A Superior Covenant

CTK Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive hope in Raleigh. Let's turn our attention to God's word. We're gonna be in Hebrews chapter eight verses one through 13. And I'm gonna read this whole section for us because it's rather long for this morning. If you wanna follow along on the screen behind me as I read from Hebrews chapter eight verses one through 13.

Now, the main point of what is being said is this. We have this kind of high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of majesty in heavens. A minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and not by man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Therefore, it was necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now, if he were on earth, he wouldn't be a priest since these are the offerings, the gifts prescribed by the law. These serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things as Moses was warned when he was about to complete the tabernacle. For God said, "Be careful that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain." But Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry. And to that degree, he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for the second one. But finding fault with his people, he says, "See the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. I showed no concern for them, said the lord, because they did not continue in my covenant. 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 write them on their hearts. I will be their god and they will be my people and each one will not teach his fellow citizen and each his brother or sister saying, 'Know the lord.' Because they will all know me from the least to the greatest of them. For I will forgive their wrongdoing and remember never again remember their sins. By saying a new covenant, he has declared that the first is obsolete, and what is obsolete and growing old is about to pass away." This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

In 2006, a movie came out with an all-star cast called Stranger Than Fiction. It's the story of an IRS agent named Harold Crick, who's played by Will Ferrell. He lives a very boring life. Day to day is just about the same thing. One morning he wakes up to discover that his life is being narrated. He hears a voice in his head that is describing exactly what he's doing. Now Harold is brushing his teeth, and as he's brushing his teeth, he hears: "Now Harold gets ready to go to work." He begins to realize that this voice is following him around everywhere. The voice is a woman named Karen Eiffel, who's played by Emma Thompson. But as he walks through his day, he realizes this voice is not just giving an account of what's happening in his life. The voice is also beginning to say things like, "Little did he know." And he stops. He's like, "Wait, what? What did he not know?" He realizes that this isn't random—he's not going crazy. Someone, an author, is telling the story of his life. And little does she know, but Karen Eiffel is the author who's writing a story about a character named Harold Crick, not knowing that this is really going on in real life.

Harold begins to lose it, and at one point realizes he needs to see somebody. But he decides not to go see a therapist or shrink. He decides, rather, "This is a story, so I need to get somebody who's good at story." So he goes to a local university and meets with Dustin Hoffman, who's a literature professor. Hoffman sits him down and says this, and this is really important. He says, "The first thing to determine conclusively is whether you are in a comedy story or a tragedy story."

Now I think that's a brilliant statement. Because whether or not you know anything about this movie, this is the kind of self-talk that we do all the time. What is my life? What is this story that I'm living out? Is this a comedy? Seems like the joke's on me. Or is this a tragedy? Is this all falling apart? Whose storyline am I living? Where is this going? Will this end with happily ever after? Or will this story end in tears?

Alastair MacIntyre wrote that humans are essentially storytelling animals. All the time we're trying to make sense. We're trying to figure out. We're trying to create a narrative out of our lives and understand the story that we're living in.

And when we can't make sense of it, we try to fix it. Try to fix the story. Remember this book, Hebrews, that we're studying through the spring and summer, was written to a group of people in the first century. A group of people who'd been raised in Judaism, who had been raised going to the synagogue every Saturday to study God's word, raised going to the temple in Jerusalem once, maybe twice a year for the annual sacrifices and festivities. People who grew up eating kosher, knowing Torah. And at this point, they have converted to Christianity. They have said, yes, Jesus is the Messiah that was described in all these pages of the Old Testament. And yet, they're facing incredible opposition. And it makes them ask the question, should we go back to what we were before? Should we go back to Judaism? This life that we're experiencing now as people who have identified Jesus as our Messiah means persecution. It means hardship. Much like people in countries today who convert to Christianity in a militant Islam or Hindu society. Dangerous. And the question for them was, will you trust the story? Will you trust the author of the story? And though we don't face the same challenges, you sitting in this room, I think those same two questions are in front of us. Will you trust the story? And will you trust the author of the story?

So I have only two points today. We're doing this whole series. We're talking about Jesus being superior. So today, point one, superior covenant. Point two, a superior story. And I want to give credit to a friend of mine who's a pastor in Atlanta for the first point of this sermon today.

Superior Covenant

The writer of Hebrews is contrasting between two covenants. Now, if you hang around the church long enough, you'll hear us use the word covenant a lot. And we refer to it to different parts of the Bible. And we refer to it by different people's names. There was a covenant made with Adam, covenant made with Noah, covenant made with Abraham, covenant made with Moses, covenant made with David. But in this passage, the writer of Hebrews is really contrasting just two covenants. One he describes as an old covenant that was made with Moses. And that is referring to all of the law of God and all the sacrificial system. And then the second is this new covenant that comes through Jesus. Simply put, this is your Old Testament and your New Testament. And he's comparing and contrasting the two of those.

And so, I want to look at these under kind of five headings. And I like tables. I like charts. So I'm going to give you a chart. We're going to look at the covenants, the old covenant and the new covenant under these five headings. All begin with the letter A, so you can remember them. So, first the author, then the actors, the activities, the aim, and the arc.

The Old Covenant

Briefly, what is the Old Testament? The Old Covenant. Who is the author of the Old Covenant? It's God. God is the author of the Old Testament. The Old Testament sacrificial system. And who are the actors? Well, if you go to the temple, you see the priests making the sacrifices. They are the actors of this drama. What are the activities? The sacrifices and prayers made at the altar. What's the aim of this covenant?

They would all know me. All of God's people would know him from the least to the greatest. — Hebrews 8:11

And the arc of the covenant—not ark, not a play on Temple of Doom or Indiana Jones. But the arc, the endpoint of that story was failure. That first covenant that God made with his people was a breakable covenant. It was provisional. It failed because it was a breakable covenant. And he lays the blame for this at the feet of his people.

The New Covenant

By contrast, let's look at the New Covenant. Who's the author of the New Covenant? Also God. God is the author of both covenants. But the actors in the new covenant, there's only one. The actor in the new covenant is Jesus. We've been talking about Jesus, our high priest. He does everything required for us to be approved of, to be accepted, to be perfect in God's sight. What are the activities of this new covenant? The old covenant required sacrifices. But the new covenant, everything is done for us by Jesus.

So let me ask you a question. Are you saved by faith or by works? The answer is yes. You're saved by faith. Your faith in the works of Jesus. The one who is the actor of the covenant, who does all the things required for us to be approved of in the sight of God. That's what we've been talking about over the last couple weeks.

What's the aim of the new covenant? That we would all know God from the least to the greatest. And this wouldn't just be the covenant written on stone tablets. Picture the tablets that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

But rather, the covenant would be written on the inside in our hearts. It'd be on the inside of us. And the arc of the story, the endpoint of this story, we read here. That we will have an everlasting covenant, unbreakable, that results in perfect forgiveness.

I will forgive their wrongdoing. I will never again remember their sins.

You can sum it up this way. The first two verses of this passage:

We have this kind of high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, the true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and not by men.

The relationship between the old covenant and the new covenant, think Old Testament and New Testament, is going from something that's provisional and shadowy to something that's permanent. Think about in school, you have to make these posters for a presentation. And the first time you write the poster, you don't write it in Sharpie. You write it in what? Pencil. Right? You trace it out in pencil to make sure it looks good. And then if it looks good, you go over it in Sharpie so it stands out on the poster.

In many ways, the old covenant system—it's not like God's beta version of salvation. It's not like God was like, let me try this and see if it sticks. No. God is sketching something out in pencil. Then later he goes back over in Sharpie. This is permanent and lasting.

Or think about ancient travel. My wife and I, we love to watch those masterpiece theater period piece dramas that many of your grandparents also like to watch. Yes. I'm that guy. And as much as I love those shows, I love all the stuff of those shows, I would never want to go back to the seventeen hundreds. I think about travel in Europe in the seventeen hundreds. If you wanted to go from London to Paris, you get into an unair conditioned, unheated coach drawn by horses, and you make the long bumpy journey down non-paved roads to Dover. And then you take a ship across the English Channel. And then you take another ride in an unair conditioned, unheated, bumpy coach from there to Paris. Takes you days. Now you can do it on the Eurostar. Takes two hours and ten minutes. It's a high speed train that goes right under the English Channel and gets you there in air conditioned Wi-Fi luxury. Who would ever want to go back to coaches and ships going across the channel?

See, from the people who first received this word, who first received the book of Hebrews, they're being convinced of this. Why would you go back to what's obsolete? Why would you go back to what God created as provisional when you could have this new covenant that Jesus has perfected for you and given you? They were living at a time when the temple in Jerusalem was still standing. It fell in 70 AD. And they were tempted to go back to what they knew.

Don't Go Back

This is what happens for all of us. Hard things happen in your life, and you're tempted to go back to what you know. And they're tempted in the face of temptation, the face of persecution, the face of hardship, to go back. And the writer of Hebrews, this is the whole point of the book. Don't go back. Don't go back. Trust the story. Trust the author.

Now, I know for you today, you're not sitting with this in front of you. This isn't your daily decision. Am I gonna go back to the Old Testament system? There's no temple in Jerusalem for you to go and do your sacrifices at. There's no sacrificial system for you to reengage with. There's none of that for you today.

In fact, you know, in our church, I know very few people even of Jewish ancestry. But we're tempted to do the same things. We're tempted to go back to what is native to us. Go back to what we know. And here's the same question for us. Will you trust the story? Will you trust the author?

So let's look at this and compare the two stories that you're faced with. Because you're not faced with this one. You're faced with the next one. Let's go to one more slide. You're faced with two stories. God's story. God's story where God is the main actor. God is the one who does all these things. Or the story of me. This is the story you're being told all the time right now, and from Disney and Pixar movies to everyday life in this world.

Let's look at this together. Who is the author of God's story? Class, very simple. God is the author of the story. He's the one who's writing the story. And who's the actor? As a Christian, this is what we believe. God is also the actor. We have all kinds of things we say.

Apart from you, God, I can do nothing. In Him, I live and move and have my being. My life is hidden with Christ in God. I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.

God is the one who's the actor on the stage if we are in God's story. What are the activities of this story? Everything. This is what's beautiful. A lot of Christians don't realize this.

But if you're trusting and you're living out of God's story, it's not that God wrote it and you show up and do all the things. Everything—whether you eat or drink or whatever you do—you do to the glory of God. We work unto Jesus. We recreate unto Jesus. We rest unto Jesus. Everything is here for us to enjoy. Not just spiritual things like praying or preaching. All things. This life is an adventure, coram deo, before the face of God.

And what's the aim of this story that God is writing? That you would know God. That you would love God. That you would enjoy God. What's the endpoint, the arc of the story? Eternal life with him forever. Internal enjoyment of him.

Two Stories

By contrast, here's the other story that is being put in front of you all the time. The story of me. Who's the author of the story of me? Me. I'm the one who makes things happen. I'm the actor of the story as well.

There's an old line that I used to hear growing up: "If it's going to be, it's up to me." Have you ever heard that before? That's the refrain of this world. It's all about you. Go out and get it. There's actually a book you can buy on Amazon where somebody's taken that and updated it into a self-help book: How to Develop the Attitude of a Winner and Become a Leader. If It Is to Be, It's Up to Me.

What's the aim of the story? My happiness or bust. Either I get happiness in this life or my life is not worth it. What are the activities of the story? Whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want it. And what is, sadly, the arc of this story? Heartache, loss, alone.

But that's the story that we're tempted to go back to. That's the story that's put in front of you every day. Will you live in the story of God, the story that God is writing? Or are you going to live in the story of me? Self-actualization.

And just like the people who first received this book and they're comparing and contrasting the two covenants, they're being told: don't go back. Stay with God's story. Stay with this new covenant. The same temptation is for us to return to what we know, what's native to us, what in the eyes of the world is superior and the right thing.

Look, this is a comparison we can still make between old forms of travel and the high-speed Eurostar. Why would you go back to what's obsolete? And for you Christians this morning, can I say this? Why would you go back to the story of me?

You know, the writer C.S. Lewis has a peculiar way of describing hell. He doesn't use the image of fire. Instead, he uses the image of planets in the universe. He describes hell as every person individually on their own planet drifting further and further apart from one another. Isolation, alone forever.

I know that there is a lot of sadness right now in our church. There's a lot of sadness in this community, and I just want to name that. There's a lot of heartache—aging parents, unbelieving kids, death, broken friendships, breaking marriages, bad decisions, losing career and money and looks and house and material possessions. And we wonder, don't we? I mean, if we're really honest, we wonder: Is this story going anywhere? Is this a tragedy that I'm living out?

The honest reality for most people in this room is that our lives—nobody's ever going to write a biography of most of our lives. For most of us, our names will be remembered, and our photos will be remembered by those we love, who love us. But in a couple of generations, our accomplishments, the things we put our energy into in many places in our lives—it will be forgotten.

But if you are a Christian, your life story is a biography of wisdom and grace that's written by the capital-A Author of all things. If you're God's child, you're invited into a much larger story, a much bigger story, the grand redemption story, which is his biography that he is writing of your life. Better than anything impressive you can accomplish in this life. Your life is a biography of wisdom and grace written by another.

And every twist, every plot twist, every new character that comes in—all of it is part of what God is writing in your life. Each new chapter advances his purpose.

Whoever is wise, let him understand these things. Whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right. — Hosea 14

I mean, it is almost a gross understatement to say that the ways of the Lord are right. The ways of the Lord are so much better, so much higher. What he is doing in your life is so much better. He's infinite in wisdom and in grace.

You've been welcomed into the greatest story ever written by grace and grace alone. Best of all, this story is a biography that has no ending to it.

Now, I want you to think about the way we talk about movies that we love and books that we love. Often people will say, hey, you're gonna love that movie. You're gonna love that book. It has an ending that you'd never expect. And that's how we sell it to one another. But the grand redemptive story is the best story because it has no ending. There's no ending to this story.

It offers the Lord of Glory offers you a place in this story so that your story begins to make sense. It has a logical flow to it. But he offers something that's hard for human brains to even grasp: he offers you life that never ever ends. Death is normal for us. Death is what all of us expect. Death is around us. Things die. People die. End of story. But that's not the end of this story. At the end of this story, death itself dies. It's hard for us to imagine. The main character of the story—which in God's story is not you—the main character of the story comes to earth and defeats sin and death. And because he does, he offers us the one thing no character in any other story can offer us: life, eternal life forever, and real life now.

I want you to remember this. You're in a story, but it's not an autobiography. Thank the Lord. It's not an autobiography. There is an author of the story, but the author isn't you. There's a hero of the story. It's a grand epic, but the hero isn't you. There's a kingdom in the story that's being given to you, but you aren't its monarch. Why would you ever want an autobiography when you could have the story that God himself is writing?

The price of your admission into this story is the death of Jesus, his son. But he conquered death so that his story continues. And at the last, he will put to death all of your enemies. And we will enter into the final chapter, a chapter that never ends, that goes on forever. This is the story of faith. This is the story of your life. This is the redemptive story that God is writing in the universe. Why would you ever go back to an autobiography?

So I meditate on my own story. I've been thinking about this a lot this week. I think about these words from Jeremiah:

Thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, or the mighty man boast in his might, or the rich man boast in his riches. But let him who boasts, boast in this: that he knows me. That I am the Lord who practices steadfast love and justice and righteousness in the earth. — Jeremiah 9:23-24

How Will Your Story End?

In conclusion, can I say this? How's your story gonna end? That's the question we're asking all the time. You know, how will my marriage end? How will this career end? How will my investments turn out? How will my kids turn out? How will I get myself out of this mess? Will I pass the course? What will I have to deal with in old age? What will I do after I graduate? How will my ministry turn out? Will the Bible turn out to be true?

We're always asking these questions in our lives. All the time. And these questions haunt us. They haunt us in a way that at some point in life you begin to realize: not only can I not control the big things, I don't even have that much control over the little things in my life.

So I want to end this way. It's a little Simon Says. I'm gonna make you repeat after me. These are words not my words but from Paul Tripp. And I'm gonna give them to you bit by bit. And I'm gonna ask you to echo me.

Situation upon situation upon situation. The ever changing cycle of my story has been authored by another one of infinite power, unparalleled wisdom, unending grace. Who has every turn of the plot, every surprising mystery, every unnoticed moment, written in his book. The author is never surprised, never taken off guard, never confused by new developments, never feeling unprepared, never just making it through, never looking for a way out. Situation upon situation upon situation. The ever changing cycle of my story, authored by another, is an unchanging saga written by the one who never changes.

Look. Can you let go of knowing the future? Can you let go of trying to have it your own way? Can you let go of the anxiety of not knowing? Can you let go of the need to control things? Can you let go of ranting against mystery? Can you settle into the story? Trust the author? Celebrate being included in the plot? Be thankful you're not in control? Remember God's way is better? Know that you're in good hands.

Things are out of your control, but they're not out of control. There is an author and he is not you and his will be done.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you are the author and finisher of our story. Lord, we thank you that the gospel is true, and it is good news. And Lord, we are not the main actor in the story. We thank you, Father, that you are the one who is the author that we can trust.

Lord, help us this day to shift our trust from self to you, to shift our storyline from autobiography to biography, to give ourselves wholly and completely and rest in your presence and in your hands. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you stand and respond to God's word together.

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