“"Better Promises"”

Sunday, July 20, 2025

We’ve passed the halfway mark in our study of the book of Hebrews. Throughout, the author has appealed to the Scriptures—what we now call the Old Testament, but which his primary audience of Jewish Christians considered to be the sum of God’s written revelation to man, practically speaking. By the time this work was authored, in roughly the late 60s AD, most of what we now call the New Testament books had been written, but there were no inexpensive, mass produced Bibles yet, collecting them all in a group for distribution. They had to rely on a small number of handwritten copies made with expensive materials, and had to wrestle with continual questions of authenticity.

The Hebrew Bible already had a somewhat cleanly defined canon that was widely known and accepted, and from which the rabbis in the synagogues taught every Sabbath. So the author of Hebrews constantly says things that seem obvious and underwhelming to modern Christians; and yet for his original audience he was mining rare and valuable gems from the ground under their feet, in the Scriptures they’d always heard and recited, without really understanding many of their predictions about the the Messiah.

Thus the author used the Scriptures to demonstrate that God had always said his Son would be greater than the prophets (ch1a), greater than the angels (chs1b-2), greater than Moses (ch3a), and greater than the Levitical high priests (chs5&7). He also used the Scriptures to warn against lazily sliding back into an old and dying way (ch6), through a hard-hearted refusal to fully listen to the very Scriptures they revered (chs3b-4). To us—partly because of the book’s abovementioned tendency of making new and exciting observations that we today consider to be obvious—the whole argument seems a bit scatterbrained. But the author helpfully opens the next chapter with a clear indication that his next point caps off everything he’s been discussing up to now.

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.

(Hebrews 8.1-3)

Having spent so much time time establishing that Jesus is our new high priest, the obvious      question is, what are his duties? A Jewish audience might assume they were identical to those of the the Levitical priests, but as the author already pointed out, Jesus’ order follows Melchizedek, not Aaron (7.11), and thus his duties cannot be the same as those mandated in the law that established Aaron’s order (vv12-13). Yet, “every” priest shares the duty of offering up sacrifices (8.3), although not of the same sort, or in the same place.

The author will return to that “something to offer” (v3) in chapter 9; but first, he lingers on the place of worship, which he calls the “true tent” (v2). The ESV’s modernized translation here seems odd; but the archaic word used in most others immediately clears it up: tabernacle. He means that the place of worship built by Moses—although “he was instructed by God” in every practical detail of its design (v5)—was never any more than a charming imitation of the real, heavenly place of worship. Where did he get this idea? As usual, from the Scriptures! God told Moses,

“See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.”

(Hebrews 8.5)

This is a slightly adapted quotation from Exodus 25.40, substituting “everything” for the unnamed utensils targeted in that verse. Why did he make this alteration? Because God told Moses essentially the same thing, in Exodus 25.9, 26.30, and 27.8! On top of this, consider Isaiah’s vision of God:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

(Isaiah 6.1-2)

Well-versed readers will notice that the seraphim here mentioned bear a striking resemblance to the cherubim whose wings overshadowed the top of the ark of the covenant—called the “mercy seat” (e.g. Ex 25.17). The idea is that God showed Moses a vision of his actual heavenly court, and then told him to build an earthly copy. In Isaiah’s similar vision, he even calls the surroundings “the temple,” illustrating the same point.

Why does this all matter? Because our high priest carries out his priestly ministry, not in the imitation, but in God’s real throne room!

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.

(Hebrews 8.6)

From here, the author makes yet another Old Testament reference to further cement the point that the covenant inaugurated through Moses was “becoming obsolete and growing old,” and “ready to vanish away” (v13). To us it seems like he’s beating a dead horse, but his original audience was witnessing the drawn out fall of the Jewish nation, and a cataclysmic end to its way of life. It became increasingly clear that Rome would destroy the temple, and with it the Jews’ national ambitions. A reference from Jeremiah 31 establishes the point this time, but it ends with the payoff to the loose thread we left dangling in verse 6—that Christ’s covenant is predicated on “better promises.” Like what?

“For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,

                and I will remember their sins no more.”

(Hebrews 8.12)

Jeremy Nettles

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