God's New Covenant of Grace - Hebrews 8:6-13

Introduction

God’s covenant with Noah was all about God’s unconditional love for humanity and all creation.

God’s covenant with Abraham was all about God’s desire to grant descendents, land, nationhood and well-being, just seeking his people to walk blamelessly.

God’s covenant with Moses was all about receiving God’s promises and participating in God’s future through adopting the wisdom and boundaries contained in the commandments of Mt Sinai.

Yet, despite all this covenant kindness and seeking of relationship on God’s behalf, there remained one very serious problem … these covenants kept being broken on the human side … people just could not live up to their side of the bargain (even with God’s help) … they got caught up in their sin, and couldn’t keep their focus on God.

Through their consciences they knew they were doing wrong, yet couldn’t seem to break the habit.

We might think at times that violent murderers have no conscience, but these words come from American Gary Gilmour (who was executed in the state of Utah) in a letter to his girlfriend: “It seems that I know evil more intimately than I know goodness … I want to get even, to be made even, whole, my debts paid (whatever it may take), to have no blemish, no reason to feel guilt or fear … I’d like to stand in the sight of God; to know that I’m just and right and clean. When you’re this way, you know it. And when you’re not, you know that too. It’s all inside of us, each of us”.

Sin (which we could define as behaviour contrary to God’s ways that demeans and hurts people) builds up in people feelings of guilt and shame.

Guilt (the knowledge of doing wrong) could be appeased through making sacrifices according to Jewish customs, but shame (the experience of feeling unworthy) could never be appeased so easily.

What would God do about this dilemma?
Today we will see that Jesus fulfils God’s desire to covenant with humanity.

Guilt and Shame

It was not as if this problem had not been detected earlier – Jeremiah, who lived six centuries before Jesus, reflected on this whole covenant abuse situation, and looked forward prophetically to God ultimately solving this. Words from Jeremiah chapter 31 are quoted here in Hebrews to make that point. The covenants with Noah, Abraham and Moses were not complete and needed a further development to unfold. It would be in the fullness of time, just when the conditions were right, that God would act. And in this dramatic intervention, God would open the possibility of us people being delivered not only from guilt, but also from shame.

In the Careforce Life-keys programs, Allan Meyer tells a story that helps us understand the difference between ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’!

The shift from guilt to shame is the movement from ‘doing wrong things’ to ‘feeling a wrong person’. Habitually doing wrong or being desperately addicted to some substance or behaviour can lead to shockingly low self-esteem and feelings of shame.

This is the resulting destination of rejecting God’s covenant. Despite all the loving-kindness and patience within God’s intentions, God is not easily able to stomach rejection; leading to the prophet’s words in verse 9 quoted in our Hebrews text. But to be in this position is exactly what God wanted to avoid. God wanted people not to live in shame, but to see themselves as wonderfully made in the image of God (as we read in Psalm 139). So there would need to be a drastic intervention.

Intervention

The US Government had to come up with a plan involving drastic intervention into their financial crisis. There were all sorts of reservations about this type of intervention, and who knows whether it will really work or not. But God’s drastic intervention into human affairs has certainly been effective, and has changed the lives of so many millions of people. People, like you and I, who would otherwise be caught up in a sense of shame, have been liberated by Jesus’ acts of grace, and filled by the Holy Spirit bringing a whole new experience of life. We are worthy, we are valuable, we belong, we are gifted, and we have purpose. We can stand in God’s presence and worship, because grace has touched our “fallenness” and Jesus has taken our sins away.

How great is God, that when there was no other way forward, he gave up the best of himself onto a cross and shed the blood that would symbolise the new covenant. This was a call for us to identify with this act of mercy and receive its gift. As Jesus said at the last supper, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” … ‘take it and drink it and remember me’. ‘Remember that I have given you everything that you need to experience life in its fullness from here to eternity’. This is why the writer of Hebrews refers to Jesus as the “mediator”, the one who stands in the centre and forms the link between God and humanity … bringing together God's loving intentions and people’s trusting grace-driven response.

Of course, we still have responsibility for our attitudes and behaviour, and once we do something that we shouldn’t have … the consequences are still out there for others and ourselves to bear. This reminds us to watch ourselves and also allow God’s Spirit to transform us. We look to Jesus and seek to discover the better way, and how that hits the road in everyday life.

The writer of this letter to the Hebrews was bold enough to say that the way earlier covenants were focussed is now obsolete (v.13). The coming of Jesus supersedes the ‘old covenant’, much like the entire ‘new testament’ interprets the ‘old testament’ for our age. Although the successive covenants of the ‘old testament’ teach us about the nature of God, the old covenant could not bring ultimate forgiveness and a changed state of being. Mere ritual doesn’t bring transformation, only a relationship with Jesus does! Abiding in Jesus, walking with Jesus, following Jesus is all that counts, and the only thing that will bring life.

Features of the New Covenant

Those boundaries we are looking for are now supremely described in the gospels, especially made clear in Matthew chapters 5 to 7. This is where the intention of God’s covenant can really be understood. And how can all the commandments be summed up? Love God, love your neighbour, love yourself – that’s the new package!

“God’s laws will not merely be written on tablets of stone: they will be impressed upon the workings of the mind, and they will be engraved in the heart, the centre of the human personality” (H W Montefiore, “The Epistle to the Hebrews”, 141).

So the covenant mediated by Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s covenant to humanity, for this covenant is about hearts and minds being changed into alignment with God’s heart and mind. History proved that the ‘old covenant’ had only worked on the external and led to a whole lot of ‘appearance management’ rather than inner change.

So, how can shame be lifted off us? If this shame is lifted off us, we will offend God less, hurt others less, and be much more free and peace-keeping in our living. Our burdens will be lifted and we will shine the light of Jesus wherever we go. So this would be a worthy investigation for us … how is it that this feeling of being unworthy or entirely a wrong person can be lifted off us.

It is by believing what we read in verse 12 (first said by Jeremiah, and then quoted here and tied to Jesus). God says, “I will remember their sins no more”. The failure and defeat of the past is wiped away (like rubbing all the writing off the chalkboard, or painting all over the graffiti with a fresh coat of paint). Future possibilities are no longer compromised or curtailed by the past – there is a fresh canvas on which to begin a whole new painting. We can be re-created into the image of God.

Karl Menninger, the psychiatrist, said that if he could have convinced the patients in his psychiatric hospital that their sins were forgiven, 75% of them could have walked out the next day. Such is the power of forgiveness truly received!

“Something beautiful, something good, all my confusion God understood. All I had to offer God was brokenness and strife, but God made something beautiful of my life.”

The crescendo of this passage is where the writer to the Hebrews concluded his quotation from Jeremiah here in verse 12. But this is not about pretence or ‘appearance management’ or simply behaviour; this is about inward change.

We should also not neglect that God’s desire to eternally covenant with us through Jesus, has a horizontal dimension … that this is something we participate in together as God’s people, bringing mutual responsibility and accountability to each other, along with so many opportunities of encouragement and practical support. Then there is the missional perspective, the call to draw others into experiencing this ‘new covenant’.

Will you release your life to Jesus, receive all the mercy he offers you from the cross, and follow him into a great life? Put your hand up for Jesus; thank him, engage with him, learn about him, live like him, be part of the Jesus movement.