“For this is the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares
the Lord: I will put my law 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 to his neighbor and each one to his brother, 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.”
Hebrews 8:10-12
(quoted from Jeremiah 31:31-34)
I continue to be blessed in my study of the Book of
Hebrews. The author is making the case
that Jesus is the only High Priest that we need, that His blood has secured an
eternal redemption, and that the covenant He established by His blood proves
the old covenant to be merely a shadow and copy with no power to forgive
sins.
Chapter 8 is all about proving that Jesus ushers in this New
Covenant, and by doing so, makes the old one obsolete. We see in the previous two verses that a new
covenant will be established because the old one failed, not due to its
imperfections, but because Israel disobeyed and broke it. So we come to the above verses, this really,
really Good News about what God will do and now has done in Christ for His
covenant people.
We can see three things from this text that are really,
really Good News for all of us who are in Christ.
I.
I will put my law into their minds, and
write them on their hearts…
In the old covenant, God writes His law on stone tablets and
tells Moses to speak to Israel all that He commands. In the new covenant, God writes the law on
our hearts, not simply that we might remember it, but that we might love it and
eagerly obey it out of gratitude. God
goes one step further in Ezekiel 36 when He promises us new hearts to replace
the stone, hard hearts that we all have before God causes us to be born
again. God gives us the ability to know
His Word and lovingly obey it. Amazing!
II.
I will be their God, and they shall be my
people…for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
This isn’t the abstract knowledge that we might get from a
book. And it wasn’t the same knowledge
that Israel had as God revealed Himself on Mt. Sinai. We know that Israel still forgot God even
after He came as a pillar of fire to guide them in the wilderness. What the new covenant promises is that we
will have a personal, intimate knowledge of God. We won’t need anyone to tell us about knowing
God because He will reveal Himself to us in a personal way. And this promises is for each and every one
of God’s people from the least to the greatest.
(Just so we don’t forget, John 17:3 tells us that knowing God is
synonymous with eternal life.)
And like with any relationship, to truly know God, one must
spend time with Him, not simply read about Him in a book or listen to a sermon
about Him. To spend time with God is to
be in His presence. In His presence
there is fullness of joy. (Psalm 16:11) Just think about what it might look like for
more of God’s people to enjoy His presence on a daily basis! What might this world start looking like if
we made more of an effort to intimately know God?
III.
For I
will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no
more.
Now, we know that while God is a God of love and
forgiveness, He is also a God of justice.
In the same way that crimes demand punishment, sin demands justice. God would not be loving if He failed to deal
with sin. To be unjust is to be
unloving. So God must deal with
sin.
What is this verse telling us then? If we have sinned and God must exact judgment
on our sin, how can He remember our sins no more? This is where Jesus comes in and why He is the
most important person EVER.
The One who created the Heavens and the Earth, the Word of
God, Jesus, God’s Son, became flesh and dwelt among us. He came to establish this New Covenant. He came to set captives free and restore
peace and health and make the blind see and the lame walk and the dead
rise.
But before ultimate restoration and redemption could happen,
He had to deal with our sin. So Jesus
came to earth and became fully man without surrendering any of His deity so
that He could take our sin and our judgment upon Himself and die in our place
to satisfy God’s justice. He did this so
that God’s people would be able to declare, “We know God!” And He did it because there was no other way
that our sins might be remembered no more by a just and holy God.
Hebrews tells us that without the shedding of blood there is
no forgiveness of sins. Jesus had to
pour out His own blood for our sins. And
He did, the perfect One trading places with guilty rebels. That was what His death accomplished. And we can be confident that He was successful
because God raised Him from the dead and He is alive.
If your heart loves God and wants to obey God’s commands,
praise Jesus Christ.
If you know God personally and intimately, praise Jesus Christ.
If you are confident of your forgiveness and right standing
before God, praise Jesus Christ.
Isn’t a God like that worth surrendering everything
for?
I think so.
But when Christ
appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then 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 means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an
eternal redemption.
Hebrews 9:11-12
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