A Better Covenant

But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as he also is a mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second... "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah... I will put my laws in their mind and write them in their hearts... For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more." In that he says, "A new covenant," he has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. — Hebrews 8:6–13

Why go back to the old when Jesus has brokered an infinitely better deal for you?

A Better Deal Was Brokered

In 1974 a thirty-year-old film director was shopping a movie treatment and rough screenplay to the studios, looking for funding. He already had a two-picture deal with Universal, and when its executives looked at his new treatment, they weren't interested. So he shopped it around and finally found an open door at Fox Studios.

Fox offered him $50,000 to write the screenplay, $50,000 to produce, and $50,000 to direct. While they were negotiating, his first film with Universal came out and became a runaway hit. His agent thought they could now get a half million, maybe a million dollars. But the director wasn't interested in more money from the studio. He wanted a new deal—something that had never been asked for before and has never been done since.

What he wanted was the sequel rights to the movie, along with the licensing rights to any merchandise made from it, because he hoped this single film would become a series of nine movies called Star Wars. Forty years later, that proved to be a much better deal: the franchise has brought in over $31 billion, and Lucasfilm retained the licensing rights, which it sold to Disney in 2012 for $4 billion. George Lucas is now worth some $5.1 billion because his agent brokered a far better deal—and Fox still kicks itself to this day for letting go of those rights.

The Argument of Hebrews: Jesus Is Better

For the last four months we've been working through the book of Hebrews, in which the author defends the position that Jesus is better. We've seen that Jesus is better than the patriarchs, better than the prophets, better than angels, better than Moses, better than the priesthood, better than the high priests. This whole book is an apologetic—a defense for Jewish readers 2,000 years ago who had left Judaism to put their trust in Jesus and were now being tempted, perhaps by family and friends, to go back.

To them the author—whom I believe was Timothy—says, in the New Living Translation: "Jesus is our high priest, and he 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." He is the one who negotiates a far better deal on our behalf, much as George Lucas's lawyer negotiated a better contract—except the deal Jesus brokers is infinitely better.

So why go back to the covenants, the promises, the temple, the priesthood, the law? The author contends that Jesus is the mediator of a far better covenant.

Understanding the Covenants

The Jewish people reading this letter understood covenants far better than we do. We don't use the concept much in our culture unless we're contract negotiators or lawyers, and we rarely think about it in our religious lives. But the Jewish readers were steeped in it—their entire identity was wrapped up in the covenants.

The first thirty-nine books of the Bible, Genesis to Malachi, are called the Old Covenant, and covenants come up again and again throughout them. From Genesis to the time of David there were seven major covenants in which God brokered a deal with humanity, each one having a mediator. There were the covenants through Adam, the covenant through Noah, the covenant with Abraham and his descendants, the covenant with Moses—the most important for the Jewish people—the priestly covenant through Aaron, and the covenant God made with David and his family.

Every covenant has a mediator, a broker. And the author of Hebrews says Jesus has brokered a far better agreement between God and man—better than what came through Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, or Aaron.

Better Because of Better Promises

Why is the deal Jesus brokered better? Verse 6 tells us: Jesus is "mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises." His is a better covenant because it is based upon better promises.

It is hard for us to feel the weight of what the author was presenting. The Jewish readers' entire national, geographical, historical, and cultural identity centered on these covenants—especially those through Abraham, Moses, Aaron, and David. The Promised Land came through Abraham. Their identity as God's chosen people came through Moses. Their access to God came through Aaron. Their hope of an eternal king came through David. For fifteen hundred years everything about who they were rested on these things.

Now the author comes in and says all of this can be set aside. The thing you trusted in, looked back to and looked forward to—you can walk away from it, because you've been given a new identity. And though most of us are not from a Jewish background, we enter that same new identity. When you put your trust in Jesus, your identity is no longer found in Moses, Abraham, the priests, the temple, or the feasts—it is found in Christ.

That would be a difficult step: to leave everything that makes you who you are and step into this new covenant. So they would ask: how is this possible? How is it a better covenant with better promises? To answer, Timothy does what he routinely does—he goes back to Scripture, five hundred years earlier, to the prophet Jeremiah.

The Promise of a New Covenant

The words in Hebrews 8:7–11 almost identically mirror Jeremiah 31. The author quotes: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah... because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord."

Timothy is essentially saying: I know this is a stretch. I'm asking you to leave your national, cultural, and historical identity and put your trust in Jesus alone. You may object that these covenants are too important to abandon. But you shouldn't be ignorant of this, because your own prophets foretold it. Five hundred years earlier God promised through Jeremiah that He would make a new covenant. You should already have known you would be stepping away from the Old Covenant under Moses, because God Himself promised something new.

The Fault Was Israel's, Not the Covenant's

But why a new covenant? What was wrong with the old one? When you examine the language of the contract itself, there is nothing wrong with it. There was still a problem—but it wasn't the covenant. The fault of the first covenant is the fault and failure of Israel, not the covenant itself.

Look carefully at verses 7–8: "For if the first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them he says..." A new covenant was necessary not because the covenant was broken, but because there was a problem with the people. God said, in effect, "I'm making a new covenant because you broke my covenant."

Now someone might object: if God knows all things, including our nature, isn't it on Him for brokering a contract with people He knew would fail? Most of us are careful before we enter a contract—we check the reviews, we make sure the other party will follow through. If you knowingly enter a contract with someone certain to break it, you were a fool. So why would God enter into a covenant with people He knew couldn't keep it?

You would be right to think that—if God's purpose in the Old Covenant had been for Israel to keep it and be made perfect by it. But that was never the purpose.

The True Purpose of the Old Covenant

The purpose of the Old Covenant—the law, the temple, the sacrifices—was never salvation. It was never to purify or perfect the people, nor to take away sin. Turn to Hebrews 10:1: "For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offered continually year by year, make those who approach perfect." If it could, the sacrifices would have ceased. Instead, verse 4 says, "It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins."

God did not give Israel the covenant hoping they would keep it and be perfected by it. He knew they never could. So what was its purpose? Paul tells us in Romans 3:20: "By the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." And in Romans 7:7: "I would not have known sin except through the law." And in Galatians 3:24: "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith."

The whole purpose of the Old Covenant was to show us just how sinful we are. And at that, the covenant was very good. The law is holy, just, and good, and it is excellent at showing us that we are complete failures. If you came to church today thinking it would make you more right with God, you're in deep trouble—you cannot do enough good to undo your sinful works. Even our righteous works are as filthy rags before God (Isaiah 64:6). The fault of the first covenant is simply that you and I are total failures—not that the covenant is bad. The covenant is great; it does exactly what it was meant to do.

A Faultless Covenant Built on His "I Wills"

So then, what now? Once we realize our failure, look at verse 10, still quoting Jeremiah: "I will put my laws in their mind and write them in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people... For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."

Notice the five "I wills" of God. Spoken five hundred years before Christ, to a nation under the Old Covenant they could never keep, God says: I will make a new covenant; I will put my law in your heart; I will be your God; I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; I will remember your sins no more. His new covenant is faultless because it relies entirely upon His faultlessness, and it forgives our failures.

Paul writes in Romans 8: "The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent His own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have... God declared an end to sin's control over us by giving His Son as a sacrifice for our sins."

The Old Covenant said: keep these requirements, offer these sacrifices, and maybe you can get up to God. But there is no possible way for us to fulfill it. The Old Covenant was conditioned upon our perfect keeping. The New Covenant is unconditional for us—God says, "I will, I will, I will." It is conditioned upon Him fulfilling it, and you can be certain of this one thing: God fulfills His end of the deal completely, perfectly, in every way.

The Old Made Obsolete

Verse 13: "In that He says, 'A new covenant,' He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away." The new covenant has rendered the old obsolete and unnecessary—which is why we preach the gospel of the new covenant and not the laws of the old.

A Jewish reader might ask: what about the temple, the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, the altar of incense—all the structures of the first covenant? Are those unnecessary too? Hebrews 9 answers. The first covenant had its sanctuary, its lamp stand, its showbread, its Ark of the Covenant, its mercy seat. The priests went continually into the first part, but only the high priest went into the second, once a year, never without blood offered for himself and the people's sins.

The Holy Spirit was indicating that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while that first tabernacle stood. It was symbolic for the present time, in which gifts and sacrifices were offered that could not make the worshiper perfect in conscience—external regulations imposed until the time of reformation.

Christ Entered the Most Holy Place

Then verse 11: "But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands... Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption." If the blood of bulls and goats could sanctify the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

"For this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant... that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance." All of us are transgressors under the first covenant, and the first covenant cannot deal with our sin. Its sacrifices are not enough to pay the debt. So Jesus came at just the right time to give His life as the one sacrifice, once for all, that we might receive the better promises.

And what is the better promise? "That those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance"—eternal life. The first covenant could not touch that. It offered veiled access to God on the basis of perpetual animal sacrifices, conditioned upon perfect fulfillment of impossible commandments. The New Covenant offers mercy for our unrighteousness and forgiveness for our iniquities on the basis of Christ's unlimited atonement—His death, burial, and resurrection for our sins, once for all. That is called good news.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, we thank You that You are the mediator of a much better deal. By our own works, our own ability, our own strength, we could never make ourselves right before You, a holy God. Many of us have tried to do better, to do away with our own sin, to live righteously for Your glory—but apart from Your strength and Your work in us, we have absolute inability. We need Your grace.

We thank You that it is You who works in us both to will and to do Your good pleasure. Thank You, Jesus, that You died once for all, the just for the unjust, doing what we could not do, what the law of Moses was unable to do because of the weakness of our sinful nature. You became sin for us that we might receive Your righteousness. You lived a perfect and holy life so that we would receive Your forgiving grace. Help us to walk in the rest and liberty of Your forgiveness, that the joy of it would be seen in our lives by everyone we meet.

Perhaps you have been trying in your own strength to undo your sin, hoping that someday God will say, "Good job." The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be saved by faith—not by keeping the law, because no one can keep it perfectly enough. But Jesus did for you what you could not do yourself. If you'd like to receive His forgiving grace, simply pray with me where you are: Dear Jesus, I recognize my need for You. I pray that You would come into my life, forgive me of my sin, and help me to follow You. In Jesus' name, amen.