Hebrews: The New Covenant Administration of Christ Max A Forsythe (c) Anno Domini 2004

From the Pulpit at Pilgrim's Rest Presbyterian Church in America

Our Heavenly Priest
For the Lord’s Day:  the 6^th of June 2004

 Hebrews 8: 1-5

“Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.  For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer.  Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.  They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.  For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’”

Introduction:  When I was in college I acquired not only a major in History and another in English & Literature, but also a minor in Philosophy.  That minor was greatly enhanced some years later when I took up with the books of Francis Schaeffer.  To his mind, the earliest noted Greek Philosopher Plato defined all human vocabulary and thought as probably only a shadow and hint of the realities in heaven where the Prime Mover or the Eternal Logos dwelt.  Given that philosophical debt, many who come to the passage before us presume a literary and philosophic debt of some sort to the earlier thinking of that same Plato.  However, this is not the case here as I understand it.  The only credit we should give to the Greek and other ancient Philosophers is that they were gifted to raise many of the essential questions which were and are answered in the revelations of God’s Word.

Thus, in this short transition passage in this book of Hebrews – we should understand the total and absolute independence of thought in not only the prior Jewish, but also this Apostle’s contemporary Christian revelation:  that of the true realities once established and still continued in the created order!  To be blunt in this regard, the God of Creation’s providential plan and purpose predated not only Plato himself, but the questions that he would raise in his day.   Remember, there is the central unifying theme of salvation in Christ alone in both Covenants of grace; the only change is that in the New Covenant our Lord Jesus Christ personally administers the saving graces by and through His death, resurrection and ascension to glory on the Father’s throne in heaven.

Now, before we consider the details of our text for today, let us put these five verses into perspective as they relate to the rest of this lengthy summarization and interpretation of the former Jewish Covenant, which is the book of Hebrews.  My main commentators could very well work up a lengthy article on whether or no these verses are really part of the last chapter, the present chapter or a transition between.  F.F. Bruce makes the most reasonable assessment in my mind:  “Having established the superiority of the high priesthood of Christ, our author now proceeds to relate His high priesthood to the themes of covenant, sanctuary and sacrifice, with which the Aaronic priesthood was closely bound up.”

Raymond Brown too enhances our understanding with this observation:  “The writer knows that his previous argument is detailed, demanding his meticulous care in exposition, but he has now come to his ‘main point’ (NEB), or, as Coverdale translated it, ‘this is the pyth’.”  Our own (ESV) translation crafts the text in this way:  “Now the point in what we are saying is this.”

Commentator John Brown explains the key vocabulary here, the word that we read as the summary “point “is used to signify either the substance of a statement – an abridged, compressed view of it – or the chief, the most important topic in a statement.”  He further explains the pointed reference for us:  “the fact that Jesus Christ is such a high priest as we need, is the substance, and the principal topic, of the statements made by the Apostle in reference to His high-priesthood.”  Whatever the theological question in both the Old or New Covenant context: the answer is centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ, or in the spirit of the Reformation He is our all in all: Prophet, Priest, King and Mediator.

Development:  We must remember in the comparative statements that follow on immediately, that we are talking about the centrality of Jesus Christ in all things.  While the earthly high priests “were allowed to approach to and stand before the emblematical throne of God” represented in the earthly temple,” Jesus by contrast has entered into the highest heavens, the very throne room of God the Father and there He is invited to sit on the very throne with the Father.

This fall and winter in my spare time I will be working on a display for a local library.  My intention is to represent for a month’s display a scaled diorama of Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.  While I am only painted one HO gauge figure for every hundred real life soldiers, still the compliment will number well over one hundred and thirty figures.  Some of you may remember the grand movie made on that same topic when several thousand re-enactors were filmed in all the material glory that good cinema can create.  At a lesser level – I remember seeing numerous southern Boy Scouts take the march across the storied field in the last few years.  A dozen here, another handful there, with their own Stars & Bars banner, all of them retracing the steps of their late ancestors.  However, we might illuminate that moment in our day; we cannot entirely recapture the historic reality exactly. 

In the same way, on any human scale the grand glory of the Father’s throne room, and His exact presence and purpose cannot be exactly duplicated because we could not live in His immediate presence in this life, Moses, Isaiah and John were all covered in one form or another representative of the blood of Jesus Christ.  For all its temporal glory and majesty – we must admit that the earthly tabernacle, the several temples built on Mount Zion:  these were all only a shadowy copy of the true reality in heaven.

And so must we also realize the temporal nature of the thousands of sacrificial animals burnt as offerings for many hundreds of years.  These too were a shadow of the sacrifice made one for all time in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose calling to priesthood in heaven is meant to show us only a different administration of the Covenant of grace.  Our passage tells us that Jesus must now “minister in the holy places.”  Raymond Brown argues that “the ministry he now offers is as intercessor, not as sacrificer.  His sacrificial work was ‘once for all’ in history.  His present work is to pray for us, and that he does … with compassionate understanding.” 

John Owen observes “the Lord Christ is specifically spoken of here as a priest; it is the name of his priestly office, in which he acts toward God.  Christ is now not a minister because he carries out God’s purposes toward us, but as he acts toward God and before God on our behalf, according to the duty of a priest.  He went into heaven to appear in the presence of God for us, and to discharge his office before God on our behalf.  Because of this he also communicates all good things from God to us, as the whole administration of things sacred between God and the church is committed to him.”

 John Brown states carefully the same truths, “Our High Priest is no more on earth, He is in heaven; and His absence, so far from being any cause of suspicion that we have not a High Priest – for we see Him not ministering as a Priest in an earthly tabernacle – is the necessary result of His being what He is, and of His having done what He has done.”

Application:  Now, just in case I have confused anyone, there are three main points to our meditation today.  These are carefully amplified by Raymond Brown:  “The verses before us focus attention on his exalted person, his eternal ministry and his present work.”

First, we must consider the exalted nature of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He was and is as the scriptural revelations tell us God Himself with us.  So much of the world and even the churches have forgotten or ignored this fact, many would rather know Christ Jesus as just another prophet or teacher describing one of many ways to eternal life.  The point that we must emphasize to the worldly around us is that they must choose in this life whether or not Jesus Christ is a crazy loon, a deceptive con artist or the incarnate Creator God Himself.  When we speak of the ascension, we are using language only descriptive of His homecoming.  He has returned to the highest heavens, from whence He put His glory by and descended to earth for a time in order to fulfill all that He and the Father agreed to before time began.

Second, there is the ongoing and eternal nature of Christ’s ministry.  While there are extended arguments about the exact nature of the “true tent that the Lord set up,” Raymond Brown suggests that “the most natural reading of the text is that our writer here refers simply to the eternal or heavenly realm where he is seated at the right hand of God.”

Our common understanding is that our Lord Jesus ministers by prayerful intercession on our behalf to the Father.  Think of it this way, when we pray “in the Spirit,” and by that I do not mean any senseless mutters; we learn ever so slowly to pray for the working out of our Father’s will and purpose.  And as we grow in grace and knowledge our prayer life may more and more be in line with God’s intentions as we submit more and more to His word and the leading of His Son and Spirit.  Given that ongoing responsibility, we must realize how much more important are the prayers of our Lord Jesus Christ?  For Him to pray is to make it so!  And thereby is the world and all that is in it administered to finally reflect the greater glory of our Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Third, there is the present work of administering the New Covenant written finally in His broken body and shed blood.  In this regard, Raymond Brown assures us, “the teaching of Hebrews is that … guilt can be banished through Christ and his sacrifice, man’s iniquity can be taken away and his sin purged.  He ‘entered’ there for us to ‘appear’ on our behalf in order ‘to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself’. … He inaugurated a completely new age as he offered his own blood,” once for all on our behalf.

We must know also, that while our pardon was obtained on earth, Christ continues His work in the secure realm of heaven.  Here on earth, Satan and all his minions challenge, attack and continually weaken the church, but the Lord Himself is beyond Satan’s reach and because Christ Himself is praying for us: every good thing He would require of us is guided and protected from the worldly who would frustrate, if they could:  His final will and purpose.  Again Raymond Brown would assure us:  “We are ever remembered at that throne and our names are enrolled in heaven.  This is our confidence.  Our faith is grounded not in what we are or what we have done, but ever and always in what he is, God’s perfect Son, and what he has done through his perfect, eternal sacrifice.”  May we receive joyous comfort with this knowledge.  Amen.
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PREACHING RESOURCES

 Brown, John.  A Geneva Series Commentary:  Hebrews.
Brown, Raymond.  The Bible Speaks Today:  The Message of Hebrews.
Bruce, F.F.  The Epistle to the Hebrews.
Owen, John:  Commentary on the Book of Hebrews.
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.
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