May 21 2023
Hebrews 9
As many can attest this whole being an adult is tough business. One of the toughest questions that one has to figure out is just who is it that is going to be there for me, if and when I might need someone. We are friends with a young lady who is estranged from her biological family so for her she has few people she can call on when she needs help, like when she has to move into a new apartment. Its at times like that I really wish she had someone else who could be there for her besides Jennifer and I but we know that everybody has to have somebody who is going to be there for them, that is just the way of the world. Even I know, that as much as my introverted self enjoys my alone time, I still have to have people in my life that I can count on to be there when I might need them. Most often men like myself figure out the importance of having someone to be there for them when they tear into a project and soon find out that said project is going to require two people to get it done. This whole understanding that we all need somebody to be there for us is also what marriage is all about. The beauty of marriage is that we have found someone who has pledged themselves to be that person that will be there in those times when we really need somebody to be there for us like when we get sick, or when our finances hit the skids or when we are grieving and hurting. In all of these times, it is wonderful to know that we have married someone who is willing to just be there for us.
This necessity that all of us have to have someone be there for us, this is what is behind this idea of covenant. A covenant is not a contract where we enter into a relationship based on doing, a relationship that has defined expectations but instead a covenant is about being there for another person. Now, you don’t have to read very far into the Bible story until you find out that the God found in that story is a God who desires to enter into covenants with people. What this tells us is that our God is a God who desires to be a God who is known as a God who is there for people. Likewise, this is also a God who desires that the people he enters into a covenant with will be there for him as well. When we step back and look at this covenant relationship God makes, it begins to be pretty clear that this is a very lopsided arrangement. I mean its great to think that we can enter a covenant so that we can be assured that God is really going to be there for us, but why in the world would God even care that we be there for him? This is the question that we must try and answer as we listen to what the writer of Hebrews is saying to us today.
In this ninth chapter of Hebrews we discover a new title for our risen Lord, that Jesus is for us the mediator of a new covenant. The word that we translate here as being, “mediator”, comes quite naturally from the Greek word for middle because as the one who is arranging this new agreement between God and humanity, it just makes sense that Jesus would be the man in the middle of it all. So, yes, the living Jesus is there, smack dab in the middle, bringing God and humanity into a new relationship where each promises to be there for each other.
Now as important as this new covenant is, the strange thing is is that many Christians know very little about it. The clues to understanding this covenant though are hidden in plain sight as when we partake of the elements during the Lord’s Supper we are told that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he took the cup and he blessed it and he gave it to his disciples, telling them, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” These are the words that are spoken over the grape juice that we drink every time we meet at the Lord’s Table yet, I wonder do we really stop to consider just what is being said here? What really is this new covenant besides perhaps a way to divide up our Bibles?
Perhaps the best way to understand this new covenant is with what is written in the eleventh verse of this ninth chapter of Hebrews which states, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, when through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy places, not by the means of the blood of goats and calves but by the means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” The writer of Hebrews has packed an immense amount of information in these few sentences so we have to take our time to consider just what is being said here. First, we are to know Jesus, the Messiah, as being our high priest. Here we need to pause and ask just why should we consider him to be our high priest? The answer is as the writer of Hebrews explains, that it is Jesus who has entered into the holy places of heaven. Just as it was that the high priest at the Temple of Jerusalem was the only one allowed to enter into the Holy of Holies of the Temple so to only Jesus ascended into the heavens into the holy presence of our Heavenly Father. So this is how we can know Jesus as our high priest. It is important that we understand him as being our high priest because what we know about the high priest is that he represented all of the people of Israel on the Day of Atonement. The high priest wore a vest which had sewn into the front of it, twelve precious stones which represented each of the twelve tribes of Israel. So, the high priest represented all of Israel when he went into the Holy of Holies to make atonement for their sins. Jesus as our high priest also represented Israel being born as one of them and, as one without sin, Jesus was able to offer himself up to death on behalf of all of Israel upon the cross. This is what the writer of Hebrews is writing about when he says in the fifteenth verse of this ninth chapter where we read, “…since a death has occurred that redeems them from transgressions committed under the first covenant.” The first covenant, then, required a death to pay the penalty for the sins that Israel had committed as a member of that agreement, a death that was fulfilled by Jesus. Even so we are left wondering just what went wrong with this first covenant?
The first covenant that God made with the people of Israel is recorded for us in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. As you read through this covenant here in Exodus and as it was renewed in Deuteronomy what you find is that it is actually more like a contract than a covenant because it states that if the people of Israel were to do all that God commanded than God would respond with the appropriate blessing of a good, full, rich, life. But, if Israel on the other hand, failed to do what God had commanded then instead of blessings, Israel would find herself accursed no longer to receive life but instead, death. Now, what becomes quite apparent in the entering of this covenant is that Israel did so with the real belief that they could most assuredly do all that God commanded, that they would indeed be living the blessed life, no problems obtaining all that goodness. You see, the people of Israel are just like all the rest of us when upon discovering that God desires to be in a covenant with us then why not see if we can get this all powerful God to give us the good life we want, right here and right now. Maybe we could bargain with him, do all the things he likes and then, just maybe he will give us what we consider to be blessings, all those things that we find necessary for a good life.
What Israel found out is that it is impossible for any of us to do all that God requires in order that we could somehow manipulate or demand anything from him. The reason for this is that the whole world is under a curse and so right from the beginning it was known that the ending for Israel was not blessing but the finding out that she too was under this universal curse. She alone among the nations understood what she deserved from God because she alone had entered into a covenant with God. So when the people of Israel were sent into exile at the hands of Babylon just as God warned them would happen when they failed to uphold their end of the bargain, the people of Israel knew that the curse of God hung heavy over them.
Into this cursed life then, came Jesus. Jesus, the very Son of God, came in his flesh and blood existence as one of the people of Israel. Jesus, the one who was and is without sin, came to represent all of Israel, to take upon himself their curse, to have his body hang there accursed upon a tree just as the first covenant spoke of in the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy. Jesus as the high priest, represented all of the people of Israel. Israel in turn was chosen by God to represent all of the race of Adam, all of humanity. So, Jesus, our high priest, did in fact represent all of us there upon the cross. There, as our representative, Jesus died our death, as the writer of Hebrews said in the second chapter, tasting death for all of us. The shedding of the blood of Jesus is a way of stating that the life of Jesus was poured out unto death in order to pay what was due for those who stood accursed before God. This image of Jesus, his life being poured out, this is our image of forgiveness because as this word, “forgiveness”, tells us, this is a gift given before a relationship can be restored. The gift given was a death that all of us owed and because of this gift all of us have been set free from the curse which had once held us captive.
One more aspect of this act upon the cross which Jesus has done is that his was a holy act. As the high priest who he was and what he did was holy. So, as we see Jesus upon the cross how does this define for us just what does it mean to be holy? In the fourteenth verse of this ninth chapter, we read that Jesus, our Messiah, “through the Spirit of the age to come, offered himself without blemish to God”. Here, most clearly, we see the radical difference between how the people of Israel had thought about their relationship with God and how Jesus, the high priest who represented them upon the cross, thought about his relationship with his Heavenly Father. The people of Israel wanted to know just what would it take to manipulate God and use his power to help them have a blessed life. The whole stance was about what God could give to them or what God could do for them if only they could just be good enough. Then, along comes Jesus, and suddenly upon the cross holiness was seen because there was one who desired only to give his whole self to God as an offering. When Jesus yielded his life he found that the power of the new age was very much present with him for there was the Spirit, the God of self-giving, holy, love. This holy offering of Jesus was given as the writer puts it, “to cleanse our conscience from dead works to present offerings to the living God.” This word here translated as being, “conscience”, is a word that literally means to see together. It is where two people have both comprehended something and now they come to a mutual understanding. So, through this self-offering of Jesus, our Messiah we can see that we need to be rid of this idea that there are certain things that we can do to please God so that he might bless us. These, as the people of Israel knew so well were quite literally dead works for that’s where all their efforts ended up. Now, upon seeing Jesus upon the cross we can see what God sees, a holy act, in the offering of Jesus, an offering given so that at last beyond our judgment we might have life.
Here at last then are the clues to help us make sense of the new covenant prophesied about by the prophet Jeremiah. The writer of Hebrews quotes this prophecy in the eighth chapter where we read, ‘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 I made with their fathers on the day 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. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: 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. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.” This prophecy of Jeremiah came as God’s plan to send his people into exile was becoming a reality. Into that dark time, a time when the judgment of God was coming down upon the people of Israel, God spoke through Jeremiah to tell his people that beyond their judgment their would indeed be life, a life with the God who is and was forever for them. Their past would be dealt with, their sins forgiven, so that in their present the people of Israel could become people who knew God because it was his way of life that had been placed within their mind and it was his way of life that had been written on their hearts. The heart is where we hold fast to our treasures so what is being said here is that in this new covenant the ways of God will be treasured by God’s people. With the coming of Jesus we are able to see in human form, the God willing to offer himself to take upon himself our judgment all because he treasured us. Through this offering of Jesus at last our understanding has been purified, now we know that what God desires us to be is people who offer ourselves to God, and we know this is to be true because this is the way of God, the God who offered himself for us. God offered himself so that beyond our judgment we might have life and with this new life given to us we are to take and offer it back to God as an act of worship, because in our hearts we treasure the God who treasures us. This is the essence of this new covenant life that Jesus, our Messiah, has mediated between our Heavenly Father and all of humanity.
So in this new covenant we do see how God is for us, offering himself to us to take upon himself the judgment of death that all of us deserve, all because he treasures us. Knowing this then we have to ask, just what is our part of the covenant? How shall we be there for God? The answer is that we are to follow the lead of God for this is to state that we know God, and we are to offer ourselves as an act of worship of God because we treasure the God who was willing to taste death for all of us. This is what Paul speaks of in the second letter to the Corinthians when he writes, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this : that this one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” This is why Jesus died upon the cross so that the same love which compelled him to offer himself might be the same love which compels us to live for him, and offer ourselves to him as an act of worship. This understanding of life under the new covenant is so important and this becomes so evident when we are called on to suffer for the cause of Christ. You see, when we offer up ourselves to God even if to do so means that we may have to suffer on account of our promise to be there for him, then what we witness to the world is just how much we treasure our God. Only as the world sees people who are willing to suffer as they offer themselves fully to God, to offer God all that they have been given, even the life that God has given to us, this witnesses that our God is truly the treasure worthy to be sought, the pearl of great price who is worthy of all we might give to call him our own. This is what it means for us to be there for God, to be people who through their lives witness that our God is the greatest treasure, the most worthy blessing we could ever desire. In this way our lives become bearers of God’s blessing for this is why we have been blessed through the offering of God for us. So, let us go forth and witness to the treasure who is our God! Amen!
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