Jesus Christ is a superior priest because he administers a better covenant, the new covenant, which is contrasted with the old Mosaic covenant. The old covenant, while holy, could not enable obedience and primarily served to reveal sin and human weakness, thus acting as a tutor to point towards Christ. The new covenant, prophesied in Jeremiah 31, involves God writing His laws on believers' hearts, transforming them from within to willingly obey. While the new covenant is specifically made with Israel, believers in the church share in its eternal truths through Christ's atoning blood, which enables a new creation and anticipates Christ's future reign on earth.
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Turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter eight. Hebrews chapter eight. The author of Hebrews has demonstrated how the Lord Jesus Christ is superior to angels, first of all, because of his deity in chapter one, and secondly, because of his humanity in chapter two. It's demonstrated how he is likewise superior to Moses in the first six verses of chapter three. In chapter five, he gave us the qualifications for priesthood. There are two, that he be human and called. And then in chapter seven, he began his long discussion concerning the superiority of the priesthood of Christ, showing that he is a better priest because he comes from a better line of priests, the Melchizedek in line, that argument based on a quotation from Psalm one hundred and ten.
Do you all have that basic structure of the book so far? kind of an easy thing. In chapter eight, we have the second point that the author of Hebrews is making concerning priesthood. He is a better priest because he administers a better covenant, the new covenant. In verse eleven of chapter seven, he says, if therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, what further need was there than another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek? In verse seven of chapter eight, using that same logic, he says, for if the first covenant had been faultless, there should have no place been sought for a second.
If the priests of the Old Testament were a super-priest, we wouldn't need another one. If the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, were perfect, we wouldn't need another one. But in the Old Testament itself, where the Mosaic covenant and the Aaronic priesthood are stated in the Old Testament itself are hints that they will pass away. The priesthood we have seen, now are the priests forever after the order of Melchizedek, and when you read about Melchizedek and priesthood, kiss Aaronic priesthood goodbye, it's all over. All you need is time to catch up until the Melchizedek and priest appears, and he appears in Jesus Christ.
When you read in the Old Testament, when they were living under the Mosaic law, that there's a new covenant coming, kiss the old and goodbye. All we need is time. And that covenant will, in fact, be old, the one that passes away. The Lord Jesus Christ is a priest who administers a better covenant. His rules of operation, his procedures are better than those of the Old Testament priests. The Old Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant. What was wrong with that covenant? In short, the Apostle Paul says nothing was wrong with the Mosaic Covenant.
The law was good and holy and just. Nothing wrong with the law. It accomplished exactly what God intended the law to accomplish. It demonstrated something. The Apostle Paul gives us the real reason for the law in First Timothy. I'd like you to turn there. First Timothy chapter one and verse eight. We know that the law is good if a man used it lawfully. And he's not writing the Old Testament saints. He's writing in a New Testament era.
And he's saying the law is good if a man used it lawfully. Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly, for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for for fornicators, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine. The law was given to reveal the moral character of God. And we have that very clearly stated in the moral law, when in ten simple statements God reveals a tremendous amount of truth concerning himself.
Are you aware of the fact that a person can be saved by keeping the law? Do you believe that? On two occasions, individuals approach the Lord Jesus Christ and they say to him, What must I do to inherit eternal life? Now, we're not talking about inherit Palestine, as Bob is telling us. This is to inherit eternal life. This is not truth for another dispensation. These are the truths that come right into our lives. What must I do to inherit eternal life? And the Lord Jesus Christ says, What does the law say?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself. You inherit eternal life. And that is true. The Apostle Paul in the opening of Romans says it is a just thing for God to recompense to those who do evil continually, tribulation and judgment, but to those who do good. eternal life. God will save a person. God will give to a person eternal life if he keeps the law perfectly. And the Lord on two occasions tells people that.
He normally, in those two instances, in other instances in his life, goes on to tell a little story. He says, I want to tell a story about the Good Samaritan. He tells that story, and he says, and who is neighbor there? And he is dealing with the part of the law that is summarized by loving your neighbor as yourself. And after he tells that story, the person that thought he had kept the law most assuredly realized that he did not love his neighbor as himself. And none of us do.
You know, we saw the film, The Shepherd, the other night. If I were the father standing on that bank, I would not have hesitated for one moment as to which person got the rope. And I want to tell you, it wouldn't have been Lyle. My son. You know? There's that old joke, a guy sitting in a barber's chair, and he's getting shaved, he's all lathered up, and the guy comes running into the barber shop, he says, Tom, your house is on fire, and he throws over the apron, goes running down the street, and he's running the ladder streaming behind him, and then all of a sudden he says, why am I running?
My name's not Tom. I was painting a house of one of the trustees of a mass, my first or second year at a mass. Lou, if you ever have a problem, need a house painted. I'll do that for trustees. Maybe. And it was a burning necessity back in those days. Continued somewhat. At any rate, I was painting a house just a couple blocks from where I lived. And as I was painting, I heard a siren. ambulance was coming into the area.
And I painted away, got down the house a little bit further, and I recognized that sign was just about where my house was. So I got off and took a paint pot and a brush and looked up the street. And there, right at the intersection where we live, the ambulance and stuff. I thought, I better see what's happening because my kids play around that area. And I went running up the street and there was a bike. that had been hit by a car and the kid was lying in the street. Boy, my heart started pounding, you know. And I got closer and I found out it wasn't my child. How do you think I felt? I don't love my neighbors myself. I want to tell you, I don't.
None of us do. Blood is thicker than water. We care for our own and our own things. to the point that we, this side of heaven, will never think of others totally as we think of ourselves. The struggle we constantly have. And if I cannot love my brother whom I see, how can I love God to fulfill the second half of the Decalogue, the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength? You see, we don't. The point of the law from the very beginning is to shut us up to Christ, to demonstrate the weakness of the flesh.
And we can take the standard of the law even in this dispensation, and we should, and say, do you love the Lord your God with all your heart? And no one does. Do you love your neighbor as yourself? And no one does. And we can use the law lawfully to establish the standard that God demands and how far short we followed meeting that standard. The law was given to us as a tutor, as a schoolmaster, to corral us to Jesus Christ, someone who fulfilled the very righteousness of the law and of God perfectly and could thereby be an adequate sacrifice for our failures to meet God's holy standard.
The law is good and holy and just. The flesh is weak. J. Vernon McGee gives a wonderful illustration of that. One that I found very appealing for one reason or another. He talked about that roast of beef in the Sunday afternoon. Sunday meal is a wonderful time of day, isn't it? You come home from a glorious time with the saints and open the door. And if mom has turned the stove on, there's a wonderful odor that comes. How many of you love that, do you? Anybody do that anymore? That's a passing event, unfortunately.
It's usually McDonald's, isn't it now? But there it is. We still do that. The roast of whatever. And my wife, I'm getting hungry all the time. My wife can make wonderful roast. Knows just how to do it. I'm testimony to that, right? When it's the best, this happens. You'll take that fork to remove the roast out of the pan and you can't do it. It falls apart. The flesh is weak. Nothing wrong with the fork. That's the law. Nothing wrong with that. The flesh can't support it. That's the problem with the law.
Not with the law, it's with me. I can't meet those standards. And the law had no enabling power. The law said, do this and I'll bless you. And I can't do that. And I end up saying as a lawkeeper what the Apostle Paul says, who will deliver me from this wretched dead body, this law that I'm trying to fulfill for righteousness' sake? Now I think Paul is doing that as a baby Christian. but nonetheless true. Who can deliver this? All it does is condemn, condemn, condemn. And all the law ever did, and we'll see this in the sacrificial section, all the law ever did was make me conscious of my failure.
If we happen to slip into law-keeping legalism as Christians, that's all it ever does. I'll set up that standard, some imagined standard, some real standard, and I'll try by my own efforts to screw up enough good living to satisfy it, and I find out I can't do it yet. In me that is in my flesh swells no good thing. All law-keeping does before or after salvation is demonstrate that we fall short, we are weak, we have nothing that we can do in ourselves that pleases God. That was the real purpose of the law.
It did not give enablement. It demonstrated that all have sinned and come short of God's perfect standard. What the law was designed to do. The children of Israel very glimly say, All that you have commanded, we will do. They really didn't have much choice to say anything else, really. Because God's thundering down. He said, I'll do it. but they didn't realize really what they were saying. Oh, you've commanded we will do. Such a statement. None of us can make that statement. We know that now, don't we? The law demonstrates the weakness, the failure, the sinfulness of the flesh.
That's the old covenant. And God picked out a nation and said, here's my law. This is what I expect. This is my standard. And He shows to all the world with that test tube nation that mankind Can't cut it in themselves. We fall short. The new priest comes along with a new covenant. And it is a covenant that deals with the very issue needed. It does not say to a sinful, fallen creature, you do this and I'll bless you. It says rather, I'll change you. I'll make you different. And that's the quote that he quotes out of Jeremiah thirty-one.
We really needn't turn to Jeremiah thirty-one because the quotation in chapter eight is just about all of Jeremiah thirty-one. I said just about all. Verse nine, just for connection's sake, not according to the covenant, chapter eight, verse nine, not according to the covenant 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. 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 in their minds and write them in their hearts.
And I will be to them a God. And they shall be to me a people. And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother saying, Know the Lord. For all shall know the Lord from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities. Will I remember no more? End quotation. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ thought Nicodemus as a teacher in Israel should know when he says, Are you surprised that I say you must be born again? You're a teacher in Israel? You don't know that? You don't know Jeremiah thirty-one? You don't know Ezekiel thirty-seven? That's what I'm talking about.
Then I'm going to change man. I'm going to change his very heart. I'm going to make him delight in the law of God. I'm going to write my law in his heart so he instinctively does what I want him to. That is what I call spiritual maturity, when a person instinctively does what God desires, or it's habit to do God's desires. Bob has a number of times mentioned the the new nature, the new person that we are. All that truth is involved in this Jeremiah thirty-one prophecy.
God makes us anew. All things are passed away. All things have become new. St. Augustine said of the Christian this, Love God and do as you please. Do you like that statement? That's an excellent statement. Because we now love God, we are new creations, we delight to do the will of God. It is not offensive to us. And as we grow in grace, He gives us the enablement to instinctively do spiritual things. When little children are growing up, we give them rules and procedures.
You say thank you, you say please. I was watching... Dale and Chris's boy last night when he wanted a sucker unwrapped. I love this thrilled me. He says, Daddy unwrapped my sucker, please. Isn't that neat? MK kids aren't supposed to be like that. They're supposed to be little brats, Dale. You're doing something wrong. Would you unwrap this, please? Please, man. That's such a shock to hear that. We teach children things like that and it delights our souls when out of their own heart they do what we have instructed them to do. That's what is so thrilling to a parent, to see a child choose to do what was the rule to do before.
And as new creations, as adult sons in the family of God, God has given us the ability and the empowerment to love the same things he loves, not to be fighting him through life, not to be falling on our face, but delighting to do the will of God. And doing the will of God is delightful. We don't have to be afraid of that. He creates in us a new heart. in which He has written the law, His desire, so that we instinctively have a desire to duck wash, to do what He desires we should do.
Now, theologically, this concept of New Covenant presents a very difficult question. As we read this, He made that New Covenant with His people. There is no old covenant God has ever made with us as members of the body of Christ. The law was made with Israel. The new covenant was made for Israel. Not for us, not for the church. I wasn't there to give the old covenant. And when Jeremiah is writing in chapter thirty-one and Ezekiel thirty-seven, he's not talking about Gentiles, he's talking about that same God making a new covenant with those same people, with the people of Israel.
And the author of Hebrews comes along and he talks about the new covenant like it belongs to us. And he's not alone in doing that. For those of you who think Paul wrote this book, mistakenly think that. Paul talks about the new covenant in relationship to the church too. He says in Second Corinthians that we are able ministers of the new covenant. And the Lord Jesus Christ kind of brings the new covenant into contact with us, doesn't he? When? At the institution of the Lord's Supper, he says, this is the blood of the new covenant.
Now, how does this work out? Here's this new covenant clearly in Jeremiah made with Israel. the time of the new covenant when it will come into fulfillment certainly is not now with Israel it is future it corresponds to the millennial age where it will not be necessary as we've read for anybody to say know the Lord for everyone will know the Lord the reason being he's sitting in Jerusalem on the throne of Israel ruling over the entire world There'll be no need for evangelism as we understand it now. There'll be no debate over the deity and humanity of Christ.
He will rule supreme. Jesus shall reign. How do we relate to this new covenant? I think the explanation given years ago by John Nelson Darby is a correct one. that we share the eternal truths of the New Covenant. That which makes the New Covenant possible is the same thing that makes our salvation possible. That is the blood of Jesus Christ. If you can envision two circles like so with a lapping, there is common ground for the Church and for Israel in a small segment of the new covenant truth.
The change that came because of Christ's death that makes it possible for us to be a new creation is the same basis that will in that day make it possible for the believing Jews to be a new creation, have the law written on the fleshy tablets of their hearts. We have a common ground. It doesn't mean that there is total equivalency. What the author of Hebrews omits in the quotation is very important. He does not talk about the territorial expansion under New Covenant times when Israel will inherit all the land. That's not the point he's making. He's not saying that we as believers in the church inherit the land.
He does say that the basis of the New Covenant. And the basis of the change that takes place in our life is the same. And our Lord Jesus Christ is the one who will administer that new covenant in the coming day, whose blood makes it possible for us to be changed totally, born again, when we trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. We make a mistake, however, to lightly gloss over new covenant truth in its literal sense. When we come Sunday by Sunday to remember the Lord and His death, we should remember that He said this is the blood of the new covenant.
We come there primarily to think of His death. That is so clearly seen in the symbolism, the bread and the blood separated from the bread. It symbolizes His death. That's the primary symbolism. The secondary symbolism seen in First Corinthians ten in the Lord's Supper is that we are one body. There is one loaf. We do it together. It is not an individual thing. It is a corporate function as we gather on the first day of the week. We are one in Christ. And I frankly like to think of a broader oneness than just that local church with whom I am meeting on a given Sunday.
There is a oneness that is worldwide. And we should think about that worldwide dimension as we've been thinking about the brothers and sisters across the sea as they meet in the chapel in Nairobi or elsewhere. Do you ever think of that on a Sunday morning? That we do it together and not just here together. But as the sun rises that morning, that Sunday morning, around the world, God's people as one great body are remembering the Lord Jesus Christ. It is death. We remember his death. We are reminded that we are one in the doing of that. It is a corporate function. We're reminded of our spiritual birthday, long before the Lord's Supper was instituted.
The Lord Jesus Christ said in John six, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part with me. He eats my flesh and drinks my blood as eternal life. Months, years, a year and a half or so later, he said the same thing to his beliefs. And we are reminded as we take that bread and cup that there was a day when I first did that, really, when I accepted Jesus Christ. into my life. And I think of my spiritual birthday from time to time when the Lord said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part with me.
And I say, I ate it, I drink it, I believe. I have eternal life. The time when we did it for the first time. The Lord's Supper is repeated week after week after week. It's not like baptism. You only die once. But the Lord's Supper is repeated. We come back because we feed on Jesus Christ. That's the fourth level of symbolism, as it is repeated. And we sing too fast the symbols pass away, but we come back. And I must confess that the coming back, the centrality of the Lord's Supper, is more than just worship.
It is a God-given safeguard for purity of doctrine. One occasion in seminary, one of the fellows was mocking the brethren movement. I was working with him at our part-time employment. He kept talking about these silly brethren and the non-pastored brethren and all this kind of stuff. And finally, I had about enough of that. I said, look, any of the churches in your denomination deny the deity of Christ. He said, yeah, a whole bunch of them. I said, I don't know what assembly it does. I said, any of your churches deny the inspiration of Scripture? Oh, yeah, there are a lot of them that just, I don't know what assembly it does in the whole world. I don't know why. Any of your churches deny the very conversion?
And he was getting a picture by now. Any of them deny the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. And I said, I don't know what assembly it does. I said, we don't have a lot of taught people. You know, they're going to run off the seminary. Only a few of us silly ones do. We don't have a lot of that kind of thing. You know what keeps us pure doctrinally? We are reminded, Sunday by Sunday, of the substitutionary death of the Son of God who was a perfect human being. And that's the heart of the truth. It's the Word of God. And we see it symbolized. And we come back and we feed on that and feed on that and feed on that. And it's a... a conditioned kind of a thing that we instinctively know.
Hey, I don't know where the verse is on that, but I know what you're saying is wrong, brother. Get out of here. You know, that's true. The Word of God safeguards us. I'm going to add one more level that we seldom think about. It's the blood of the new covenant. We as brethren have been strong on the millennium and the rule of Christ, but in another way, we kind of forget about it we get stuck at the rapture and then we think of heaven eternity and we skip a thousand years that we know is there this good earth that's groaning for its redemption one day is going to come to new covenant time and there's not going to be starvation in Africa then there's not going to be unrighteousness in government then And you and I are going to be here with the Lord as He reigns on this earth.
And there's a glorious time coming when there'll be no more droughts. And there'll be no more extremes of temperature. And the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. There's new covenant time coming when the curse is reversed. We've had that in chapter two. When man rules on this earth in the person of Jesus Christ. where this earth is what God finally intended it to be, or intended it to be finally, and it's never been up until that time. And when I take the cup, it is the blood of the new covenant, and it reminds me that my Jesus is going to reign as a perfect human being on this earth. And it will be righteousness and holiness to the Lord, and every person will know the Lord in that day.
And we'll be here with him. Who's going to be ruling over Des Moines? I'll have Dubuque. Johnny will have Mid-South here, right here in this camp. It'll be terrific. I don't know how we'll reign, but we'll reign with him if indeed now we're suffering with him. What a privilege. It's a new covenant. He's a better priest because he administers a better covenant, a covenant that changes my heart. That covenant that will place Israel finally in its proper place. That covenant that will have man, the king of the earth, seen in the Lord Jesus Christ, ruling over all the earth.
And Sunday by Sunday, I love to be reminded of that. Jesus shall reign. Where the sun, doth his excessive journeys run, his kingdom spread from shore to shore till moon shall wax and wane no more. And that's going to be thrilling. People in tongues of every realm. will come and praise Him the new covenant. It's a whole lot better in the covenant that says, you do this, I'll curse you. Because we always do that. And we fall under the curse. He has changed us, made us