What A Deal! Series

My wife Jeanie is a shopper par excellence! She loves to shop. But what she loves to shop for is the great deal—she loves finding and getting something of great value for pennies on the dollar. So she’s an expert garage saler. She’s always checking out the sale racks at the back of stores. She shows up after Christmas, and at the end of various seasons, looking for the close-outs and clearances as stores empty their shelves of things that are out of season, or at the end of their inventories, to find a great deal.

So, she’ll come home really excited from a garage sale when she finds a pot that normally costs $50 or $60 for two or three dollars, when she finds men’s shirts that normally run $50 to $75 after Christmas, or after the season, for $2 and $3 apiece, when she gets rolls of Christmas wrapping paper for about a tenth of what they normally sell for. About a year ago at this time, with the help of her sister, she found a recliner chair that would help me stand up after heel and knee surgery in a neighboring town that should have cost us $600 to $800. It was offered to us for something like $50, but I think because of the Pandemic, the person selling it to us didn’t want to chance meeting us at the door, and left it outside for free, if we would just come and pick it up.

So she’s a great shopper. She knows how and where to find great deals. And she’s discerning—she knows a great deal when she finds one.

And it’s that same kind of discernment that we need to apply when it comes to our relationship with God. When God offers a good deal, even a great deal, we need to be discerning. We need to be able to tell when it’s a great deal, and we need to take it when it’s offered.

And God has offered a great deal, a far better deal than He’s ever offered before. And the Book of Hebrews tells us it’s the New Covenant. It’s just the kind of deal you and I need—it’s the best and now the only deal that God offers. It’s free, and it provides just what we need—a changed heart, a personal relationship with God, God’s mercy and the forgiveness of sins. And it’s offered by His Son, Jesus Christ, who has paid the price for us—it comes free of charge with repentant faith. It’s a deal none of us want to miss, and it’s a deal we certainly don’t want to abandon. Because it’s the only deal, or covenant with God that is now available.

And that’s the gist of the argument as we come to Hebrews 8. If you’ve been with us, you know that the writer to the Hebrews is concerned that Jewish Christians in the first century we’re contemplating abandoning Christ to return to Judaism because of the great persecution that they had endured from their fellow Jews for many years. He has shown how Jesus, and the Christian faith is superior to Judaism in every way—how Jesus is superior to the angels through whom the Old Testament Law was revealed, how Jesus was superior to Moses, the Mediator of the Old Covenant, how Jesus, as our Great high Priest forever is superior to the Old Covenant Levitical Priesthood, and now He moves to show us how the Covenant which Jesus Mediates, the New Covenant is far greater than the Old Covenant that these Jewish believers were thinking about returning to. More than that, He’s going to tell them that it’s the only covenant that God is offering--that the Old Covenant has now become obsolete and was coming close to, and now, historically, has even passed away.

And having concluded that Jesus is the great high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek in chapter 7, He now summarizes His argument with this though in verses 1-6: Recognize that Jesus, the better priest, offers the better covenant from the better place—heaven. Recognize that Jesus, the better priest, offer the better covenant from the better place—namely heaven.

Hebrews 8:1: “Now the main point in what has been said is this: We have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of Majesty in the heavens.” Such a high priest? What kind of high priest? He’s clearly referring back to what He has just said about Jesus in Hebrews 7:26: This Jesus, this high priest, is holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. He has permanently replaced the sinful multiple mortal high priests who had to give multiple sacrifices in the Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple which could never take away sins. But He, by one sacrifice, as the Son of God, has paid for our sins once for all, and by this sacrifice, he is going to say, He has inaugurated a New Covenant, a better covenant than the Old Covenant which had been offered through Moses.