Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Text:

People who make and market products know how important it is to make promises people want. Some products promise more energy. Some products promise fast weight loss. Some products promise to help regrow hair. I’d use one of those if I thought they’d actually work. But instead I’m resorting to the extreme come forward technique. If you I’m exaggerating, just wait until next week when I come back with a haircut. Just make sure you bring your sunglasses.

In the midst of commercialism and our society that makes so many promises, God makes promises, too. But God’s promises are better. And they’re sure to come about.

Read Hebrews 8:6-13

In ordinary language, a covenant is simply an agreement. When a man and a woman get married, they make a covenant together. And God has made covenants with man throughout time as well.

An important question for us to answer is why the new covenant is better than the old covenant. We might go about answering this in a variety of ways. The new covenant is better because we couldn’t keep the old covenant, but Christ has completely fulfilled the new covenant for us. The new covenant is better because the old covenant was never meant to be permanent, but the new covenant of salvation by grace through faith in Christ will never pass away. While all these reasons are true, the text makes the point that the new covenant is better than the old because it’s based on better promises (v. 6).

The new covenant is better because it’s based on and leads to the fulfillment of better promises. To truly appreciate the better promises of the new covenant, we need to understand the promises of the old covenant. The old covenant being referred to is the covenant God made with the people of Israel through Moses. The agreement was that as long as Israel obeyed God, God would bless them. And the blessings of the old covenant primarily dealt with this life. They would have peace instead of war. They would have their own land. They would increase in number and enjoy God’s provision. And all of these blessings were temporary.

But the new covenant promises us spiritual and eternal blessings. It promises us joy in Christ. It promises us peace that passes understanding. It promises hope that doesn’t fail. And it promises us salvation in Christ. And the new covenant is better than the old because God not only promises to bless us, but He Himself met the conditions for our blessing. Instead of telling us, “Obey Me, and I will bless you,” God tells us, “My Son has obeyed Me, so I will bless you.” What a promise!

Observe how beautiful this new covenant is described (v. 10). Think of the implications for knowing and loving God’s Word from this verse! Not only are we to have God’s laws on our minds, but in our hearts. We are to know God’s Word, and we are to cherish God’s Word. Anything less than that is missing the point of the new covenant. The new covenant is not a new set of rules that we need to obey in order to be on God’s good side. The new covenant is when we’re called into an intimate relationship with the God of grace. And if we love this God, then we should want to hear from Him, and He primarily speaks to us through His Word, the Bible. So certainly this verse has implications regarding knowing and loving God’s holy Word.

But the idea that it’s really expressing is that when we trust in Christ, God’s law is no longer something external that we must conform to. It’s something dear to us, and something inside us, something that’s part of us, changing us, and now that we have the Holy Spirit in us, we have help and desire to conform to what God would have us be. And it’s even less about doing and more about simply being. God’s laws have already been fulfilled by Christ on our behalf. Now we simply get to be the people of God, a people who know Him, and love Him, and experience His love.

In this we find, perhaps, the greatest blessing of the new covenant. God promises to be our God, and God calls us His people (v. 10b). Of course, God is the God, since there is only one God, but in saying, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” God was telling us about a relationship that we can have with Him. When we trust in Christ, God reveals Himself to us. We get to know God. He’s not just some far off, impersonal Being, He’s real to us. God shows us His love. God speaks with us in Scripture, and He listens to us as we pray, and He answers our prayers. He guides us, leads us, and calls us to His presence. He is our God.

And we are His people. We humble ourselves before Him. We are called by His Name. We walk with Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We tell of God’s greatness and love. We have the great privilege of sharing His grace with others. We are His people.

And being God’s people, we know Him personally (v. 11). It’s not saying that we should not teach each other. The New Testament is clear that we should have pastors and teachers in the church. And the New Testament is clear that one of the ways that we function together as a church is to teach one another as we grow in Christ (Colossians 3:16). Rather, Hebrews 8:11 is contrasting the way we know the Lord today with the way the Jews knew the Lord under the old covenant. You see, it was possible under the old covenant to be called an Israelite, yet not know the true and living God. If you followed all the rules, continually brought your tithes, and teach others to do the same, you would be considered a good and faithful Jew, even if you did all these things out of a dull and empty routine. That’s why it could be said of them, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.” So one true Israelite who had his faith firmly in God might have told a lifeless, faithless Israelite, “Know the Lord.” Don’t make your religion about sacrifices and routines, but about knowing God.

But now, under the new covenant, all who are saved by the blood of Jesus cannot but know the Lord. So it’s unnecessary to tell a brother or sister in Christ, “Know the Lord,” because if they have already trusted in Christ, then they already know the Lord! Yet in this train of thought, we should ask ourselves, “Do I know the Lord?” We don’t want to fall into the same trap that many Israelites did! We must not make Christianity into a list of rules, but about knowing our Savior.

The new covenant is not about what we must to for God, but about what God has done for us (v. 12). When we embrace the new covenant, God has mercy toward us. We’ve all sinned, yet God forgives us of our sin because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross.

All of this is to show how excellent Christ’s ministry to us is (v. 6).