3/13/20
Tom Lowe
Title: The Inadequacy of the Old Covenant (Heb. 8:7-9)
Text: Hebrews 8:7-9 (NIV)
7For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. 9It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestor when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them,
Introduction:
Although the first-century Jews felt such a fascination with the Mosaic covenant, they didn't understand the covenant to be the proclamation of the gospel that it was intended to be (4:1-2). The author of Hebrews has already pointed out that the wilderness generation of Israel was not to be emulated (chapters 3-4). After all, that generation perished and failed to obtain God's salvation. They had the rituals the Jews were still so fond of, but they didn't have the faith necessary to finish what they had begun (3:16-19).
As the author moves to the topic of the covenant cherished by the first-century Jews, he uses an argument like one he had used before. They wanted to believe that the covenant between God and Moses was a permanent one, and they were continuing to try to live according to those rules and regulations. But if that were so, asked the author of Hebrews, why did God later promise a new and better covenant?
What can unify us in hope if not the new covenant {1] of God? Look at what it promises: it promises that God will take the initiative. Notice the repeated emphasis on the personal initiative of God: the personal promise of God: I will establish a new covenant I will put my laws into their mind, and write them on their hearts, I will be their God, I will be merciful, I will remember their sins no more. This is a God who promises to block out our sins from His memory and give us a new beginning. Not that he looked lightly upon sin. A church that has no serious view of sin has no serious sense of mission. The hope is that God looks compassionately on the simple plight of His people.
The old covenant was based upon the obedience of man to the law of God. The new is based on the realization that never has there been a man who could perfectly obey the law of God. So, the new covenant was based upon the grace of God and upon the perfect sacrifice of Christ, who covers man's transgressions forever and draws him back to receive the forgiveness of God and restores his hope that one day, he shall awake in the likeness of his God, in whose image he was created. That image has been fatally flawed by himself and by his society, and only God can restore it.
Commentary
7For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant {2], no place would have been sought for another.
Verses 7-13 are really the explanation of the better promises (8:6) on which the new covenant is enacted. The new covenant has Christ as its mediator, just as Moses was the mediator of the old covenant. The writer sees this new covenant as “more excellent than the old because it is underwritten or legally secured by “better promises” (8:6). This security is Christ Himself for, in 7:22, Jesus is called the “guarantor” of a better covenant.
The emphasis in the new covenant is on God’s “I will.” The nation of Israel at Sinai said, “All the words which the Lord hath said will we do” (Ex. 24:3). But they did not obey God’s words. It is one thing to say, “we will” and quite another thing to do it. But the new covenant does not depend on man's faithfulness to God but on God’s faithful promise to man. The writer of Hebrews affirms God’s “I will” on behalf of those who trust Jesus Christ (Hebrews 8:10). In fact, God’s “I will” is stated three times in that one verse and six times in Hebrews 8:8-12.
“For {3] if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant.“ -The first covenant was not adequate, which created a necessity for a better covenant. Somebody says, “Then the old covenant was wrong.” But that is the wrong assumption because the Old Covenant did not teach a different, inferior means of salvation and that is evident from various considerations:
1) The author has said that it was the gospel that was preached to Israel in the wilderness (4:2). Their failure to obtain the rest of God was not due to any defect in the message, but rather to their failure to believe. They lacked the required faith. The same is true of those under the new covenant.
2) The assumption that modern believers have an easier pathway to God is not supported by Hebrews or anywhere in scripture. Christians have the same responsibility as God's people in the Old Testament. The gospel has been proclaimed, and they are under the obligation to believe it and obey it. The author of Hebrews asked believers in Christ to do what believers had always done to be saved. If they continue in their faith, they will reach God's heavenly country; if not, they could fail to obtain eternal life. Hebrews never contrasts Old Testament believers with New Testament Christians. Rather, it always identifies the spiritual situations of God's people from the beginning of history to its end.
According to the author of Hebrews, the first covenant was the system of ceremonies that included animal sacrifices, the priesthood, and the temple. That first covenant could never truly take away sins (10:4) but was only a shadow (10:1) of good things to come -the Salvation available through Jesus Christ, the once-for-all sacrifice for sins.
Furthermore, the old covenant came up short because it could not provide a priest who would make ultimate and full atonement for the sins of God's people. The old covenant’s fault and failure to provide a final sacrifice for sin should have been obvious. After all, under the old covenant there remained an unrelenting need for constant sacrifices. This endless repetition of sacrifices demonstrated the covenant’s incompleteness and its inability to deal with sin once for all time. This makes Christ’s statement on the cross all the more breathtaking. When he cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He was announcing that the wrath of God toward the sin of His people was finally paid in full. Never again would there be a need for animal sacrifice, for Jesus paid it all.
The first covenant had been broken, and the people had attempted to replace a genuine relationship with God with adherence to a system of rites and ceremonies. The same problem was taking place among the first-century Christians -and continues with certain believers today. The author of Hebrews knew it wasn't enough to be an Israelite, just as it wasn't enough to create a ceremonial practice of Christianity. What is necessary for Salvation is a true, living, perseverance in faith in Christ, the eternal Priest who offers an infinite sacrifice and is able to make perfect those who draw near to God through Him.
Furthermore, even the high priest of the old covenant had to make unrelenting sacrifices for his own sins before he could make a sacrifice for the sin of his countrymen. In the light of the new covenant, that’s no gospel. But the author of Hebrews is now declaring that the final priest has come, not to atone for his own sins, but to save His people. Indeed, a better priest with a better ministry has come to mediate a better covenant enacted on better promises. Jesus’ ministry of inaugurating the new covenant is “superior” precisely because of these “better promises.” In the new covenant, God will write His law on the hearts of His people rather than on tablets of stone. As a result, all covenant members will know the Lord, and sins will be dealt with completely.
The most glorious day for Israel is yet ahead. They will see Jesus when He comes, they will see the scars in His hands and in His feet, they will recognize Him and receive Him, and He will reign over the House of Israel for one thousand glorious years right here upon this earth during the Millennium (Isaiah 11).
8But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.
When Abraham left the Ur of the Chaldees at God's command, God bound His people to Him in a great covenant. He demonstrated His keeping power when He intervened in Egypt to break the power of the Pharaoh, to liberate His people from bondage, and to bring them out of a land flowing with milk and honey. God lead Israel out of Egypt the way a father would take a child by the hand and lead him. God gave Israel His holy Law for their own good, to separate them from the other nations and to protect them from the sinful practices of the heathen. But the nation failed; “they continued not in my covenant” (Hebrews 8:9). God’s response to Israel’s disobedience was to discipline them repeatedly and finally to send them into captivity. Then came the prosperous days of the kingdom and, later, the corruption of idolatry, the perversion of justice, and the mockery of empty worship. The people went after strange gods. Divine judgment fell, the old covenant was broken, and captivity came.
The prophets of the Old Testament recognized that a wholesome religious order must provide three things: a moral standard to challenge the will, a divine fellowship to satisfy the spirit, and an inward cleansing to soothe the conscience. The old covenant partially met these needs. It met the need for a moral standard by providing the law. It met the need for fellowship with God by providing the priesthood, which would speak to God for man. It met the need for cleansing of the conscience by the annual Day of Atonement.
“But God found fault with the people,” not with it (the covenant). The problem never was with God's covenant. There is nothing wrong with God's law, but there is a whole lot wrong with you and me. You and I are not able to keep the law; we are not able to make up here its requirements.
“Behold, the days coming, sayeth the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the House of Judah.” The new covenant promise is laid out in Jeremiah 31:31-34. The author of Hebrews leads his readers to this text in verses 8-12. Jeremiah wrote to show that the Lord had long ago foretold the day when this final priest would come. The covenant community should have inferred from the sacrifices of old that a final sacrifice and a final priest who would not have to sacrifice repeatedly were coming. The terms of this new and better covenant would bring a peace infinitely greater than what the old covenant could produce. The extraordinary promise of the new covenant was not that God would dismiss the old covenant but that He would be merciful toward our iniquities and remember our sins no more
Our greatest problem is sin, for it severs us from the presence of God. Our sin and His Holiness are incompatible, yet God promised to reconcile sinful people to Himself through the mediator who would inaugurate the new covenant. He chose to do this through his son Jesus Christ, the mediator who established the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20). In him, the extraordinary promises and the better covenant were fulfilled. The Lord is merciful to His people because Christ suffered and died in their place, and they are now hidden in Him forever by virtue of their faith and repentance. In Jesus, all the new covenant promises belong to God's people.
9It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestor when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them,
The problem was that these did not work, for man continued to sin, the law failed to keep him from sinning. So also did the priesthood and the Day of Atonement. They were shadows without substance. Only the substantial sin-breaker, Christ Himself, could cancel the power of sin and cleanse the conscience forever. So, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah promising a new covenant and assuring him that God would do a better thing for man. Jeremiah showed the people that ancestral religion was not enough, Sinai was not enough, animal sacrifices were not enough. In the grace of God, a new covenant was provided. Some passages which look forward to a new covenant to supersede the old are not only Jeremiah 31:31-34, but also Ezekiel 36:25-26 and Isaiah 59:21.
The new covenant would be a permanent covenant. Notice the personal quality of this covenant presented in the first-person singular pronoun: God said, “I will establish a new covenant .” “I will put my laws into their minds.” “I will be their God.” “I will be merciful toward their equities.” “I will remember their sin no more.” The three outstanding features which mark this new covenant are inwardness, immediacy, and the initiative of God.
The new covenant is the whole of God's grace; no sinner can become a part of this new covenant without faith in Jesus Christ. Grace and faith go together just as the Law and works go together (Rom. 11:6). The Law says, “The man that doeth them [the things are written in the Law] shall live in them (Gal. 3:12). But grace says, “The work is done believe and live!”
Israel failed to fulfill the conditions upon which God made His promises to them. They despise and broke the terms of the covenant; they broke their pledge to God. They said, “All that the Lord has said, we will do” (Ex. 19:5-8; Deut. 5:27). They promised, but they did not keep their promise. Therefore, God punished them and allowed them to suffer in bondage. They reaped what they sowed. They underwent severe persecution from the heathen. The people broke the first covenant. It did not enable them to perform what they demanded.
Special Notes
[1} A “covenant” is a pact between persons, like the covenant between David and Jonathan. Genesis 6:18 and 17:2 are examples of a covenant between God and men.
[2} The “first covenant” was external. It set before the people of Israel the standard God required, but it did not supply the power to enable them to live up to that standard.
The “first covenant” dealt with men in the flesh, and therefore because of the weakness of the flesh the law could not accomplish what God demanded (Rom. 8:3).
[3} ”For” denotes that Paul here confirms what he had confirmed in the two previous verses.
