Hebrews: The Better Way of Faith

Let me pray as we look into Hebrews chapter 8 this morning.

Hebrews 8 · chapter mention

God, thank you for this morning.

Open our hearts as we come in.

Some of us with a very busy heart, preoccupied, and some of us with very hurt heart.

And God, would you would your Holy Spirit meet us exactly where we are this morning?

And we thank you that you are the pursuer, you are the rescuer.

As we open up your word, would you embed it into our hearts that new life would be created inside of us?

And have mercy on us.

Have mercy on us, especially the one who speaks.

Amen.

So we've been making our way through the book of Hebrews.

We've been talking about the priesthood of Jesus.

Last week we've talked about the doctrine of intercession, which I had never even preached on before, and that was a blast for me to get into and realize how good Jesus is, not only in the past on the cross, but in the present, in this doctrine of intercession.

And we get to this Hebrews chapter 8, verses 6 and 7.

Hebrews 8:6

Here's what it 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, so that old one, had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

So in verse 6, two different times it says, better.

So Christ brings a better way than some former way of living faith.

The word better means more useful, more advantageous, more excellent.

So there is a new way to live faith that is better than an old way that had faults.

I bought a new iPhone about a year ago.

Mine was getting super slow and frustrating, and so finally I caved, and I bought a new one, and then of course, you know, right when you get the new one, you realize all your stuff doesn't work.

And I've been using uh these headphones for years.

Uh these headphones, the corded headphones, and it has the round, the round into the round, and then the new phone had the rectangle, and I don't know the terms for all those plugins, but the the round didn't go into the rectangle, but these worked fine for me.

I used them for music, I made phone calls with them, I had no real problem with these.

They're fine, so I didn't see any reason to do anything real complicated here.

So I bought an adapter.

So the adapter, if you've done this trick, anybody done this trick because you didn't want to buy new headphones, is you just do the adapter and now the round turns to a rectangle, the rectangle goes a rectangle, and now your new phone takes your old headphones.

And so I just kept using these, and then my children started to make fun of me because I didn't have AirPods, right?

AirPods, right?

And I for I'll confess I thought it was they were called ear pods for a very long time.

After being corrected, I kept using the term earpods just to make my children laugh, and so that went for a while, but I'm pretty sure, although not completely confident to be honest, that they are called AirPods.

Or they it's AirPods, okay, so it's AirPods.

And so finally I get home one day, and over on my side of the counter is this nice, beautiful little box, and you flip it open, little right, and you know that little click.

And there's over there, my wife had got them for me, the AirPods, right?

Now I'm now I'm a justified man in the world.

I can you know walk proudly, and of course, I do what I did with all new technology.

I just put them in the glove box of my truck, and I didn't use them for about a month, and then one day, for no reason any other day, I just pulled them out to make phone calls.

I probably couldn't find the corded ones.

I made phone calls with these, and I will admit, the moment of pulling these out versus untangling these, right?

Like this was a good moment, and these worked really well.

They hung perfectly my ears, and these always kind of hurt my ears if I was gonna be honest.

And these hung perfectly my ears, which these were falling out, I get some big ear issues, and so they were falling out.

These hung, they stayed in.

I was walking, I got my phone calls, the Bluetooth picked up immediately.

The clarity was unbelievable.

I could not argue with it.

Groundbreaking tech review, these are better.

And you already knew that as you've been using them for three years or how many years they've been out, right?

You already knew that.

They're more useful, more advantageous, more excellent.

There was an old way with fault, and then a new way came, a better way.

And the Hebrews writer is saying is there's two ways of faith.

These actually interact.

I mean, this is the framework of the scriptures, and it should be the framework of our hearts to understand these dynamics of an old way of law that still has a role in your life, but we live in the new way of grace, the covenant of law and the covenant of grace.

So let's make sense of this.

Point number one: your heart will either be overwhelmed by law or relieved by gospel.

So those are the two forces, not only that we see in the scripture, the law, the standard of who we should be and how we should live, but the gospel that we are rescued and relieved.

The covenant of law and the covenant of grace.

Now, a covenant is a binding agreement for a relationship to work between two parties.

That's what a covenant is.

The first one that we're talking about here in this passage is the covenant with Moses that God made.

We see it in the Ten Commandments, and it is holy and it is good.

All the moral law is good and holy, all the law in the New Testament of who we should be, even as Christians, is good and holy, and yet there's a problem with all of it.

And the problem's us.

Because we don't live up to it perfectly, and it demands our perfect righteousness.

But good news, the story wasn't over because the law, while it guides us, it crushes us, and it leads us to the gospel.

A thousand years after that covenant with Moses, Jeremiah writes, Jeremiah 31, 31, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

He's talking about the person and the work of the incarnate God and Jesus the Christ.

This is what Paul helps us make sense of in all of his writings, Galatians 3, 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

So as good and holy as the law is, it can become a curse.

It always becomes a curse on us because it eventually condemns us and our shortcomings.

The writer of Hebrews expands it, 8, 12, and 13.

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities.

This is God speaking, and I will remember their sins no more.

And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete.

And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

So the law guides and crushes, and the gospel rescues and relieves.

And gospel is not an adjective, gospel music.

We say that.

The gospel is news, something done.

Good news of God's inexhaustible love to you in Jesus.

And Jesus' finished work for you.

Nothing for you to add.

It's the new covenant of finished work, of absolution, and your righteousness.

My friend and author, David Zall, he said this on the Mockingcast podcast last week.

He said, We've turned Christianity into something that's another and rather than where you go when the ands crush you.

So he's commenting on how easy it is for us just to move back into, even in Christianity, move back into a life of performing or pretending, just into a list of things to do.

God loves you and you need to attend church.

Thank you for being at church, by the way.

This is a lot better than an empty sanctuary those first couple months of the pandemic.

I love that you're here.

God loves you and you need to pray continuously.

How's that going, right?

Okay, all right, there's where the law can crush you.

God loves you and you should be patient always.

God loves you and you should love your neighbor.

God loves you and the law there can pile on you just like the world's laws can.

And those are good and holy things for us to do.

But rather, the grammar of God is different.

The grammar of God is because God loves you, you get to be involved in a community of faith.

Because God loves you, you get to exercise patience toward people.

Because God loves you, you can be free from money and give money away to needs.

Because God loves you, you get to move toward morality and holiness and love of neighbor.

One is more ands, and the other is because you are already righteous.

And that is freeing.

And it aspires and empowers movement toward God.

This chart by Tim Keller in his book, Gospel and Life, has helped me make sense of it.

For me, this was a pretty crucial sort of framework of thinking of how does the gospel intersect my life and where how does law work itself out and how do I see it?

How would I describe it?

How would I recognize it?

And then what does gospel look like?

I'm not going to go through all of this, although I would love to go through every single sentence of this, but you could Google Tim Keller Gospel and Life chart, you'll get this chart, it's all over the internet at this point.

Let me just mention a few of them.

Religion says, I obey, therefore I'm accepted.

Gospel says, I'm accepted, therefore I obey.

We have to have the distinguishment here.

Religion uses fear or insecurity for motivation in your faith.

Maybe you've been there.

Gospel has motivation for the Christian life as grateful joy.

In religion, my self-view, and I know all about this, swings between two poles when I'm living up to standards and law, and we can put that in the religious law or worldly law, any standard of who I should be, it swings.

So if I'm living up to those standards, I am feeling fantastic about myself and also prideful.

And then you know what happens because you felt it.

You don't live up to it, and the pendulum swings, and you don't live up to law.

You feel like a failure.

You feel shame.

But the gospel, such good news says my self-view is not based in my moral or worldly achievement.

I am completely sinner and saint simultaneously at the same time, and I am so sinful that Jesus had to die for me, and yet I am so loved he gladly died for me.

Last one, my self-worth is based in how hard I work.

This is what religion says.

How hard I work, how moral I am.

So inevitably I end up looking down on somebody who doesn't have their act together.

And the gospel says, my identity is in the covenant of grace.

God's love for me and Jesus, I am saved and made whole by sheer grace.

So I can't look down on somebody because they don't have their act together, and I can't look down on somebody because they believe differently than me, because only by grace I am who I am.

See, this is how the heart is saved, gets healed, put free from performance and pretending, free from worldly law and free from religious law.

And as we recognize and distinguish the difference between law and gospel, we can catch ourselves as we revert back.

This is what Paul wants us to do: catch ourselves so that we can understand that we should live under the gospel.

Point number two is this when something is better, you fight to remain in the better, not return to the former.

When something is better, you fight to remain in the better, not return to the former.

So I know it was a rough evening, last evening for all of us, right?

Braves, bulldogs, it was not good.

Wasn't good.

Now, equally exciting has been Fat Bear Week.

Anybody been following Fat Bear Week?

Y'all remember it from last year where I thrilled you for weeks and weeks and weeks about Fat Bear Week.

And Fat Bear Week, to catch you up to speed, because I know you've been we woke up for this.

Uh, Fat Bear Week is up in Katma National Park.

If you remember, here's a picture of it.

These are the grizzly bears up in Alaska.

They come to Brooks Falls from June through October before hibernation, and they come here and the salmon are happening here, and they they just gorge themselves for months and months and months, and they start out super skinny and they feed and feed and feed, and they're getting fatter and fatter and fatter.

You can look at pictures, there's a community, by the way.

I'm in the community because I've participated, and you can be in the community if you want to be in the community, it's a community of bear people, and you can watch videos and see pictures, and then October comes the excitement because it's Fat Bear Week with a tournament, and you vote on what bear got the fattest from the beginning to the end.

And if you remember last year, Holly won.

Here's a picture of Holly, same bear, same year.

Okay, that's what's important about this picture on the left.

That's the beginning of the summer, and that's her, same bear, at the end of the summer.

And so she took the championship last year.

This year, bear 747.

This is 747.

This guy won this year, 747.

He beat up Chunk the Bear, in case you're wondering who came in second.

Now, what I didn't tell you last year was a bit of a soap opera that happened there at Brooks Falls.

And what happened was is this new bear named Humphrey Hump, if you're in the community, we just call him Hump.

Hump the Bear, he shows up, never been there before.

So he's new to Brooks Falls, and he shows up there at Brooks Falls and he's trying to find his spot, and you saw it, it's a lot of bears there trying to find his spot, and he gets there and he starts a fight with 801, bear 801.

801 had this prime fishing spot, and he starts a fight, and they fight for a little bit, and you can watch the video online, it's thrilling.

They kind of go at it for a little bit, and then Otis, the bear, the 2017 champion, he's an old timer, he's 23 years old.

Otis sees what's going on, he's not far off, and he turns around, he's just not gonna have it.

He comes over and he kind of pushes Hump on, and Hump leaves.

But here's the deal with Hump.

Now, I don't like that Hump showed up and he's causing these problems with everybody else.

I also don't blame him, right?

Now he stays the rest of the summer.

He stayed, and you can't blame him for staying.

Who knows what river he's been fishing in and what creek he's been fishing in, and then he shows up at Brooks Falls.

This place is a feast.

I mean, these salmon are jumping into these bears' mouths.

He does not want to leave.

He's gonna stay, he's gonna figure it out and find his way in.

He's gonna plant himself there.

He's not gonna move on, he's not gonna go back to the old.

This is what the New Testament is guiding us to.

It's what Paul's urging us.

Don't go back to the former way.

This is this passage in Hebrews.

There was an old way.

It had faults.

Because we don't live up to it.

And we have a new and a better covenant and the covenant of grace in Jesus.

That's why these words like in Christ mean so much.

Because it means you're fully forgiven and fully righteous, and that does mean you have complete freedom because you don't have to add on to that work, and it's that healing and that freedom that actually empowers you.

The Holy Spirit uses it to create healing to even want to live a godly life.

And this new covenant of grace, it also asks for perfect righteousness, by the way, and perfect obedience.

It asks for the same thing, but it fulfills itself.

God fulfills, provides the fulfillment of what he asks.

And so not only do we have complete absolution in Jesus, we have perfect righteousness in Jesus.

So we live in him and in the covenant of grace, not under the law.

The law guides us and it crushes us and it leads us to the gospel.

So our earning is over, and in grace, our effort to follow Him can begin.

Last point, point number three.

At the end of your self-sufficiency is delight.

It will be your delight in Christ's sufficiency and embrace of you.

It's there at the end of yourself that you'll you'll see it and you'll rest in it, and you'll take delight in it.

In 1934, a failed stockbroker, Bill Wilson, he was an alcoholic.

He'd been to detox three times.

This is his fourth time being a New York detox center.

And he was he had nothing left.

He just had nothing left.

And finally, in the middle of the night, he prays.

Finally, fourth time in there, finally, he gets to the end of himself, and he prays, if there is a God, let him show himself.

I am ready to do anything.

He just has nothing left to offer except brokenness.

He never touched alcohol again.

He goes on and he forms AA, which has millions of members and the entire organization.

The movement of pulling people out of addiction is based on this one great truth, same truth for us, and that is at the end of ourselves we find healing.

And the recognition that we are in need of the grace of God, do we find healing?

See, the law is going to do its work in your life.

Whether that's in the world of who you think you should be, and then you're falling short, the law will eventually crush you.

Or whether that's in religion, then all the ands that we put on top of God loves you and you need to.

And if you live by that, eventually you will live condemned.

The law will always do its job.

And if all we had was God's law, we would have no hope.

If all we had was life application, we would have no hope.

The law always does its job.

But the gospel always does its job.

And that is to pursue you and rescue you and relieve you in the finished work of Jesus.

It's why we keep saying we are more broken than we originally thought, more sinful than we even know now, but we are more loved by God than we have ever dared a dream.

That's pretty good.

God, thank you for this good news that we are made right with you by your grace to us and the covenant of grace that you fulfill not only for our absolution on our cross, on your cross, but the righteousness we need by the life of Christ.

By your grace.

By your grace.

Would you help our hearts to heal from all the ways we want to live by performance?

Would you help our hearts to heal by all the ways we want to live in escaping from your law?

And would we sit in front of your law and be able to proclaim how good and holy it is?

And it crushes me, and I need to repent and thank you for your goodness and kindness that rescues me.

May we live in greater and deeper ways in your covenant of grace.

Give us eyes to see the distinguishment between law and gospel as we can live in your gospel.

Holy Spirit, teach us these things.

That we might live in a freedom.

That we might live in a freedom of a life that honors you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.