Category: Hebrews

“So if the priesthood of Levi, on which the law was based, could have achieved the perfection God intended, why did God need to establish a different priesthood, with a priest in the order of Melchizedek instead of the order of Levi and Aaron? And if the priesthood is changed, the law must also be changed to permit it. For the priest we are talking about belongs to a different tribe, whose members have never served at the altar as priests. What I mean is, our Lord came from the tribe of Judah, and Moses never mentioned priests coming from that tribe.

This change has been made very clear since a different priest, who is like Melchizedek, has appeared. Jesus became a priest, not by meeting the physical requirement of belonging to the tribe of Levi, but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed. And the psalmist pointed this out when he prophesied,

‘You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.’

Yes, the old requirement about the priesthood was set aside because it was weak and useless. For the law never made anything perfect. But now we have confidence in a better hope, through which we draw near to God.”

Put yourself in the mind of a first-century Jew for a moment. Everything you have known so far is that you are part of a special people chosen by God, you have been given God’s laws to follow, and priests from the tribe of Levi mediate between you and God. We also have consider that this was a collectivist culture, not individualistic as we are in America today. So the Jewish people collectively need to seek God and be made right with God. The law was the system by which the people as a whole were made right with God and kept their end of the covenant with God.

Along comes this man that you saw grow up in Nazareth. He says seemingly blasphemous things like, “Your sins are forgiven” and refers to himself as the Son of Man and Son of God. Sure, he can do some miracles but honestly that’s creeping you out too. Maybe he’s demonic? I genuinely empathize with the Jewish religious leaders who felt this way. Jesus sure seemed like a threat to everything God had ever told them. That is, if the law was the key to relationship with God. Turns out that “if” was where they had missed God completely.

Verse 19 says, “For the law never made anything perfect.” If you believe that following all the rules will make you acceptable to God, you are sadly mistaken. God gave the law to his people to show them that there was no way they could ever possibly be good enough. They would never be perfect and the law could not make them perfect. That’s a pretty hopeless place to land if your hope had been in following a lot of rules for God. Verse 19 goes on to say, “But now we have confidence in a better hope, through which we draw near to God.” The law never brought anyone closer to God — it simply showed how far away people were from him. Our hope in Jesus is way better than hoping in the law. Relationship is the only way we will ever truly be with God, and Jesus made that possible.

“This new system was established with a solemn oath. Aaron’s descendants became priests without such an oath, but there was an oath regarding Jesus. For God said to him,

‘The Lord has taken an oath and will not break his vow:
    ‘You are a priest forever.’

Because of this oath, Jesus is the one who guarantees this better covenant with God.

There were many priests under the old system, for death prevented them from remaining in office. But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. Therefore he is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf. He is the kind of high priest we need because he is holy and blameless, unstained by sin. He has been set apart from sinners and has been given the highest place of honor in heaven. Unlike those other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices every day. They did this for their own sins first and then for the sins of the people. But Jesus did this once for all when he offered himself as the sacrifice for the people’s sins. The law appointed high priests who were limited by human weakness. But after the law was given, God appointed his Son with an oath, and his Son has been made the perfect High Priest forever.”

The Bible is often much more than it seems. In today’s passage the author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 110, which we mentioned at the start of chapter 7 as one of the few passages that mentions Melchizedek. It’s not clear whether King David, the author of Psalm 110, knew that his little song was a profound and prophetic statement. It’s confusing right from the start when it says, “The Lord said to my Lord…” Why are there two Lords? How can that be? Perhaps David did realize that he was seeing something about the coming Messiah.

Because of Psalm 110, we see a bit of God’s relationship within himself — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He’s talking to Jesus and taking an oath which will be in effect for all of eternity. This captures the supernatural moment that Jesus was appointed as the eternal and perfect High Priest. He is the only one that had the power to offer himself as a sacrifice once for all.

God doesn’t forget about his promises. He doesn’t take an oath and then change his mind. Verse 22 says that Jesus is our guarantee of our covenant with God. Let’s think about it this way — when a person is trying to buy a house, they have to submit an offer. They can do that with a simple letter, or they can include an approval letter from a bank. Even better is the offer that includes proof of sufficient cash to make the entire purchase. The money is the guarantee that the offer is actually good. I could put a whole bunch of offers on million dollar homes, but I have no proof to offer that I have that money to give (because I don’t!). An offer is only as good as the proof that you can really follow through. Jesus is God’s proof that he will follow through and rescue his people — he still hasn’t given up yet!

“Here is the main point: We have a High Priest who sat down in the place of honor beside the throne of the majestic God in heaven. There he ministers in the heavenly Tabernacle, the true place of worship that was built by the Lord and not by human hands. And since every high priest is required to offer gifts and sacrifices, our High Priest must make an offering, too.  If he were here on earth, he would not even be a priest, since there already are priests who offer the gifts required by the law. They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven. For when Moses was getting ready to build the Tabernacle, God gave him this warning: ‘Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.’ But now Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises.”

I love it when an author gives signposts to help the reader understand their point. Today’s passage gets right to it: Jesus is our High Priest who sits directly beside God’s throne. If you thought the earthly Tabernacle (or Temple) was impressive — it was! — just imagine a heavenly one. That Temple was just a shadow compared to this true place of worship that God built. Anything man made is going to be far inferior to the direct handiwork of God.

The earthly priests are kind of like actors, mimicking the real worship happening in heaven. If Jesus were only an earthly human, he wouldn’t have even been eligible to be a priest at all because he was not from the tribe of Levi. However, because Jesus is someone completely different from any other priest, he doesn’t follow the earthly rules. He oversees an upgraded contract between God and his people, with a whole lot more in store for those who follow him.

If you use what you see around you on earth as a gauge for reality, you’ll be limited in what you can see. There is beauty here on earth, but there is also pain. There’s never enough time or resources to do everything that we could imagine wanting to do. We are limited by time, space, and human frailty. Jesus has something supernaturally better. This new covenant, or promise, from God is full of hope. Jesus has more for you than you could think to ask for or imagine. It will blow your mind! Don’t settle for what you see around you. Reality is so much bigger than that.

“If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it. But when God found fault with the people, he said:

‘The day is coming, says the Lord,
    when I will make a new covenant
    with the people of Israel and Judah.
This covenant will not be like the one
    I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
    and led them out of the land of Egypt.
They did not remain faithful to my covenant,
    so I turned my back on them, says the Lord.
But this is the new covenant I will make
    with the people of Israel on that day, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their minds,
    and I will write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
And they will not need to teach their neighbors,
    nor will they need to teach their relatives,
    saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’
For everyone, from the least to the greatest,
    will know me already.
And I will forgive their wickedness,
    and I will never again remember their sins.’

When God speaks of a ‘new’ covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete. It is now out of date and will soon disappear.”

Most of today’s passage is a quotation from Jeremiah 31:31-34. Although I recently wrote about the empathy I feel for first-century Jews who saw Jesus as a threat, the reality is that God had been telling them about what was coming for a long time. The book of Jeremiah was written around 626 B.C., so the Jewish people had over six centuries to ponder the idea of God introducing a new covenant. Certainly there is also a lot of prophetic writing about a coming Messiah as well. God was not throwing a sudden curveball when Jesus came to earth.

The old covenant needed to be replaced because the contract had been violated, rendering it null and void. Who broke their promises? The people of Israel. God remained faithful and he saw that a covenant between himself and his people could not rely on their ability to keep their end of the deal. God had to guarantee BOTH sides of the contract. These laws, once written on stone, now needed to be imprinted directly into the hearts and minds of the people.

God isn’t a big mystery in the sky that we have to figure out. While he is infinite and mysterious, he has revealed a lot about himself and he wants you to know him. The Holy Spirit is now at work directly in your heart and mind, which is unprecedented access to God that was made possible through Jesus’ death and resurrection. God created a covenant in which he made it possible to know him and he promises to forget all your sins. This new system replaces the old covenant, so we no longer have to worry about keeping up our end of the bargain with God. He’s got the whole thing covered.

“That first covenant between God and Israel had regulations for worship and a place of worship here on earth. There were two rooms in that Tabernacle. In the first room were a lampstand, a table, and sacred loaves of bread on the table. This room was called the Holy Place. Then there was a curtain, and behind the curtain was the second room called the Most Holy Place. In that room were a gold incense altar and a wooden chest called the Ark of the Covenant, which was covered with gold on all sides. Inside the Ark were a gold jar containing manna, Aaron’s staff that sprouted leaves, and the stone tablets of the covenant. Above the Ark were the cherubim of divine glory, whose wings stretched out over the Ark’s cover, the place of atonement. But we cannot explain these things in detail now.

“When these things were all in place, the priests regularly entered the first room as they performed their religious duties. But only the high priest ever entered the Most Holy Place, and only once a year. And he always offered blood for his own sins and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. By these regulations the Holy Spirit revealed that the entrance to the Most Holy Place was not freely open as long as the Tabernacle and the system it represented were still in use.

“This is an illustration pointing to the present time. For the gifts and sacrifices that the priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciences of the people who bring them. For that old system deals only with food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies—physical regulations that were in effect only until a better system could be established.”

When God’s people (the Israelites or Jewish people) were wandering in the desert after being set free from slavery in Egypt, God set up a tent so that he could camp out with them in the midst of the wilderness. You can see exactly how this all went down by reading Exodus 24-40. You can also check out my previous series on Exodus by using the “Search by Category” feature on the right side of FreedomForToday.com.

God’s instructions were detailed. There are instructions for the types of fabrics and threads to use. There are instructions for priests, right down to their underwear! God was extremely specific with them. However, these were merely physical rituals rather than supernatural ones. Why would God bother to go to all this trouble if it didn’t matter? What was the point of the old system in the first place?

God isn’t in a rush. He doesn’t get straight to the point. He was setting up a system as an object lesson for his people. If they could successfully be “good enough” and follow his laws perfectly, then they would have no need for a Savior. Ultimately they would have no need for God. Recall that when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, the rules of the world fundamentally changed. Satan was given power on earth (by Adam and Eve abdicating their authority to him) and this created a separation between God and humanity. God was not defeated in that moment, humans were. God has never had any desire to give up his creation or ditch humanity. Rather, he set up a system in which humans could choose to return to him. Jesus created the path by which we can now access God. But without the old system, we would not see a need for a path. The reality is that we cannot overcome the devastation we caused. The old system proved that repeatedly. We have to turn to God for salvation. It’s the only way. That was God’s plan all along.