Hebrews 8

CHAPTER 8THEME: The true tabernacle; the New Covenant is better than the oldThe high watermark of this magnificent epistle is before us in this chapteractually it began in the previous chapter at verse Heb_7:25: “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” This verse is the key to this section. You see, the emphasis is upon the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is living. He is not deadHe is not on a cross; He is not lying in a grave. He arose from the dead, and the emphasis is upon our living Christ. Then verse Heb_7:26: “For such an high priest became us [He is what we need], who is holy [in His relation to God], harmless [He never does anything to harmHe is never moved by anger], undefiled [free from any moral impurity], separate from sinners [in His life and character, although He is right down here among us and wants us to come to Him], and made higher than the heavens [He is in the presence of God].” The value of His sacrifice is stated in verse Heb_7:27: “Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.” His sacrifice was not of silver or gold or bulls or goats; He offered up Himself! There is nothing of greater value than He.

Verse Heb_7:28: “For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore.” You do not place your confidence in a mere man when you place your confidence in Jesus; you place your confidence in the Godman. Because He is a man, He can sympathize with you and is able to meet your need. He is a royal priest. He is a righteous priest. He is a peace-promoting priest. He is a personal priestHe is for you personally.

He didn’t inherit the office; that is, He didn’t come in the line of Aaron. He is an eternal priest. Now here in chapter 8 we are told that He ministers in a superior sanctuary by a much better covenant, which is built upon better promises.

Hebrews 8:1

THE TRUE TABERNACLE"This is the sum." He is not actually summing this up, although that thought is included. He is doing more than that. Let me give you a literal translation: “In consideration of the things which are spoken, this is the focal (chief) point. We have such an high priest, who sat down in the heavens on the right hand of the Majesty.” As we have said, this is the high watermark of Hebrews. “Who is set on the right hand of the throne.” Christ did something which no priest in the Old Testament ever did. There is not a priest in the line of Aaron who ever had a chair in the tabernacle where he sat down. He was on the run all the time. Why? Because he had work to do. All of these things are shadows that point to a finished sacrifice. Now that Christ has died, all has been fulfilled, and we do not need to wonder if we are doing enough to merit salvation. All we need to do is turn to Jesus Christ and trust Him as our Savior. He sat down because He had finished our redemption. He asks only that we accept it.

Hebrews 8:2

Bezaleel was the master craftsman who made the beautiful articles of furniture for the tabernacle. The mercy seat and the golden lampstand were of gold and highly ornate. It was all man-made, although the Holy Spirit directed him. In contrast, the Lord Jesus ministers in a tabernacle that He Himself has made in heaven. Now we are going to see something that I feel totally inadequate to present.

Hebrews 8:3

This verse makes it clear that at the time the Epistle to the Hebrews was written the temple in Jerusalem was still in existence and that in it priests were still going about their duties.

Hebrews 8:5

It is my belief that when God instructed Moses to build the tabernacle in the wilderness, God gave him a pattern of the original in heaven, the true tabernacle (v. Heb_8:2), meaning genuine. The tabernacle in its beautiful simplicity furnishes a type of Jesus Christ (which is almost lost in the complicated detail of the temple). The tabernacle was called a tent, the sides of which were upright boards, covered on both sides with gold. It measured thirty cubits long and ten cubits wide and was divided into two compartments. The first compartment was called the Holy Place. In it were three articles of furniture: the golden lampstand; the golden table of showbread; and the golden altar where incense was offeredno sacrifice other than incense. The lampstand was a type of Christ, the Light of the World.

The table of showbread symbolized Him as the Bread of Life. The golden altar at which the high priest offered prayer, spoke of Christ, our Great Intercessor. Then on the great Day of Atonement the high priest passed through the separating veil to the inner compartment, the Holy of Holies, in which were two articles of furniture. (1) The ark of the covenant was a box made of wood, covered with gold inside and outside, in which were the Ten Commandments written on tables of stone, a pot of manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded. The Ten Commandments speak of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Law, and He is the only one who ever kept it in all of its detail. Then the pot of manna speaks of the fact that He is the Bread of Life even today. Aaron’s rod that budded speaks of Christ’s resurrection. (2) The ark of the covenant was covered with a highly ornamented top called the mercy seat.

Crowning it were two cherubim of beaten gold. Once a year the high priest placed blood on the mercy seat, and that is what made it a mercy seat. That was God’s dwelling place; that is, the place where God met with the children of Israel. Around the tabernacle was a court, surrounded by a linen fence one hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide. In that outer court were two articles of furniture. The first was the brazen altar where all sacrifices were made. The sin question was settled there, but since saints still sin, there was also a laver where the priests could wash, signifying the cleansing from sin. Now, the Holy Place is where the priests served and where they worshiped. We worship God when we pray, feed upon His Word, and walk in the light of His presence, that is, in obedience to Him. No one but the high priest (and he only once a year) entered into the next compartment, the Holy of Holies. But when the Lord Jesus died, the separating veil was rent in twaintorn in twosignifying that He had forever opened the way into the Holy of Holies and the presence of God. We might say that the Lord Jesus Christ took the tabernacle, which was horizontal, and made it perpendicular to the earth so that the Holy of Holies is now in heavenbecause that is where He is. And we are going to find in the following chapter that the golden altar of incense, together with the ark of the covenant, are now in heaven. They are there because Christ Himself is there. If you had been in the wilderness with Israel, you would have seen the tabernacle in the heart of the encampment, with the tents of the tribes camped all around it. You would have seen the pillar of cloud over the tabernacle by day and the pillar of fire by night. You would have seen the priests busily running to and fro carrying on their ministry of offering sacrifices and observing all of the ritual which God had commanded. Now all of that was a shadow of a reality. The reality itself was in heaven. And today Jesus is there in the heavenly tabernacle functioning in behalf of you and me. Now perhaps you are saying, “You said that when we got to this section that the writer of this epistle would start serving porterhouse steaks. Well, it seems that we are still drinking milk, because what we have been studying so far seems very simple. When are we going to get something deep?” Well, the beefsteak is ready now, and I’d like to put it right down before you. I’ll put it in the form of a personal question. My friend, is Christ real to you right now? If you still like to run around in a ritual and have a nice beautiful church service (there is nothing wrong with thatdon’t misunderstand me), but if you think that is worship, and if you think that you are serving God by just teaching a Sunday school class or singing in the choir, I have news for you. He is trying to tell us, friend, that Jesus is up yonder in heaven for you right at this very moment. What does that really mean to you? Come now, don’t choke on this steak.

Don’t ask for a glass of milk. Don’t start running around doing little things. Let the pots and pans alone, Martha; you don’t need to be handling them right now. Let’s sit at Jesus’ feet. Let Him be a reality in our lives. When you left the house this morning, did you take Him with you?

Were you conscious of His presence? He is in heaven serving you, friend! Christ is your intercessor. You are to go to Him to make confession of your sin. Why is it that you are worrying your pastor to death with your problems? Why do you keep going to him for counseling?

Isn’t Jesus real to you today? Quit being a little baby that has to be burped all the time. Grow up! Come into the presence of the living Savior. That is what the writer is talking about. Oh, may God take the veil from our eyes, and may He make Jesus Christin all of His power, and in all of His salvation, and in all of His love, and in all of His care for youa true reality! I have been asked, “Why don’t you run up the American flag? Why don’t you fight corruption and lawlessness?” The reason I don’t preach about those things is because I teach the Word of God, and I am trying to get folk into the presence of the living Christ. When that is accomplished, all of those other things will drop into their right places. If you walk in the light of His presence, you are going to walk with Him down the street. If you go into a barroom, Christ is going to have to go in with you. I don’t know whether you would want to take Him into a bar or not.

When Christ is with you, there are many things you are going to have to stop and consider. You will watch your conduct when you are conscious of the presence of Jesus Christ with you all of the time. He is the living intercessor today. He is alive. Again let me say that the Lord Jesus ministers in a better tabernacle, the genuine tabernacle in heaven. He has made the throne of God a throne of grace, and we have been bidden to come there with great confidence and assurance that He is there. The thing you and I need to pray above everything else is: “Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief.” I don’t know about you, but my unbelief is bigger than my belief. We need to come to Him by faith. “Without faith it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb_11:6). So you and I need to have the reality of Jesus Christ in our lives. You will not see Him with your physical eye nor hear Him with your physical ear, but you will behold Him with that inner eye and hear Him with that inner ear which only faith can open. Oh, how wonderful this is! Perhaps you think we have bogged down in this section. No, we are in His presence. We are at the high watermark. We are walking in the tall corn now. This is a wonderful section of God’s Word.

Hebrews 8:6

THE NEW COVENANT IS BETTER THAN THE OLD"He obtained a more excellent ministry." The tabernacle down here was a shadow of the real tabernacle up yonder in heaven. Christ lives up there and He can keep us saved. Somebody asks me, “Do you think you can lose your salvation?” Well, I’ll make a confession to you. I would lose my salvation before the sun goes down if Christ were not up there right now. He is having a problem with meand maybe He is having a problem with youbut, thank God, He is there. My, how we need Him! “He is the mediator of a better covenant.” We have what is known as a New Covenant today; we call it a new testament. The New Testament is actually a New Covenant which God has made, and it is in contrast to the old covenant of the Old Testament. God gave to Moses the Law, then He gave to him instructions for the tabernacle with its service. It was there that sin was dealt with. No one was ever saved by keeping the Law. No one ever came to God and said, “I have kept all Your commandments, therefore receive me.” No, instead they were continually bringing sacrifices because they had transgressed God’s law.

The Law revealed to them that they had come short of the glory of God. The sacrificial system was all shadow. Although the tabernacle God gave to them was a literal tabernacle, it was a shadow of the real tabernacle in which Christ ministers today. In other words, so far we have seen that we have a better priest; we have a better sacrifice; we have a better tabernacle. All of this converges yonder at the brazen altar because Christ is all three: He is the better priest who ministers there. He is the better sacrificeHe offered Himself.

And He ministers in a better tabernacle, for He offered His own blood for your sin and my sin. At this point I would like to refer you to my book, The Tabernacle, God’s Portrait of Christ. In it I go into much more detail, and I take the position that Christ offered His literal blood in heaven. It is my opinion that He was on His way to do this when He appeared to Mary. “Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (Joh_20:17). I think He was at that moment our High Priest on His way to offer His literal blood in heaven. And I believe it will be there throughout eternity to remind us of the price that He paid for our redemption. When my book was first published, it was reviewed by a Christian magazine.

The critic recommended it but warned that I took this literal view. The critic called it a crude concept. Well, I don’t think that the blood of Christ is crudeeither when it was shed on earth or offered in heaven. Simon Peter, who was not what one might call a cultured individual, called it precious blood. A society dowager approached a great preacher in the East years ago. Looking at him through her lorgnette (a lorgnette, you know, is a sneer on the end of a stick), she said, “I hope you will not be like our last preacher.

He was rather old-fashioned and put great emphasis on the blood. The blood offends my aesthetic nature. Don’t you think it is crude?” His reply to her was, “Madam, I see nothing crude about the blood of Christ except my sin and your sin.” I agree with him wholeheartedly. I say to you very definitely and dogmatically that I believe His blood is even now in heaven, and throughout the endless ages it will be there to remind us of the awful price Christ paid to redeem us. “Which was established upon better promises.” Back in the Old Testament God had given the Mosaic Law, and when the people of Israel broke it, they brought the sacrifices. Before God gave the Mosaic Law and the instructions for approaching Him through the tabernacle ritual, they came to God by faith like Abraham did. Then when we move back of the time of Abraham, we find that Noah was on a different basis altogether. I don’t feel that you can read the Bible intelligently without seeing that God dealt with men differently in different ages. If you don’t want to call them dispensations, then you use your own word, but if you accept the inerrancy of Scripture and believe it is the Word of God, you are faced with the dispensational systemif you read it aright. The writer of this epistle says that now we have a “better covenant” and that it is based upon “better promises.” Although you and I as Christians have been made a part of it, God is not through with the nation Israel, and these “better promises” are going to be fulfilled for them in the future Millennium. When you read the Old Testament prophets, you just cannot get away from the fact that God is going to return the children of Israel to their land. (As far as I can see, the present return of the Jews to Israel is not the fulfillment of prophecy.) For example, notice this prophecy in Jeremiah: “Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will bring again the captivity of Jacob’s tents, and have mercy on his dwellingplaces; and the city shall be builded upon her own heap, and the palace shall remain after the manner thereof” (Jer_30:18). Then in Jer_31:8 we read, “Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither.” This verse mentions the north country, which is Russia. The Jews are having a hard time getting out of Russia today, but when God steps in, there will be no trouble getting out of Russia and going to Palestine. Continuing on in the Book of Jeremiah we are told, “Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock. For the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he” (Jer_31:10-11, italics mine). The Jews are not in Israel under God’s redemption todaythey are far from Him.

But when that day comes, there will be a fulfillment of what the writer to the Hebrews is talking about when he says that there are going to be better promises on a better covenant that God will make with these people. “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer_31:31-33, italics mine). In effect, God says, “I gave it to them before and wrote it on a cold hard stoneand they couldn’t keep it, but now I am going to write it on the fleshly tablets of the heart.” He has not done this up to the present moment. As I write this, I have just returned from the land of Israel and I saw no turning to God at all. One of the tour guides whom I had the privilege of meeting was a very attractive and likeable fellow. After I had witnessed to him, I told him, “You ought to be telling me about Jesus. You are a Jew, and you are living here in this land where He lived.

He died for the sins of the world. I’m a poor Gentile who has come from afar. You ought to be telling me about Himand here I am telling you!” He just laughed. May I say to you, friend, the Jews are not back in their land according to this promise. But someday Jeremiah’s prophecy is going to be fulfilled. Listen to him: “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me [they don’t know Him today], from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer_31:34).

This is what the writer to the Hebrews is talking about. The New Covenant is established upon better promises. Christ is the mediator of the better covenant because it contains better promises.

Hebrews 8:7

“For if that first covenant had been faultless"the first covenant was not adequate, which created a necessity for a better covenant. Somebody says, “Then the old covenant was wrong.” Now, that is not the case. Listen to the next verse:

Hebrews 8:8

“For finding fault with them"not with it. The problem never was with God’s covenant. There is nothing wrong with God’s law, but there is a whole lot wrong with you and me. You and I are not able to keep the Law; we are not able to measure up to its requirements. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” We have just read about that in Jeremiah’s prophecy, and you can read about it in the rest of the prophets.

Hebrews 8:9

The people broke the first covenant. It did not enable them to perform what it demanded.

Hebrews 8:10

The New Covenant will be written upon their heartsnot upon tables of stoneso that they will be able to obey it.

Hebrews 8:11

There will be full forgiveness of sin. There will be complete pardon.

Hebrews 8:13

So, my friend, we are not under the Mosaic system. God says that it is an old model and He has brought in a new model. That New Covenant He has made through the Lord Jesus Christ who is our Savior. Let me repeat, He did it, not because there was something wrong with the old covenant, but because there is something wrong with us. I feel sorry for folk today who have come back to the old covenant. They try to keep the Sabbath day and they try to keep the Mosaic Law. Oh, my friend, if they will really study it and are honest, they know they are not keeping the Mosaic system. They come short. All of us need to come to God for mercy, and accept in His New Covenant the provision of a Savior. The Law was totally incapable of producing any good thing in man. Paul could say, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing …” (Rom_7:18). And, friend, that is Scripture, and that is accurate. Man is totally depraved. That doesn’t mean only the man across the street or down in the next block from you, nor does it mean only some person who is living in overt sin; it means you and it means me. The Holy Spirit is now able to do the impossible. The Holy Spirit can produce a holy life in weak and sinful flesh. Let me illustrate this truth by using a very homely incident. Suppose a housewife puts a roast in the oven right after breakfast because she is going to serve it for the noon meal. Time goes by and the telephone rings. It is Mrs. Joe Dokes on the phone. Mrs.

Dokes begins with “Have you heard?” Well, the housewife hasn’t heard, but she would like to; so she pulls up a chair. Someone has defined a woman as one who draws up a chair when answering a telephone. Mrs. Dokes has a lot to tell, and about an hour goes by. Finally our good housewife says, “Oh, Mrs. Dokes, you’ll have to excuse me.

I smell the roastit’s burning!” She hangs up the phone, rushes to the kitchen, and opens the oven. Then she gets a fork and puts it down in the roast to lift it up, but it won’t hold. She can’t lift it out. She tries again, closer to the bone, but still it won’t hold. So she gets a spatula. She puts the spatula under the roast and lifts it out.

You see, what the fork could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, the spatula is able to do. Now, there is nothing wrong with the forkit was a good fork. But it couldn’t hold the flesh because something was wrong with the fleshit was overcooked. The spatula does what the fork could not do. The Law is like the fork in that it was weak through the flesh. It just won’t lift us up; it can’t lift us up. But a new principle is introduced: the Holy Spirit. What the Law could not do, the Holy Spirit is able to do. Therefore, you and I are to be saved and are to live the Christian life on this new principle. We have a New Covenant based upon better promises; God has given to us the Holy Spirit and Christ, our intercessor, is up yonder to help us today. This is a very wonderful passage of Scripture. If you want to get off the milk diet (although milk is good for you, and there is milk in the Word), learn to eat some meat along with it. The meat is to put the emphasis upon the living Christ, His ascension, and His intercession yonder in heaven for you and for me. My friend, when we lay hold on the living Christ, we have gone to the heights. We cannot go any higher than that in this age in which we live.