“A New Covenant”
[Hebrews 8:8-13]
April 14, 2013 Second Reformed Church
What is the difference between a
“contract” and a “covenant”? One book
notes at least four differences: a contract
list a series of benefits for each party, whereas a covenant focuses on
increasing the intimacy between the parties.
A contract is by mutual agreement, whereas a covenant is offered as a
gift by a stronger party to a weaker party.
A contract obliges each party to fulfill its terms, whereas a covenant
obliges each other to mutual loyalty. A
contract is broken when the terms are not fulfilled, whereas a covenant is
broken when the quality of the relationship suffers. [cf. Kingdom
Through Covenant]
We are looking at two covenants – or
two different administrations of the same covenant – the Covenant through Moses
– the Mosaic Covenant – and the Covenant through Jesus – the Gospel.
Last week we saw that the Mosaic Covenant
is a shadow of the Gospel – the Mosaic Covenant pointed to and is fulfilled in
the Work that Jesus did on earth. We
also considered the conclusion of the author of Hebrews: Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, Who is in
Heaven, in His glorified physical human body, Who is a High Priest after the
order of Melchizedek and the Perfect and Final Sacrifice for His people, is
Sovereignly reigning, and mediating between His people and God the Father.
Today we are considering the New
Covenant – the Gospel – as is was prophesied by Jeremiah during the Babylonian
captivity – about six hundred years before Jesus was born.
The author of Hebrews begins with
the preparatory note: “For he finds
fault with them when he says:” We are
being reminded that God was angry with Israel and Judah for breaking the Mosaic
Covenant, yet, in surprising mercy, God promised them that He would make a new
covenant to replace the Mosaic Covenant.
It’s worth understanding that the
Mosaic Covenant was not just the Ten Commandments. That is the best known part of the Covenant
for many of us, but the laws of the Covenant continue for most of the rest of
the books of Moses – all of the laws and instructions of Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are part of the Covenant.
The author of Hebrews continues,
having told us that God was angry with the people that He made the Mosaic
Covenant with – which is why they were now in the Babylonian Captivity – and
quotes the promise found in the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah:
“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, 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. For they did not continue in my covenant, and
so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.”
The first thing we ought to
understand this morning is that God makes – literally, “cuts” – the Covenant
with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. No human being makes a covenant with
God. As often as we may try to make
deals with God – “If you let me do well on this exam, I’ll never tell another
lie” and so forth – God alone makes covenants with humans, because He is the
stronger party.
After God had freed Israel by His
Mighty Right Hand from four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, Moses and the
people of Israel crossed the Red Sea on dry land, and when Israel was safe on
the other side, God closed up the waters and drown the Egyptian army, and Moses
cried out in praise:
“I
will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider
he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is
my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I
will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his
name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host he
cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them; they went down into
the depths like a stone. Your right
hand, O LORD, glorious in power, your
right hand, O LORD, shatters the enemy. In
the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries; you send out your
fury; it consumes them like stubble. At
the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the
deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the
spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them.
I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’ You blew with your wind; the sea covered
them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing
wonders? You stretched out your right
hand; the earth swallowed them. You have led in your steadfast love the people
whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy
abode. The peoples have heard; they
tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now
are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the
inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them; because
of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone, till your people, O
LORD, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. You will bring them in and plant them on your
own mountain, the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode, the
sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. The LORD will reign
forever and ever” (Exodus 15:1b-18, ESV).
Notice, Moses’ song is not mere
rejoicing over the death of the Egyptians, nor is it a lifting of the
Israelites, but it is all praise to God, their salvation. It was with that understanding of God being
their salvation that Israel received the Mosaic Covenant in the wilderness at
Mount Sinai. The Covenant commanded
Israel to live holy lives and to worship God in holiness. But Israel sinned against God and did not
keep the Covenant. They did not live
lives of holiness and they did not worship God in holiness.
And we may be thinking, “But they
couldn’t live lives of holiness and worship God in holiness, because they were
sinners. You have told us that they
could not keep the Covenant.”
That is exactly the point they
missed: the Mosaic Covenant was designed
to show them – among other things – that they could not keep the Covenant and
needed the Savior that God had promised back in Genesis three. The point of the Covenant was to cause them
to run to God as their only salvation. But
they didn’t – they didn’t understand that the Mosaic Covenant was a shadow of
the Covenant that would come with the Savior – the Messiah. They didn’t understand that the response to
breaking the Covenant was not to make excuses or to “try, try again,” but to
fall on their faces calling out for the Mercy of God – “Forgive me, a sinner!”
Since they did not keep the
Covenant, God cast them – many of them – aside.
God used the Covenant to expose the fact that God never had any
intention of saving everyone.
That is the second thing we ought to
understand this morning: it was never
God’s intention to save everyone. God’s plan
of salvation has not been frustrated.
God has not lost people He really, really wanted to save. No, as we see again and again through the
Scripture, God chose to save a remnant – the elect. Paul explained:
“And Isaiah cries out concerning
Israel: ‘Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea,
only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence
upon the earth fully and without delay.’ And as Isaiah predicted, ‘If the Lord
of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become
like Gomorrah.’ What shall we say, then?
That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a
righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would
lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they
did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have
stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in
Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him
will not be put to shame” (Romans 9:27-33, ESV).
After this introduction, the author
of Hebrews moves on to explain what the New Covenant is all about:
“For this is the covenant that I
will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:”
And again we see in the idea of
“covenant” that it is God – the greater party – Who is the One to make and enforce
the Covenant. But notice the Mercy of
God – Israel and Judah had already broken the Mosaic Covenant. God had no obligation to make a covenant with
them in the first place, how much more surely was it then that God had no
obligation to make a New Covenant with them – with the remnant – the elect who
would believe. The remnant had nothing
to offer to induce God to make a covenant with them in the first place – how
much less did they have to offer to induce God to make a covenant now that they
had broken the Mosaic Covenant. No, the Covenant
is all of God; the remnant adds nothing to it.
Marvel at the Mercy of our God!
“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.”
In the Mosaic Covenant, the laws
were written on stone, but now, God promised to write His Law on the minds and
the hearts of people. Instead of the
laws being on exterior slabs of rock, God cut them into the minds and hearts of
people.
Now, the Mosaic Covenant was written
on stones that everyone could see. Who
had the New Covenant cut into their hearts and minds? It cannot be everyone. Why not?
Hear what Paul wrote to the Ephesians about the difference between a
Christian and a non-Christian:
“Now
this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the
Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their
understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is
in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have
given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about
him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self,
which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful
desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new
self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians
4:17-24, ESV).
Paul
explains that those who have believed the New Covenant – the Gospel – have been
changed in their hearts and minds. God
has taken our futile minds and renewed them, and He has taken our hard hearts
and renewed them. If we had not been
renewed in heart and mind first, we could not receive the New Covenant in our
hearts and minds.
So,
that is the third thing we ought to understand this morning: God regenerates our hearts and minds – He
brings to life the hearts and minds – of those into whom He cuts the New
Covenant. God brings those to spiritual
life that He chooses, prior to them receiving the Gospel. No one can believe
the New Covenant – the Gospel – until God raises him from spiritual death to spiritual
life. We cannot believe that salvation
is through Jesus Alone until God saves us.
We
have talked about this before: God has
chosen a remnant – God has elected some out of all of humanity – to believe and
receive the Gospel. Those – and only
those – will believe in Jesus Alone for salvation. These are the ones God has chosen for His Own
Reasons to save those who will receive the law on their hearts and minds.
For
God is the God of those who believe in Him and the Savior He sent. And the people of God are those who believe
in Jesus Alone for salvation. God is the
Creator of all people, but He is the Father of those who believe. And only those people who believe in God and
His Savior savingly are God’s people.
Peter
writes, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who
called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a
people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now
you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10, ESV).
And
now that we have been renewed in mind and heart, with God as our God and we as
His people, we are able to follow after God and keep His commandments – we are
able to repent of our sins and be obedient to God’s commands. And we are able to strive with confidence
towards the holiness God calls us to. As
Paul writes, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one
receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises
self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we
an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the
air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching
to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27, ESV).
“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.”
Fourth, teaching will not cause us
to know the Lord savingly. God causes
whomever He will to believe in Him, and the Holy Spirit, Who indwells every
Christian, helps us to remember and understand what we have learned and what we
are learning from God’s Word. As Jesus
said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,
for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will
speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify
me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father
has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to
you” (John 16:13-15, ESV).
That does not mean that we don’t
need to be taught and to work together as a body to understand what God has
said. But as far as believing the New
Covenant – the Gospel – is concerned, we do not need to be taught it for
conversion, because the non-elect will not believe it or understand it, and God
causes the elect to believe it. There
are scholars who can explain all the ins and outs of the Scripture correctly,
but don’t believe, because God has not been pleased to cause them to believe.
That does not mean that we are not
to evangelize, because Jesus commands us to evangelize – we are to tell others
what the Gospel is. What we need to
understand is that we cannot cause someone to believe the Gospel. Our job is to tell others the Gospel, and
then God causes people to believe as He wills.
The point is, if you believe the
Gospel, it is because God made you believe the Gospel, not because of how and
how well you were taught it. We are to
teach the Gospel and to tell others, but that does not cause people to believe.
And then we are to read and discuss
the Scripture together. The author of
Hebrews wrote, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,
for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another
to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of
some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing
near” (Hebrews 10:23-25, ESV). Every
Christian is called to study the Word of God and to study it with other
Christians that we all might grow and be encouraged by what God has said and
promised.
“For I will be merciful toward their
iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
Fifth, if you believe the New Covenant
– the Gospel -- with your heart and mind, you have also been forgiven of all of
your sins by the free and sovereign pardon of God.
Paul wrote, “And you, who were dead
in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive
together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the
record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside,
nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14, ESV).
We who believe in the Gospel do not
need to live under the fear and condemnation of the Mosaic Law which said, “the
wages of sin is death,” because we have been forgiven for all of our sins
throughout time, by the work Jesus accomplished on earth – which is the Gospel,
the New Covenant.
God has come to earth in the Person
of Jesus Christ, lived a perfect life under the Mosaic Law – which He now
credits as righteousness to all those who will ever believe, took upon Himself
the sin of all we who would ever believe and endured the Wrath of God for that
sin, died, physically rose from the dead, and ascended back to His throne.
Finally, the author of Hebrews tells
us that since there is a new covenant, the old one is obsolete – it is old and
ready to vanish away: “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.”
And we may find this confusing,
since we have said that God now helps us to follow the Law – not for salvation,
but in thanksgiving, and in becoming more like Jesus. If this is true, for example, may we now lie,
murder, and commit adultery? Are these
no longer laws we have to obey?
The answer is found in understanding
that there are different types of laws – there are moral laws – like not to
murder – which are eternal – and then there are ceremonial and judicial laws –
laws about how to worship and how to conduct law within the ancient nation
state of Israel. Ancient Israel no
longer exists, so we don’t have to obey those laws. So, the laws that are in question are the
ceremonial laws – the laws about worship, and that is what the author of
Hebrews is referring to.
The Mosaic Covenant had laws about
how to worship – and specifically, how to offer up a sacrifice. Those laws are now obsolete, because they
have been fulfilled in the Gospel through Jesus. There is no need to offer up sacrifices – and
especially blood sacrifices – because Jesus has offered up once and finally a
sacrifice that covers all of the sins of all of the people who will ever
believe in Jesus Alone for salvation.
And so we see that Covenants are cut
by God, not us.
God has always intended to save a
remnant, not everyone.
God saves His remnant by
regenerating our hearts and minds and writing His Gospel on them.
Although being taught the Gospel
does not save a person, someone who believes the Gospel will be led to
repentance and obedience.
Anyone who believes the Gospel has
been forgiven of all of his or her sins and made righteous.
And the ceremonial law is now obsolete
because Jesus has fulfilled and offered up the final sacrifice to eternally
save all those God has chosen to be His people.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we are quick to put
aside the Old Testament and think it of little value. Help us to see that although the Mosaic
Covenant has been fulfilled in Jesus, it is through the moral law that we
understand what sin is and how to live the holy lives we are called to and to
worship God in all holiness. May the
Holy Spirit lead us. For it is in Jesus’
Name we pray, Amen.
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