Like Creation, marriage and sex (which go hand in hand Biblically) should have a unified front in the church that Jesus Christ founded on the day of Pentecost. But it is not so, especially in this day and age, when liberalism, individualism, and a diluted, perverted caricature of Biblical love is being paraded throughout the church proper. It would be a simple matter to say, “they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God,” John 12:43. This may be true, but this is not all.
Hebrews 8:13 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.
God addresses a new covenant through the prophet Jeremiah, indicating that the temporal and conditional covenant made at Sinai was—or would be—no longer valid. Otherwise, as stated in Hebrews 8:7, a second covenant would not have been sought.
Hebrews 8:10 “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 in their mind and write them in their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
This verse is reminiscent of the prophecy of Joel, which reads at length: “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days,” Joel 2:28, 29 NIV.
Hebrews 8:8b “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—[9] not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.
This portion of Hebrews chapter 8, verses 8 through 12, is cited from Jeremiah 31:31-34. The writer uses this prophetic utterance to demonstrate that the seemingly novel thing he is addressing—finding fault with the old covenant because of the people—is not in fact anything new at all.
Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. [8a] Because finding fault with them, He says:
There is a saying that a chain is only as good as its weakest link. God is perfect, and the Law is holy and good. But Paul observed that the Law, which was to bring life, brought death instead, because the Law was contrary to its recipients. While the Law was holy and good, mankind is unholy and evil.
Hebrews 8:6 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.
Turning from Hebrews, we will find the apostle Paul’s testimony about the glory of the old and the new covenant in the third chapter of 2 Corinthians. Pausing on his explanation to the church at Corinth will be edifying for the verse we’re presently on, so we will go at length into his discussion.
With my eldest daughter’s permission, I wanted to share this excellent poem she wrote two days ago for a school English essay. It is untitled, and I present it the way it was written, with minor grammatical correction. I enjoyed this very much, and I hope you do as well. God bless!
Hebrews 8:4 For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law: [5] who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
The author makes the differentiation that if Christ were on earth He would not be part of the priesthood. Why? The priests who served the tabernacle erected by Moses served under the Law, and also served the shadow of the heavenly things they were patterned after, Exodus 25:40.
Hebrews 8:3 For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this One also have something to offer.
Leviticus chapter 16 describes the high priest’s sacrifice, or atonement, for his own sin. “Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house,” Leviticus 16:6. Aaron attained to the role of high priest by divine appointment; that cannot be overstated. What the Aaronic priesthood did in the interim between the genesis of the tabernacle and the fulfillment of the Law by Christ was ordained by God.
Hebrews 8:1 Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: we have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, [2] a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.
We have now exited the parenthetical portion of the epistle. The writer, in an effort to extrapolate about the superiority of Jesus in regards to His High Priesthood and relation to Melchizedek, went down a bypath in chapter 5. The pause in his advance happens in Hebrews 5:11 and 12 when he relates that while he has much to say about the topic, the hearers have grown dull, and need milk rather than solid food.
Like reproduction, which passes along the choicest genes to the worthy heirs of tomorrow, death cycles the old into the new, making things incrementally better, step by minute step. Death is a blessing (if such an absurdity exists in a materialistic, relativistic worldview) endowing future generations a greater aptitude for survival. That is, until death takes them as well, and the cycle repeats.
It is debatable if the battle for the book of Genesis is considered a molehill. But for the interest of this series, I constitute it as such, since Christendom should be standing harmoniously on the truth of God’s word about how our universe, planet, and conscious life came into being. Sadly, most of the church, fearing the “truth” as it is found in Darwinian Evolution, has capitulated, compromised, and abandoned Genesis as a fairy tale.
Hebrews 7:28 For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever.
This is the author’s summarized thoughts as he finishes his parenthetical pause, beginning around Hebrews 5:11 and culminating in this verse. The diversionary teaching came on account of the readership’s poor understanding, and how, though they were Christians for some time they needed to rehash the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Hebrews 7:27 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 for all when He offered up Himself.
Continuing the contrast between the Aaronic priesthood and Jesus Christ, the author makes another telling point. Our Lord, unlike the priests that worked under the Mosaic Law, does not need perpetual sacrifice. The priests under Aaron never ceased their work; they did not sit but kept the fire kindled day and night. And every officiating priest still needed sacrifices offered on his own behalf, as well as Israel’s commonwealth.
