We do not rise to heaven on the basis of any kind of personal righteousness, but on a vicarious and an imputed righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. He gives that righteousness to all who believe. Want to go to heaven today? Or want to assure that you're going to go to heaven today? trust in Jesus Christ, who came for that very purpose, to call you to repentance and faith in him. He's all over the pages of this Bible. The Old Testament projected it to the new. And so we can learn some stuff by reading the old. I have been, when I first came to what I believe is the proper understanding of these verses, I went back and re-read the Old Testament at least 10 times to see what I had missed. This was about 19, 2002, I think, or somewhere along there. when in reading the book of Hebrews and studying, I was convicted that my theological view had some errors. And so I reread the Old Testament with an eye on Christ. What did this mean, I said, of the book of Leviticus, the book of Exodus, when it relates to Jesus Christ? That's exactly what the book of Hebrews is about. And these Jewish people who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ are about to abandon this new faith because of affliction and persecution. And this writer is saying, don't do it. Don't do it. You already have received the perfection that comes through Christ. Why would you go back to an old, obsolete system whose purpose was only to show their sinful nature and the lack of any way to be saved outside of looking to God. It turned their attention to God. Abraham saw it and he believed God. and it was counted to him, imputed, counted to him for righteousness. Faithful Abraham, hallelujah. And you are the children of Abraham if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Did you know that today? We both have the same righteousness. It is an imputed righteousness that comes from Christ in his righteousness because we failed on every count. I've confessed in this class, I've confessed. I've failed in all of the 10 commandments. We can start them and list one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And as a human being, I've failed in every one. There is no way I can claim not even a smidgen of righteousness. It said, thou shall not murder, but Jesus came along and said, if you've been angry with your brother without a cause, you're guilty of murder. Wow. I don't have any hope left, eh? The law cannot give me righteousness. And what the law was meant to do was to force Abraham to, well, not Abraham, but to force the Israelites to look out from themselves. And the law being the power of looking out to another way of righteousness. Righteousness has always been by faith. Abraham had faith and it was counted to him for righteousness. That was before the law. And it hasn't changed. If anyone is in heaven, it is because they had faith and that they were awarded, whether they knew it or not at the time, the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to their account, Romans 4 and 5. Beautiful things, isn't it? What is this beautiful thing we have believed? I don't know about you, but I'm excited about that. Makes my heart race just a little bit. I wrote to an atheist the other day. I debate atheists all the time on Quora. And I told him, I said, well, I have an account of my own conversion to Christ. if you would be interested in hearing it." And he said, of course I would be interested in hearing it. I said, well, I have the short version, that's about 15 minutes verbally, then I have a little longer version, which is about 30 minutes, and then I have a long version that could go on for a long time. He said, that's all right, just start with your, he said that was all right, I did that, but just start when I enlisted in the military. So I did that and I wrote page after page about how the Lord had worked in my life and how I had grown up essentially, if not a formal atheist, certainly a non-believer. I prayed at my parents' gravesite yesterday. as we laid flowers there. Both perished and are in hell today. Not fun, eh? But God's justice is perfect and holy. And how could a person coming out of that like me Not believing in God, my father was an absolute avid atheist that didn't know what he was talking about. But he didn't believe in any God at all. My mother, who had a sort of a sentimentalistic thing, but nothing religious and had no idea of what Jesus Christ was. I never attended a church service. I grew up in essentially an atheist and not a very good one. Then what happened? I met a man. God took me around the world. I'll shorten the story for you all. And took me to a place in Big Spring, Texas. I hope I got time to relate this, because it relates to this. Faith. I was not a person of faith. I reported to my new station. My boss, a sergeant, master sergeant with stripes all up and down his neck, said, I don't want to fool with this, so I'll turn you over to this man. and he introduced me to Airman Jack Burkholder. Jack was a very friendly person and said he would like to have us over for supper. I said no, I declined. I thought it inappropriate for a person just meeting me to invite me to dinner, but nonetheless, I learned later that Jack had been recently converted to Jesus Christ. Long story short, he found his way from his church on visitation night to my house, or apartment, I should say. And he began to preach the gospel to me, and I hated every minute of it. And I told him so, and I used foul language. I used every kind of vulgar language you could think of trying to, what, embarrass him out the door. but they would read from the scriptures about all of sin and come short of the glory of God. There's an unrighteous, no, not one. And I said, poof, get away from me with that stupid stuff. And so they kept this up, he and a deacon friend of his, who fell off after a while, the deacon apparently, after I learned it later, said, we got other work to do, let this guy go. But Jack would not let me go. He kept after me. He was committed to winning me to Christ. And I was committed to scaring him away. I didn't believe in any Christ, this person that the Bible speaks so much of. And so he kept that up for I would say six months, seven months, every week, hammering me with the gospel, reading from the book of Romans primarily, the Roman Road. And then finally I said, look, I've had enough. I want you guys to stop. Stop coming here. Stop telling me all this stuff. Well, they were reluctant to do so, but they honored my request and they stopped coming. I said in my mind, well, I bested them, eh? That's right, I sent them packing. They didn't come back. One month passed, two months passed, three months passed, four months passed, five months passed, and I like to say, I died. I'm a halfway intelligent person, and all of those quotes from the book of Romans were spinning in my head. I could quote them better than they quoted them. What I didn't realize is I kicked them out the door, but I didn't kick out the Word of God. They had been faithful in sharing the Word of God, and the Word of God had its work. It killed me, and I died, spiritually speaking. I fell into what Bev would call clinical depression. She worried about me committing suicide. I'm not sure I was too arrogant to do that, I think. But one day when she was out to get groceries, the pressure became too much. I couldn't go any further. It had to stop. So I threw myself on the floor of my bedroom And I cried out in the words that I like to say to the God I did not know. The one that told me about, who would forgive me of my sins if I would confess them and repent. And I did. It was his word, not mine. I got up from the floor after about 30 minutes, sat down in the living room, sweating. I was sweating. And I had the most peaceful feeling I'd ever had in the world. I had believed on this person. a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. I didn't keep any laws. I had failed all of them. But righteousness was that day imputed to me. When I arrive at heaven's door, which is probably sooner than I want, coming up fairly soon, I will claim the blood of Jesus Christ and his righteousness. Because of these things, because I believe in a better covenant, the one that gives me the power through faith to follow my Lord Jesus Christ and to obey him. I'm not perfect in that, but I am always working in that. And he has, in the years that have passed since then, blessed me to an extent of the ability to keep his laws that he has written on our hearts. He is the mediator of a better covenant than the old one. I hope that you're hearing these things, not just my testimony, but I recount it from time to time because it, if you will, illustrates the very gracious work of Christ. You don't have to be a perfect person. I was none of that. You don't have to be a righteous person. I was none of that. All you have to do is believe that Jesus Christ hung on that cross that day and died for you. I want you each to consider those things today. I don't know what the state of your soul is, I really don't. I do know as a pastor that I have seen people who sat in our congregation for years who later were to be gloriously saved. It may be the same here, I don't know. But I point you to this great high priest, according to the line of Melchizedek, that is, not the Mosaic code, but to the promises made by Christ in the new covenant. Let's ask the Lord's blessing on the things that we've said. Thank you, dear Lord, for the book of Hebrews that we're studying through, and for these wonderful things that you have set forth here. Lord, help us to see them, to understand them, and then to fully believe them. Help each and every soul in this room. If there be any who have not yet cried out to you for mercy, let it be now. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Thank you.