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Hebrews 8:11, Matthew 11:27-28

Know Jesus, Know God!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 16, 2020

The writer of Hebrews began his letter by explaining how God speaks to us, not through the prophets or through the law or through angels or through the Levitical priesthood. God now, in these days, “speaks to us through His Son.” And the whole Bible from beginning to end is about the message of His Son! Jesus is the living “Word” of God. He embodies God’s message to all mankind. It’s not a profound theological concept that only philosophers or theologians can understand. It’s the pure message of God’s love for each and every one of us. Receiving God’s love as expressed through Jesus on Calvary brings a rebirth and regeneration to our lives through the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit. This is the simple truth that is to be proclaimed by preachers. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. This is true for rich and poor alike. It’s true for employer and employee alike. It’s true for each and every member of every race on earth. It’s true for male and female alike. It’s true for everyone! There are no standards to be met in order to receive God’s love. He offers it freely to us all and with it the Holy Spirit. This is why the author of Hebrews adds Hebrews 8:11. It says, “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.”

Again, it’s all about Jesus. You’ve heard the saying: “No Jesus, No God. Know Jesus Know God!” Jesus said to Philip “whoever sees me sees the father” (John 14:9). In Matthew 11:27 Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” There is no more miraculous revelation from God or about God. Everything has been revealed in Jesus. Jesus is just what He claimed to be; the ultimate revelation of God to man. Then Jesus goes on in Matthew 11:28 to say, “come to me all you who are weary and burned out on religion and I will give you rest.”

Kent clarifies the idea of everyone will “know” God. “The Holy Spirit residing in each believer provides the basic enlightenment. John did not mean that no teachers are ever needed by believers (John himself was teaching in his epistle), but that the function of human teachers is to clarify and unfold, rather than to convey new revelation from God. That revelation has already come, and the indwelling Spirit provides the intuitive knowledge which in germ at least is possessed equally by all believers.”[1] True rest comes to those who understand Jesus is the ultimate manifestation of God’s love for man. Knowing Jesus is knowing God. No God, no rest. Know God, know rest!

[1] Homer A. Kent Jr., The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary (Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1983), 154.

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Hebrews 8:10, Romans 5:8, John 3:16

Look at Jesus!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 16, 2020

In a lengthy reference to the New Covenant as explained in Jeremiah 31, the writer of Hebrews lays out the difference between the New and the Old Covenants. The Old one was external. It was written on stone and the “flesh” of sinful man could never keep its precepts. The New one was an internal one. Hebrews 8:10 says, “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.” It would be grounded in their hearts and minds and would bring God and man together in a new relationship of the heart – a relationship of love.

The children of God failed the first covenant. The northern kingdom fell to Assyria in 721 BC. The southern kingdom fell to Babylon in 586 BC. The Temple, their religion, was destroyed! But they were not left hopeless. Pfeiffer says, “They had proved faithless to Israel’s God. Jeremiah complained that they had as many gods as they had cities. He insisted that God would send them into exile, where they would remain for seventy years. Yet, Jeremiah did not end on a note of despair. God would one day write a new covenant, not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the human heart. Man’s inner motivation would be transformed. He would become a new creature.”[1]

Looking at the law shows us God’s standards. We see an employer trying to maximize our performance. We see a policeman hiding behind a billboard trying to catch us doing something wrong. We see a coach trying to exhort his losing team to try harder, be more committed, prepare better and give more. It’s all about what we do! But now stop and look at Jesus. What do we see? Paul explains it in Romans 5:8. He says, “God demonstrated His love for us in this: while we were yet sinners (losers!) Jesus died for us.” Jesus is the unmistakable demonstration of God’s love for us. John 3:16 affirms it. “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life.” As both the Old Testament and the New Testament affirm, the thing God wants most from us is our love. But only the loved can love. Look at Jesus! His love can make us new creatures.

[1] Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Everyman’s Bible Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1962), 68.

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Hebrews 8:8-9, Jeremiah 31:31-34

I can be sure with Jesus!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 13, 2020

The writer of Hebrews presents the truth of the superiority of Jesus’ ministry to that of the ministry of the Levitical priests. His ministry is far superior because the covenant that establishes it is far superior to that of the Mosaic covenant.  The Mosaic covenant was based on the successful fulfilling of the requirements. The New Covenant is based upon the unconditional promises of God.  The conditional Mosaic Covenant failed because the people failed to hold up their end of the contract. It’s interesting that this was foretold in the Law as well as the prophets. Jeremiah was the one who explained the failure as the nation was taken away as slaves to Babylon. He prophesied concerning a New Covenant that was to come and the author of Hebrews quotes from Jeremiah chapter 31. Hebrews 8:8-9 says, “For he finds fault with them when he says: ‘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.’”

In the Greek of the Septuagint from which the author of Hebrews draws his quote, Jeremiah makes one thing perfectly clear: it will be a new covenant of a “different” kind. It won’t be like the old one. That difference is in the fact of its unconditional nature. Guzik explains this well. He writes, “There are two ancient Greek words that describe the concept of ‘new.’ Neos described newness in regard to time. Something may be a copy of something old; but if it is recently made, it can be called neos. The ancient Greek word kainos (the word used here) described something that is not only new in reference to time, but is truly new in its quality. It isn’t simply a new reproduction of something old.”[1] The Old Covenant exhortation was an external law of do’s and don’ts, none of which sinful man could keep. The “you will not lie” and the “you will not steal” and all the other commands are “you will or you will not!” In the New Covenant God says, “I will…”

Raymond Brown says God’s promises of the New Covenant are the basis of our eternal security because they are founded on God’s “I wills” not on ours. He writes, “The ‘I wills’ of God rob uncertain, doubting man of his timidity, reticence and fear. God says, ‘I will make this covenant’, ‘I will engrave my laws in their hearts’, ‘I will be their God’, ‘I will manifest myself to them all’, ‘I will make myself known to the least as well as the greatest’, ‘I will be merciful’, ‘I will forget their sins.’ All the tentativeness and hesitancy of the earlier days have gone. Man can now be sure…”[2]

[1] David Guzik, Hebrews, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Heb 8:8–12.

[2] Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 151.

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Hebrews 8:6-7, Matthew 26:27-28, Exodus 24:8

Jesus: A better ministry & covenant!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 13, 2020

The conditional covenant that God established with Israel at Sinai was inadequate. It could not make anyone righteous. It could not be maintained by sinful man. This was not a surprise to God because He had informed Moses after the whole nation signed the covenant with an oath saying “we will keep the laws of the Lord” at the end of Deuteronomy, that they would not keep their promises. The law was the basis upon which God’s people could enjoy life to the fullest extent possible in the land but it had a more permanent purpose; to reveal to all mankind their sinful nature. God wanted the law to break them with failure. The High Priest’s ministry was to intercede with God on behalf of sinful people. He did that through the sacrificial system. The conditional covenant failed, as God foretold. The ministry of the blood of animals accomplished nothing. This necessitated a better ministry and a better covenant. Jesus brought both. Hebrews 8:6-7 says, “But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.”

Jesus’ ministry involved a far superior sacrifice. His perfect body. The sign the shepherds looked for in Bethlehem was that the baby would be swaddled. To us that seems to be a strange sign. But it wasn’t to those shepherds. The Bethlehem shepherds kept the flocks raised by the priests for sacrifices. When a lamb was born it was inspected for flaws. If there were any, the lamb was left to its mother and could easily injure itself as it stumbled around learning to walk. If it qualified as a sacrificial lamb it was swaddled to protect it from harming itself as it grew. The shepherds knew this baby had a perfect body acceptable by God as a sacrifice for sin.

Jesus’ ministry involved a far better Covenant. The old one was dependent on the actions of the people. This one, as the covenant with Abraham, was a promise by God that He would bring about a specific result regardless of the behavior of others. It was totally dependent on the unshakable promise of God from Genesis 3 through the rest of the Old Testament.  The blood of the Levitical sacrifices sealed the old covenant. Jesus’ blood seals a far superior unconditional covenant! Stedman observes, “On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took a cup of wine, passed it to his disciples and said: ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ (Mt 26:27–28). With those words and that symbolic action, he borrowed the phrase used by Moses when he took the blood of an animal, sprinkled it on the people and said, This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words’” (Ex 24:8).[1] Fruchtenbaum concludes his study on this passage by saying, “the earthly Tabernacle must give way to the Heavenly Tabernacle. The temporary Tabernacle must give way to the eternal one. The system that rested on a temporary, conditional covenant had to give way to a system that rested on an unconditional, eternal covenant.”[2]

[1] Ray C. Stedman, Hebrews, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 1992), Heb 8:1.

[2] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, The Messianic Jewish Epistles: Hebrews, James, First Peter, Second Peter, Jude, 1st ed. (Tustin, CA: Ariel Ministries, 2005), 110.

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Hebrews 8:5, 1 Thessalonians 4:13

Jesus is the real thing!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 13, 2020

God instructed Moses in great detail regarding the construction of the tabernacle.  It seems to have been more than just instructions or blueprints because Moses was shown a “pattern” by which he should model the earthly sanctuary in which the Levitical priests would perform their intercessory ministry for the people. When God finished His instructions to Moses, He concluded His remarks in Exodus 25:40 by saying, “And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.” God actually showed Moses a model by which he would design the residence of God’s mercy seat on earth. The model that God showed Moses was the real deal! Moses’ reproduction on earth was just a shadow or a reflection of the real thing. Again quoting from the Old Testament the writer of Hebrews 8:5 says, speaking of the Levitical priests, “They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’”

Plato is famous for his allegory of the cave. People were chained facing a wall on which their shadows were reflected. The shadows were all they knew and believed the shadows to be reality. Since they spent their lives in the cave they knew and could not imagine anything else. Although there were others in the cave, the prisoners could only see their shadows moving around on the walls. Their reality was only a shadow of what actually existed. Justin Martyr, an early church father around 125AD, thought that Plato got his idea from Moses. He writes, “And Plato, too, when he says that form is the third original principle next to God and matter, has manifestly received this suggestion from no other source than from Moses, having learned, indeed, from the words of Moses the name of form.”[1] The author of Hebrews explains that the “shadow” of reality is the earthly tabernacle.  The “form”, the “pattern”, the real thing is the one where Jesus the High Priest ministers in heaven.

There is another reality! The heavenly reality is more real than the shadowy world in which we live. We now “walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” But Jesus has conquered death and it is merely a means by which we leave this life of shadows and enter into real life with Jesus.  Jesus is for real! Everything on earth is simply a passing shadow. The prisoners thought that the shadows were reality but they were wrong. We see the things of this world and say they are reality. We too are wrong. We are seeing only the shadows, the temporary manifestations, rather than the real things laid up in heaven for us. When the prisoners are released and see the reality in the light of the sun, they stand amazed. They could never have imagined the beauty and the glory of reality. The liberated slaves of Plato’s analogy can’t help but go back into the cave to tell the others. Paul explains in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 that we “do not grieve like those who have no hope” at the loss of loved ones. We know they have just passed from the shadows into the glorious reality of the place that Jesus has prepared for them for all eternity.

[1] Justin Martyr, “Justin’s Hortatory Address to the Greeks,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. M. Dods, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 285.

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Hebrews 8:3-4

Jesus is enough!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 13, 2020

The veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place in the tabernacle represented the separation of sinful man from God. God resided in the most holy place above the mercy seat. No one could come near to God at any time. But the high priest would do that for the people once a year only. He would offer sacrifices for his own sins first and then offer sacrifices for the sins of the people and then he’d sprinkle the blood upon the mercy seat as a symbol that God has accepted man’s sacrifice and forgiven their sins. According to tradition, this was true only if the priest came out of the Holy of Holies alive! Tradition says that the priests who entered had a rope tied around their leg so that if they died in the presence of God they could pull him out by use of the rope. He had bells along the bottom of his robe so that his movement could be heard. If it went too long without any movement they feared he might have died in the presence of God and they would need to retrieve his body. The sacrifice for the sin of the people had to be acceptable to God. If the priests followed Moses’ instructions and if the sacrifice was acceptable, the Priest would come out alive. There had to be a blood sacrifice and it had to be acceptable.

Just as the earthly priests had to bring an acceptable sacrifice so too does our High Priest, Jesus as He resides in the presence of God. Hebrews 8:3-4 says, “For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.” Jesus offered Himself, the perfect Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the world. His sacrifice was not an earthly, temporary one like the Levitical priests offered. He wasn’t even qualified to offer that kind of a sacrifice. His sacrifice had to be different and of course it was. The earthly priests brought “gifts and sacrifices,” but our heavenly high priest only brought one, Himself! All the offerings of the OT: guilt, thanks, trespass, and all the others, have been satisfied completely by the singular “something to offer” that Jesus brought. No other sacrifice is necessary!

Jesus was the breach between the heavenly and the earthly. At His birth, He took on a human body and brought divinity to man. He lived on earth for 33 years as a divine human with all the signs and miracles of God. He took His life, the ultimate sacrifice for sin, into the grave and offered the sacrifice that sets men free. Then to prove that the sacrifice was acceptable, He came back to life! He lived! He stayed for another 40 days as the God-man with a transformed body capable of managing both realms and then ascended to His rightful place at the right hand of God. The pattern established by God through Moses to deal with man’s sin through a blood sacrifice had been fulfilled. No other sacrifice or offering is needed. Jesus is enough!

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Hebrews 8:1-2

Grounded in Jesus!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 13, 2020

Hebrews chapter 7 dealt primarily with Jesus’ priesthood and its superiority to the Levitical priesthood. Jesus’ Melchizedekian priesthood was superior for many reasons. It was permanent not temporary. It involved a perfect sacrifice that was offered once and for all instead of the sacrifices of the old covenant being required over and over again. The high priest under the Levitical system had to offer sacrifices for his own sin. Jesus had no sin that required a sacrifice. Jesus has entered into the very presence of God Himself on our behalf and has remained there; whereas the Levitical priests had to enter again and again, year after year. Chapter 8 continues the theme of Jesus’ superiority by pointing out that Jesus priestly duties take place not on earth but in heaven. This is how the author of Hebrews begins chapter 8. Hebrews 8:1-2 says, “Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.”  Guzik observes, “The tabernacle and the temple of the Old Covenant had beautiful furnishings, but no place for the priests to sit down because their work was never finished. The work of Jesus is finished—He is seated in heaven.”[1]

God has established a heavenly dwelling place for His Son and believers. Our author refers to it as the “heavenly tabernacle.” That’s the place where God dwells. God gave Moses the blueprints from which to build the earthly tabernacle to serve as a picture of the heavenly one. There are two realms with which we have to deal; the earthly one and the heavenly one. Moses, his covenant of law, and the Levitical priests serve in the earthly tabernacle. Jesus serves in the true presence of God in heaven. We deal with the Law covenant in this life. We reap what we sow. We get what we deserve! We make our beds and have to sleep in them. We make atonement for our sins in this life in prison, on the gallows, or in just plain consequences of daily life. But there’s a new realm that relates to each of us in a different way through our faith in Jesus.

Ray Brown explains the situation for us emphasizing the truth in a way that helps us through our daily struggles today. He writes, “We may feel crushed, dejected, bewildered or broken, but our eternal salvation has never depended on our vacillating moods or our changing circumstances. Christ has entered the heavenly sanctuary; ‘once and for all’ he offered his blood for us. There he has appeared for us and now he is praying for us. We are ever remembered at that throne and our names are enrolled in heaven. This is our confidence. Our faith is grounded not in what we are or what we have done, but ever and always in what he is, God’s perfect Son, and what he has done through his perfect, eternal sacrifice.”[2]

[1] David Guzik, Hebrews, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Heb 8:1–2.

[2] Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 146.

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Hebrews 7:14-17, John 14:6

Jesus opens the door for us!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
January 7, 2020

The writer of Hebrews makes it perfectly clear that the priesthood of Jesus was different, radically different, from the priesthood of Levi. According to law, He could never have served in the Levitical priesthood because of His lineage. Hebrews 7:14 says, “For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.” No priests were to come from Judah, only Kings! Yet the intercessory ministry of Jesus replaces that role and established a permanent one which was not alien to the writings of the Old Testament. In fact, His ministry fulfills the role established previously by Melchizedek. Hebrews 7:15-17 says, “This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.  For it is witnessed of him, ‘You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.’”

Jesus priesthood is different in many ways but first of all, His is eternal. There are no time restrictions of any kind. He is once and for all established as the one and only priest who can make sure atonement for our sins with God and give us access to His heavenly presence for all eternity.  Also, His priesthood doesn’t separate us from God, but opens the way to God. The Levitical priesthood separated people from God. They stood at the door as doorkeepers who would deny access to all except those born of the correct line. Only the Levitical priests could come into the presence of God. But Jesus rent the curtain that separated the people from their God. Jesus defrocked the door keepers who kept sinners away. Jesus opened that way and made it possible for all of us through faith in Him to enter into God’s presence knowing we’re accepted as His children. In John 14:6, Jesus said, referring to His eternal role as Priest, “no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus is not a door keeper but a door greeter! I like the way Richards explains the situation established by Jesus’ new and permanent priesthood. He writes, “Because of Jesus, the door to God is always open, and so we always have hope. The old doorkeepers, the Aaronic priests, are gone. Their struggle to keep open the crack that the Old Testament opened in relationship to God is ended. Jesus has come, and He has not only thrown open the door, but He stands in it to welcome us personally when we turn to Him.”[1]

[1] Larry Richards and Lawrence O. Richards, The Teacher’s Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987), 1003.

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