Jesus: Mediator of a Better Covenant
By John Piper, Pastor
December 22, 1996
Bethlehem Baptist Church
"It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of what
happened in A. D. 70 in Jerusalem."
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Hebrews 8:6-13
But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much
as He is also the Mediator of a better covenant, which has been
enacted on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had
been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for
a second. 8 For finding fault with them, He says, "Behold, days
are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with
the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; 9 not like the
covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took
them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they
did not continue in my covenant, and I did not care for them,
says the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with
the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put
my laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their
hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
11 And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and
everyone his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all shall know
me, from the least to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be
merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no
more." 13 When He said, "A new covenant," He has made
the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and
growing old is ready to disappear.
A Threatening Prediction:
For those who had ears to hear there was a threatening prediction
behind Hebrews 8:13. It would not have seemed threatening
to everyone, but to many it would have and it did. The writer
interprets the word “new”, in the phrase “new covenant” from
Jeremiah 31, like this: “When He said, ‘A new covenant,’ He has
made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and
growing old is ready to disappear.” What does he have in mind?
This old covenant is “ready to disappear”? For those whose whole
way of life was defined by this “first” covenant, this predicted
disappearance would have been threatening.
Let me give you a background that will help you hear this the way
I think he meant it to be heard.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of what
happened in A. D. 70 in Jerusalem. It was an event that, for
Jews and Christians, was critical in defining their faith for the
next 2,000 years. God had been at work for 2,000 years since
Abraham, calling, preserving, judging, forgiving and blessing
his people Israel. He had commanded an elaborate system
of sacrifices and priestly ministries and feasts and rituals to
define Israel among the nations and to make himself known
to them and to point them to the future fulfillment.
Christianity Threatened the Jewish Way of Life:
Now Christians claimed that the Messiah had come, Jesus
of Nazareth. The great mass of Israel rejected this claim.
The rejection resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus and the
persecution of the early Christians. The claims of the
Christians raised a huge question for the Jewish people
as a whole. What would become of their way of life?
The new faith seemed incredibly radical. For example,
in Acts 6 Stephen is proving to be an irresistible witness for
the truth of the Christian faith. To stop him, false witnesses
are brought in. And what is their charge? Acts 6:13-14:
They put forward false witnesses who said, "This man incessantly
speaks against this holy place, and the Law; for we have heard
him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and
alter the customs which Moses handed down to us".
There you have the meaning of Christianity for the Jewish
leaders. It meant the destruction of the old ways. The
“vanishing” of the first covenant. They could sense it.
He speaks against this place (Jerusalem) and the Law;
and they really believed that Christianity threatened the
existence of the Temple itself. And if the Temple falls,
then what will become of all the “customs” of the Old Testament
and the whole religious life of Judaism? The issue was so sharp
they killed Stephen over it.
And they did indeed have reason to be afraid. Not only had
Jesus actually said that the Temple would be destroyed, he
had predicted the entire destruction of Jerusalem. For example,
in Luke 19:43-44 he said,
The days shall come upon you when your enemies will throw up a
bank before you, and surround you, and hem you in on every side,
and will level you to the ground and your children within you,
and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because
you did not recognize the time of your visitation.
In other words, the Jewish people had reason to fear these early
Christians. Even though they were a meek and peaceful band that
would rather die than live by the sword, nevertheless at the very
heart of their faith was the implicit end of the Jewish way of
life as they knew it. So much so that the end of that way of
life (not by Christian violence, but by God’s hand) would be
a partial vindication of the Christian’s claim to truth.
The Roman Destruction of Jerusalem:
For decades before and after the birth of Jesus the atmosphere
in the land of Israel was tense with the spirit of rebellion
against Rome. The Jewish people chafed under this godless
power, and dreamed of deliverance. In September A. D. 66,
Florus, the Roman governor of Judea, provoked the Jews by
raiding the Temple treasury and taking what he thought the
Jews were withholding in taxes.
This provoked a riot, and he ruthlessly crucified some of
the citizens and allowed his troops to plunder part of the city.
This enraged the people. Eleazar, the Jewish Captain of the
Temple, persuaded the priests no longer to offer daily sacrifices
for the welfare of the Roman emperor. This was an ominous
sign of open revolt against Rome by a tiny vassal nation.
In a surge of courage and folly, the Jewish forces stormed
the fortress of Antonius in the city and took it and wiped out
the Roman soldiers. So the die was cast, and there was no
turning back. Vespasian, the Roman general, came to put down
the revolt in 67 and took all of Israel except Jerusalem.
He returned to Rome to become emperor and left the finishing
of the work to his son, the general Titus. After a five-month
siege, he broke through and burned the Temple to the ground
in August of 70. A few Jewish groups held out for a while,
but all eventually collapsed, including the force at Masada,
who committed mass suicide in 73 rather than be handed
over as captives.
The End of Judaism as it Was:
That was the end of Judaism as it had been known for hundreds
of years. The priesthood was at an end. The animal sacrifices
were at an end. The worship life that centered on Jerusalem and
the Temple was at an end. And it has never been restored to our
own day. Judaism as we know it today in Minneapolis and New York
and Tel Aviv is not the same way of life practiced before AD 70.
What is the meaning of this cataclysmic event for Judaism?:
It was a witness to the truth of Christianity. Jesus predicted
it. And it came to pass. Christians did not fight against
Israel in this revolt. In fact, Christians suffered in Jerusalem
with Israel because of the revolt. As far as Rome was concerned
Judaism was the tree and Christianity was the branch. If they
could destroy the tree of Judaism, they could wipe out
Christianity as well. Jews and Christians suffered together
in AD 70.
So the destruction of AD 70 was not an act of anti-Semitism.
Rather it was an act of divine judgment. That is what Jesus says
in Luke 19:43-44: these things happened“ because you did not
recognize the time of your visitation”, that is, you did not
recognize the coming of the Messiah. It was God’s testimony that
the coming of Jesus was in fact what the book of Hebrews says it
was -- the replacement of shadows with Reality -- Christ himself.
One of the early church fathers, Athenasius (born A. D. 373),
put it like this...
It is a sign, and an important proof, of the coming of the Word
of God, that Jerusalem no longer stands. . . . For . . . when the
truth was there, what need any more of the shadow? And this
was why Jerusalem stood till then -- namely, that [the Jews]
might be exercised in the types as a preparation for the
reality.
In other words, one might say, the destruction of the Temple
and of Jerusalem was God’s way of saying: “Wake up to the
meaning of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament.”
Now we come back to Hebrews 8:13 with a new sense of what
was at stake in these words: “When He said [in Jeremiah 31:31],
‘A new covenant’, He has made the first obsolete. But whatever
is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear”.
Christmas Means Two Things:
What we saw in the last two Sundays looking at Hebrews 8
is that Christmas means two things.
1) It means the replacement of Old Testament shadows with
reality. The temple and tabernacle and sacrifices and priesthood
and feasts and dietary laws were all shadows and copies of
the Reality in heaven, namely, Jesus Christ and his work as
our High Priest and our Sacrifice and our focus of worship.
Jesus fulfills and replaces the shadows of the Old Testament.
2) And the second meaning of Christmas that we saw in this
chapter is that God makes the Reality of Christ real to us
personally by the work of the new covenant when he writes
the will of God on our hearts (v. 10).
So Christmas means shadows are replaced with Reality:
Old Testament copies give way to the Original, Jesus Christ.
And it means that God goes beyond that, and moves powerfully
into our hearts and minds to overcome our resistance to this
Reality. He writes the will of God -- the truth of the Reality
of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6) -- on our hearts, so that we are
willing and eager to trust him and follow him -- from the inside
out freely, not under constraint from rules outside.
A Third Meaning -- God is Merciful:
Before we connect these two meanings of Christmas with Hebrews
8:13 and the destruction of Jerusalem, let’s add one more from
verse 12: “For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will
remember their sins no more”. This is the end of the quote
from Jeremiah 31. It begins with “for” or “because”. So it is
the ground or basis for the other promises of the new covenant
(in verses 10-11).
God said, I will write the my will on your hearts, and be your
God, and cause you to know me personally . . .For I will be
merciful to your iniquities and remember your sins no more".
In other words, the death of Jesus for our sins is the foundation
of the new covenant (Hebrews 7:27; 9:28; 10:12). It’s the basis
of the other promises. If Christ had not died for our sins, God
could not be our God or write the law on our hearts or cause us
to know him personally. All that mercy was obtained by the blood
of Jesus. This is why Jesus called the cup of the Lord’s supper,
“the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).
Here’s what the writer wants us to understand. God is just and
holy and separated from sinners like us. No fingerpointing here
-- like us! This is our main problem at Christmas and every
other season. How shall we get right with a just and holy God?
Nevertheless God is merciful and has promised in Jeremiah 31
(five hundred years before Christ) that someday he would do
something new. He would replace shadows with the Reality
of the Messiah. And he would powerfully move into our lives
and write his will on our hearts so that we are not constrained
from outside but are willing from inside to love him and trust
him and follow him.
A Christmas Gift Worth Singing About!:
That would be the greatest salvation imaginable -- if God should
offer us the greatest Reality in the universe to enjoy and then
move in us to see to it that we could enjoy it with the greatest
freedom and joy possible. That would be a Christmas gift worth
singing about.
That is, in fact, what he promised. But there was a huge
obstacle. Our sin. Our separation from God because of
our unrighteousness. How shall a holy and just God treat us
sinners with so much kindness as to give us the greatest Reality
in the universe (his Son) to enjoy with the greatest joy
possible? The answer is that God put our sins on his Son,
and judged them there, so that he could put them out of his mind,
and deal with us mercifully and remain just and holy at the same
time. Hebrews 9:28 says, “Christ was offered once to bear the
sins of many.”
This is what verse 12 means: Christ bore our sins in his own body
when he died. He took our judgment. He canceled our guilt.
And that means the sins are gone. They do not remain in God’s
mind as a basis for condemnation. In that sense he “forgets”
them. They are consumed in the death of Christ.
Which means that God is now free, in his justice, to lavish us
with the new covenant. He gives us Christ, the greatest Reality
in the universe, for our enjoyment. And he writes his own will
-- his own heart -- on our hearts so that we can love Christ and
trust Christ and follow Christ from the inside out, with freedom
and joy.
Jesus Christ is the Goal, the Reality:
When Jerusalem fell to the Romans in A. D. 70, and the Temple
was burned, and the sacrifices stopped being offered in Judaism,
and the Levitical priesthood came to and end, God was saying
with his power and providence: Christ was the goal of it all.
Christ was the Reality; the rest was shadows. Christianity is
a faith woven into history. It is not a mere set of ideas. It is
about a person, Jesus, who came into history and died and
rose again. And it is about a God who intervenes in history
to bear witness to the reality of his Son, Jesus Christ.
And look around today. Is it not astonishing that God has
preserved the Jewish people to this day. And there is yet
a future for them in Christ according to Scripture. But what
do we see? Are they meeting at the Temple? Are they offering
animal sacrifices? Do they look to the Levitical priesthood
for their mediation with God? No. Why? Because Jesus
said, “they did not recognize the time of their visitation”
(Luke 19:44). The existence of the Jewish people today
and the transformed version of Judaism that they follow
is a constant witness to the world that the first covenant
[vanished] away. That the Messiah, Jesus Christ, has come.
That he has inaugurated the new covenant. That the shadows
have been replaced by Reality. And that the Spirit has written
the will of God on our hearts.
So let us look to the great final reality of Christ, and put our
hope in him, and love him and worship this Christmas.
http://www.preteristarchive.com/PartialPreterism/piper-john_pp_01.html
--
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass,
till all these things be fulfilled." - Matthew 24:34
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