Let me start off today with an oversimplified, but hopefully helpful explanation… 

In your Bibles, you have an Old Testament and a New Testament.  

• The Old Testament, which is the collection of ancient scriptures penned before Christ, contains the Old Covenant… that is, the original system, established by God, of how humans could relate to God.  It details all of the rites, rituals, laws, systems of worship, signs, and agreements that made up this covenantal relationship between God and His people.  

• The New Testament contains the New Covenant, which is the new way that humans can relate to God through Jesus Christ.   

The grand message of Hebrews is that the New Covenant through Jesus is far superior to the entire Old Covenant system, and totally sufficient to save us from our sins and bring us into an eternal relationship with God in ways that the Old Covenant never could.   

The reason that was relevant for the original recipients of this letter is because the audience, as we’ve mentioned many times but always bears repeating, were Jewish Christians in the first century who were being pressured to abandon the gospel of Christ and revert back into their old Jewish practices.  The author needed them to know that the old system wasn’t designed to save; it was designed to foreshadow.  Therefore they should cling to Jesus, not to the Old System.  

• Imagine you had the opportunity to build your dream home.  You spend weeks pouring over blueprints with an expert architect, and for months while its being built you can’t stop looking at the artist renderings… Then one day, it’s done.  But instead of moving in, you just prefer to keep sitting in your old apartment staring at the blueprints. 

• That's kind of what it would be like to linger in Old Covenant practices now that Jesus is here. 

All of the offerings and animal sacrifices and rules and ceremonies were designed to be a shadow of a coming reality, which is Jesus Christ and the New Covenant.  

The Old Covenant was a shadow; Jesus is the substance. 

Now… 

You and I may not be tempted to revert back to Judaism… but our minds are under a continual onslaught from the culture around us to take our eyes off of Jesus and place our trust in temporal, earthly things, or in systems of self-improvement, or even in religious activity to save us.  

Those things won’t last, and they certainly can’t save.  But Jesus does.  

• As we saw last week, Jesus is “able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him”.  

And so, continuing on that theme, the author takes all of chapter 8 to unpack the ways Jesus’ priesthood and the New Covenant are the eternal realities of which the earthly priesthood and the Old Covenant were simply blueprints and shadows.       

Hebrews 8:1–13 (ESV): 8 Now the point in what we are saying is this: 

Wow, what a statement. He’s really pitching us an easy one now… Typically you and I are left to use the best of our interpretive abilities to discern what the main point of a text is.  If you were here last week when we treaded through 28 verses about the mysterious priest/king Melchizedek from the Old Testament, you may have left a little dazed wondering ‘what was the point of that’?   Well, the author is plainly going to tell us…  

Think of it like this: Chapter 7 was like a symphony building in intensity… chapter 8 is the crescendo.  This is the manifesto.  This is the big idea, as they say.  

Here it is: 

we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 2 a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. 

Let’s break this down. 

We have such a high priest. 

What kind of High Priest is that?  The kind that matches the description of Melchizedek back in chapter 7.  The kind that’s not limited by duration or genealogy or human sinfulness or any other factors.  The kind that transcends the Levitical priesthood in every single way.  

• The priests under the Old Covenant were merely human, and as mere humans they were mortal and imperfect.  Jesus is immortal and absolutely flawless in every way. 

• The priests all had to offer animals for their own sins; Jesus doesn’t have any sins. But He offers Himself as the Lamb of God. 

• The priests of the OT became priests by their lineage; Jesus became the eternal High Priest by His very nature.  Back in chapter 7 we read that He is holy, innocent, unstained, exalted above the heavens… 

• The Old Priestly order was temporary; Jesus’ priesthood is eternal.    

This is the kind of High Priest you and I have. 

It says this High Priest we have is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven. 

Why is Jesus seated?  Here’s the answer: 

Jesus is seated because His work is finished. Earthly priests could never sit down because their work was never done.  

• There were always more offerings to make, more sins to atone for… the task could never be finished because the whole system was only a dress rehearsal for the real thing. 

  • Hebrews 10:11 (ESV): 11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

But when Jesus died on the cross, it says… 

• 1 Peter 3:18 (ESV): 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God…

• Hebrews 10:14 (ESV): 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

He completely finished the task.  That one offering was adequate to pay for all sin, past, present and future, of those who would believe… in fact when He died on the cross He even cried out, “it is finished”. Paid in full.  

So now, He can sit down.  The job is done.  Remember that next time you feel like your sins are too big for Jesus to overcome.  He has already overcome them; they’ve already been paid for.   

Where is He seated? At the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven.

He’s at God’s right hand.   The ‘right hand’ is the position of authority and highest honor.  Jesus is not only our Priest who has atoned for our sins and makes continual intercession for us; He is also our reigning King on the throne.  

• “All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me…” He said (Matthew 28:18).

• Philippians 2:10–11 (ESV): 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

What is He doing there in the place of highest authority? Besides sitting, He’s also ministering.  

That’s what priests do… they minister. They represent people before God, and mediate that relationship so that sinful people and holy God can be at peace.  That’s what Jesus our perfect High Priest does for us, in some mysterious way.  

If that intrigues you and you wonder what that could look like, keep reading and you’ll be even more intrigued… it says… 

He ministers in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.

What does that mean?  It means there is a heavenly reality that corresponds to the earthly model.  The blueprint was on earth; the actual building is in heaven.  

Let me explain… 

• Back in the OT, the Israelites had a special tent called the Tabernacle, that functioned as a sort of mobile temple.  It’s also sometimes referred to as the “Tent of Meeting”.     

  • Eventually when they settled in the Promised Land, the Tabernacle gave way to the Temple which was built in Jerusalem under King Solomon.  Then it was destroyed during the Babylonian exile, then rebuilt under Zerubbabel, remodeled by Herod the Great, and ultimately destroyed by Titus in 70 AD.  

• But before all of that the Jews were a nomadic people, wandering in the desert after God freed them from slavery in Egypt, and so they had to have a portable place of worship, and that was a tented structure called the Tabernacle.   

• It was specifically designed by God, who gave Moses very specific instructions on how to build it, which you can read all about starting in Exodus 25 and onward.

• Walking into the Tabernacle, you would first enter:     

  • The Courtyard, 150 feet by 75 feet.  In the courtyard was…  

    • Bronze Altar, where animal sacrifices were offered. It symbolized that sin had to be atoned for in order to come into God’s presence. 

    • Bronze Basin, where priests would wash themselves before ministering before God. 

  • Then passing through the courtyard, you’d pass through the Outer Veil into a tented room called the Holy Place. 

    • Only priests could go there.  

    • It contained things like the Golden Lampstand (Menorah) which lit up the space and symbolized God’s light and guidance. 

    • Table of Showbread (Bread of the Presence - a gold covered table with twelve loaves of bread representing the twelve tribes of Israel). Symbolized God’s provision and fellowship with His people. 

    • Altar of Incense, a small gold altar where incense was burned representing the prayers of God’s people rising to Him. 

  • Finally, you come to The Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies.

    • The thick veil which symbolized separation between God and humanity because of sin. 

      • Only the High Priest could enter, and only once a year on the Day of Atonement. 

    • Ark of The Covenant - A gold-covered chest made of Acacia wood, which contained the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, a jar of manna, Aaron’s Rod.  It all symbolized God’s covenant relationship with His people.    

    • The Mercy Seat was the gold lid on top of the Ark, symbolizing the throne of God, and the place where mercy was given.  On the Day of Atonement, blood was sprinkled on the Mercy Seat as a symbol of atonement being made for sin so that the justice of God is satisfied.  Justice is upheld, yet mercy is extended as sin is atoned for.     

• All of this was contained in the Tabernacle and was meticulously arranged and deeply symbolic.  

And according to verse 2, it was all a replica of a greater reality in heaven; the real heavenly tabernacle.  The throneroom of God. 

This is going to be made more explicit as we keep reading… 

3 For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest (Jesus) also to have something to offer. 

That’s what priests do; they offer sacrifices. So Jesus, being a priest, also offered a sacrifice (himself). 

4 Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. 

We talked at length last time about how Jesus’ priesthood doesn’t fall within the Levitical system; that’s why the author used Melchizedek, the priest who pre-dated Aaron and Levi, to show the transcendent and superior priesthood of Christ. 

5 They (that is, the earthly priests under the Old Covenant) serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” 

This is fascinating!  Have you ever considered that when God told Moses how to build the Tabernacle, the reason it was so specifically and meticulously constructed, was because it was a replica of the real thing!? To get it wrong would be to misrepresent the true heavenly form of worship! 

It’s hard for us to get our heads around the idea that there is a spiritual realm that is just as real and much more enduring than our current world.  But there is.  

• By the way, your homework for this week is to read Hebrews 9 in its entirety, which goes into great detail about these heavenly realities.  

The shadow is on earth; the substance is in heaven. 

6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 

Better ministry, better priest, better covenant, better promises… 

Christ is better.  He’s saying, ‘why would you go back to the old system of worship and sacrifices when Jesus has come and fulfilled all of that, and given us a direct pathway to God through Himself?’ 

He’s the better Mediator of a better Covenant.

A mediator is someone who stands between two parties and brings them together.  Jesus stands between humanity and God and brings us together.   

• “...we have one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.” 1 Timothy 2:5

A covenant is God’s established relational agreement with His people.  It includes promises, responsibilities, commitments… But it isn’t just a contract.  It’s relational.

A covenant we are all familiar with is the covenant of marriage.  

• In a marriage covenant, you are vowing to one another that an exclusive relationship will be upheld for the rest of your lives.  Both parties come together in the wedding ceremony and come into agreement with the terms of the covenant. 

Throughout scripture, God made a series of covenants with His people.  

• For example, the Noahic Covenant. After the flood, God promised that never again would He destroy the whole world with a flood.  He gave a rainbow as a ‘sign’ of that covenant.  (That’s another feature of a covenant, there is a sign or symbol of the agreement. In marriage, it’s the rings…) 

• As we’ve been going through Hebrews we’ve referenced God’s covenant with Abraham, when He promised that through Abraham all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That’s the Abrahamic Covenant.

• Typically when we refer to the Old Covenant, we are referring to the Mosaic Covenant, the promise that God made through Moses to the people of Israel.  The priests, the sacrifices, the tabernacle, the temple, the law… These were all features of the Mosaic Covenant, or the Old Covenant.   

When Jesus came, He came to fulfill that Old Covenant system and replace it with the New Covenant, which He inaugurated by His own blood.  

And in the verses that follow, we’re going to see the explanation of why the New Covenant is better than the Old (the Mosaic).   

7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. 

Just to be clear, the Old Covenant was inadequate because we are sinful.  The Law acts like a mirror for us: it shows us how we can’t keep God’s moral standard.  

8 For he finds fault with them when he says: 

That is, with Israel… 

      “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, 

      when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel 

      and with the house of Judah,

This, by the way, is a quote from Jeremiah 31:31-34.  The author of Hebrews is using the Old Testament scriptures to show these Jewish Christians that the New Covenant was forecasted long before they stepped into it.  

Think about how radical this would have been for them.  Imagine you grew up steeped in Jewish tradition, and for as long as you’ve been alive you have understood this idea that if you wanted to come to God you had to go through the system established by Moses.  You had to go through an earthly priest, and worship at the earthly temple, and adhere to rites and rituals detailed in the Mosaic Covenant.  

And now you’re being shown, from your own scriptures, that the entire old system is obsolete.  

This New Covenant… this New way of relating to God… of coming to God… God told Jeremiah… is… 

      9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers 

      on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. 

That’s referring to God’s agreement with Moses on Sinai––the Old Covenant. 

For they did not continue in my covenant, 

      and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 

      10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel 

      after those days, declares the Lord: 

Listen how beautiful this is…       

I will put my laws into their minds, 

      and write them on their hearts, 

      and I will be their God, 

      and they shall be my people.

Here you have this rebellious group of people who keep disobeying God, neglecting God, being ungrateful towards God, thinking that their way is better than His way even though He’s done everything to get them where they are  (sound familiar?) 

And what does God do with them?  He says, ‘I’m going to fix this.  Instead of giving them external laws to obey as a means of coming to Me, I’m going to change them from the inside out. I’m going to put my law inside their hearts and make them into my people at the deepest level, the heart level’.  

That’s what needs to happen, isn’t it? If we want to obey God, we can’t do it in our own strength.  We need new hearts given by God, and we need to become something we never were before; we need to become God’s people by our very identity.

And that’s exactly what happens when you trust in Jesus. 

• 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV): 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  

Under the New Covenant, we become something we never were before. We become God’s people at the heart level.  This means we can know Him intimately… 

      11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor 

      and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ 

      for they shall all know me, 

      from the least of them to the greatest.

See, under the Old Covenant there were those within the covenant community who were just born into it.  They didn’t have love for God in their hearts.  

But you and I aren’t just born into the New Covenant community; we are ‘reborn’ into it by repentance and faith in Jesus. 

• Every true Christian has an intimate relationship with God, and not just a superficial one.  

• Nobody who truly belongs to Christ is there simply by association; we are there because we have new hearts and a new identity.  

How is this new identity attainable for sinful people like you and I? Here’s how:  

      12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, 

      and I will remember their sins no more.” 

How’s that possible? How can God just forget about the sins of His people and not hold them against them?  

You say, ‘well because He’s God’.  No.  That’s not good enough.  In fact, that’s the reason He can’t simply overlook sin.  As God He is perfectly righteous and just, and He must punish sin or else He would be contradicting His own nature.  

So what does He do to show mercy to sinful people and still maintain His justice? 

Enter Jesus, our perfect High Priest.  

• Jesus comes and fulfills the Law of God perfectly on our behalf. 

• He earns perfect righteousness for us.  

• He dies on the cross as the all sufficient sacrifice for sin. 

• Justice is served. Sin is paid for; not by the sinner, but by Jesus.  

• He rises from the dead proving that He has indeed overcome sin and death. 

• And then He proceeds to mediate our relationship with God.  

He is the substance that the earthly shadows were pointing towards all along.   

• In His life, He ‘became flesh and dwelt among us’... literally tabernacled among us.  Then, He enters into the real, heavenly Tabernacle/Temple, into the very presence of God, to advocate for us.

• Like animals were slain on the Bronze Altar, Jesus was slain on the cross. 

  • Ephesians 5:3 Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 

• As the Bronze Basin was used for cleansing and purifying, Jesus Himself purifies the worshiper before God. 

  • Titus 3:5 He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

• The lampstand provided light in the tabernacle; Jesus IS the light of the world (John 8:12 - He Himself declared that while standing in the Temple!)

• The Bread of The Presence symbolized God’s provision… Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life” John 6:35 

• The Altar of Incense represented prayers to God… 

  • Jesus “always lives to make intercession” for us (Heb. 7:25)

• The veil blocked sinful people from holy God. Jesus tore the veil by His death and opened up clear access for us to God through the curtain, that is, through his flesh (Heb. 10:20) 

• The Ark of The Covenant represented God’s presence; Jesus is the very embodiment of God’s presence to us.  

  • If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father (John 14:9)  

  • He is the image of invisible God. (Col. 1).  

• The Mercy Seat is where atoning blood went; Romans 3:25 says God put forward Jesus as a propitiation by His blood

• The High Priest could go into the Holy of Holies once a year; Jesus gives us permanent access into the Holy of Holies, as undeserving as we are, because we are holy in Him. 

This is the beauty of the New Covenant.  

13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Indeed, since you and I are on the other side of the destruction of the Temple, it has vanished away.  There is no more shadow, no more pattern, no more type… Just the reality in Jesus Christ.   

As I was thinking deeply about the truths conveyed through this text I found myself thinking about the realities of Heaven compared to the shadows of earth. 

We get so invested in and attached to the things of earth.  But look around you.. and think about your life… God’s Word says: 

• 1 John 2:17 (ESV): 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

• 2 Peter 3:10 (NLT): 10 But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.

If you belong to Christ, you belong to a different world.   

• C.S. Lewis: If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. 

Your life is not meant to revolve around earthly shadows but heavenly realities.  

Have you come to the real substantial means of salvation, Jesus Christ? Or are you still trying to find freedom and forgiveness and meaning and significance through mere shadows?